The Piano Tuner
Mason, Daniel

RRP
A$18.99

On a misty London afternoon in 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the War Office: he must leave his wife, and his quiet life in London, to travel to the jungles of Burma to tune a rare Erard grand piano. The piano belongs to Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll, an enigmatic British officer, whose success at making peace in the war-torn Shan States is legendary, but whose unorthodox methods have begun to attract suspicion.

So begins the journey of the soft-spoken Edgar across Europe, the Red Sea, India, Burma, and at last into the remote highlands of the Shan States. En route he is entranced by the Doctor's letters and by the shifting cast of tale-spinners, soldiers and thieves who cross his path. As his captivation grows, however, so do his questions: about the Doctor's true motives, about an enchanting and elusive woman who travels with him into the jungle, about why he came. And, ultimately, whether he will ever be able to return home unchanged to the woman who awaits him there...

Sensuous and lyrical, rich with passion and adventure, The Piano Tuner is a hypnotic tale of myth, romance and self-discovery. It is an unforgettable and haunting novel.

REVIEWS:

"An irresistible amalgam of Kipling, Rider Haggard, and Conrad at their very best. Masterful"-KIRKUS REVIEWS

"An extraordinary piece of work. The Piano Tuner is a novel of journeys and the shifting grounds of perception, but at heart it is a story of the human urge to be absorbed fully into life, to cease to be a bystander, to be thrust into the essential dreamscape of human strivings. Daniel Mason's debut is shining and striking. He transported me thoroughly, well beyond the initial reading. Days later, the scenes shift and stir and agitate within me. This is writing of deep potency and resonance. Of beauty and pain and all things in between."-JEFFREY LENT, author of In the Fall and Lost Nation

"Daniel Mason has woven together an elegant and unusually engrossing story, one that offers the reader the best possible journey-into a world that no longer exists. Rich, atmospheric, and evocative of the sights, smells and textures of 19th century Burma, The Piano Tuner is an astonishingly accomplished first novel. I truly enjoyed it."-ARTHUR GOLDEN, author of Memoirs of a Geisha

"A rattling good story, complex characterizations, and a brilliantly realized portrayal of an alien culture-all combine to dazzling effect in this first by a California medical student who has worked and studied in the Far East. Piano tuner Edgar Drake undertakes his journey (thrillingly described), arriving at the inland fortress where the suave Dr Anthony Carroll-part Albert Schweitzer, part Mistah Kurtz of Heart of Darkness-rules as a benevolent despot, aided by a beautiful Burmese woman to whom Edgar finds himself increasingly attracted. A wealth of information-musical, medical, historical, political-and numerous colorfully detailed vignettes of life in Burma's teeming cities and jungle villages provide a solid context for the intricate plot, which brings Drake into 'complicity' with Carroll's visionary dream...until the powerful denouement [and the] deeply ironic climactic action. (One keeps thinking of what a marvelous movie The Piano Tuner might make.)... An irresistible amalgam of Kipling, Rider Haggard, and Conrad at their very best. Masterful."-KIRKUS (STARRED REVIEW)

Author Information

After graduating at the top of his class at Harvard in 1998 with awards in science and creative writing, Mason spent a year studying malaria on the Thai-Myanmar border before beginning medical school in San Francisco. He will graduate in 2003. A seasoned lecturer, brilliant and inexhaustible, he couldn't be more promotable.