Brahms Comes to Dinner

Overview

The passion of unrequited love propels this lovingly drawn novel set in mid-19th century Germany, depicting a complex emotional relationship among giants of classical music. Robert and Clara Schumann, recognizing his genius, champion Johannes Brahms at the onset of his career and nurture his ascendance to its pinnacle, where he joins Bach and Beethoven as the third B of the genre’s immortals. Author Boman Desai brings to life the complex relationship between Brahms and the Schumanns, the most influential people in his life, as the story circles around the intimate dinners Brahms enjoyed over the years as a guest in their country home. Following the descent into madness and tragic death of maestro Robert Schumann, widowed Clara and Brahms continue their passionate yet uneasy relationship. Clara devotes her career as a brilliant pianist to performing her deceased husband’s music, memorializing Robert’s music at the expense of her own, while Brahms tries but never succeeds in finding a wife. Desai’s narrative displays a keen understanding of what made the music so great, and in lyrical language and a keen eye for the telling detail and image, he’s imagined these figures with subtlety and wit and a universal compassion for the human spirit and ways of the heart as only a great novelist can.

Author Biography

Boman Desai was bound for a career in market analysis when a chance encounter with Sir Edmund Hillary, his first hero, turned him back to writing. He had his first break when an elegant elderly woman submitted half a dozen of his stories for publication to Debonair (in Mumbai where he was born and raised)—all of which were published, but the woman vanished and her identity remains a mystery to this day. His second break came when another elegant elderly woman, Diana Athill, published his first novel, The Memory of Elephants. Desai is best known for that novel, published subsequently by the Un