Yiyun Li's New Novel Puts a Piano Pioneer and His Student at the Centre
Yiyun Li's historical novel Music Against the Night imagines the life of John Field, the Dublin-born pianist and composer remembered as the inventor of the nocturne. A nocturne is a short, dreamy piece for piano, a form that Frédéric Chopin later perfected.
The story's central figure is Adelaide Percheron, an orphan raised by her grandmother in Pondicherry, in French India. People around her knew her as Percherette. In the novel, she becomes Field's student in 1807, the year he is living in Moscow. The two marry in 1810.
The Guardian's review, published on 26 October 2026, places the book at the end of the 18th century, against a background of global upheaval. It describes the novel as being about the link between life and art, and about what it can mean to give up a life to art. The paper featured the review as its Book of the day.
Li's book is a historical novel, meaning a work of fiction set in the past. Kirkus Reviews describes it as the first volume in the Nocturne Trilogy, so this is the opening book of a planned series rather than a standalone story.
On the practical side, the U.S. edition is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Publishers Weekly lists its U.S. list price, the price printed on the cover, as $29, and gives its length as 352 pages. Macmillan's U.S. publisher page gives the on-sale date as 13 October 2026. In the UK, the book is published by 4th Estate, a literary imprint, which is a smaller label operating within a larger publishing group.
Field's own city has kept a small piece of his memory. The National Concert Hall in Dublin has a room called The Field Room.
For readers, the appeal is in the setup: a composer whose name is attached to a whole musical form, and a young woman who turns up in his orbit with a past of her own. The Guardian's reviewer treats the novel as a question about what art costs the people who make it. Readers can judge that question for themselves.
