This thrilling historical mystery starring Mozart tells of friendship and betrayal, and how music allows us to defy death—from the acclaimed author of Death and the Maiden and The Suicide Museum.
In 1789 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visits the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig, looking for a sign, a signal, an answer to an enigma that has haunted him since childhood: Was Bach murdered by a famous oculist? And years later, was Handel a victim of the same doctor?
Allegro follows his investigation, from the salons of London to the streets of Paris, recreating an enthralling and turbulent time, full of rogues and brilliant composers, charlatans and presumptuous nobles. Running parallel to this search is the rise of Mozart, his knowledge and fame, his trials and losses.
Praise for The Suicide Museum:
“An intricate examination of guilt and grief…evocative of Philip Roth. Its prose is brainy and confident, building momentum through the intensity of its ideas…profoundly moving.” —New York Times Book Review
“Set largely in the nineteen-nineties…[The Suicide Museum is] also a novel that looks toward the future…exhilarating.” —The New Yorker “A thriller nested inside a literary novel nested inside a memoir…playful and intriguing.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean-American author, born in Argentina, whose award-winning books in many genres have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in more than one hundred countries. Among his works are the plays Death and the Maiden and Purgatorio, the novels The Suicide Museum (Other Press, 2023), Widows, and Konfidenz, and the memoirs Heading South, Looking North and Feeding on Dreams. He writes regularly for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Guardian, El País, and CNN. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Threepenny Review,and Index on Censorship, among others. A prominent human rights activist, he worked as press and cultural advisor to Salvador Allende’s chief of staff in the final months before the 1973 military coup, and later spent many years in exile. He lives with his wife Angélica in Santiago, Chile, and Durham, North Carolina, where he is the Walter Hines Page Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University.
View titles by Ariel Dorfman
This thrilling historical mystery starring Mozart tells of friendship and betrayal, and how music allows us to defy death—from the acclaimed author of Death and the Maiden and The Suicide Museum.
In 1789 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visits the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig, looking for a sign, a signal, an answer to an enigma that has haunted him since childhood: Was Bach murdered by a famous oculist? And years later, was Handel a victim of the same doctor?
Allegro follows his investigation, from the salons of London to the streets of Paris, recreating an enthralling and turbulent time, full of rogues and brilliant composers, charlatans and presumptuous nobles. Running parallel to this search is the rise of Mozart, his knowledge and fame, his trials and losses.
Reviews
Praise for The Suicide Museum:
“An intricate examination of guilt and grief…evocative of Philip Roth. Its prose is brainy and confident, building momentum through the intensity of its ideas…profoundly moving.” —New York Times Book Review
“Set largely in the nineteen-nineties…[The Suicide Museum is] also a novel that looks toward the future…exhilarating.” —The New Yorker “A thriller nested inside a literary novel nested inside a memoir…playful and intriguing.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean-American author, born in Argentina, whose award-winning books in many genres have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in more than one hundred countries. Among his works are the plays Death and the Maiden and Purgatorio, the novels The Suicide Museum (Other Press, 2023), Widows, and Konfidenz, and the memoirs Heading South, Looking North and Feeding on Dreams. He writes regularly for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Guardian, El País, and CNN. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Threepenny Review,and Index on Censorship, among others. A prominent human rights activist, he worked as press and cultural advisor to Salvador Allende’s chief of staff in the final months before the 1973 military coup, and later spent many years in exile. He lives with his wife Angélica in Santiago, Chile, and Durham, North Carolina, where he is the Walter Hines Page Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University.
View titles by Ariel Dorfman
