Violin Lessons

A young boy plays the violin for his mother in Melbourne. Nina Simone sings 'Pirate Jenny' in a bar in Berlin. A fisherman plays a flute on the Mekong. And the strains of Paganini resonate in the forests of eastern Poland. From the cabarets of 1940s Baghdad to the streets of war-torn Saigon and the canals and alleyways of present-day Venice, music weaves through each of these spellbinding true stories.

They are tales of hardship, of yearning and of celebration. Tales that span the globe, and bring us back to Melbourne and the extraordinary story of Amal - her flight from Iraq, her fears boarding the unseaworthy boat Australians would come to know as SIEV X, her night spent clinging to a corpse alone in the sea, and her desire to have her story told.

'Maybe this is why I am alive,' Amal says, 'to tell the story of the people who sank in the ocean.'

About the Author

Arnold Zable was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and grew up in the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton. He has travelled and lived in the USA, India, Papua New Guinea, Europe, Southeast Asia and China, and now lives in Melbourne with his wife and son. His books include Jewels and Ashes, Café Scheherazade, The Fig Tree, Scraps of Heaven and Sea of Many Returns. Arnold is president of the International PEN, Melbourne, and is a human rights advocate.