Hourglass - Hardcover

Kis, Danilo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571132936 ISBN 13: 9780571132935

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1991

Synopsis

The author focuses on an unimportant man, known only as "ES". As the novel opens this 53-year-old minor functionary in the Hungarian State Railways is attempting to find out why his pension is being reduced. From here, the story moves to the Holocaust and the extermination of European Jews.

About this title

Review

"What distinguishes Ki 's novel is its authorial independence. A conventional narrative structure is ignored; it is the author's musings and diversions that magically build suspense. That he succeeds is a rare achievement." --Herbert Mitgang, "New York Times"
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"What distinguishes Kis's novel is its authorial independence. A conventional narrative structure is ignored; it is the author's musings and diversions that magically build suspense. That he succeeds is a rare achievement." --Herbert Mitgang, New York Times
"Probably no other novelist has succeeded better than Kis in making a densely stylistic pattern out of such a nightmare, conveying with gruesome but also aesthetically beautiful effect the interrelation in such a life at such a time of the quotidian and the apocalyptic, the combination of the sense of trivia with the sense of doom." --John Bayley, New York Review of Books
"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." --John Simon, Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Danilo Kis (February 22, 1935-October 15, 1989) was a Yugoslavian novelist, short story writer and poet who wrote in Serbo-Croatian. Kis was influenced by Bruno Schulz, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges and Ivo Andric, among other authors. His most famous works include A Tomb for Boris Davidovich and The Encyclopedia of the Dead. Ralph Manheim has translated several works by Gunthre Grass and Bertolt Brecht.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571132936
• ISBN 13: 9780571132935
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256