Sommerfuglens stemme

In 1943 Ruth Koppelman, a gifted 24-year-old opera singer, is sent to Theresienstadt, where her love of music and a growing attachment to a handsome young man keep her going. Half a century later, in a Jewish care home in New York, she records her story on a creaking cassette recorder. In 2015 Alexander, forty, is stuck in his singing career, and he and his girlfriend Gry are going through fertility treatment that will not work. His overbearing mother Lillian, a musical star, interferes at every turn, yet about her own origins she says nothing. Then Alexander finds two small tapes in her attic, addressed to him. The family saga of the Jewish Koppelmans deals with inherited trauma and with music's power to set people free.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

448 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Historical, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

Czechia, United States, 1943 to 2015

First published

2024 by Politikens Forlag

Author's age

50 when first published

ISBN

9788740083880 (original)