Het Stravinsky-spel roman

Het Stravinsky-spel is the latest novel by Arthur Japin. The central figure in this novel is Susan Sontag, particularly her daring trip to Sarajevo to direct a play, there, while the city was in a war zone. In a sense, her trip to Sarajevo was a gamble, and the question seems to be what was at stake? What was it for, and is that worth the risc. This dynamic is played out in the fictional element of the relationship between Susan and Cody, and a childhood game they invented as they watched Thomas Mann and Igor Stravinsky as contemporaries. Central to the game would be the question: how many years would you risk of your own life to have one more masterpiece by these great artists?

The novel makes a strong point that art matters, Sontag's show more undertaking was not a frivolity or vanity. Since she pulls it off in Sarajevo, she is the winner of the Stravinsky game.

Het Stravinsky-spel is a multi-layered novel that may not be so exciting to the average readers to whom Susan Sontag is no household name. The novel seems to challenge critics to reconsider art, including Japin's art. Finally, for anyone wishing to know more about Susan Sontag, there is Benjamin Moser's Pulitzer Prize winning biography. Arthur Japin is Benjamin Moser's husband. Having observed the writing of Sontag's biography so closely, it is likely Japin has seen and been intrigued by something about her not immediately apparent beneath the harsh intellectual harnass and the shrouds of vanity surrounding Susan Sontag. show less