Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
“Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book.” —Washington Post Book World
New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett’s spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis
Somewhere in South … learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Patchett’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
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Beautifully written
unexpected action and suspense. Good Characters. Stolkholm Syndrome
It was a book group read.
Didn’t like
Excellent read!
I read this with my book club. It was very disappointing — maybe the writing, maybe it seemed dated. They were mostly disappointed, too.
You know how you read the last page, anxiously and reluctantly, and give in to a minute of marvel and gratitude for the talent you’ve just been privy to? Bel Canto epitomizes that response for me, simply among the best reading experiences of my life.
Amazing book, dark and thoughtful story. Believable and tragic.
I loved it. It was long ago that I read it, but I remember I was entranced.
Excellent novel and a real page turner!
One of my favorite books of all time.
read it a long time ago but have remembered it as one of the best books I have read
About the Stockholm Syndrome; beautifully written
One of my all time favorite books. Any reader has already read it, but for those who haven’t , don’t miss it.
My all time favorite book!
It has been a while but I remember that I loved this book!
Unexpected for the opera fan.
Most of my reading I enjoyed the book.
It’s about the relationship developing between hostages and their captors.
There are many people in the story describes the writer quite stereotypically. The rich and privileged hostages, the terrorists, most of whom are teenagers of Indian descent, illiterate and ignorant, violent and innocent. The Tower …
Bel Canto was loosely based on the Lima Hostage Crisis of December 1996. Where members of a revolutionary guerrilla movement took hostage of high-level diplomats, government and military officials, and business executives who were attending a party at the official residence of Japan’s ambassador to Peru, Morihisa Aoki, in celebration of Emperor …
I would give this book six stars if I could! One of my favorites, and the book that started me on my Ann Patchett collection. Love how all of her books are set in completely different worlds.