The Great Petrowski

The Great Petrowski is a magical love story as well as a moral fable that shows how the gift of talent and dedication to one's art can aid a troubled world.. It was only in the decade preceding her death last summer that Gina Berriault won the readership and critical acclaim that had been rightfully hers from the start. In 1997, after forty years of writing, she won four major fiction prizes for Women in Their Beds , Counterpoint's collection of her masterful short stories. At the last, she suffered fame and popularity and the press of ardent fans.This last year, she wrote and illustrated The Great Petrowski , an ecological fable about a lonely parrot, lost in a nameless rainy city, homesick for a place he can't quite remember. Petrowski comes in from obscurity to win international renown because of the splendor of his singing voice. As a magnificent opera star he finds true love and uses his gift of fame to save not only his native rainforest but all creatures of the earth. The charming illustrations, rendered with the same simplicity and wit as the text, will remind some of Semp, of Edward Gorey, or of Bemelmans' bar at the Hotel Carlyle.