Music Against the Night

by Yiyun Li

John Field is a piano prodigy in turn-of-the-century Dublin who invents the nocturne form that another pianist, Frédéric Chopin, will make famous. Adelaide Percheron, or “Percherette,” is an orphan in Pondicherry, French India, who determines to make a life for herself playing the pianoforte. Li’s historical saga merges these two unlikely paths across European capitals at the peak of empire.