The Bass Saxophone
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
A landmark work of Czech literature, The Bass Saxophone presents two novellas — the title story and Emöke — that together stand as a profound meditation on music, freedom, and the human spirit under totalitarian oppression. The title novella chronicles a young jazz-obsessed musician in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia who is drawn into a clandestine, surreal encounter with a traveling German orchestra, where his forbidden love of jazz becomes an act of quiet but dangerous defiance. Written with lyrical intensity and a deep reverence for jazz as a symbol of liberation, the prose carries a dreamlike, almost hallucinatory tone that mirrors the disorientation of living under an authoritarian regime. Emöke, the companion piece, unfolds as a melancholic and tender portrait of longing and spiritual alienation set against the grey conformity of Communist Czechoslovakia. Together, the two works illustrate Skvorecky's enduring argument that art — particularly music — represents an irreducible form of human freedom that no political system can fully extinguish.
Author: Josef Skvorecky
Format: Hardback
Published: 1978, Chatto & Windus
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
A landmark work of Czech literature, The Bass Saxophone presents two novellas — the title story and Emöke — that together stand as a profound meditation on music, freedom, and the human spirit under totalitarian oppression. The title novella chronicles a young jazz-obsessed musician in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia who is drawn into a clandestine, surreal encounter with a traveling German orchestra, where his forbidden love of jazz becomes an act of quiet but dangerous defiance. Written with lyrical intensity and a deep reverence for jazz as a symbol of liberation, the prose carries a dreamlike, almost hallucinatory tone that mirrors the disorientation of living under an authoritarian regime. Emöke, the companion piece, unfolds as a melancholic and tender portrait of longing and spiritual alienation set against the grey conformity of Communist Czechoslovakia. Together, the two works illustrate Skvorecky's enduring argument that art — particularly music — represents an irreducible form of human freedom that no political system can fully extinguish.