Thursday, October 7th, 1954, about half-an-hour after lights out...
Hitherto secure in his comfortable boarding school world, 13-year-old Ben is disturbed by someone playing the piano downstairs. Captivated by the music, his quest to find out the pianist's identity leads to an adolescent passion and the taste of forbidden fruit. Discovery, expulsion and exile are followed by an extraordinary act of atonement at the novel's climax.

Beautifully and sensitively told, in the first person, in letters or occasional verses, this majestic novel moves back in time to trace Ben's origins in wartime France, and forwards ultimately to a parish priesthood in Scotland. Richly peopled, studded with period pieces and back-lit with irony, this is a book to read and re-read and discover something new each time.

Christopher Campbell-Howes is well known in francophile circles for his writing about the south of France. The wider horizons and deeper issues approached in The Night Music mark a departure from his earlier writing. He lives in the Languedoc, where he divides his time between writing, composing and making music, building drystone wals and cultivating strawberries.