This image is the cover for the book Time of Hope, The Strangers and Brothers Novels

Time of Hope, The Strangers and Brothers Novels

A young man resolves to rise above his humble beginnings in the series praised as a “masterwork . . . a panorama of middle and upper-middle class English society” (The New York Times).

Nine-year-old Lewis Eliot learns that his father is bankrupt in the summer of 1914. This family crisis—and the tragedy that follows—shape his future, but with fierce willpower, he diligently studies and eventually finds a promising law career in London. However, that very determination to succeed against difficult odds may prove Eliot’s undoing as he courts and marries a troubled, wealthy woman, raising questions of social class, marriage, and the nature of ambition.

“Snow depicted a milieu of which he was an intimate and exhilarating part. [The Strangers and Brothers novels are] precisely, often poetically written books . . . strong on plot and narrative and nuances of power politics.” —The New York Times

“A sensitive evocation of the early background of Lewis Eliot, Snow’s narrator, and with the first stages of the career that is to take him through so many different layers of English society. . . . [The novel] gives a remarkable impression of the world of the law.” —Commentary

C.P. Snow

Charles Percy Snow was a scientist, novelist, and public intellectual. Born in Leicester in 1905, Snow attended the University of Leicester and Cambridge University, where he became a fellow of Christ’s College. Knighted Baron Snow in 1957, he served under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He is best known as the author of the eleven-book Strangers and Brothers series of novels (1940–1970), which provide an insider’s view on the influence of outside forces on academic institutions. Snow’s novel In Their Wisdom was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1974. He was married to novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson until his death in 1980.

Open Road Media