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The Unfinished (Hardcover)
Reinhard Jirgl; Translated by Iain Galbraith
bundle available
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R688
Discovery Miles 6 880
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Komotau, the Czech Republic, late summer, 1945. Four
women-seventy-year-old Johanna, her two daughters Hanna and Maria,
and Hanna's daughter Anna-are ordered by the new Czech authorities
to leave their homes and assemble with other Germans at the local
train station. They are given thirty minutes-the "wild expulsions"
of Sudeten Germans have begun. But where is Anna? Witnessing the
revenge lynching of SS and suspected collaborators on her walk
home, she arrives in Komotau to find her family gone. The trek
takes the older women via Munich, then Dresden and Magdeburg, to an
outpost in the far northwest of the Soviet zone where they settle
as farm laborers. Once united again, their hope of one day
returning to the heimat-homeland-is both a source of strength and a
burden, choking attachments to new surroundings and neighbors. This
conflict will prove to be the story of their lives, as well as both
the joy and ruin of Anna's son. A tale of four generations told in
Reinhard Jirgl's unique and subversively expressive idiom, The
Unfinished plays out between the ruins of Nazi Germany and the rise
and fall of communist East Germany, the birth of the Berlin
Republic, and the shadow of a new millennium.
Reinhard Jirgl's strikingly individual novel The Fire Above, the
Mountain Below demonstrates that he is not only unorthodox in his
approach to language, but also difficult to pin down in terms of
any genre. Weaving together elements of crime story, Cold War
espionage, family tragedy, and a dystopian future, he creates a
tapestry of fragile humanity and menacing inhumanity. The
investigation of a series of gruesome killings takes a detective
inspector into explorations of a secret intelligence programme in
former East Germany and the role of a family with a tragic history.
The more is uncovered, the more disorienting it becomes, and the
reader is drawn into a complex web of discovery and suppression.
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The Unfinished
Reinhard Jirgl, Iain Galbraith
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R516
Discovery Miles 5 160
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A profound novel detailing the brutal legacy of Nazism on four
generations of a family in Germany. Komotau, the Czech Republic,
late summer, 1945. Four women—seventy-year-old Johanna, her two
daughters Hanna and Maria, and Hanna’s daughter Anna—are
ordered by the new Czech authorities to leave their homes and
assemble with other Germans at the local train station. They are
given thirty minutes—the “wild expulsions” of Sudeten Germans
have begun. But where is Anna? Witnessing the revenge
lynching of SS and suspected collaborators on her walk home, she
arrives in Komotau to find her family gone. The trek takes the
older women via Munich, then Dresden and Magdeburg, to an outpost
in the far northwest of the Soviet zone where they settle as farm
laborers. Once united again, their hope of one day returning to the
heimat—homeland—is both a source of strength and a burden,
choking attachments to new surroundings and neighbors. This
conflict will prove to be the story of their lives, as well as both
the joy and ruin of Anna’s son. A tale of four
generations told in Reinhard Jirgl’s unique and subversively
expressive idiom, The Unfinished plays out between the ruins of
Nazi Germany and the rise and fall of communist East Germany, the
birth of the Berlin Republic, and the shadow of a new millennium.
Max Weber famously described politics as “a strong, slow drilling
through hard boards with both passion and judgment.” Taking this
as his inspiration, Alexander Kluge brings readers yet another
literary masterpiece. Drilling through Hard Boards is a
kaleidoscopic meditation on the tools available to those who
struggle for power. Weber’s metaphorical drill certainly embodies
intelligent tenacity as a precondition for political change. But
what is a hammer in the business of politics, Kluge wonders, and
what is a subtle touch? Eventually, we learn that all questions of
politics lead to a single one: what is political in the first
place? In the book, Kluge masterfully unspools more than one
hundred vignettes, through which it becomes clear that the
political is more often than not personal. Politics are everywhere
in our everyday lives, so along with the stories of major political
figures, we also find here the small, mostly unknown ones: Elfriede
Eilers alongside Pericles, Chilean miners next to Napoleon, a
three-month-old baby beside Alexander the Great. Drilling through
Hard Boards is not just Kluge’s newest fiction, it is a
masterpiece of political thought.
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