Dancing to the Music of Time

A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. It has sometimes, erroneously, been referred to as a roman à clef. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. In 2008/09, following a similar and (for the most part) successful attempt to read Proust, we finally got around to it.