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The Appointment (Paperback)
Herta Muller; Translated by Michael Hulse, Philip Boehm
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R245
Discovery Miles 2 450
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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'I've been summoned, Thursday, ten sharp.' So begins one day in the
life of a young clothing-factory worker during Ceausescu's
totalitarian regime. She has been questioned before, but this time
she knows it will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the
linings of men's suits bound for Italy. 'Marry me', the notes say,
with her name and address. Anything to get out of the country.As
she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts stray to her
friend Lilli, shot while trying to flee to Hungary; to her
grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them; to
Major Albu, her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet
kiss on her fingers; and to Paul, her lover and the one person she
can trust. In her distraction, she misses her stop and finds
herself on an unfamiliar street.And what she discovers there
suddenly puts her fear of the appointment into chilling
perspective. Bone-spare and intense, The Appointment is a pitiless
rendering of the terrors of a crushing regime.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche conducts his protagonist
through his great journey of life - the quest for meaning, and
fulfilment, and for a way to live with the knowledge of death. In
this faithful new translation by Michael Hulse, Zarathustra is
revealed in all his bold and ironic splendour, as a man who strives
to find a way to live - joyfully - in a secular world. Luminous and
ecstatic, Thus Spake Zarathustra is a grand celebration of
perilous, beautiful, human life by one of the most important
philosophers in history.
New Directions is delighted to announce beautiful new editions of
these three classic Sebald novels, including his two greatest
works, The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. All three novels are
distinguished by their translations, every line of which Sebald
himself made pitch-perfect, slaving to carry into English all his
essential elements: the shadows, the lambent fallings-back,
nineteenth-century Germanic undertones, tragic elegiac notes, and
his unique, quiet wit.
Part fiction, part travelogue, the narrator of this compelling masterpiece pursues his solitary, eccentric course from England to Italy and beyond, succumbing to the vertiginous unreliability of memory itself. What could possibly connect Stendhal's unrequited love, the artistry of Pisanello, a series of murders by a clandestine organisation, a missing passport, Casanova, the suicide of a dinner companion, stale apple cake, the Great Fire of London, a story by Kafka about a doomed huntsman and a closed-down pizzeria in Verona?
The Rings of Saturn-with its curious archive of photographs-records
a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things
which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is
not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne's skull, a
matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside
towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson,"
the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII,
the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G.
Sebald's The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan
Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike
any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the
last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings
of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The
Emigrants."
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The Emigrants (Paperback)
W. G. Sebald; Translated by Michael Hulse
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R462
R374
Discovery Miles 3 740
Save R88 (19%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the
straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald
reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school
teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their
footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from
Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South
German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople,
and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the
Holocaust, he collects photographs-the enigmatic snapshots which
stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald
combines precise documentary with fictional motifs, and as he puts
the question to realism, the four stories merge into one
unfathomable requiem.
At first The Emigrants appears simply to document the lives of four Jewish émigrés in the twentieth century. But gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose begins to work its magic, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss.
'Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st Century' The Times What begins as
the record of W. G. Sebald's own journey on foot through coastal
East Anglia, from Lowestoft to Bungay, becomes the conductor of
evocations of people and cultures past and present. From
Chateaubriand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, to fishing
fleets, skulls and silkworms, the result is an intricately
patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things human.
'A novel of ideas with a difference: it is nothing but ideas...
Formally dexterous, fearlessly written (why shouldn't an essay be a
novel?), and unremittingly arcane; by the end I was in tears' Teju
Cole, Guardian
Encountering an eccentric cast of characters along the way, Sebald
confronts the frailty of human existence as he voyages along the
Suffolk coast on foot. What begins as the record of a journey on
foot through coastal East Anglia becomes the great, constellated
story of people and cultures past and present: of Chateaubriand,
Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and
silkworms. A rich meditation on the past via a melancholy trip
along the Suffolk coast, The Rings of Saturn is an intricately
patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things human.
VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to
the depths of the mind
A Walking tour through the haunted landscapes of the past, in the company of the exiled and the departed.The Rings of Saturn begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia. From Lowestoft to Southwold to Bungay, Sebald's own story becomes the conductor of evocations of people and cultures past and present: of Chateau briand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms. The result is a book unlike any other in contemporary literature, an intricately patterned and endlessly thought-provoking meditation on the transience of all things human.
Lucid narratives of family dramas, global warming, and
conversations with Death make a riveting new collection from this
prize-winning poet. The poems swing between Mexico City, New York,
the Peloponnese, a Staffordshire village and home - their
engagement with the church, art and natural beauty provide
sure-footed travelling companions. In an extended sequence, Death
relates stories of her encounters with people and culture. This is
not to suggest the poems make for comfortable reading: each poem's
subject provides an opportunity to challenge and question its
integrity. By turns mischievous and assured, this collection
becomes more engrossing the more you read.
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Vertigo (Paperback)
W. G. Sebald; Translated by Michael Hulse
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R466
R379
Discovery Miles 3 790
Save R87 (19%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Perfectly titled, Vertigo -W.G. Sebald's marvelous first novel - is
a work that teeters on the edge: compelling, puzzling, and deeply
unsettling. An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments,
journeys accross Europe to Vienna, Venice, Verona, Riva, and
finally to his childhood home in a small Bavarian village. He is
also journeying into the past. Traveling in the footsteps of
Stendhal, Casanova, and Kafka, the narrator draws the reader, line
by line, into a dizzying web of history, biography, legends,
literature, and - most perilously - memories.
