A Luthier's Journey from War-Torn Tokyo to Paris – Healing Through Music
by Akira Mizubayashi
Awarded the Prix des libraires by France's booksellers, a universal story about music and restoring one's faith in others amid the aftermath of tremendous loss.
Tokyo, 1938. An amateur quartet, led by the compassionate Yu, gathers to practice. Suddenly, their rehearsal is brutally interrupted by military police. In the ensuing skirmish, Yu's violin is smashed while his son, Rei, witnesses his father's arrest. He will never see him again. Salvaging his father's instrument, Rei escapes thanks to a mysterious lieutenant.
Paris, 2003. Raised in France, Rei–now Jacques–has dedicated his life to the broken violin's repair: studying music, becoming an apprentice, and, eventually, a luthier. However, despite his effort to rehabilitate the damage of years ago, he struggles to reconcile his past with the present.
Yet, when a world-class violinist, connected to the lieutenant that helped him as a boy, appears, Jacques' past is rekindled and he perseveres in a final bid to heal. Fractured Soul is a parable of what once was lost and what there stands to be gained–a story of immense beauty and ferocious courage.
Media reviews not yet available.
This information about Fractured Soul 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.
A Japanese writer and translator, Akira Mizubayashi was born in 1951. He first visited France in 1973 for pedagogical training in Montpellier, where he became certified to teach French as a second language. Since 1983, Mizubayashi has taught French in Tokyo, where he currently is professor emeritus at Sophia University. His work has been critically acclaimed in France; in 2020, Fractured Soul won the Prix des libraires among other awards. Mizubayashi resides in Tokyo and writes in French.

If you liked Fractured Soul, try these:
The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.