' Dr Julius Newton is a world-famous biographer who specialises in the lives of composers. His latest project is on the famously secretive French composer Maurice Ravel, and he is thrilled when a young man, Charles Joseph Pym, contacts him to tell him that he has discovered some exciting material relating to Ravel's life: a letter, a photo, and a new, wonderful sonata, Le Gouffre, or The Abyss, which will revolutionise the public view of Ravel the man as well as the composer. But all is not as it seems--and in a novel which twists and turns on itself, friend soon turns foe: bluff and double bluff succeed each other--just who is hoaxing who?' (Sophie Masson).
