Oz Edition
The year is 1957, and the place is Paris, where the psychic wounds of World War II have barely begun to heal. A silent young German woman, Saffie, becomes maid, then wife, to Raphael, a privileged French musician who finds her remoteness provocative and irresistible. One day in the Marais, the old Jewish quarter of the city where she has taken her husband's flute to be repaired, Saffie meets a Hungarian instrument maker - and all their lives are unexpectedly, dramatically altered.
Reminiscent in its intensity and moral complexity, of 'The Reader' and 'Sophie's Choice', this powerfully unusual novel centres on two people who are damaged, in different ways, by war; and on a liaison which crosses boundaries, more dangerously than they know. As their stories unfold against the rising tide of violence unleashed by the Algerian conflict, the novel builds to a shocking climax. With beautifully judged detachment, Huston movingly conveys the loss of innocence, the erotic charge and the tragic irony of these lives twisted out of shape by the weight of history.
