The Quartet

Who is Just? What is pursuing him? What has this to do with the nature of music - and terrible revelations about a German company in France, and its links with the machinery of the Nazi death camps?

The novel which has taken Paris by storm, THE QUARTET has the structure of a thriller, following a company psychologist's investigation of his director, Matthias Just, in the aftermath of the Second World War. In clear, beautiful prose, it tells of the collapse of Just, his dissolution of the company's string quartet, and the revelation of papers in his desk at home containing instructions for the construction of faultless vehicles for the extermination of humans, upon which musical notations are overlaid. What does this tell us about the nature of humanity - and what value can art ever have again?