A novel based on the life of Nejiko Suwa, a young Japanese prodigy to whom Joseph Goebbels gifted a Stradivarius in Berlin in 1943 in the name of the alliance between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.

At a young age, Nejiko leaves Japan for France so that she could further master the violin. She was simply a musician but got caught up in the struggles of politics and war.

Unbeknownst to Nejiko, the Stradivarius she was offered was taken from Lazare Braun, a Jewish musician killed by the Nazis. Nevertheless, she struggles to make the violin hers; it has a soul, haunted by its past. And it’s questionable that it’s even a Stradivarius.

After the war, a musician named Félix Sitterlin is asked by the French government to find the violon and return it to Lazare Braun’s family. That’s when he meets Nejiko who refuses to speak with him. She has protected the violin with her life. However, decades later, after her death, he receives her private journals and uses them to write this, her story.

Yoann Iacono was born in Bordeaux in 1980. He spent three years in France, Germany and Japan investigating Nejiko Suwa’s life. This is her first novel.