![]() ![]() Unfortunately the plans go awry because on the night of the party in the vice presidential mansion, a band of guerrillas swarm in through the air ducts. Their quarry is the president but he’s nowhere to be found. ![]() If she sings at a birthday party in honour of Katsumi Hosokawa - one of her biggest fans - he could, they hope, be persuaded to build an electronics factory in their country. They come up with a plan to woo a visiting Japanese industrial magnate by using the world-renowned soprano Roxane Coss as bait. All we gather is that it’s a small South American country whose government is in desperate need of foreign investment to prop up their failing economy. ![]() The actual location of Ann Patchett’s novel is never specified, it’s described only as the “host country”. ![]() The novel is loosely inspired by an event in December 1996 when members of a guerrilla group entered the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, Peru, seized nearly 600 hostages and demanded the release of a number of political prisoners. Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto makes a grand claim for the power of music not only to sustain the spirit in the bleakest of times but even to transform a life. ![]()
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