Piano by Jean Echenoz

Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti

• Bibliothèques Municipales Geneva, Switzerland
• Médiathèque de l'Agglomération de Montpellier, France
  

Publisher of Nominated Edition
The New Press ISBN 1565848713

A critically acclaimed bestseller in France, Piano is a sly, sardonic evocation of Dante and Sartre for the present-day, the playful and daring masterpiece of a novelist at the top of his form.

Max Delmarc, age fifty, is a famous concert pianist with two problems: the first, severe stage fright for which the second, alcohol, is the only cure. In this unparalleled comedy by Prix Goncourt-winner Jean Echenoz, we journey with Max from the trials of his everyday life to his untimely death and on into the afterlife.

After a brief stay in purgatory - part luxury hotel, part minimum-security prison supervised by dead celebrities - Max is sentenced to "the urban zone", a partition of hell bearing an uncanny resemblance to his native Paris on an eternally gloomy day.

Forbidden to reveal his true identity, Max engages in a hapless struggle to piece his former life back together while searching in vain for the woman he once loved.

Jean Echenoz is the winner of France's prestigious Prix Goncourt for I'm Gone. He is the author of four previous novels in English translation, including Big Blondes and Cherokee, winner of the Prix Medicis. He lives in Paris.