Synopsis

A Spanish composer active in the first half of the nineteenth century, Fernando Sor was a fierce opponent of the French when Napoleon's armies invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 1807. However, he later became an ally, until he was forced into exile and settled in Paris in 1813. This was only the beginning of his wanderings, which took him to London from 1815, and then, driven by his passion for the ballerina Félicité Hullin, to Moscow until the end of 1826.
But in this book, another voice soon emerges: that of a professional musician who shifts the narrative to the present tense. He is a foreign guitarist who has lived in Rome for years, having retired from the stage after losing his motivation and drive. The decision to resume his concert activity, albeit with a single solo recital, unleashes in this character, until the last page, a long series of questions and recriminations about his role as a musician and his inextricable relationship with Sor's work.
Sor himself, returning from Russia in 1827, settled permanently in Paris, where he met a brilliant young man, Napoléon Coste, also a composer and guitarist, but as cold and reserved as Sor was impulsive and irascible. Their last-ditch attempt to solve a puzzle involving the numbers seven and nine fails to have the desired outcome: the story has taken us up to this point, in July 1830, during the three days of violent popular revolution that shook Paris and led to the collapse of the reactionary monarchy. It
will be up to the reader to distinguish the real events, sometimes described in detail, from those that are merely the author's imagination: as the title of this novel seems to invite us to do.