Ravel

by Jean Echenoz

Translated from the French by

Linda Coverdale

A bestseller in France, Ravel is a beguiling and original evocation of the last ten years in the life of a musical genius, written by the acclaimed novelist Jean Echenoz, winner of the Prix Goncourt. The book opens in 1927 as Maurice Ravel—dandy, eccentric, and curmudgeon—voyages across the Atlantic aboard the luxurious ocean liner the France to begin his triumphant grand tour across the United States, where he will travel aboard such fabled trains as the Zephyr, the Hiawatha, and the Sunset Limited, smoking his precious stash of Gauloises along the way. 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 professional and personal life but a truly touching farewell to a dignified and lonely old man going reluctantly into the night.

(From Publisher).

Jean Echenoz is the winner of France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt for I’m Gone (The New Press). He is the author of four previous novels in English translation and is the winner of numerous literary prizes, among them the Prix Medicis and the European Literature Jeopardy Prize. He lives in Paris.

Psychological novel of the last 10 years of the French composer. The suggestive effect is a stylistic element similar to the famous "Bolero" and ironically broken by the author.