Research Catalog

Title

• The facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios / Yann Martel.

Author

Martel, Yann

Publication

Toronto : Vintage Canada, 2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 179 p.; 21 cm.

Summary

"In the title novella, a very young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the twentieth century, whose horrors and miracles their story echoes. In "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American composer John Morton," a Canadian university student visits Washington, D.C., and experiences the Vietnam War and its aftermath through an intense musical encounter. In "Manners of Dying," variations of a warden's letter to the mother of a man he has just executed reveal how each life is contained in its end. And finally, in "The Vita Æterna Mirror Company", a twentysomething grandson learns the alchemy of mirror-making and the value of memories, but learns too late the importance of the present moment."--Back cover.

Subject

• Death > Fiction
• Youth > Fiction

Genre/Form

Fiction

Note

• Originally publ.: Toronto : Knopf Canada, 1993.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios -- The time I heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with one discordant violin, by the American composer John Morton -- Manners of dying -- The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company : mirrors that last til kingdom come.

ISBN

• 0676976190 :
• 9780676976199

OCLC

56011664

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library