Piano: A Novel

(Hardback)

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Description

Max Delmarc, age fifty, is a famous concert pianist with two problems: the first is a paralyzing stage fright for which the second, alcohol, is the only treatment. In this unparalleled comedy from the Prix Goncourtwinning French novelist Jean Echenoz, we journey with Max, from the trials of his everyday life, through his untimely death, and on into the afterlife.

After a brief stay in purgatorypart luxury hotel, part minimum security prison, under the supervision of deceased celebritiesMax is cast into an alarmingly familiar partition of hell, "the urban zone," a dark and cloudy city much like his native Paris on an eternally bad day. Unable to play his beloved piano or stomach his needed drink, Max engages in a hapless struggle to piece his former life back together while searching in vain for the woman he once loved.

An acclaimed bestseller with 50,000 copies sold in France, Piano is a sly, sardonic evocation of Dante and Sartre for the present day, the playful, daring masterpiece of a novelist at the top of his form.

Reviews

"Piano is not only Echenozs best book, its also his most personal and most daring." Le Journal Du Dimanche

"Piano is a euphoric and meticulous book." Le Monde

"Rarely has the difficult craft of storytelling been as well mastered." The Times Literary Supplement

Author Bio

Jean Echenoz won Frances prestigious Prix Goncourt for Im Gone (The New Press). He is the author of nine other novels in English translationincluding 1914, Big Blondes, Lightning, Piano, Ravel, and Running, all published by The New Pressand the winner of numerous literary prizes, among them the Prix Mdicis and the European Literature Jeopardy Prize. He lives in Paris.