Mostly know for his play Miss Margaridas Way, presented on Broadway starring Estelle Parsons and produced in more than 30 countries, Brazilian author Roberto Athayde writes both in English and Portuguese. Jonathans Friend is a novel inspired by the authors own experience as a foreign student in the US. The narrator, Armando, is a composition major at the the Music School of the University of Michigan in the spring of 1969. He is in the process of giving up music for writing. He finds out that a certain young composer is supposed to be in love with Jonathan, the best violinist in the music school, and that his passion is not reciprocated. Armando figures that such story might be just what he needs to get on with his fiction. He strikes a friendship with the unhappy composer. But, instead of merely finding material for a short story, the sensual Armando falls hopelessly in love with Jonathans friend. Jonathans Friend is a novel of budding passion played out amidst the notes of classical music. It was written by Roberto Athayde when the author was nineteen years old and has been withheld for more than thirty years.
