Piano
ABOUT
THE BOOK
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.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Mark
Polizzotti
Mark Polizzotti is an American translator and author. He has translated more than 50 books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Marguerite Duras and André Breton, and written 11 books, the latest of which is Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto (2018). He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the recipient of a 2016 American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature, and a publisher and editor-in-chief at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Mark Polizzotti is an American translator and author. He has translated more than 50 books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Marguerite Duras and André Breton, and written 11 books, the latest of which is Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto (2018). He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the recipient of a 2016 American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature, and a publisher and editor-in-chief at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.