The Double Life of Anna Song
Publisher
:
Actes Sud
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782742785674
Number of pages
:
191
Description
Based on a true event—the story of British pianist Joyce Hatto—The Double Life of Anna Song is an original reflection on love and admiration that explores the fascination of a man for a woman. It is an ode to music and love amid fraud and deception.
When pianist Anna Song learns that she will die from cancer, she leaves the city with her husband, Paul, to live in an old manor in the country. She dreams of devoting her last years to playing and recording the best of the piano repertoire, from Beethoven to Ravel. The records Paul produces create an unprecedented oeuvre; Anna is acclaimed as “the best pianist whom no one had ever heard of”—a true phenomenon. Journalists, however, eventually discover that she is not the performer of her recordings and begin to investigate her.
The novel includes journalists’ reports of the investigations and subsequent exposures, but at its core it is a love story. Paul Deroches tells his version of their lives and the emotions that drove him into a world of deceit. The two met when Anna and Paul were children. Paul’s parents had died, and his grandmother, concerned about his loneliness, introduced him to Anna, a young and musically talented Vietnamese girl. The fascination Paul felt at their first meeting deepened. The two were separated during adolescence when Anna moved with her parents to the United States. When they met again 15 years later, Paul’s love was still strong, but Anna had changed. She had had to give up the idea of becoming a professional musician—a rare illness had paralyzed one of her fingers. Paul then devoted his life and energy to convincing her that she was a brilliant pianist.
As in her first novel, Minh Tran Huy creates her own universe, inspired by Vietnam, remembrance, and a particular relationship between fiction and reality. She plunges the reader into a gripping story where the mystery remains a mystery until the end.
Author
Minh Tran Huy : Born in Paris in 1979, Minh Tran Huy is a deputy editor of Le Magazine Littéraire and a literary critic. La double vie d’Anna Song is her third novel after La Princesse et le pêcheur (Actes Sud, 2007) and Le Lac né en une nuit (Actes Sud, 2008).
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