Extraordinary Renditions - Softcover

Ervin, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566892465 ISBN 13: 9781566892469

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 2010

Synopsis

Music, war, and imperial ambition touch three lives in this intricately woven story.

World-renowned composer and Holocaust survivor Lajos Harkályi has returned to Hungary to debut his final opera and share his mother’s parting gift, the melody from a lullaby she sang as he was forced to leave his Hungarian home for the infamous Czech concentration camp Terezín.

Private First Class Jonathan “Brutus” Gibson is being blackmailed by his commanding officer at the US Army base in Hungary, one of the infamous black-sites of the global War on Terror, and he must decide between going AWOL or risking his life to make an illegal firearms deal in Budapest.

Aspiring musician Melanie Scholes is preparing for the most important performance of her career as a violinist in Harkályi’s opera, but before she takes the stage she must extricate herself from a failing relationship and the inertia that threatens to consume her future.

As this book reaches a crescendo, their three stories achieve an alchemical harmony, reminding us that each individual has the spirit to contend with tyranny, apathy, and the brutal circularity of history.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Ervin grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and has lived in Budapest, Illinois, and Louisiana. His fiction has appeared in Akashic’s Chicago Noir, and excerpts from this collection have appeared in Conjunctions and the Southern Review. A former bookseller and accomplished literary critic, his essays and reviews have appeared in the Believer, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and USA Today. Extraordinary Renditions is his first novel.

Reviews

Three disparate lives—of an aging, internationally renowned composer; an African American GI; and a young American violinist—intersect in contemporary Budapest in Ervin’s first novel. Lajos Harkályi returns for the first time to his native city to attend the world premiere of his new opera with his niece, Magda, a translator at a nearby U.S. Army base; PFC “Brutus” Gibson is having an affair with Magda; and Melanie Scholes has a solo in Harkályi’s opera. But each person’s story has a darker side: Harkályi is reminded of being sent to the Terezen concentration camp as a youth and narrowly escaping death, Gibson is blackmailed by his sadistic commanding officer and attacked by skinheads in the city where his race makes him stand out, and Scholes is an expat adrift in a personal relationship. Ervin’s prose style seems to fit his protagonists, becoming more elegant for Harkályi, angrier and more combative for Gibson, and more diffident for Scholes until the climax, as the theme of “Strange Fruit” grows stronger. A thought-provoking exploration of tyranny, freedom, and the power of music. --Michele Leber

Edition details

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566892465
• ISBN 13: 9781566892469
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 183