**Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist •** New York Times **Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21** **st** **Century** **** Bel Canto **is its own universe. A marvel of a book. —** Washington Post Book World **Ann Patchett’s spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis.** Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers. Patchett’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make *Bel Canto* a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.