by Deborah Levy
First published 2024
Elsa M. Anderson abandons her piano performance mid-concert in Vienna at age thirty-four. The celebrated virtuoso has reached the peak of her career, yet something compels her to simply leave the stage. The story picks up later in an Athens flea market, where Elsa encounters a woman buying mechanical dancing horses. This stranger seems oddly familiar, as if she might share Elsa's deepest longings or perhaps be Elsa herself. From Athens, Elsa travels to the Greek island of Poros, then continues wandering through Europe. She runs from her prodigious talent and her history as a child performer, but the mysterious woman follows her everywhere. Elsa cannot escape this double who might be her other self. Her journey becomes a search for transformation, an attempt to rewrite her story and discover who she might become beyond the identity that fame and early success imposed on her. The novel explores how we try to shed our old selves and create new ones.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, doppelganger, journey-of-self-discovery
Setting: Athens, Europe, Greece, Poros, Vienna
Period: 20th-century
168 pages · Paperback · Literatura Random House