The Song of Names, Norman Lebrecht
The Song of Names, Norman Lebrecht
List: $20.97 | Sale: $14.68
Club: $10.48

The Song of Names

Author: Norman Lebrecht

Narrator: Simon Prebble

Unabridged: 9 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/03/2012


Synopsis

Martin Simmond’s father tells him, “Never trust a musician when he speaks about love.” The advice comes too late. Martin already loves Dovidl Rapoport, an eerily gifted Polish violin prodigy whose parents left him in the Simmonds’s care before they perished in the Holocaust. For a time the two boys are closer than brothers. But on the day he is to make his official debut, Dovidl disappears. Only 40 years later does Martin get his first clue about what happened to him.

In this ravishing novel of music and suspense, Norman Lebrecht unravels the strands of love, envy and exploitation that knot geniuses to their admirers. In doing so he also evokes the fragile bubble of Jewish life in prewar London; the fearful carnival of the Blitz, and the gray new world that emerged from its ashes. Bristling with ideas, lambent with feeling, The Song of Names is a masterful work of the imagination.

About Norman Lebrecht

Norman Lebrecht is the world’s bestselling author on classical music. His Whitbread Award-winning novel, The Song of Names, is currently being developed into a feature film. Aside from the history of Western music, he has a lifelong passion for the culture and chronicles of the Jewish people and is the author of Genius & Anxiety. He lives in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bionic Jean on February 15, 2025

Norman Lebrecht was already established as a Music commentator, and the author of a dozen books on Classical music when he startled the publishing industry with this first novel, which won the Whitbread award in 2002. The novel follows a friendship between two Jewish boys, starting before the Second......more

Goodreads review by Reindert on October 17, 2016

I found the book was quite special and full of depth. The writer addressed topics like friendship, bonding, love for music, dealing with the loss of family members in a remarkable way. Despite the bunch of difficult words and sentences, the book was easy to read and kept me longing to the end. I was......more

Goodreads review by Bookguide on October 28, 2020

"My life was a pathetic sonata built upon an unresolved chord, infinitely tense and unrewarding. Like an amputee, I never lost sensation in the missing limb, or the ache of deprivation. Not a day passed without a remembrance of wholeness" 'The Song of Names' is full of musical references, and tells t......more

Goodreads review by The Final Chapter on August 15, 2015

Low 2. There is a poignant and very moving explanation behind the title of this book but unfortunately the author has not woven this idea into a novel which really captures the attention of the reader. The protagonist, Martin Simmonds, fails to engage the reader’s interest, while the all-too brief a......more

Goodreads review by Holly on May 24, 2021

Two Jewish boys befriend each other; one, Martin, is well off but feels like an outcast - he is very unhappy and lonely, is pudgy, and has a stutter. The other, David, is suave, confident, and is a violin virtuoso but is poor; his family is from Warsaw and sent him to study w/ a illustrious violin i......more