Kleinzeit (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) - Softcover

Hoban, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 194114781X ISBN 13: 9781941147818

Publisher: Valancourt Books, 2015

Synopsis

When Kleinzeit, an advertising copywriter whose name means either 'hero' or 'smalltime', depending on who you ask, picks up a sheet of yellow paper in the London Underground, he doesn't suspect that it will cause him to be fired from his job and admitted to hospital with geometrical pain in his hypotenuse.

In Hospital Ward A4, Kleinzeit discovers he is not alone: his fellow patients also suffer from nonsensical but possibly deadly ailments which all have something strange in common. With the help of the beautiful night nurse and armed with a glockenspiel and a paperback of Thucydides, Kleinzeit escapes from hospital and finds himself plunged headlong into a wild and flickering netherworld of mystery involving the Underground, an enigmatic red-bearded man, a key, sheets of yellow paper, and Death himself ...

A hilarious, surreal and completely unpredictable novel about one man's search for reality, Kleinzeit (1974) is one of Russell Hoban's best-loved works.

'Hoban is as funny and unusual as any writer around ... Kleinzeit is a sort of holy fool, a fierce, lonely intelligence desperately trying to make sense of a hopeless world. A tour de force.' - Evening Standard

'Hoban is an extraordinarily talented novelist, an original mind in the era of mass-produced philosophers.' - Irish Times

'Delightful ... Kleinzeit's language is forever astonishing.' - Boston Globe

About this title

Review

"A tour de force... entirely delightful” -- Evening Standard

‘A tour de force... entirely delightful’ -- Evening Standard

‘An original... a delight to read’ -- The Times

‘Outstanding... brimming with humanity and humour’ -- Glasgow Herald

‘Russell Hoban is one of out Greatest, timeless novelists’ -- The Times

“An original... a delight to read” -- The Times

“Outstanding...brimming with humanity and humour” -- Glasgow Herald

“Russell Hoban is our Ur-novelist, a maverick voice that is like no other” -- Sunday Telegraph

From the Publisher

“ Hoban is unclassifiable, thank goodness. He is an original; imaginative and inventive. Though some of his work has been compared with that of Tolkein and C.S Lewis he is his own man, working his own vein of magical fantasy” Sunday Times “Masterly... mosaic in which each tiny fragment of wit, or dirt is profundity has its appointed place... the marvellous energy of Hoban’s writing, simultaneously dry and passionate, justifies everything he does” TLS

Edition details

• Publisher: Valancourt Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 194114781X
• ISBN 13: 9781941147818
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184