An author who would go on to write rigorous experimental fiction, Gert Jonke was born in 1946 in Klagenfurt, Austria—Robert Musil’s hometown. A talented pianist, he studied music but left the conservatory to be a writer, and found quick success with the 1969 publication of Geometric Regional Novel, a satire that Peter Handke praised in Der Spiegel. In fact many of his poems, novels, and plays reveal that his interest in music never subsided—they often feature characters lost in music, like the nameless composer who narrates The Distant Sound, his latest book to be translated into English. After