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Instruments, scores and musicians are the protagonists of various recent novels, which explore the resonances of musical art from the written word. These are works by authors as diverse as Helena Attlee, Akira Mizubayashi, Hélène Gestern or Pascal Quignard.
One of the most successful authors of recent decades, Antonio Gala, passed away last Sunday, leaving behind a work that reflects the sensitivity of an era. His most famous title was 'The Turkish Passion'.
The author of 'Out of Africa', Baroness Karen Blixen, had a stormy love affair with the Danish poet Thorkild Bjørnvig, who made her known in a book that is now published.
A mix of essay, biography and gossip, the American Phyllis Rose analyzes in 'Parallel Lives' five sentimental unions of renowned 19th century intellectuals: Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth, Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, Effie Gray and John Ruskin, Georges Henry Lewes and George Eliot and John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor.
Toni Montesinos agrees that Stefan Zweig's 'Legends' allow us to "penetrate the ins and outs of his personality, see which events affected him the most" and "how he struggled to resolve the paradoxes and contradictions that gripped his soul". For J.A.Masoliver Ródenas, in 'Writing School', her author, Mercedes Abad, has "the intention of entertaining, something that she more than achieves".
In the novel 'Number One', John Dos Passos (1896-1970) makes an x-ray of political corruption through the figure of Chuck Crawford, a lying and adulterous candidate, a political animal master of eloquence and understanding of the masses. With the help of a drunken campaign adviser, Crawford wins the senatorship and soon runs for president of the United States. You can read the beginning of this work, published by Impedimenta, which advances features of current populism, here.
