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Win a copy of The Song of
Names: by
Norman Lebrecht Winner
of the Whitbread First Novel Award Fiction
| Anchor | Trade Paperback | February 2004 | $14.00 | 1-4000-3489-2 Martin
Simmonds’ father tells him, “Never trust a musician
when he speaks about love.” The advice comes too late. Martin already loves Dovidl Rapoport, an eerily
gifted Polish violin prodigy whose parents left him in the Simmonds’s care before they perished in the Holocaust.
For a time the two boys are closer than brothers. But on the day he is to
make his official debut, Dovidl disappears. Only 40
years later does Martin get his first clue about what happened to him. In this ravishing novel
of music and suspense, Norman Lebrecht unravels the
strands of love, envy and exploitation that knot geniuses to their admirers.
In doing so he also evokes the fragile bubble of Jewish life in prewar |