Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award * Winner of the Orange Prize * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century

"Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book." --Washington Post Book World

Ann Patchett's spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis. 

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening--until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

Patchett's lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.

ANN PATCHETT has written seven novels and three nonfiction pieces. She has been named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important Persons in the World, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize in England, and the Novel Sense Book of the Year. More than thirty languages have been translated into her work. She resides in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Karl, and their dog, Sparky, as co-owner of Parnassus Books. annpatchett.com is a website dedicated to Ann Patchett.