Richly imagined, The Piano Tuner winds like a lazy river, carrying the reader into the mythic land of Kipling and Conrad. In this début novel, Mason proves himself equally adept at scenes of wry humor and moments of rapture most remarkable, he has written a profound adventure story with an unexpected climax, as the mild piano tuner finally becomes the hero of his own life. Drake's journey to the Far East is a kind of anti- Heart of Darkness, as he opens himself up to the uncertainty and wonder of human experience. Happy with his wife of eighteen years and his reputation as one of the finest piano tuners in late-nineteenth-century London, he is "a man whose life is defined by creating order so that others may make beauty." Transformation comes in the form of a summons to a remote outpost in Burma: a maverick British officer there has imported a vintage Erard grand into the jungle, where the humidity has caused it to lose its temperament. He has written a seductive and lyrical novel that probes the brutalities and compromises of colonization, even as it celebrates the elusive powers of music and the imagination.įorty-one-year-old Edgar Drake seems an unlikely protagonist for a bildungsroman. ( From the publisher.)Ĭonfidently weaving historical fact together with his own imaginative constructions, Mr. Currently, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Daniel has also published a short story in Harper's, on the life of the artist Arthur Bispo de Rosario. A Far Country, his second novel, was published in 2007. His first novel, The Piano Tuner, published in 2002, was a national bestseller and has since been published in 27 countries. He studied Biology at Harvard, and Medicine at the University of California, in San Francisco. Currently-lives in San Francisco, Californiaĭaniel Mason was born and raised in Northern California.Education-Harvard University University of California,.Sensuous, lyrical, rich with passion and adventure, this is a hypnotic tale of myth, romance, and self-discovery: an unforgettable novel. And at the doctor’s fort on a remote Burmese river, Edgar encounters a world more mysterious and dangerous than he ever could have imagined. On his journey through Europe, the Red Sea, India, and into Burma, Edgar meets soldiers, mystics, bandits, and tale-spinners, as well as an enchanting woman as elusive as the surgeon-major. The piano belongs to an army surgeon-major whose unorthodox peacemaking methods-poetry, medicine, and now music-have brought a tentative quiet to the southern Shan States but have elicited questions from his superiors. In October 1886, Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the British War Office: he must leave his wife and his quiet life in London to travel to the jungles of Burma, where a rare Erard grand piano is in need of repair. An extraordinary first novel that tells the story of a British piano tuner sent deep into Burma in the nineteenth century.
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