By Bradford Morrow
Twining music history with the political tumults of the 20th century, The Prague Sonata is a sophisticated, engrossing intellectual mystery. And its prose, according to The Wall Street Journal, won’t leave you feeling ashamed in the morning.
The plot is set in motion when a Czech soldier entrusts the manuscript for a sonata to his young daughter before he perishes in World War I. Two decades later, after the Nazis invade Prague, his daughter divides the composition into its three movements and flees the city, leaving two parts behind, one with her husband and the other with her friend , tasking the latter with reuniting the manuscript if she survives the war. Half a century later a young musicologist in New York, Meta Taverner, receives one of the parts and is charged with reuniting all three.
The novel follows Meta to Europe as she pursues the task of uncovering the two missing pieces, her task complicated when she finds another musicologist attempting the same feat. A reviewer for The Historical Novel Society says “The Prague Sonata is more than a superb multiperiod novel; it reads like a concerto by one of the masters. Themes and counterpoints intertwine, just as we follow Meta’s exciting leads and the schemes of the experts she consults. The melody passes seamlessly from one instrument to another, just as Brandford Morrow deftly transports us between WWII Prague and the vital city of today. Meta is the well-rounded passionate soloist who waltzes us through The Prague Sonata under Morrow’s deft baton, and makes us fall in love with his literary artistry. Highly recommended.”