Visitation
Jenny Erpenbeck
(Author)
Susan Bernofsky
(Translator)
Description
A forested property on a Brandenburg lake outside Berlin lies at the heart of this darkly sensual, elegiac novel. Encompassing over one hundred years of German history, from the nineteenth century to the Weimar Republic, from World War II to the Socialist German Democratic Republic, and finally reunification and its aftermath, Visitation offers the life stories of twelve individuals who seek to make their home in this one magical little house. The novel breaks into the everyday life of the house and shimmers through it, while relating the passions and fates of its inhabitants. Elegant and poetic, Visitation forms a literary mosaic of the last century, tearing open wounds and offering moments of reconciliation, with its drama and its exquisite evocation of a landscape no political upheaval can truly change.
Product Details
Price
$15.95
$14.83
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
September 30, 2010
Pages
192
Dimensions
5.27 X 7.94 X 0.45 inches | 0.39 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811218351
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About the Author
Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. New Directions publishes her books The Old Child & Other Stories, The Book of Words, and Visitation, which NPR called "a story of the century as seen by the objects we've known and lost along the way.
For New Directions, Susan Bernofsky has translated Yoko Tawada's Where Europe Begins, The Naked Eye, and Memoirs of a Polar Bear (winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation), eight titles by the great Swiss-German modernist Robert Walser, and five books by Jenny Erpenbeck, including The End of Days (winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize). She is the author of Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser, and teaches at Columbia University, where she also directs the literary translation program.
Reviews
The brutality of her subjects, combined with the fierce intelligence and tenderness at work behind her restrained unvarnished prose, is overwhelming.--Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
Jenny Erpenbeck's writing is a lure that leads us--off-centre, as one travels into a vortex--into the most haunted and haunting territory. This is a novel of profound clarity and precise grief.--Anne Michaels, Author of Fugitive Pieces
Love, death and passion, from the Weimar Republic to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Wonderful German prose.-- "Playboy"
Jenny Erpenbeck is the rising star of the German literary scene.-- "Cosmopolitan"
Erpenbeck will get under your skin.-- "Washington Post Book World"
Bernofsky's translation vividly captures the rhythm of Erpenbeck's original and allows us to experience this stunning parable of change and brevity in all its beauty and wonder.-- "Jewish Book World"
Erpenbeck's voice is fresh and independent and very convincing.--Frederike Knabe "Mostly Fiction"
Visitation adds to her compact scenarios something intangible and enormous, which works on them from outside their modest frames with a force eroding human history and its claims to establish durable meaning.-- "The Nation"
Jenny Erpenbeck's writing is a lure that leads us--off-centre, as one travels into a vortex--into the most haunted and haunting territory. This is a novel of profound clarity and precise grief.--Anne Michaels, Author of Fugitive Pieces
Love, death and passion, from the Weimar Republic to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Wonderful German prose.-- "Playboy"
Jenny Erpenbeck is the rising star of the German literary scene.-- "Cosmopolitan"
Erpenbeck will get under your skin.-- "Washington Post Book World"
Bernofsky's translation vividly captures the rhythm of Erpenbeck's original and allows us to experience this stunning parable of change and brevity in all its beauty and wonder.-- "Jewish Book World"
Erpenbeck's voice is fresh and independent and very convincing.--Frederike Knabe "Mostly Fiction"
Visitation adds to her compact scenarios something intangible and enormous, which works on them from outside their modest frames with a force eroding human history and its claims to establish durable meaning.-- "The Nation"
