The novel opens with the famous concert conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, a symbol of resistance to Nazism when the Bayreuth Festival reopened. A concert that was attended by Antonin Tcherniakovsky, a Soviet officer posted to Berlin.

Like so many others, Antonin Tcherniakovsy’s life was overturned by World War II. Although he had been preparing for a career as a violinist, history decided otherwise. Having enlisted in the Polish division, he was in France early in the war. After the defeat, he winds up interned in Switzerland, where he meets a young woman, Alberte, the novel’s other main character. She is teaching the interns French, but she too, had wanted to be a violonist.

The third major character is the narrator, who is unnamed. Perhaps because his own life story seems to elude his grasp. There are so many questions he would have liked to be able to ask Alberte, his mother, who hardly knew how to love him. And there’s that stranger from his past, who seems to have been there, at a distance, every since. His quest, which has the feel of a thriller at times, takes him to both Rome and Berlin, and will, despite the obstacles, allow him to reconnect with his buried past.

An intimate twentieth century saga told through the thwarted fates of three musicians whose lives overlap with both World War II and the Cold War.