I, City - Softcover

Brycz, Pavel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8086264270 ISBN 13: 9788086264271

Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press, 2007

Synopsis

Fiction. Translated from the Czech by Joshua Cohen and Marketa Hofmeisterova. Winner of the Orten Prize and the State Prize for Literature in 2004. I, CITY is a story about the north Bohemian city of Most, an ancient city founded on a primeval wetland that was literally "relocated" to get to the brown coal beneath it. For Pavel Brycz, the youngest ever recipient of the Czech State Prize for Literature, Most is its varied inhabitants, and he as the city tell its own story through these inhabitants, who make their "appearances" in fleeting, ghost-like vignettes. As they emerge from the pollution, or from the swamp of the town's founding, we find not individuals but representatives. Theirs are historical lives that mistrust history, or that live it at least with typical irony. As Brycz makes fictional people say factual things and factual people (Kafka, the pope, Gustav Husak) say fictional things, post-modernity via magical realism makes its almost requisite--though noiseless--appearance in the best easterly European tradition of Danilo Kis or Isaac Babel.

About this title

Product Description:

Rare book

Review:

Brycz has a sharp talent for exploring life-changing historical
events through the scope of mundane, everyday occurrences. -- Think Again

The voice of Brycz's battered city rings epic and authentic, while
the translators' note offers an extensive history of Most. -- Publishers Weekly

sinuous, almost bewitching prose captures the blend of anonymity,
heterogeneity, vitality, and witness of Most and by extension nearly all
cities ... -- Henry Berry, Midwest Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 8086264270
• ISBN 13: 9788086264271
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 156