0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction

Buy Now

The Hourglass (Paperback, New edition) Loot Price: R696
Discovery Miles 6 960
You Save: R62 (8%)

The Hourglass (Paperback, New edition)

Danilo Kis; Translated by Ralph Manheim

 (sign in to rate)
List price R758 Loot Price R696 Discovery Miles 6 960 | Repayment Terms: R65 pm x 12* You Save R62 (8%)

Bookmark and Share

Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days

Kis, who died last year, is most renowned in Europe for this novel, now rendered expertly into English by Manheim. It is the most authoritative of his writings, melding miscellany, nuggetted family portraiture, miraculously self-assured stylistics, and great sadness to achieve the kind of un-silly juxtapositions that give the feel of a life lived. In 1942, E.S. - a 52-year-old employee of the Hungarian State Railways - has had his pension inexplicably cut; and as he searches out the end of the thread that might explain this action, he pulls at the entire fabric of European Jewry (and, most specifically, Sephardic Jewry - of which Kis is the great if abstract chronicler) that is about to be forever rent. But this novel is in no way a descriptive Holocaust intimation. It is a fiction that proceeds by means of a number of indirections; there are two modes of interrogation, for instance - terrifyingly formal or more relaxedly self-accusatory - and there are histories of whole clans compressed into half a page; sections are often dreamlike: "their monochrome and polychrome quality. . .their faculty of transforming unknown places, people, and landscapes into known ones, and vice versa. . ." More suave and calm than most metafictionalists, Kis shapes the book as negative space. But it is the intimacy of complicated and teeming life remembered, highlighted, that gives it a shimmering quality: los seems here a repository of secrets. Elusive yet startling, full-throated fiction, gorgeously prosed. (Kirkus Reviews)
Of all Danilo Kis's books, HOURGLASS, the account of the final months in one man's life before he is sent to a concentration camp, is generally considered his masterpiece. "A finely sustained, complex fictional performance. It is full of pain and rage and gusto and joy of living, at once side-splitting and a heartbreaker".--WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD.

General

Imprint: Northwestern University Press
Country of origin: United States
Release date: 1998
First published: 1998
Authors: Danilo Kis
Translators: Ralph Manheim
Dimensions: 203 x 133 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 274
Edition: New edition
ISBN-13: 978-0-8101-1513-2
Categories: Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN: 0-8101-1513-1
Barcode: 9780810115132

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!

Partners