Isabel Merton is a renowned concert pianist, whose playing is marked by rare intensity, and for whom each performance is a plunge into the compelling world of the music. At the height of her career, she feels increasingly torn between the expressive musical realm she inhabits, and the fragmented life she leads as an itinerant artist, with its frequent flights, anonymous hotels and fortuitous, arbitrary encounters. Away from her New York home on a European tour, Isabel meets Anzor Islikhanov, a political exile from war-torn Chechnya driven by a bitter sense of injustice and a powerful desire to help and avenge his people.As their paths cross in several cities, they are drawn to each other both by their differences, and their seemingly parallel passions - until a menacing incident forces her to re-evaluate his actions and her own feelings - and throws her into a creative crisis. In this fiercely lyrical novel, Hoffman explores the luminous and dark faces of romanticism; our often unadmitted need for more than personal meaning; and the place and force of art in a world riven with violence.
- ISBN10 1847827055
- ISBN13 9781847827050
- Publish Date 1 June 2009 (first published 5 June 2008)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 21 October 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher F A Thorpe (Publishers)
- Imprint Ulverscroft Large Print Books Ltd
- Edition Large type / large print edition
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 416
- Language English