"A Tale of Music" draws on this history to tell a disturbing parable about an artist's willing self-abnegation in the service of the Great Leader.

NPR: 'A Tale of Music': From 'Literature from the Axis of Evil'

The rest is bravado, boasting, good and bad times with many women and hangers-on, enormous earnings (most of them blown), and wrenching self-criticism and self-abnegation.

NEWYORKER: Tyson