The Conductor - Softcover

Quigley, Sarah

3.85

985 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1443413097 ISBN 13: 9781443413091

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2012

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June 1941: Nazi troops surround the city of Leningrad, planning to shell and starve its people into submission. Most of the cultural elite escape, but the famous composer Shostakovich stays behind to defend his city. That winter, the bleakest in Russian history, the Party orders Karl Eliasberg, the shy, difficult conductor of a second-rate orchestra, to prepare for the task of a lifetime: he is to organize a performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, a haunting, defiant new piece that will be relayed by loudspeakers to the front lines. Eliasberg’s musicians are starving and scarcely have the strength to carry their instruments, but for five freezing months, the conductor stubbornly drives them on, depriving those who falter of their bread rations. Slowly the music begins to dissolve the nagging hunger, the exploding streets, the slow deaths . . . but at what cost? Eliasberg’s relationships are strained, obsession takes hold and his orchestra grows weaker. Soon, they are struggling not just to perform but to stay alive.

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About the Author:

SARAH QUIGLEY is a writer, poet and reviewer. She has a D.Phil. in literature from the University of Oxford, and her work has been widely published in New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. and Germany. The winner of several high-profile awards for her fiction, Sarah Quigley was the inaugural recipient of the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency. She now lives in Berlin.

WEB: SARAHVQUIGLEY.COM

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