{"product_id":"the-piano-tuner-9781956763416","title":"The Piano Tuner","description":"\u003cb\u003eThis bestseller and winner of every major literary award in Taiwan is an elegiac novel about love and loss, broken dreams and desolate hearts--and music: \"A delightful read.\"--Ha Jin\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e A widower grieving for his young wife. A piano tuner concealing a lifetime of secrets. An out-of-tune Steinway piano. A journey of self-discovery across time and continents, from a dark apartment in Taipei's red-light district to snow-clad New York. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e At the heart of the story is the nameless narrator, the piano tuner. In his forties, he is balding and ugly, a loser by any standard. But he was once a musical prodigy. What betrayal and what heartbreak made him walk away from greatness? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Long hailed in Taiwan as a \"writer's writer,\" Chiang-Sheng Kuo delivers a stunningly powerful, compact novel in \u003ci\u003eThe Piano Tuner\u003c\/i\u003e. It's a book of sounds: both of music and of the heart, from Rachmaninoff to Schubert, from Glenn Gould to Sviatoslav Richter, from untapped potential to unrequited love. With a cadence and precision that bring to mind Thomas Mann's \u003ci\u003eDeath in Venice\u003c\/i\u003e, Kazuo Ishiguro's \u003ci\u003eNocturnes\u003c\/i\u003e, and Yasunari Kawabata's \u003ci\u003eSnow Country\u003c\/i\u003e, this short novel may be a portrait of the artist as a \"failure,\" but it also describes a pursuit of the ultimate beauty in music and in love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChiang-Sheng Kuo (郭強生)\u003c\/b\u003e is one of the most exciting storytellers and prose stylists in Taiwanese literature today, He has written a number of novels, essay collections, and plays, of which \u003ci\u003eThe Piano Tuner\u003c\/i\u003e is the first to be published in English. \u003ci\u003eThe Piano Tuner \u003c\/i\u003ewas a bestseller and swept every major literary award in Taiwan, including the 2021 \u003ci\u003eUnited Daily \u003c\/i\u003eLiterature Award, 2020 Taiwan Literature Golden Award, and 2020 Openbook Book of the Year Award as well as other honors. Chiang-Sheng Kuo earned a PhD in drama from New York University and teaches in the Department of Language and Creative Writing at National Taipei University of Education. He lives in Taipei. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHoward Goldblatt\u003c\/b\u003e translates Chinese fiction from China and Taiwan, including Nobel Prize-winner Mo Yan, five of whose works are published by Arcade (\u003ci\u003eThe Garlic Ballads\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Republic of Wine\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eBig Breasts and Wide Hips\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eLife and Death Are Wearing Me Out; Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh\u003c\/i\u003e). He has also translated works by Chiang-Sheng Kuo (\u003ci\u003eThe Piano Tuner\u003c\/i\u003e) and Liu Zhenyun (\u003ci\u003eI Did Not Kill My Husband\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eRemembering 1942\u003c\/i\u003e, all with Sylvia Li-chun Lin and published by Arcade). He taught Chinese literature and culture for more than a quarter of a century. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSylvia Li-chun Lin\u003c\/b\u003e, a former teacher and scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and culture, is a full-time translator and writer. She and Howard Goldblatt live in Lafayette, Colorado, with their demonic cat, Domino.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Arcade Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50562241528082,"sku":"9781956763416","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_15f83c0b-075f-4d37-9057-672304801229.jpg?v=1731858325","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-piano-tuner-9781956763416","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}