A musician’s endorsement

"Boman Desai’s Trio and Trio 2 has dramatized the story of the Schumanns and Brahms in the form of a novel, citing their original correspondence of 43 years among his sources. He has researched this most romantic of stories thoroughly, but writes so compellingly that it is like discovering the story anew,” notes international conductor Zubin Mehta. Coming from a musician of Mehta’s status and standing regarding the lives of outstanding 19th century composer and pianist Robert Schumann, his concert pianist wife Clara and their friend Johannes Brahms, one can share the novelist’s jubilation.

Covers of Trio with author Boman Desai (top) and conductor Zubin Mehta

"The great composers of the age make appearances when their lives intersect those of the trio, and I was glad to see that Desai presents them to us, warts and all, with the deepest sympathy and understanding. It is perhaps his greatest achievement that they appear as fullbloodedly as if they might have been his neighbors,” adds Mehta appreciatively.

"Trio and Trio 2 is actually one novel published in two volumes because it was too large a book for the publisher to publish in a single volume,” states Desai, adding, "The two books together are easily my life’s work, beginning with a gleam in my eye in 1988 and ending with the publication of the second volume in 2006.”

While sharing the above with Parsiana Desai gives us a hint of his current activities. Presently in India to visit Sanjan where the plot of his current novel — "58 pages strong and counting” as he describes it — reaches a climax, Desai’s fiction has drawn much inspiration from the community.