{"product_id":"bel-canto-easton-press-signed-collectors-edition","title":"Bel Canto (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePATCHETT, Ann.\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cem\u003eBel Canto.\u003c\/em\u003e Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2013.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eOctavo. Full deep blue leather. Spine with raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. 318pp. \u003cstrong\u003eSigned Collector's Edition. Signed by the author on the special title page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper.\u003c\/strong\u003e Originally published New York: HarperCollins, 2001.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eAnn Patchett (b. 1963) grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, attended Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and published her first novel in 1992. \u003cem\u003eBel Canto\u003c\/em\u003e, her fourth, was the book that brought her to the widest possible audience: it won the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN\/Faulkner Award in 2002, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was included in the \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e list of the 100 best books of the twenty-first century. Patchett is also, since 2011, the co-founder and co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, one of the most celebrated independent bookshops in the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe novel was inspired by the Japanese embassy hostage crisis of 1996–97, in which members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took seventy-two hostages at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, during a holiday party. The crisis lasted 126 days and ended with a military assault. Patchett transposed the events to an unnamed country and transformed their meaning entirely: what she was interested in was not the politics or the violence but the strange suspended world created when captors and captives are forced to inhabit the same space for months at a time and the expected roles begin to dissolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe novel opens on the birthday party of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese industrialist, at the home of a South American vice president. The entertainment is provided by Roxanne Coss, the world's greatest living soprano, whose presence Hosokawa has insisted upon. The evening is perfect until a band of young guerrillas takes the entire gathering hostage. What follows, over the months of captivity, is a gradual transformation in which the certainties that structure ordinary life — nationality, class, the distinction between captor and captive — give way to something more human and more contingent. People who cannot speak each other's languages learn to communicate; people who have no reason to love each other fall in love; the music that Roxanne Coss continues to sing becomes the medium through which the enclosed community discovers what it actually values. Patchett's achievement was to write this process without sentimentality, with a clear understanding that what is being described is beautiful and temporary and destined for a violent end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBel Canto\u003c\/em\u003e is an inspiring tale of transcendent romance that has been adapted into a 2018 film directed by Paul Weitz, starring Julianne Moore as Roxanne Coss and Ken Watanabe as Mr. Hosokawa. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNear fine. \u003c\/strong\u003eSome small markings to lower edge gilt; otherwise fine throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThis book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: \u003ca href=\"mailto:rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au\" title=\"Harry Hartog Rare Book Department\"\u003erarebooks@harryhartog.com.au\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCatalogue Number: HH000517\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ann Patchett","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49070467645683,"sku":"1110002990427","price":120.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0634\/4284\/5939\/files\/1_f695b092-1f63-47e3-a2b6-f8a25a81ebbc.png?v=1779071822","url":"https:\/\/www.harryhartog.com.au\/products\/bel-canto-easton-press-signed-collectors-edition","provider":"Harry Hartog Bookseller","version":"1.0","type":"link"}