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An extraordinary first novel that tells the story of a British piano tuner sent deep into Burma in the nineteenth century.
In October 1886, Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the British War Office: he must leave his wife and his quiet life in London to travel to the jungles of Burma, where a rare Erard grand piano is in need of repair. The piano belongs to an army surgeon-major whose unorthodox peacemaking methods—poetry, medicine, and now music—have brought a tentative quiet to the southern Shan States but have elicited questions from his superiors.
On his journey through Europe, the Red Sea, India, and into Burma, Edgar meets soldiers, mystics, bandits, and tale-spinners, as well as an enchanting woman as elusive as the surgeon-major. And at the doctor's fort on a remote Burmese river, Edgar encounters a world more mysterious and dangerous than he ever could have imagined.
Sensuous, lyrical, rich with passion and adventure, this is a hypnotic tale of myth, romance, and self-discovery: an unforgettable novel.
What are you reading this week? (9/04/2025)
I just finished The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason (loved the Piano Tuner and Northwood by same. It was a marvelous escape into the mind of a WWI medic in a field hospital) and started another audio of Naill Williams The History of Rain. It's a bookish delight of a family history told by a bedrid...
-Karen_K
What are you reading this week? (7/17/2025)
I am halfway thru Northwoods by Daniel Mason. I read his earlier book The Piano Tuner and was wowed and so decided to take the leap to his most recent book. I am enjoying the very original book, Northwoods on audio (Libro.fm format, benefits an independent bookstore of my choosing). Also reading ...
-Karen_K
"A rattling good story, complex characterizations, and a brilliantly realized portrayal of an alien culture–all combine to dazzling effect in this first by a California medical student who has worked and studied in the Far East. Piano tuner Edgar Drake undertakes his journey (thrillingly described), arriving at the inland fortress where the suave Dr. Anthony Carroll–part Albert Schweitzer, part Mistah Kurtz of Heart of Darkness–rules as a benevolent despot, aided by a beautiful Burmese woman to whom Edgar finds himself increasingly attracted. A wealth of information–musical, medical, historical, political–and numerous colorfully detailed vignettes of life in Burma's teeming cities and jungle villages provide a solid context for the intricate plot, which brings Drake into 'complicity' with Carroll's visionary dream…until the powerful denouement [and the] deeply ironic climactic action. (One keeps thinking of what a marvelous movie The Piano Tuner might make.) ... An irresistible amalgam of Kipling, Rider Haggard, and Conrad at their very best. Masterful." ―Kirkus Reviews
"[The Piano Tuner] ends, inevitably, in tragedy, but the reader will regret that it ends at all. This is an utterly involving first novel, rich in historical detail. Mason's language is at once tropically lush and as precise as a Bach prelude. A novel for readers of literary and popular fiction alike; highly recommended." ―Library Journal
This information about The Piano Tuner was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Daniel Mason received his bachelor's degree in biology from Harvard in 1998 and spent a year studying malaria on the Thai and Myanmar border, where much of The Piano Tuner was written. He is currently a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco.
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