Ann Patchett

Bel Canto

​

This novel fictionalizes a historical event: the 1990s takeover of the Japanese embassy in Peru by guerilla fighters. Various dinner guests (including a famous opera singer) and the teenage guerillas are trapped inside the embassy for months in a standoff with authorities. Little by little, the dignitaries and the teens grow accustomed to their new life together, and relationships are forged between people who, under typical circumstances, would have remained strangers or become enemies. The novel is a bel canto—a beautiful song about the possibility for human connection and the brutality that can destroy it.