Simplicissimus - Softcover
It is the rarest kind of monument to life and literature, for it has survived almost three centuries and will survive many more. It is a story of the most basic kind of grandeur - gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil - but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage and lust, but immortal in the miserable splendour of its sins. Thomas Mann
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Review:
This is Germany's first-ever bestseller, republished and translated more than 200 times. Brecht took Mother Courage out of it, and it receives a mention in one of John Le Carre's novels. It is a violent and often all-too-realistic picaresque, set in war-torn Europe during the 17th-century Thirty Years War. Simplicissimus is the eternal innocent, the simple-minded survivor, and we follow him from a childhood in which he loses his parents to the casual atrocities of occupying troops, through his own soldiering adventures, and up to his final vocation as a hermit alone on an island. It is Rabelasian in some respects, but more down to earth and melancholy. --Phil Baker in The Sunday Times
About the Author:
Grimmelshausen was born at Gelnhausen in 1621 or 1622. His early life was dominated by the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) in which he fought for both sides. He describes his first involvement in the war as a 'snotty-nosed ten-year-old musketeer' in his writing and served as a soldier until its end. His experiences in the Thirty years War are mirrored in his masterpiece, Simplicissimus which was first published in 1668 and was the first bestselling novel in Germany. Several of his later work takes up themes and characters occurring in Simplicissimus, including The Life of Courage;Notorious Whore, Thief and Vagabond. Mike Mitchell's translation of Simplicissimus was shortlisted for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
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- PublisherDedalus Ltd
- Publication date1995
- ISBN 10 1873982763
- ISBN 13 9781873982761
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages400
- EditorBlow D.
- Rating
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Book Description brossura. Condition: nuovo. New copies. Introduction and chronology by David Blow, Ill. bn: --, Ill. colori: --, Peso: 435 gr. Seller Inventory # 2583-AA25
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