Liebestod: Opera Buffa with Leib Goldkorn

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, Liebestod returns us to Leslie Epstein's most compelling literary character, that European émigré and meagerly successful musician, Leib Goldkorn, whose final years as a randy centenarian in New York City end in one of the most memorable swan songs in recent fiction. Invited back to his hometown in Moravia, Leib discovers that his father is not a hops magnate but actually one of the twentieth century's greatest composers, Gustav Mahler. Returning to New York with a bevy of rabbinical cousins, Leib, now besotted by a world-famed diva, is determined to bring to the Metropolitan Opera Rubezahl, the only opera his real father ever wrote. Yet the much-heralded premiere turns into a fiasco of unimaginable proportions, all breathtakingly relayed by a stunned newspaper correspondent who survives to report on this monumental disaster. With Liebestod, Epstein once again "illuminates the mystery of our common humanity and mortality" (New York Times).

Author: Leslie Epstein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/13/2012
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.70w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780393081312

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/28/2011
Library Journal 01/01/2012 pg. 92
Booklist 01/01/2012 pg. 38
New York Times Book Review 02/19/2012 pg. 19
New York Times Book Review 02/26/2012 pg. 22

About the Author
Epstein, Leslie: - Leslie Epstein has written eight books of fiction including King of the Jews, San Remo Drive, and Pandemonium and won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature for his creation of Leib Goldkorn. The director of the Creative Writing Program at Boston University, he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.