The Polish lover

by Anthony Weller

The Polish Lover is an erotic novel of music, obsession, and exile - a first-person memoir of an affair, equal parts lust and love, gone wrong. Danny, a young jazz clarinetist from New York, meets a powerful expatriate Polish beauty named Maja while on tour in the South Pacific. Their tumultuous relationship leads back to her homeland in Eastern Europe during an icy Christmas, and a stormy end to the entanglement. The Polish Lover explores the difficulties and ecstasies of both improvising jazz and of falling hard for someone who turns out to be dangerous, strong-willed, and deceptive - the heady risks of playing music and of falling in love. Most of all, The Polish Lover is a cadenza of remembered desire, told with candor and humor and heat. And it is one of the few authentic jazz novels by a writer who is also a professional musician.