Love can elevate genius—and push it to the brink.
In Longing, the storied romance of composer Robert Schumann and piano prodigy Clara Wieck unfolds across nineteenth‑century Europe amid censorship and rumblings of revolution.
Leipzig, 1830s. They first meet when Clara is eight and Robert a seventeen‑year‑old lodger under her father’s eye; years of enforced separation sharpen desire until Clara hauls Friedrich Wieck into court and wins the right to wed in 1840. Eight children and triumphant premieres follow, even as Robert’s melancholy drives him toward an asylum. Clara carries his music to rapt audiences while a gifted twenty‑year‑old, Johannes Brahms, steadies the family and the legacy.
Told in meticulously dated chapters that weave letters, journals, and Schumann’s own criticism into fiction, Longing pairs narrative sweep with scholarly rigor to deliver an intimate, electric portrait of two artists forever chasing the note just beyond reach.
- “Strikingly original… it’s almost as if Landis himself were conducting a score.” — The New York Times Book Review
- “Glorious fiction.” — Publishers Weekly (starred & boxed review)
- “Brings these fascinating geniuses to vivid life… hard to know what is more admirable, Mr. Landis’s erudition or the liveliness of his imagination.” — The Wall Street Journal
- “A gripping real-life story full of love, music, madness and intrigue… utterly realistic in its history and wonderful in its sentiment.” — Booklist
- “Wonderfully enjoyable… passionate and flamboyant. Not just a novel for music lovers but for lovers, plain and simple.” — The Chicago Tribune
- “Richly conveys both the joy and the sorrow of the Schumanns’ extraordinary love story.” — Los Angeles Times