While clearing out his great aunt’s midtown apartment after her death, author David Winner discovered artifacts of her storied existence: notes from opera stars, love letters and artifacts from the Middle East of the 1930’s. His Aunt Dorle had been a co-founder of Angel Records and a prominent figure in the mid-century classical music world. But the more he learned about her world, the more complicated her story became, a twisted puzzle full of fascism and fraud and a record of a young woman grappling with her attraction to lovers with hair-raising political ties. A powerful work of family discovery, rooted in a bygone Midtown Manhattan and involving artists and politicians from around the world.
“This book is a brilliant concoction, equal to the ingredients that might have been combined in Dorle’s cocktail shaker: fact, fiction, revelation, riddles. It has a sad ending – though one that is so kind. The tenderness broke my heart.”
– Ann Beattie
David Winner is the author of three novels, Enemy Combatant, Tyler’s Last and The Cannibal of Guadalajara, winner of the 2009 Gival Press Novel Award and nominated for the National Book Award. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, Fiction, The Iowa Review, The Millions. The Kenyon Review and other publications in the U.S. and the U.K. He is the fiction editor of The American (www.theamericanmag. com), a monthly magazine based in Rome, a senior editor at Statorec magazine and a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail. Most recently, he is the co-editor of Writing the Virus: Recent work from Statorec magazine.
Including a starred review from Booklife, a huge rave from Kirkus and more glowing praise from Ann Beattie, Sean O’Driscoll and Clifford Thompson.
