AKIRA MIZUBAYASHI
Broken Soul - Editions Gallimard

Tokyo, 1938. Four amateur musicians with a passion for Western classical music meet regularly at the Cultural Center to rehearse. Around the Japanese Yu, an English teacher, three Chinese students, Yanfen, Cheng and Kang, remained in Japan, despite the war in which the Empire's expansionist policy was plunging Asia.
One day, the rehearsal is brutally interrupted by the arrival of soldiers. Yu's violin is broken by a soldier, the Sino-Japanese quartet is taken away, suspected of plotting against the country. Hidden in a cupboard, Rei, Yu's eleven-year-old son, witnessed the scene. He will never see his father again... The child escapes the violence of the military thanks to Lieutenant Kurokami who, far from denouncing him when he discovers him in his hiding place, entrusts him with the destroyed violin. This event constitutes for Rei the first wound which will mark all her life...
In this charming novel, Akira Mizubayashi explores the question of memory, uprooting and impossible mourning. We find the themes dear to the author of a language from elsewhere: literature and music, two forms of art which, deepening over time until they become the very matter of life, defy death. 

LOLA GRUBER
Three concerts - Editions Phébus

Clarisse is a quiet, closed child who seems to hear sounds a second in advance. Could music save her from isolation? At the age of seven, she provokes chance by becoming a student of Viktor Sobolevitz. She shares with this famous and misanthropic master the same uncompromising love of art. But to make a career in music, you need more than talent. Unprepared for the competition, the young cellist will soon learn that... When she meets Rémy Nevel, a music critic, media savvy and ambitious, her destiny could change. Interweaving the scores of these three characters, Lola Gruber offers us a novel of initiation out of the ordinary, which is also a reflection on our thirst for purity and recognition.

JULIEN DECOIN
Turntables - Editions Seuil

Jean, an elderly writer, lives retired in an old convent, not far from Paris. One evening, on his way back by train, he stops at the village PMU bar. To have a drink. To be alone among others. The vision of a young blonde woman, singer of an amateur band, will awaken the past.
It was in 1976. The young novelist was then on a writing residency in the United States and was looking to get into trouble. In the corridor of a bar, he meets Platine, a crazy rock star of the New York underground. From this furtive encounter, he wrote a book that was published in 1978 and won the Goncourt Prize. A few months later, she agrees, against all odds, to play her own role in the adaptation of the novel he is to direct. It was the beginning of their adventure, but he remained the little "Frenchie" in the dizziness of Manhattan. And love stories often have an end. This one will shatter him.
Agreeing to see Marie, the young singer without much talent, with the same platinum blond hair, means running the risk of stirring up painful memories from which his isolation is supposed to protect him. It is also to open a chance: that to write again.
With a sustained rhythm, and inspired by the extravagant character of Debbie Harry, from the band Blondie, Julien Decoin signs a novel that is both nostalgic and extremely contemporary, in a punk and romantic spirit.