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A magnetic debut novel from world-renowned violinist Eugene Drucker
Simon & Schuster
July 2007
On Sale: July 17, 2007
ISBN: 1416543295
EAN: 9781416543299
Hardcover
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Fiction
Set during the final weeks of World War II, The Savior is
the story of Gottfried Keller, a young German violinist.
Exempted from military service, Keller is burdened with the
demoralizing task of playing for wounded soldiers in
hospitals and makeshift infirmaries. As he leaves his apartment one morning to pick up a new
assignment at headquarters, Keller finds an SS driver
waiting for him and is escorted without explanation to a
labor camp outside his town. There he is introduced to the
camp's Kommandant, who tells Keller that he will spend the
next four days performing for the inmates as part of an
experiment in reviving hope in those who have lost it
completely. Overwhelmed by fear and compelled by the temptation of using
his talent to affect others so powerfully, Keller finds
himself playing a series of concerts for the prisoners --
and seeing with his own eyes the horrifying truths within
the barbed-wire fence. As he plays the music of Ysaÿe,
Hindemith and Bach, most notably the searing Chaconne,
Keller's own questionable past unfolds, revealing the loss
of his closest friend and the Jewish fiancée from whom he
fled in fear of being caught as a Jew-lover. As he bears
witness to the camp's atrocities, Keller's horror toward the
perpetrators and their crime begins to fade, revealing his
own culpability. Beautifully conceived and gracefully written, The Savior is
a complex and illuminating character study of a man severed
from his past expectations and an artist struggling with his
identity in the face of human catastrophe.
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