“The Piano Tuner” by Daniel Mason: Page preceding Chapter 1 defines “fugue” as 1. A polyphonic [musical] composition…, 2. Psychiatry. A flight from one’s own identity…

Daniel Mason’s first novel, The Piano Tuner (1), was written when he was still a medical student. After publishing the novel and graduating from medical school, he specialized in psychiatry.

On the page before chapter one, he quotes an Oxford English Dictionary definition of “fugue” that features not only the musical, but also the psychiatric sense of the word (2, p. 9). He evidently wants the reader to include a psychiatric interpretation. Search “fugue” in this blog for past posts that discuss it.

Before Edgar Drake, the piano tuner, leaves London on his mission to Burma (in 1886), his wife Katherine “watched her husband wander absentmindedly through the house” (2, p. 29). Search “absent-minded” in this blog to see past posts on what absentmindedness sometimes implies.

Katherine also wanted to “tell Edgar not to return [from Burma] with a ridiculous new name” (2, p. 40). She had heard that some people who go to Burma come back with a Burmese name, which she took as proof that the war in Burma was a “boys' game,” but which also could be interpreted as getting a name for an alternate personality.

1. Wikipedia. “The Piano Tuner.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Piano_Tuner

2. Daniel Mason. The Piano Tuner. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.