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Simon & Schuster
July 2008
On Sale: July 8, 2008
224 pages
ISBN: 1416543309
EAN: 9781416543305
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Historical | Literature and Fiction Literary
A magnetic debut novel from world-renowned violinist
Eugene Drucker 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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