AustLit

'The Universal Language is a memoir about the unity of music set in the complexity of Israel, as a young woman studying in Jerusalem comes to question her own identity through the prism of a divided city.

'In 2013, Nicky Gluch knew herself to be Australian, a woman, aged 19 and a Jew. In Israel, she found herself travelling with Americans, working alongside Palestinians, and living, for a time, with an Arab nun. She thought she wanted to be a doctor, that healing people would fulfil a sense of purpose, but as she dove deeper into exploring that which divides us – religion, language, country – she came to seek that which unites us.

'Nicky Gluch has a vision of what message she wants readers to gain from her stories:

'‘We should be seeking that which unites us rather than that which divides. But the aim of the book is more to provide a reflective space.

​'‘I call it a book of fragments. How the pieces come together is one part, but I also urge readers to look between the gaps.’'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When I spoke with Christoph von Dohnànyi about what he’d chosen to conduct in Sydney, there was no mention of symphonies and concertos. Rather, he spoke of men. As if arranging places at a dinner party, he told me he never ‘put Bruckner with Beethoven, he’s better with Mozart’ but that, this time, he’d decided to put him with Berg. Speaking as if he knew them, he explained that Berg and Bruckner shared a mentality, but took a different approach to life. Bruckner looked inward, his ideas centred in themselves, whereas Berg asked a lot of questions. Why did this have to happen? Why did this wonderful woman have to die so young? As Dohnànyi painted it, I imagined that if they met in heaven they would discuss romance long into the afterlife. For that was the reality: even though Dohnànyi spoke of them in present tense, he could not restore them to the present. All he had were their scores and the secrets bound up in them.'  (Introduction)