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Music Stories

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A beautiful hardcover anthology of short stories about music by a remarkable array of literary greats, selected by someone who is both a musician and a writer

Music may be a universal language that transcends words, but that hasn't stopped our most accomplished writers from trying to capture its essence on the page, paying homage to one art form through another. The dazzling examples collected here range from Virginia Woolf's "The String Quartet" to Langston Hughes's "The Blues I'm Playing" and Donald Barthelme's "The King of Jazz," and from Ivan Turgenev's "The Song of Triumphant Love" to Katherine Mansfield's "The Singing Lesson" and Ian McEwan's "A Duet." Here are melodious scenes from E. M. Forster's Howards End and Vikram Seth's An Equal Music, and stories by James Joyce, Gustave Flaubert, and Marcel Proust in harmony with pieces by Vladimir Nabokov, Maya Angelou, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Philip K. Dick. Together these twenty-four musical tales make up a gorgeous symphony of literary delights.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

464 pages, Hardcover

Published February 13, 2024

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About the author

Wesley Stace

13 books61 followers
Wesley Stace also records music under the nom de plume of John Wesley Harding.

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for Monica.
Author 6 books35 followers
February 24, 2024
This is such an incredible collection of stories! Arranged thematically, I appreciate what a heterogeneous collection it is. There’s a Willa Cather story I hadn’t read (that prompted me to request the Cather collection from the library), followed by a chapter from an Iain Banks novel (that I also requested from the library, followed by an excerpt from Howard’s End. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.
228 reviews
June 20, 2025
Nice collection of music themed short stories.
Profile Image for josé almeida.
358 reviews18 followers
September 24, 2024
mais uma colectânea-maravilha da everyman’s, um ovo-de-colombo em reuniões de contos, trechos, textos e poemas dedicados a um tema comum. neste caso é a música, ao som das palavras de woolf, proust, barthelme, flaubert, joyce, nabokov, mansfield, ishiguro e muitos mais.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

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