A beautifully crafted tale of the loves, lust and lies of a young Viennese opera singer.
A beautifully crafted tale of the loves, lust and lies of a young Viennese opera singer.
When young singer Friederike marries English music-seller Archy he claims to have discovered the lost last act of Alban Berg's opera 'Lulu'. What emerges is a story of music, lying, marriage and cooking set against the backdrop of contemporary Vienna.
'A very accomplished book indeed, brimming with quality and admirably lacking in tricks or literary artifice...a crisply written story with a nice undertow of irony...there is fine writing on every page. The dialogue is inch-perfect and there are some beautifully mournful descriptive passages.' Sunday Telegraph
philip hensher is Chief Literary Critic for the Spectator, and regularly reviews in the best UK and US newspapers and journals. His other books include The Mulberry Empire, Kitchen Venom, Pleasured and The Bedroom of the Mister's Wife.