Wow! eBook
Aloha, Mozart
Author(s): Waimea Williams (Author)
- Publisher: Luminis Books, Inc.
- Publication Date: November 1, 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 282 pages
- ISBN-10: 1935462636
- ISBN-13: 9781935462637
Book Description
Born into an impoverished Hawaiian family in the 1960s, Maile Manoa’s quest for a life in music lures her to the high-stakes world of European opera. In Salzburg, Austria she attracts the attentions of powerful men and falls in love–with a troubled young musician, with the city, and the intrigue that surrounds her.
When Werner von Wehlen, the famous conductor at the center of Salzburg’s glamorous music festival, offers her a leading role, she is forced to confront the Nazi heart of the classical music scene and von Wehlen’s treacherous past.
With Soviet tanks threatening to invade the city on the evening of her much-anticipated premiere, Maile must choose between recognition on the world stage or leaving the city with her life–and her conscience–intact.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Aloha, Mozart really got under my skin. It is partly because of the knowing narrative voice, partly the quiet passion and intensity of the story, partly the sensuality with which Williams evokes place. I came away feeling it was one of those novels that took me to places I’d never been, but recognized completely.Hawaiian Maile Manoa, born into a large impoverished family, is set apart by a fierce independence and stunning voice. Her quest for a life in music lures her from her beloved family and island paradise, to the rarefied and competitive world of opera in Salzburg, Austria. It is the 1960’s and Austria, still licking its wounds from World War II, now faces the threat of Soviet aggression. As Maile begins to succeed in this strange, straight-laced, Caucasian world, the complexities of politics, love, and ambition converge, and the book asks us to consider what, in the end, really matters. Suffused from beginning to end with a remarkable aural awareness, the only thing this wonderful novel lacks is a soundtrack. — Cai Emmons, author of The Stylist, His Mother’s Son
“Few know the secrets of Salzburg in 1968: the glamorous, high-stakes world of young competitors for renown in classical music. The most wonderful reward of the novel is the immersion it provides in a beautiful old culture, the cuisine and the architecture and the customs and the high art, as well as the corruption, of a great civilization.” — –Louis B. Jones, author of Ordinary Money, Particles and Luck, California’s Over, and Radiance
“Gorgeously conceived and enacted and textured, this richly pleated story unfolds with dark and thrilling suspense.” — –Al Young, Poet Laureate of California
Few know the secrets of Salzburg in 1968: the glamorous, high-stakes world of young competitors for renown in classical music. The most wonderful reward of the novel is the immersion it provides in a beautiful old culture, the cuisine and the architecture and the customs and the high art, as well as the corruption, of a great civilization. — –Louis B. Jones, author of Ordinary Money, Particles and Luck, California’s Over, and Radiance
Gorgeously conceived and enacted and textured, this richly pleated story unfolds with dark and thrilling suspense. — –Al Young, Poet Laureate of California
About the Author
Waimea Williams is a former opera singer who spent a decade in Austria and Germany. As a fiction writer, she has received awards from Glimmer Train Press, the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, and Salamander Magazine, and completed a writing residency at the Ragdale Foundation. She lives near Honolulu.