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The Sorrows of Young Werther (Paperback)
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe; Introduction by Michael Hulse; Notes by Michael Hulse; Translated by Michael Hulse
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R273
R220
Discovery Miles 2 200
Save R53 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Based partly on Goethe’s unrequited love for Charlotte Buff, this novel of pathological sensibility strikes a powerful blow against Enlightenment rationalism.
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The Appointment (Paperback)
Herta Muller; Translated by Michael Hulse, Philip Boehm
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R487
R405
Discovery Miles 4 050
Save R82 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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From the winner of the IMPAC Award and the 2009 Nobel Prize in
Literature, a fierce and devastating novel about a young woman's
discovery of betrayal in the most intimate reaches of her life
"I've been summoned. Thursday, ten sharp." Thus begins a day in the
life of a young factory worker during Ceausescu's totalitarian
regime. She has been questioned before; this time, she believes,
will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the linings of men's
suits bound for Italy. "Marry me," the notes say, with her name and
address. Anything to get out of Romania.
As each tram stop brings the young woman closer to the appointment,
her thoughts stray to her father and his infidelities; to her
friend Lilli, shot trying to flee to Hungary; to her grandparents,
deported after her own husband informed on them; and to Paul, her
lover, her one source of trust despite his drunkenness. In her
distraction, she misses her stop and finds herself on an unfamiliar
street. And what she discovers there makes her fear of the
interrogation pale by comparison.
Bone-spare and intense, "The Appointment" powerfully renders the
humiliating terrors of a crushing regime and its corrosive effects
on family and friendship, sex and love.
Almost painfully direct, the poems of 'The Secret History' testify
to a new depth and a new tenderness in Michael Hulse's voice. The
shadow of his dead father and the light of new love meet here in a
collection that is impossible to put down and that lingers in the
heart as much as in the memory.
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Lust (Paperback, Main)
Elfriede Jelinek; Translated by Michael Hulse
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R337
Discovery Miles 3 370
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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In a quaint Austrian ski resort, things are not quite what they
seem. Hermann, the manager of a paper mill, has decided that sexual
gratification begins at home. Which means Gerti - his wife and
property. Gerti is not asked how she feels about the use Hermann
puts her to. She is a receptacle into which Hermann pours his
juices, nastily, briefly, brutally. The long-suffering and battered
Gerti thinks she has found her saviour and love in Michael, a
student who rescues her after a day of vigorous use by her husband.
But Michael is on his way up the Austrian political ladder, and he
is, after all, a man. In Elfriede Jelinek's mitteleuropa, love is
as distant from sex as the Alps are from the sea, and the everyday
mechanics of husband, wife, and child become a loveless horror.
Both a condemnation of the myth of romantic love and an angry
defence of women's sexuality, Lust is pornography for pessimists. A
bestseller throughout Europe, Lust confirms Elfriede Jelinek as the
most challenging writer - female or male - in Europe today. It is a
dark, dazzling performance.
"Ostensibly a record of a journey on foot through coastal East
Anglia," as Robert McCrum in the London Observer noted, The Rings
of Saturn "is also a brilliantly allusive study of England's
imperial past and the nature of decline and fall, of loss and
decay. . . . The Rings of Saturn is exhilaratingly, you might say
hypnotically, readable. . . . It is hard to imagine a stranger or
more compelling work." The Rings of Saturn - with its curious
archive of photographs - chronicles a tour across epochs as well as
countryside. On his way, the narrator meets lonely eccentrics
inhabiting tumble-down mansions and links them to Rembrandt's
"Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, a matchstick
model of the Temple of Jerusalem, the travels of Sir Thomas
Browne's skull, and the massive bombings of WWII. Cataloging
change, oblivion, and memories, he connects sugar fortunes, Joseph
Conrad, and the horrors of colonizing the Belgian Congo. The
narrator finds threads which run from an abandoned bridge over the
River Blyth to the terrible dowager Empress Tzu Hsi and the silk
industry in Norwich. "Sebald," as The New Yorker stated, "weaves
his tale together with a complexity and historical sweep that
easily encompasses both truth and fiction." The Emigrants (hailed
by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece-perfect while being
unlike any book one has ever read") was "one of the great books of
the last few years," as Michael Ondaatje noted: "and now The Rings
of Saturn is a similar and as strange a triumph."
Scathingly clever short stories. Includes "The Devil in the White
House" and "The Development of Iraq as a Case for the Files." At
once a genuine story-teller and a literary documentarian, Alexander
Kluge's genius lies in the very special way he makes found material
his own. Each of the miniatures collected here touches on "facts"
and is only several pages long. In just a paragraph he can etch a
whole world: he is as great a master of compression as Kafka or
Kawabata. Arranged in five chapters, the dozens of stories of The
Devil's Blind Spot are condensed, like novels in pill form. The
first group of stories illustrates the little-known virtues of the
Devil. The second explores love from Kant and opera through the
Grand Guignol. The third is entitled "Sarajevo Is Everywhere" and
tests how convincing power is. The fourth group concerns the
cosmos, and the fifth ranges all our "knowledge" against our
feelings. In each piece, Kluge alights on precise particulars: on
board the atomic submarine Kursk, for instance, we are marched
precisely step by step through a black comedy of the exact,
disastrous stages of thinking that lead to catastrophe. Sample
titles include "The Devil in the White House," "The Development of
Iraq as a Case for the Files," "Intelligence of the Second Degree,"
and "Love's Mouth Also Kisses the Dog."
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