Concert 'In Memory of an Angel'

Erik-Emmanuel Schmitt is a philosopher and researcher of the human soul, a writer and film director—one of Europe’s most successful playwrights. In his books—“The Gospel According to Pilate,” “The Sect of Self-Lovers,” “Oscar and the Pink Lady,” “Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran,” “The Other’s Destiny,”—and in his plays, he asks questions to God and Pontius Pilate, to Buddha and Muhammad, to Freud, Mozart, and Denis Diderot.

Schmitt’s new collection of novellas, “Concert ‘In Memory of an Angel’,” received the 2010 Goncourt Prize. As always, the writer offers brilliant, refined—and completely unexpected—plot turns. What connects an elderly woman who poisoned three husbands and a president in love with his wife? A burly sailor who worries he didn’t pay enough attention to his daughters, and a cynical businessman who earned his first billion by trading images of Catholic saints and porn accessories? And what does Saint Rita have to do with it—the patron saint of those who are in trouble and in despair?