Casanova's Chinese Restaurant

Casanova's Chinese Restaurant

Casanova's Chinese Restaurant is a novel by Anthony Powell (ISBN 0-09-947244-9). It forms the fifth volume of his masterpiece, the twelve-volume sequence A Dance to the Music of Time, and was originally published in 1960. Many of the events of the novel were included in the television adaptation broadcast on the UK's Channel 4 in 1997, comprising part of the second of four episodes. There was also an earlier, more comprehensive, BBC Radio adaptation.

Exploration of themes of time and memory are developed here. As with several of the earlier volumes, there is a substantial time-overlap with previous books, the first part returning to the period before the death of Mr. Deacon. However, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant concentrates on a new set of characters, principally the composer Hugh Moreland, (based on Powell's close friend Constant Lambert), his fiancée Matilda, and the critic Maclintick and his wife, Audrey, whose unhappy marriage forms a key part of the narrative.

The interweaving of historical with fictional events is more notable here, and is deployed to illuminate the characters, as for example in Erridge's ill-considered departure for the Spanish Civil War. An unintended consequence is to reveal hints of the author's own conservative views, although these are not obviously attributed to Nick who remains Everyman in this volume.

The hospital sequence displays one of the first examples of Powell's handling of emotion, much of it repressed, but powerful nonetheless.