In 1886 the British are fighting an imperial war on another continent with the express goal of suppressing and maintaining control of the natives. Sound familiar? In The Piano Tuner, Daniel Mason gives us an alternative--it is the lush spiritual healing of old Burma--fighting against war not only with resistance but also with beauty, with the soulful, mystical songs of regional history. In the postmodern day, with another passionless war looming, we ache for just these sorts of songs, and many of us are haunted by their absence.

Like Marlow in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Mason's protagonist, Edgar Drake, goes on a spiritual voyage of self-discovery while traveling, in this case to Burma, where he finds an antidote to white imperialism in the songs and beauty of the native culture.

For months the images trembled in the back of his eyes, at times flaming and fading away like candles, at times fighting to be seen, thrust forward like the goods of jostling bazaar merchants. Or at times simply passing, blurred freight wagons in a traveling circus, each one a story that challenged credibility, not for any fault of plot, but because Nature could not permit such a condensation of culture without theft and vacuum in the remaining parts of the world.

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