'Spins with virtuosic, charismatic brilliance around a core of wilful mystery' Guardian

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Russia in the 1940s. A small boy practises spinning on his mother's wooden floors, entranced by what he can make his body do. His momentum will propel him far from home; we watch him turn, through the lives of his teachers, his partners on and off stage, through the eyes of doormen and shoemakers, hustlers and nurses, through the rehearsal rooms of Moscow to Parisian opera houses to the streets of New York – ablaze as a comet, his light hot enough to catch and burn.

Masterfully blending fact and fiction to give an alternative biography of Rudolph Nureyev's life, Dancer is not only the story of one of the most important artists in history – but a biography of the twentieth century itself.

'McCann's agile, muscular prose creates its own energy and rhythm … He has taken one of the most charismatic characters of the twentieth century and created a bold contemporary novel' Daily Telegraph

'Remarkable … Does full justice to the tragic story of a dancer who was the glory of his generation' Sunday Times

'Here is an astonishing book. Colum McCann writes with a ferocious eloquence and a masterly sense of narrative' Spectator