Dvorak in Love

Here is a wonderfully imagined picture of a little known period in American musical history. In 1892 at the height of his prodigious powers Antonin Dvorak was persuaded to leave his native Bohemia to come to New York to be director of the National Conservatory for Music. In this exuberant novel Josef Skvorecky tells the story of Dvorak’s utterly requited love affair with young America the anthem of which is his famous Symphony in E Minor “From the New World.”