Bel Canto

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

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 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.

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 08/02/2005
Pages: 336
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.32w x 0.83d
ISBN: 9780060838720

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.3
Point Value: 19
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 155131 / Bel Canto


Review Citation(s):
Ingram Advance 08/01/2005 pg. 38 - Best Of The Best/Highly Recommended
Entertainment Weekly 06/29/2012 pg. 77

About the Author
Patchett, Ann: -

ANN PATCHETT is the author of eight novels, four works of nonfiction, and two children's books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women's Prize in the U.K., and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her most recent novel, The Dutch House, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. TIME magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the co-owner of Parnassus Books.