тАЬVividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom┬а.┬а.┬а. A brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torteтАЭ (Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology).
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In this poignant yet rollicking novel, ninety-six-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski forgoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that MarthaтАФthe last of the now-extinct passenger pigeonsтАФdied. Levadski too has an acute sense of being the last of a species.
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He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesnтАЩt have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days. This gloriously written tale is тАЬa book like a fantastic party, as unshakeable as a childтАЩs faith [that] astonishes to the very endтАЭ (Neue Z├╝rcher Zeitung).