Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time as a Narrative of Trauma

In The Noise of Time (2016), Julian Barnes narrates the biography of the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Barnes presents Shostakovich as a trapped and anguished human being who needs to be understood and absolved from the accusations of his time. We can read the novel as the story of a great composer who lived his life as trauma, and carried this burden in a most Sisyphean sense. We watch him as he tries his best to save his personal integrity while undergoing severely distressing events, continuously distracted by the noise of his time as he is perseveringly composing his masterpieces despite it. This paper will illustrate how Barnes evokes sympathy for Shostakovich’s traumatic life and how Shostakovich fought with trauma by the help of his ironic mode of living