The facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios
By: Yann Martel
Edition: Vintage Canada ed.
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
Number of pages: 179
ISBN-13: 9780676976199
Description: "In the title novella, a very young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the twentieth century, whose horrors and miracles their story echoes. In "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American composer John Morton," a Canadian university student visits Washington, D.C., and experiences the Vietnam War and its aftermath through an intense musical encounter. In "Manners of Dying," variations of a warden's letter to the mother of a man he has just executed reveal how each life is contained in its end. And finally, in "The Vita Æterna Mirror Company", a twentysomething grandson learns the alchemy of mirror-making and the value of memories, but learns too late the importance of the present moment."--Back cover.
Notes: Originally publ.: Toronto : Knopf Canada, 1993.