About the Novel

    The Glass Harmonica is the story of Chjara Vallé (listen to pronunciation) a young woman exiled from her Corsican homeland and sold as a servant to an opium addict in Paris. Music paves the way for her to flee with Henry, her love, to post-revolutionary America. There the new freedoms and Puritan vigor compete for ascendancy. Chjara woos and scandalizes in equal measure with her playing of Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica, while Henry hides his trade in erotica and forbidden books. Secrets gather and the charge between the lovers weakens as the crowds begin to call for the family’s blood. Rooted in historical fact, this debut novel by a gifted international storyteller takes you into a passionate world full of dangerous ideas and dangerous men – it is a world you’ll not want to leave.

    ‘A knock-out historical novel… reminiscent of Louis de Bernières’ — New Zealand Herald. Finalist, Utah Book Award, 2011.

          Available in audiobook, paperback and ebook editions

    Inspired by Daniel Andreev’s The Rose of the World or Роза Мира, Rosa Mira publishes work that bears “the mark of talent and at least one of the following: a sense of beauty, broad scope, profundity of thought, sharpness of insight, purity of heart, or a joyful spirit” notwithstanding “a keen awareness of the world’s darker depths.”