Enigma Variations

From André Aciman, the author of Call Me by Your Name (now a major motion picture and the winner of the OscarTM for Best Adapted Screenplay) comes “a sensory masterclass, absorbing, intelligent, unforgettable” (Times Literary Supplement). André Aciman, hailed as a writer of “fiction at its most supremely interesting” (The New York Review of Books), has written a novel that charts the life of a man named Paul, whose loves remain as consuming and as covetous throughout his adulthood as they were in his adolescence. Whether the setting is southern Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents’ cabinetmaker, or a snowbound campus in New England, where his enduring passion for a girl he’ll meet again and again over the years is punctuated by anonymous encounters with men; whether he’s on a tennis court in Central Park, or on a New York sidewalk in early spring, his attachments are ungraspable, transient, and forever underwritten by raw desire—not for just one person’s body but, inevitably, for someone else’s as well. In Enigma Variations, Aciman maps the most inscrutable corners of passion, proving to be an unsparing reader of the human psyche and a master stylist. With language at once lyrical, bare-knuckled, and unabashedly candid, he casts a sensuous, shimmering light over each facet of desire to probe how we ache, want, and waver, and ultimately how we sometimes falter and let go of those who may want to offer only what we crave from them. Ahead of every step Paul takes, his hopes, denials, fears, and regrets are always ready to lay their traps. Yet the dream of love lingers. We may not always know what we want. We may remain enigmas to ourselves and to others. But sooner or later we discover who we’ve always known we were.

Elgar's Variations for Orchestra, commonly known as the 'Enigma' Variations, marked an epoch both in his career, and in the renaissance of English music at the turn of the century. First performed in 1899 under Hans Richter, the work became his passport to national fame and international success. From the first it intrigued listeners to know why it was called 'enigma', and who were the 'friends pictured within', to whom the work is dedicated. Appearing in the centenary year of the work's composition, this book elucidates what is known, and what has been said about the work and the enigma, and directs future listeners to what matters most: the inspired qualities of the music.

THE STORY: Nobel Prize-winning author Abel Znorko lives as a recluse on a remote island in the Norwegian Seas. For fifteen years, his one friend and soulmate has been Helen, from whom he has been physically separated for the majority of their affai

Authoritative British editions of the 14 Variations, rich with melody and vibrant rhythms, and four of the five stirring "Pomp and Circumstance" Marches — all filled with distinctively British grandeur.

Authoritative British editions of the 14 Variations, rich with melody and vibrant rhythms, and four of the five stirring "Pomp and Circumstance" Marches — all filled with distinctively British grandeur.

Two anthropologists work to ascertain the authenticity of some South American tribal and slave artifacts, encountering collectors, native carvers, and museum officials, all of whom have different ideas of what constitutes "authentic."

Master thief Justin Vincent and his computer hacker partner Ashna help people recover stolen items when the authorities can't. This time, their client needs his missing research notes back—notes that could help provide the solution to a century old musical mystery. The trail is cold, but the motive is clear: a £1 million reward offered to anyone who can decode the secret message hidden in Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations. Justin and Ashna come up against a mystery steeped in arcane lore lurking behind what they thought was a simple case of theft and a shadowy foe who seems to be a step ahead of them at every turn. Will they be able to identify the thief and retrieve the formula before its dark forces are unleashed on an unsuspecting world?