Time is running out for Otto Steiner, an elderly Jewish music critic who is languishing in a sanitorium in Salzburg on the eve of the Second World War. Music remains his only love, but the forces of darkness are closing in. Then Otto is asked to write the program notes for the approaching music festival.

For a few evenings Salzburg will be the capital of the Reich and of music. He bears witness in his diary to the sinister sounds of Nazism, but also reveals his astonishing act of heroism.

A hair’s breadth away from changing the course of history, Otto Steiner makes music itself a powerful form of resistance. Saving Mozart is a literary gem and a fiercely subversive novel for our times.