Music, in a Foreign Language

Winner of Scotland's Saltire Prize for Best First Novel, Music, in a Foreign Language is a layered, deeply affecting exploration of friendship, betrayal, the nature of fiction, and the meaning of history.Set in an imaginary police state in contemporary Britain, the novel explores the complex relationship between two men, Charles King and Robert Waters, a physicist and a historian who share a secret history of political and sexual dimensions. As young men, King and Waters had briefly copublished an underground magazine called Flood. Years later, long-concealed copies of the magazine become important in a state investigation that will pit one man against the otherAs the novel's narrator unfolds the tale, he reveals pieces of his life. A man with an incomplete past and an uncertain future, he writes and reads in search of his own history. Like the melody and counterpoint of a fugue, the past story of King and Waters is augmented by the narrator's autobiography, until both movements inevitably join across time in a conclusion of startling power.Drawing together his variations into a grand theme, Andrew Crumey weaves music, physics, history, philosophy, and fiction together with an unforgettable human drama.