Description:
In present day London, a rare, 17th-century violin is offered at auction. Two bidders in particular covet it, one of whom claims to know its "terrible story." So begins Canone Inverso, Paolo Maurensig's elliptical tale of two young men whose passion for music, and this fiddle in particular, converges in a crescendo of obsession, envy, and betrayal. Friends who meet at music school in prewar Austria, Jeno and Kuno come from very different worlds: one the illegitimate son of a sausage maker, and the other the heir to a baronetcy. But together they share an obsessive devotion to music. Alas, what begins as a dance of soul mates--"We were like brothers, not in flesh or blood, but in that part of the spirit where order, rhythm, and harmony are found"--ends badly, the brutal disintegration of their relationship eerily paralleling Germany's decent into Nazi madness. Maurensig offers up a mesmerizing allegory (good against evil, brother against brother), peeling away layer after layer, only to reveal yet another bizarre reality: "Behind the refined music we hear, performed with levity and perfection by and orchestra or a string quartet, there is the straining of nerves, the gushing of blood, the breaking of hearts." --Marianne Painter
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