Music of wings. David Almond

A poetic book about pristine music and unity with the world in the brilliant translation of Olga Warsaver. The author David Almond is a modern classic, laureate of Andersen Prize and the owner of the Carnegie medal.

City girl, a brave rebel Sylvia, comes to the north of England, to the village, and everything around seems to her by stranger and hostile, and the helicopter wastelands and the Verzeroloshi and the Verrip The endless empty sky evoke longing. She strives back to Newkasl - to where the phone works, where her friends are waiting for her. Everything changes overnight when she meets a young man named Gabrielle...

They roam together in hills and forests, and Sylvia looks at nature with completely new eyes. It turns out that the past is everywhere - both right under the feet and deep inside the person. Sylvia feels like a part of nature, is filled with its powerful force and returns to the city, ready not only to survive in the modern world, but to change it, to do better and more perfect.

for whom this book is

For children from 12 years old.

for adult connoisseurs of good literature.

from the translator Olga Warsaver:

Almond for me a special author, not passing. “The Music of the Wings” (in the original Bone Music) is the ninth book of David, which I was lucky to translate.

David is a man-bird. Starting with his very first and famous book, Skellig, he invariably writes about people with wings - sometimes in a figurative, and sometimes in the literal sense of the word. Sometimes he is ranked for magical realists, but among them he occupies a special place, because, say, Marquez and Borges are adults, and David writes for young readers.

And David is a senior man. And then I must say a few words about his surname, which we translite, write how it is written, through L, but it is pronounced in English amond. David always answers the question of pronouncing the surname: "I am like a almond nut." Once I talked about this at a meeting with readers in North Ossetia, in Vladikavkaz. And I feel that my rather restrained listeners suddenly began to whisper. What is I ask? They answer: right, and write an amonda, because amondo in Ossetian is happiness.

Here, in my opinion, everything converges. David is a man-bird and a person-country. He was very pleased when I told him this story.

David Almond for me not just the author, but a friend. A lot is related to us. In particular - love for the theater. There are already many theatrical productions in Russia in Russia. And we are very happy about this. David himself wrote his plays from his books “Skellig” and “My Dad - Birds”, I also wrote several staging or, more precisely, plays based on his texts. I am especially happy when the directors read prose and offer their stage versions of what they read. I believe that this will certainly happen with the book “Music of the Wings”. Now we are just signing an agreement according to which I will be a “stage” agent of Almond in Russia. So - welcome, theaters!