The Cello Suites

One autumn evening, not long after ending a stint as pop music critic at the Montreal Gazette, Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites. There, something unlikely happened: he fell deeply in love with the music. So began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of mystery, intrigue, history, politics, and passion.

Part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: The first features Johann Sebastian Bach and the missing manuscript of his suites from the eighteenth century; the second follows Pablo Casals and the historic discovery of the music in Spain in the late nineteenth century; and the third is Eric Siblin's own infatuation with the suites in the twenty-first century. This love affair leads Siblin to the back streets of Barcelona and a Belgian mansion; to interviews with cellists Mischa Maisky, Anner Bylsma, and Pieter Wispelwey; to archives, festivals, and conferences; and even to cello lessons - all in pursuit of answers to the mysteries that continue to haunt this piece of music more than 250 years after its composer's death.

The Cello Suites is an incomparable, beautifully written, true-life journey of discovery, fuelled by the transcendent power of a musical masterpiece.