Product Description

The reader finds the first Esperanca in timeless fifteenth-century Madeira. It is Portugal's finest hour: her explorers are reporting that the world is not flat; Christopher Columbus is about to discover a whole new world. And Jewish scientists, map-makers and navigators are playing their part in this great outward-looking adventure. Esperanca longs to learn to read. Can her friend, the sailor, Emmanuel, help her discover her own new world in the holy books of the Hebrew tradition? The second Esperanca is a spoiled teenager in Faro, until she converts to the faith of Emmanuel, the printer. But this is 1492, and the Jews are about to be expelled from Portugal, with terrible suffering. The third Esperanca becomes involved in a murder-mystery in Byron's Lisbon. Who is the dark stranger who kills washerwomen as they cross the aqueduct at night? But her meddling destroys her gentle bookseller friend, the learned Emmanuel - a scapegoat, like so many innocent Jews throughout history. Finally, there is Hope, living among London's expat community in the Portuguese enclave of Vauxhall. Married to Dan, she is in love with Dan's brother, Mel. Hope is desperately searching for something - but what?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #800650 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 366 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Traversing time and geography, Lee Langley's original and life-affirming novel Distant Music elegantly weaves together four independent stories, each unveiling the common themes of love, loss and the irrevocable progress of time.

Beginning on the Portuguese island of Madeira in 1429 and culminating in London in 2000, the four tales introduce us to the recurring characters of Esperanca and Emmanuel whose love is continually thwarted by social and religious divides. Esperanca is a Portuguese Catholic, Emmanuel a Jew, and their first meeting in Madeira in the 15th Century sees Esperanca as a poor, illiterate peasant girl, captivated by a young, mysterious Jew who arrives on a boat from Portugal and teaches her to read Hebrew. The twin themes of words and learning provide the glue that binds together their different meetings throughout the novel. The learning of new words acts as a metaphor for self-discovery, adolescence and first love, but also as a means of recording scientific discovery and exploration. The lovers are cast together and then torn apart against a backdrop of Portugal's great maritime empire. An elderly Esperanca encounters Christopher Columbus as he prepares to discover the New World and, in a later incarnation, Emmanuel is an assistant to a map maker whose maps reveal the world's un-navigated waters in the same way as Esperanca's newly-learnt words disclose the unexplored terrain of the soul.

Although there is the suggestion at each new meeting that the lovers have met before, this is not a story about reincarnation. Rather, it is a celebration of the defiant power of love and its ability to overcome displacement and prejudice. From the anti-Semitism experienced by the Jews in Madeira and Portugal in the 15th and 19th centuries to the loneliness or "saudade" of the Portuguese immigrant community in modern-day London, love, although not always able to conquer all, will at least resurface to offer new hope. --Jane Morris

The Sunday Telegraph
‘A very definite and original voice’

The Sunday Telegraph
'Wonderfully subtle, beautifully observed’

Customer Reviews

Simply exquisite!
Distant Music is a romance in four different historic and geographic contexts where the two main caraters fall in love but fail to bring their romance to a happy conclusion. It starts on the island of Madeira in 1429 and ends in London in the year 2000 mingling fact with fiction to give the reader an insight into sephardic jews and their plight during the Inquisition. This is quite simply one of (if not the) most enjoyable read I can remember. The style is remarkable yet unpretentious; the facts and historical background impecable and well researched. Langley shines through as an intelligent, brilliant writer: the syzygy with this book is evidently not left to chance. If you enjoy this book you might also enjoy The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler.

Learned yet enjoyable
Although I read this book some time ago and had to trawl half the hotel bars in Tokyo to find it after leaving it under my chair with only 50 or so pages to go (my thanks to the Park Hyatt for keeping it), it has left a strong impression on me.

It spans 4 periods of history, other than the present day, these periods are relatively understudied. The principal theme of the persecution of the Jews throughout the ages is fascinating and deeply depressing. Although this is summed up in the final part in a sort of verbal essay, it has much greater impact when told from the perspective of someone involved. I felt that the 1492 chapter was particularly poignant and it showed not only the terrible cruelty of the policies of christrianisation but also its stupidity. Has Portugal yet recovered from the decision to expel some of its best educated people? It should certainly be given more prominence as it ranks along side the 1578 battle of Alcacer Quibir as a turning point.

The other chapters are also good. The priest in the opening chapter is a grotesque caricature but very much in the style of an Eca de Queiroz priest such as Padre Amaro.

The Lisbon earthquake chapter is also excellent and reminds one of the other tragedies to befall the country (at least that time not self-inflicted) while persecution continued and the gentry looked away.

The final chapter is in a way more complex as a work of fiction, love triangles, confused loyalties and growing up in a cross cultural marriage. It is also at times too direct and at others overly confusing in its eagerness to show a confused mind.

Notwitshanding all of the historical analysis and anguished chest beating, this is also 4 love stories with very real characters.