Martin Simmonds’ 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.