Lea Singer is a German cultural historian and a novelist who uses a pseudonym for her fictional works. Under her legal name of Eva Gesine Baur, she has authored biographies of Frederic Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. She has also written novels inspired by the lives of pianist Paul Wittgenstein and painter Caspar David Friedrich. Elisabeth Lauffer is the recipient of the 2014 Gutekunst Translation Prize. After graduating from Wesleyan University she lived in Berlin where she worked as a commercial translator and then obtained a master's in education from Harvard.
This intriguing, quirky novel, based on unpublished letters of Horowitz to a Swiss student, explores his hidden European years between living in Russia and the United States, and his hidden homosexual life outside his marriage with Wanda Toscanini. --Stephen Hough, concert pianist and author of Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More and The Final Retreat: A Novel One of the greatest pianists of the last century, an illicit love affair with a young man, and a story using the genuine correspondence that passed between them--it makes for an utterly compelling read. --Jeremy Nicholas, author of The Great Composers and Chopin: His Life and Music A tender psychological depiction of an impossible love--and between the lines a good deal of veneration for the pianist Horowitz and for the persuasive power of music. --Suddeutsche Zeitung Lea Singer's novel combines narrative imagination and accurate research ... recounting vividly as well as exemplarily the multi-faceted history of a forbidden love between men and thereby captivating the reader. --Weltwoche A book that tells with empathic devotion of music and death ... the story of a search for freedom in the most adverse circumstances ... The book poses the biggest question of all about relationships, What is true and what is a lie? --Neue Zurcher Zeitung