Piano - Softcover

Echenoz, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1843431807 ISBN 13: 9781843431800

Publisher: The Harvill Press, 2004

Synopsis

Max Delmarc, a middle-aged, internationally famous pianist, suffers from debilitating stage fright, for which alcohol is the only remedy. He lives a monotonous life, drinking and playing the piano at concerts, until the night when on the way home he is mugged and stabbed. In the course of a brief stay in a hotel that might be a hospital - in which his nurses bear an uncanny resemblance to Dean Martin and Peggy Lee - or might be a purgatory, Max explores the forbidden "rural zone" before being sent to the "urban zone". There are only three basic rules in the urban zone. First, it is forbidden to contact people you knew in life, forbidden to make yourself recognized...The second is that you also have to change your identity...The third rule is that it is forbidden to resume any professional practice related to the one you used to have. Defying the rules, Max engages in a hapless struggle to retrieve pieces of his former life, and although followed by watchers from Purgatory he feels livelier than he did when he was alive. Piano can be read as a metaphor of life and death, heaven, hell. The question is: Which is which?

About this title

Review:

"Echenoz investigates morality, religion and sex. All is delivered with the lightest touch, so the reader is left entranced." -- Lucy Dallas, TLS

"Teasing, elliptical, sometimes playful and containing passages of awesome literary dexterity, it is a beautiful read. -- Phil Miller, Glasgow Herald

'Echenoz offers more delight in each paragraph than a shelf full of blockbusters' -- ALLAN MASSIE, Scotsman

'Highly filmic, this offbeat fable is enjoyable'. -- Jane Housham, Guardian

A deadpan, elegant and wittily observed tragicomedy: posh French fun. -- Lee Langley, The Spectator, Jan 1, 2005

From the Publisher:

A huge bestseller in France, Piano is a witty, sardonic evocation of Dante or Sartre for the present day.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Harvill Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1843431807
• ISBN 13: 9781843431800
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192