While the Gods Were Sleeping
Language: English
Published by Steerforth Press, 2015
- Hardcover
- Used

Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.Better World Books
AbeBooks seller since August 3, 2006
Condition: Used - Good
£ 6.44
Quantity: 2 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.
Seller Inventory # GRP91125830
- Title
- While the Gods Were Sleeping
- Author
- Mortier, Erwin
- Publisher
- Steerforth Press
- Publication year
- 2015
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1782270175
- ISBN 13
- 9781782270171
- Item weight
- 1.263 pounds
- Dimensions
- N/A
'It sounds dreadful,' I said to him one day. 'But actually the war is the best thing that ever happened to me.'
Helena's mother always said she was a born poetess. It was not a compliment. Now an old woman, Helena looks back on her life and tries to capture the past, filling notebook after notebook with memories of her respectable, rigid upbringing, her unyielding mother, her loyal father, her golden-haired brother. She remembers how, at their uncle's country house in the summer of 1914, their stately bourgeois life of good manners, white linen and afternoon tea collapsed into ruins. And how, with war, came a kind of liberation amidst the mud and rubble-and the appearance of a young English photographer who transformed her existence.
Lyrical and tender, filled with images of blazing intensity, While the Gods Were Sleeping asks how it is possible to record the dislocation of war; to describe the indescribable. It is a breathtaking novel about the act of remembering, how the past seeps into our lives and how those we have lost leave their trace in the present.
"A beautifully unorthodox novel of the Great War... a kaleidoscopic palette"Independent
"Almost too beautiful a writer... the footprint of Proust visible on every page" Financial Times
"Sumptuously imagined" Independent Best Translated Fiction 2014
"Visceral and heart-stopping...deeply and painfully moving... one of the finest war stories ever written"NewBooks
"Mortier writes so well that you are inclined to see everything else as of secondary importance" NRC Handelsblad
"A monumental, phenomenal book" De Morgen
"If Marcel Proust had a descendant somewhere in Flanders, he must have been born in Ghent." Knack
Erwin Mortier (1965) made his mark in 1999 with his debut novel Marcel, which was awarded several prizes in Belgium and the Netherlands, and received acclaim throughout Europe. In the following years he quickly built up a reputation as of one the leading authors of his generation. His novel While the Gods were Sleeping received the AKO Literature Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the Netherlands. His latest work, Stammered Song Book, a mother's book of hours,' a raw yet tender elegy about illness and loss, was met with unanimous praise. Mortier's evocative descriptions bring past worlds brilliantly to life.
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Better World Books
Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since August 3, 2006
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Better World Books (https://www.BetterWorldBooks.com) is a for-profit, socially conscious business and a global online bookseller that collects and sells new and used books online, matching each purchase with a book donation. Each sale generates funds for literacy and education initiatives in the U.S., the UK, and around the world. Since its launch in 2003, Better World Books has raised $33 million for libraries and literacy, donated over 32 million books, and reused or recycled more than 397 million books.…
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