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Riverhead
May 2008
On Sale: May 15, 2008
256 pages
ISBN: 1594489866
EAN: 9781594489860
Hardcover
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Literature and Fiction Literary
This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story
of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the
extreme fear
of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays
undaunted in
their midst.
One day a shell lands in a bread line
and kills
twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in
his flat. He
vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play
Albinoni’s
Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The
Adagio had
been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was
firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that
it had been
rebuilt by a different composer into something new and
worthwhile gives
the cellist hope.
Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for
his weekly
walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his
family on
the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t
know, tries to
make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is
waiting.
Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the
next shot
will land on the bridges or streets they must cross,
unwilling to talk
to their old friends of what life was once like before
divisions were
unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the
pseudonymous name
of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the
cellist from a
hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his
memorial to the
victims.
In this beautiful and unforgettable novel,
Steven
Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to
create a story
that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the
human
spirit under extraordinary duress.
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