![]() ![]() 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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