Selected as one of Oprah.coms 20 Tantalizing Beach ReadsSelected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceIsabel Merton is a renowned concert pianist, whose performances aremarked bya rareresponsiveness to the complexities of her art,and its intensities of feeling.At the height of her career, she feels increasingly torn between the compellingmusical realmshe deeply inhabits, and her fragmented itinerant artists life, with its frequent flights, anonymous hotels, and brief, arbitrary encounters. Away from her New York home on a European tour, Isabel meets a political exile from a war-torn country, a mandriven by a ranklingsense of injustice and a powerful desire tovindicatehis cause and avenge hispeople.As their paths cross in several cities, they are drawn to each other both by their differences and their seemingly parallel passionsuntil a menacing incident throws her into a creative crisis, and forces herto reevaluatehis actions,and her ownmotives.In this story of contemporary love and conflict,Hoffman illuminates the currents and undercurrents of our time, assheexplores the luminous and dark faces of romanticism, and those perennial human yearnings, frustrations, and moral choices that canlead to destructiveness, or the richest art.From the Hardcover edition.