Overview

If they could meet today, what would Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, American composer Amy Beach and jazz pianist Bud Powell have to say to each other about identity and appropriation, racism and feminism, folk music and modernity? Petra, a music student from South Tyrol, embarks on a research trip to New York City, where the past magically comes alive and she engages first-hand in heated debates about the chances and limits of universality with the musical greats she's studying. She is guided by the mysterious Navajo librarian López and joined by her Nigerian boyfriend Bukar who is on a mission to promote a value as universal as music-justice-for Boko Haram victims in his home country. Goin' Home and Far Away is a multilayered novel that focuses on a largely unknown chapter of American music history: the interplay of white, Black, and Indigenous music after the year 1890. Interspersed with QR codes to relevant music recordings, it critically examines America's musical evolution and the current hot-button identity debate.

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Reviews

The American moment is fraught. Commensurately, the American memory is short. In his deeply researched fictional history Goin Home and Far Away, Christian Much remembers a vital cultural chapter Americans have long forgotten: that at the turn of the twentieth century, an eminent musical visitor catalyzed a reverberant debate over national identity. And, as Much's ambitious time-line makes clear, that debate resounds loudly to this day. Joseph Horowitz (Author, Music Critic) 'Facts' and 'fiction' are valid ways of telling the story of Dvořák. To the novels in the latter category (such as The White Man's Spiritual by Zdeněk Mahler, and Josef Skvorecký's Dvořák in Love) we can now happily add Christian Much's Goin' Home and Far Away, a brilliant assembly of historical characters, and a beautifully drawn portrait of the composer himself. Michael Beckerman (Professor of Music, NYU)

Author Information

CHRISTIAN MUCH spent his career as a diplomat and writes about the topics close to his heart: politics, international criminal law, bridging cultures, and his life-long hobby: music. Born in Luxembourg, he currently divides his time between southern Germany and South Tyrol in northern Italy. Goin' Home and Far Away is his third novel. KATE MUESER is a writer, German/English translator, presenter for TV and live events, journalist, voice-over artist, and musician. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Piano Performance from Indiana University and a Masters Degree in Modern European Studies from Columbia University. A California native, she has spent nearly her entire adult life in Germany, with brief interruptions in New York City and Las Vegas.

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