Twenty Minutes

David Horovitch reads an excerpt from Jean Echenoz's prize-winning comic novel celebrating the life and times of a concert pianist. Although Max Delmarc lives quietly in Paris with his wife, his life is in chaos - he has begun to fear performing and has started to drink to forget his problems. Max's cynical agent employs a minder to look after him, and a strange and touching relationship blossoms between the two as each evening, seconds before the curtain rises, there are new terrors to deal with.