These Are the Names: Tommy Wieringa - Softcover

Wieringa, Tommy

3.56

6,444 ratings by Goodreads

9781922247841: These Are the Names: Tommy Wieringa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1922247847 ISBN 13: 9781922247841

Publisher: Scribe UK, 2015

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A border town on the steppe. A small group of emaciated and feral refugees appears out of nowhere, spreading fear and panic in the town. When police commissioner Pontus Beg orders their arrest, evidence of a murder is found in their luggage. As he begins to unravel the history of their hellish journey, it becomes increasingly intertwined with the search for his own origins that he has embarked upon. Now he becomes the group’s inquisitor ... and, finally, something like their saviour.
Beg’s likeability as a character and his dry-eyed musings considering the nature of religion keep the reader pinned to the page from the start. At the same time, the apocalyptic atmosphere of the group’s exodus across the steppes becomes increasingly vivid and laden with meaning as the novel proceeds, in seeming synchronicity with the development of Beg’s character.
With a rare blend of humour and wisdom, Tommy Wieringa links man’s dark nature with the question of who we are and whether redemption is possible.

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Review:

'This is an important and profoundly felt book about displacement and migration, but it is also fast-paced, often humorous and full of lyric power. The prose is snappy and contemporary, but Wieringa's themes are timeless ones.'

– Patrick McGuinness, author of The Last Hundred Days

'Structurally sound and highly intelligent. Wieringa will make you think and keep you reading eagerly to the final page.'

– Claire Lowdon, Times Literary Supplement

'Poetic, ambitious ... The pricelessness of our common humanity is one of numerous heavyweight ideas Wieringa balances carefully on his novel’s laden back ... Short, freighted words and sentences carry the novel’s ambiguous, questing symbolism.'

– Phoebe Taplin, Guardian

'Superb ... Within pages it becomes clear that this is a rare novel possessed with a sense of place and a purpose. In ways a parable about displacement, encompassing the emotional, the spiritual and the psychological, it has cohesion and urgency, balancing the ordinary with the extreme horrors of a news bulletin. Sam Garrett’s fluid translation not only renders the exchanges into authentic dialogue but also conveys the natural rhythms of Wieringa’s descriptive prose, as well as the internal tone shifts ... This is a bravura performance. Far closer to Joseph Conrad than one might expect, it makes a case for the saving power of small continuities.'

– Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

‘A deft, restrained tale of human struggle in a hostile wasteland.’

– Claire Lowdon, Times Literary Supplement

'Quietly compelling ... Simply but intriguingly told.'

– Lesley McDowell, Sunday Herald

'Tommy Wieringa can do poetry ... but that's not what makes this book such a bewitching delight. What Wieringa does best is people; with a few cherry-picked words he creates a townful of wholly believable, empathetic characters, each subtly leaking their own past, so that within a few pages the reader is surrounded by voices, in turns funny, bitter, hopeful, melancholy, gleefully mercenary and tenderly benign ... I can't recommend this profound, thoughtful, truthful book enough.'

– Jane Graham, Big Issue

'This is a landmark novel which, alongside intelligence, discipline and originality, also shows Wieringa’s lust for perfection.'

– de Volkskrant

'Wieringa leaves no doubt as to what it is about ― what people believe. Everything revolves around the meaning they give to events. An unusually clever novel.'

– NRC Handelsblad

'These Are the Names unfolds gently ... The characterisation is superb but not at the expense of the plot.' *****

– Guy Pringle, Newbooks

About the Author:

Tommy Wieringa was born in 1967 and grew up partly in the Netherlands, and partly in the tropics. He began his writing career with travel stories and journalism, and is the author of several internationally bestselling novels. His fiction has been longlisted for the Booker International Prize, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Oxford/Weidenfeld Prize, and has won Holland’s Libris Literature Prize.

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