Rent Ravel

Synopsis

Winner of the world’s premier literary awards, as well as a French-American Foundation Translation Prize, Ravel is a beguiling and original evocation of the last ten years in the life of the musical genius Ravel, written by novelist Jean Echenoz.

The book opens in 1927 as Maurice Ravel—dandy, eccentric, curmudgeon—crosses the Atlantic aboard the luxury liner The France to begin his triumphant grand tour of the United States. Ravel travels across America, playing in grand concert halls from Boston to Chicago to California, meeting luminaries of the day including Stravinsky, Mahler, Bartók, Toscanini, Gershwin, and even Charlie Chaplin.

In this “tiny miracle of a biographical novel” (Booklist), Echenoz captures the folly of the era as well as its genius, concentrating both on Ravel’s personal life—sartorially and socially splendid—and on his most successful compositions across a tumultuous decade. Illuminated by flashes of Echenoz’s characteristically sly humor, Ravel is not just a delightfully quirky portrait of a famous musician coping with the ups and downs of his illustrious career but a truly touching farewell to a dignified and lonely man going reluctantly into the night.

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