2023 Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award
by Eugene Vodolazkin, Marian Schwartz
From the winner of Russia's biggest literary prizes, a richly layered novel in which a celebrated guitarist robbed of his talent by Parkinson's disease seeks other paths to immortality: by authorizing a biography and by mentoring a thirteen-year-old virtuoso battling cancer.
This personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning will resonate with readers of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Umberto Eco, and Solzhenitsyn. Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, belonging and purpose, time and eternity. At the stunning finale of Brisbane, all the carefully knit stitches unravel into a riddle: Whose story is it - the subject's or the writer's? Are art and love really no match for death? Is Brisbane, the city of our dreams, our only hope for the future?
The Independent Publisher Book Awards were established in 1996 to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers.