Music for the Third Ear

Seeking asylum from a distant conflict in Eastern Europe, Zheljka and Mesud are given refuge in the home of Hans Olav and Mette in Norway. Their arrival has profound consequences. Apparently settled into a childless middle age, Mette revisits her own unresolved family history in her frantic desire to establish a connection with Zheljka. All the while, Mesud and Zheljka try to reinvent their love for each other in the aftermath of a brutal war. Both families struggle to acknowledge the unspoken pain in their lives as Zheljka's child, unwanted but not unloved, becomes the focus of a drama in which each of them will share. Powerful and compassionate, Music for the Third Ear is a deeply moving novel about war and its consequences.AUTHORBIO: Susan Schwartz Senstad, an American, has resided in Norway for fifteen years.In 1995, after long experience providing psychotherapy and management consulting in the U.S., Italy and Norway, she received an MFA for Writers from Vermont College in Montpelier.She is now a full-time author. Music for the Third Ear, her first novel, has been published in Great Britain, Holland and Norway and will soon be out in Germany.Before publication, the novel was a semi-finalist in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition and nominated for the Pushcard Editors Choice Award. In the summer of 2000, an excerpt of the novel won The Literary Reviews Charles Angoff Award. REVIEW: "Tightly woven....unusually perceptive....artful and compassionate, taking on difficult subjects without crassness or predictability.Senstad pits two wars and two generations against each other in a way that manages to be understanding and unjudgmental." (Maggie O'Farrell, The Observer Review) REVIEW: "Fine and powerful....Electric....Summarised, the novel sounds like a thriller.And indeed it is, but of conflicting moral constraints, and psychic needs and political pragmatism." (The Guardian) REVIEW: "Lyrical......Devastating yet unsentimental......History is woven into the text with astonishing skill." (Scotland on Sunday) REVIEW: "Senstad has written a powerful novel that is eminently worth reading....the language is insistent and pounding....Investigates the phenomenon of fleeing, whether it be from outer or inner foes....compelling." (Aftenposten --Norway) REVIEW: "This is politically engaged literature about the burning issues of our times." (Stavanger Aftenblad--Norway)REVIEW: "Convincingly done....with subtle psychological twists, convincing characters, and a certain humor, all of which intensifies her weighty themes." (Dagbladet--Norway)Senstad, Susan Schwartz is the author of 'Music for the Third Ear' with ISBN 9780312266219 and ISBN 0312266219.