num_pages: 464
description: Winner of the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize.In a finely woven series of flashbacks and correspondence Lev Termen the Russian scientist inventor and spy tells the story of his life to his one true love Clara Rockmore the finest theremin player in the world. In the first half of the book we learn of Termens early days as a scientist in Leningrad during the Bolshevik Revolution the acclaim he receives as the inventor of the theremin and his arrival in 1930s New York under the aegis of the Russian state. In the United States he makes a name for himself teaching the theremin to eager music students and marketing his inventions to American companies. In the second half the novel builds to a crescendo as Termen returns to Russia where he is imprisoned in a Siberian gulag and later brought to Moscow tasked with eavesdropping on Stalin himself. Throughout all this his love for Clara remains constant and unflagging traveling through the ether much like a theremins notes. Us Conductors is steeped in beauty wonder and looping heartbreak a sublime debut that inhabits the idea of invention on every level.
language: English
title: Us Conductors
publisher: Tin House Books