num_pages: 315
description: This is the autobiography of Tedi Papavrami born in 1971 in Albania then a dictatorship under the thumb of Enver Hoxha. Given every encouragement to cultivate his obvious talent for the violin young Tedi nonetheless has a harder time of it than other child prodigies from the free world. One he gets a French grant to start studying his instrument in France at age 11 his world is dislocated. Only one of his parents is allowed to join him at any one time and he is initially a paying guest with an awful Albanian family close to the hated dictatorship. Finally when he is 14 he and his parents decide to defect to the West for good. Tedi's grand-parents uncles and cousins pay a heavy price for this as they are put in labor camps for many years in retaliation. The book deals both with the mystery of a child's affinity with an instrument and gradual acceptance of the harsh discipline needed to reach the highest level and with the tragic consequences when a gifted child has the misfortune to be born in a dictatorship.
language: French
title: Fugue pour violon seul
publisher: Robert Laffont