On one side, towering genius: Bach, Beethoven, Schubert. On the other, human depravity at its darkest: the hounding of innocents, unremitting suffering, death camps. And trapped in the grey world that lies between: Reuben Mendel - musician, sage, survivor.
Mirroring the last movement of a late Beethoven string quartet, Grosse Fugue has three emotional peaks. First, the trenches of World War 1 and the trauma of injury and recovery. Second, the Holocaust: flight, capture, familial slaughter and survival. And finally, the struggle to make sense of the senseless and the conflict that emerges with those who would ignore or exploit it.
The novel begins after Reuben Mendel's death, before flashing back to how his parents met in England. He comes to music early, captivated as a young boy when he hears the great Kreisler play Beethoven’s violin concerto. A solo career is ended by the trenches of the First World War. Traumatised and captured, he is hospitalised in Vienna.
There he recovers, to settle in the seething cauldron of post-war Austria, initially with his parents, later with wife and children. Playing in the Vienna Philharmonic, a life of comfort ensues. But before long, the dark clouds begin to gather, taking them from a life of comfort to the edge of doom, cataloguing their descent and increasingly futile attempts to escape. Captured, they are plunged into the extermination process, where Reuben plays in the Men’s Orchestra at Auschwitz.
After liberation, Reuben returns to London, where he forms a string quartet that becomes celebrated. But he refuses to play late Beethoven; until the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz when the Quartet perform the third of the five quartets.
After a cathartic performance, his fame spreads, and he finally comes to term with his overpowering guilt and the need to make sense of his loss. He proposes a new settlement that allows all Jews to be possessed not merely of their heritage, but of the moral legacy of the Holocaust, regardless of their belief system.
Mirroring the last movement of a late Beethoven string quartet, Grosse Fugue has three emotional peaks. First, the trenches of World War 1 and the trauma of injury and recovery. Second, the Holocaust: flight, capture, familial slaughter and survival. And finally, the struggle to make sense of the senseless and the conflict that emerges with those who would ignore or exploit it.
The novel begins after Reuben Mendel's death, before flashing back to how his parents met in England. He comes to music early, captivated as a young boy when he hears the great Kreisler play Beethoven’s violin concerto. A solo career is ended by the trenches of the First World War. Traumatised and captured, he is hospitalised in Vienna.
There he recovers, to settle in the seething cauldron of post-war Austria, initially with his parents, later with wife and children. Playing in the Vienna Philharmonic, a life of comfort ensues. But before long, the dark clouds begin to gather, taking them from a life of comfort to the edge of doom, cataloguing their descent and increasingly futile attempts to escape. Captured, they are plunged into the extermination process, where Reuben plays in the Men’s Orchestra at Auschwitz.
After liberation, Reuben returns to London, where he forms a string quartet that becomes celebrated. But he refuses to play late Beethoven; until the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz when the Quartet perform the third of the five quartets.
After a cathartic performance, his fame spreads, and he finally comes to term with his overpowering guilt and the need to make sense of his loss. He proposes a new settlement that allows all Jews to be possessed not merely of their heritage, but of the moral legacy of the Holocaust, regardless of their belief system.