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Canone Inverso has the structure and resonance of an intricate piece of music, leading up to a devastating finale. A strangely carved, beautiful violin accompanies two generations of artists from Hungary, torn by World War I, to Vienna awaiting the Nazi Anschluss. Mysteriously, the violin reappears in an auction at Christie's in present-day London.

Propelled by the prophecy that all musicians are the descendants of Cain, the story centers on two friends: a bastard peasant boy burdened with a great talent and the only heir to an Austrian aristocratic family desperately clinging to the prerogatives of noble birth. Theirs is the age-old tale of the doppelgnger reimagined: companions, perhaps brothers, and, inevitably, lethal enemies.

The lives of the main characters intertwine in a mysterious and magical fugue, in which music is at once threat and consolation. Immortality, history, and an all-consuming passion come to play in this artfully layered, erudite narrative. Maurensig's sensuous prose brings to life an age, an art, and the spirit of music.