On December 17, 1996, fourteen MRTA revolutionaries stormed the Japanese embassy in Peru in the middle of a party celebrating the Japanese Emperor's birthday. The siege was deadlocked for 126 days. Ann Patchett has fictionalized this dramatic and true event in her novel, Bel Canto. Bookclub-in-a-Box shows how Ann Patchett sets the stage and has the players act out the drama of this hostage-taking incident. What should be narrated as a tense and terse action-filled tragedy turns out to be a human story told with warmth and sardonic humor. Patchett has taken a cacophony of different characters -- an opera singer, a Japanese businessman, a translator, a vice-president of a small South American country, other important dignitaries and a couple of dozen terrorists -- and has created a lyrical story which resonates with the similarities among people, rather than their differences. The Bookclub-in-a-Box guide to Bel Canto will interpret Patchett's novel, voice by voice.
- ISBN10 1897082010
- ISBN13 9781897082010
- Publish Date 1 July 2006
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint Bookclub-in-a-Box
- Format Paperback
- Pages 32
- Language English