The year is 1914. Anthony Ives Eckhart, a scientist of music, boards a ship bound for Yokohama carrying a conviction that will cost him dearly: the music of the East deserves the same rigorous attention as any Western symphony. Sir Robert, a loud English traveler, dismisses Eastern music as primitive noise. Eckhart's quiet ire ignites into public argument, a defense of traditions his peers have never bothered to understand. As the ship cuts across the Pacific, the voyage becomes a crucible where East meets West not in exotic ports but in cramped conversation, where the question of what constitutes "real" music collides with questions of culture, desire, and who has the right to define beauty. Merwin writes with early 20th-century precision, but his novel anticipates our own cultural reckoning. For readers who love period fiction that grapples with the roots of modern multicultural tension, this obscure gem offers a window into how earlier generations understood, and failed to understand, their interconnected world.
