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Knopf
July 2015
On Sale: July 7, 2015
Featuring: Leda
386 pages ISBN: 110187449X EAN: 9781101874493 Kindle: B00OEXM6SS Hardcover / e-Book
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Historical
February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, clutching a suitcase
and her father’s cherished violin, leaves her small Italian
village for a new home (and husband) halfway across the
world in Argentina. Upon her arrival in Buenos Aires, Leda
is shocked to find that her bridegroom has been killed.
Unable to fathom the idea of returning home, she remains in
this unfamiliar city, living in a commune, without friends
or family, on the brink of destitution. She finally acts on
a passion she has kept secret for years: mastering the
violin. Leda is seduced by the music that underscores life
in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices,
now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets. Leda knows, however, that she can never play in public as a
woman, so she cuts off her hair, binds her breasts, and, as
a young man, joins a troupe of musicians bent on bringing
tango into the salons of high society. As time progresses,
the lines between Leda and her disguise will begin to blur,
and feelings that she has long kept suppressed will reveal
themselves, jeopardizing not only her music career but her
life itself.
With evocative scenery, prose suffused
with the rhythms of the tango, and a deep, resonant core, De
Robertis delivers her most accomplished novel yet.
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