Faber buys Mahler biography

27.01.10 Victoria Gallagher in The Bookseller

Faber has bought the rights to a title on the life and works of composer Gustav Mahler, pic left in 1892.
Belinda Matthews, editorial director at Faber, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown.
Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the World by Norman Lebrecht will be published as a £17.99 hardback in July this year.

Faber described the title as "part biography, part travelogue, part hitchhiker's guide," and said it was a "multi-layered exploration" of the role that music plays in our lives.

This year is the 150th anniversary of Mahler’s birth and 2011 is the centenary of his death.

Lebrecht has previously written 12 books about music and also won the Whitbread Prize for The Song of Names (Headline Review) in 2002.