PRAISE FOR THE PRAGUE SONATA
An Indie Next pick for October 2017
A Buzz Books pick for fall/winter 2017
A Book Passage Elaine’s Pick
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“Twining music history with the political tumults of the 20th century, The Prague Sonata is a sophisticated, engrossing intellectual mystery . . . At the heart of the adventure story is a sensitive exploration of music’s strange power to encode memories into its themes and progressions . . . [Morrow’s] captivating, hopeful book presents a vision of the broken past, restored.”
―Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
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“A treasure of a novel. I read The Prague Sonata with marvel and gusto. Such a deliciously enveloping musical mystery! Heartiest congratulations on a virtuoso performance.”
―Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper’s Wife
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“Bradford Morrow is an astonishing writer. His short fictions are brilliantly macabre, and his longer fictions are epic adventures in which obsessive particularities—in this case the provenance of a piano sonata presumed to be of the late 18th century—transform entire lives in the most unexpected and remarkable ways. Having explored the netherworld of ingenious fakery in The Forgers, Morrow now explores an even more intricately rendered world of rivalrous musicologists in his most ambitious novel to date, The Prague Sonata.”
―Joyce Carol Oates, A Book of American Martyrs
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“The Prague Sonata is music scored for the reader’s imagination, expertly arranged—at once suspenseful and meditative, classical and surprising, devastating and genuinely inspiring. What a gorgeous novel this is. I thought often of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves—the fragmentation and ephemeral unity, its power to absorb us fully into a moving music. Bradford Morrow’s writing is as haunting and as beautiful as the fabled sonata it describes.”
―Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
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“An enthralling epic quest of a novel . . . The Prague Sonata is without doubt Bradford Morrow’s magnum opus . . . History is thrillingly re-enacted or re-created. Musical passages are conveyed with lyrical grace. Regular doses of surprise and suspense keep us immersed and involved . . . Compulsively enjoyable.”
―Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis StarTribune
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“This rich, masterful novel brilliantly explores the complex tumble of history, the human capacity for good and evil, the fragile but redeeming glory of art. Morrow has long been one of America’s finest novelists. And this humanely epic tale is his finest book.”
―Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Perfume River
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“Morrow stages an academic mystery with real historical sweep . . . The Prague Sonata is plotted and scored like a golden-age film, and its triumphant ending will rouse you to applause.”
―Weekly Standard
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“Bradford Morrow has written his masterpiece. The Prague Sonata is a rich, joyous, complex journey into the city of Prague, the claims made upon us by music, and several dark, dark corners of human experience. In the right hands, as here, the novel can throw open its windows, rear up on its back legs, and tear off down the street, singing at the top of its lungs.”
―Peter Straub, author of Interior Darkness: Selected Stories
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“A highlight of the year for me . . . [A] wonderful, vast novel.”
―Bill Goldstein, NBC, Bill’s Books
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“Music and war come to a crescendo in Bradford Morrow’s The Prague Sonata.”
―Vanity Fair, “Hot Type”
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“Bradford Morrow's enormous talent brings both Czechoslovakia of the early twentieth century roaring to life, as well as perfectly capturing our present-day protagonist, gracefully unwinding the secrets of the past. With each beautifully intimate moment The Prague Sonata will capture your heart, all the while the fascinating mystery at its center alights your imagination.”
―Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA
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“As entrancing as the musical piece in question, The Prague Sonata weaves through decades of mystery. A young musicologist whose performing career was cut short must tread through Prague as carefully as her fingers once caressed piano keys, as she seeks to reunite three long-missing manuscripts of sublime music.”
―Rosemary Pugliese, Spellbound Bookshop, Asheville, NC
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“This is a book for those who like their fiction long and immersive—most especially those with a love of music. Prague’s history, a composer’s mystery, and more than one love story make this a read that is fascinating in terms of its scholarship, musical in terms of its themes and its writing, breathtakingly paced yet epic in scope.”
―Betsy Burton, King’s English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, UT
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“Music infuses Morrow’s descriptions of war, revolution, peace, love, friendship, and betrayal. Finely crafted storytelling . . . The reading pleasure comes from both Meta’s pursuit and the prose, which brims with musical, historical, and cultural detail.”
―Publishers Weekly
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“A musical mystery set against the backdrop of a nation shattered by war and loss . . . sonically rich . . . an elegant foray into music and memory.”
―Kirkus Reviews
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“A sweeping, rich novel that moves through history from World War I, through World War II, into the fall of the Soviet Union and up to the present day, as it affects Czechoslovakia. Weaving throughout the story, with its rich and complex characters, is a hauntingly beautiful anonymous piano sonata that has been broken up into three parts. With writing that is multilayered and moves seamlessly throughout, it touches deep into the human heart.”
―Richard Corbett, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR