The Mozart Question

From a master storyteller and former Children’s Laureate comes a moving story of a group of musicians who survived the Holocaust using the only weapon they had.

The author of the international phenomenon War Horse brings us a moving tale of secrets and survival bound together by the power of music. When Lesley is sent to Venice to interview world-renowned violinist Paulo Levi on his fiftieth birthday, she cannot believe her luck. She is told that she can ask him anything at all – except the Mozart question. But it is Paulo himself who decides that the time has come for the truth to be told. And so follows the story of his parents in a Jewish concentration camp, forced to play Mozart violin concerti for the enemy; how they watched fellow Jews being led off to their deaths and knew that they were playing for their lives. As the story unfolds, the journalist begins to understand the full horror of war – and how one group of musicians survived using the only weapon they had.

A hopeful yet haunting tale brought to life by one of the world’s leading illustrators.
The author of the critically acclaimed WWI novel War Horse tackles the Second World War with equal sensitivity.