The Novel of a Pianist

« The Novel of a Pianist is a breathtaking detective story and initiatory tale, where art and life combine. Mikhail Rudy has the reader in a swirl of feelings and extreme situations. Rudy evokes his first music experience in ruins of a war torned underground, his adolescence in a dangerous area of a southern Ukraine’s industrial town, his resistance to KGB agents, his success at the Paris Marguerite Long Competition, his political asylum he asked France under dramatic circumstances, his spiritual quest in orthodox monasteries or in the Himalayas, his artistic thoughts or his encounters with leading contemporary artists – Rostropovich, Nureev, Karajan, Messiaen, Chagall – all this makes this book a true symphony to life’s story.

Mikhail Rudy’s vision is one of a poet, tender yet fierce, playful yet tragic. As a self-taught young man he learned French by reading Diderot and Proust. All throughout his life Rudy kept journals. For him litterature is as important as music. »

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On the other side of the wall.

« Music entered my life almost by accident. I was 4. Every day I heard notes through my neighbors’ division wall separating us from the adjoining building. It was the sound of a violin, a musician of Stalino’s (Donetsk) Symphonic Orchestra, a large industrial town of Southeast Ukraine, where we had just settled during one of our numerous moves. The violinist would rehearse at home and I could spend hours listening to him, totally hypnotized. His music penetrated me. »

– Éditions du Rocher (2009)

– ISBN-10: 2268068943 | ISBN-13: 978-2268068947

Through the looking glass

« We were housed in a police’s secret apartment, more exactly in a furnished room in the New Athens neibourhood, in which we had to stay while waiting to get asylum, without the permission of going out. We caused sensation at the canteen when, accompanied by a DST agent, we spoke Russian : »There are Russian who work for us now ! » agents said, amused. After the policement left, we felt emptied, skeptical. Despite the interdiction of going out, we did not want to stay in the room and left for a walk. It was before Christmas, lights were shining everywhere, the smell of unknown food overwhelmed us : African, Greek, Chinese. Small wnosflakes were falling softly. We went up the rue des Martyrs all the way up to Montmartre. We could hear the sound of a barrel organ. The French language music, so special, rough yet translucent, was coming from all sides. I was very moved and could not hold my emotions, going from laughter to tears, while my heart was pounding. Each sensation seemed new and the world seemed unusually clear, as if it was washed-out. I thought to myself : « this is it, we went through the looking glass ».