Music for Wartime
In Music for Wartime, Makkai brings together a collection of sweeping, powerful, spellbinding stories, three of which under the “legends” section are based on her own family’s history in 1930’s Hungary. A reality show producer manipulates two contestants into falling in love, while her own relationship is falling apart. Just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a young boy has a revelation about his father's past when a renowned Romanian violinist who survived a brutal pogrom only to be incarcerated for twenty years by the 'liberating' Communists plays a concert in their home. In an unnamed country, a composer records the folk songs of two women in a village on the brink of utter destruction. In these transporting, wide-ranging, and deeply moving stories, Rebecca Makkai brings to bear the signature mix of intelligence, imagination, and heart for which her novels are so beloved.
Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and the 2018 National Book Award, and was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize among other honors. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca teaches graduate fiction writing at Middlebury College, Northwestern University, and the Bennington Writing Seminars, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.