River. This item is unavailable.River

"A magnificent novel."—The New Yorker

"This is a book to relish."—The Guardian

A woman moves to a London suburb near the River Lea, without knowing quite why or for how long. Over a series of long, solitary walks she reminisces about the rivers she has encountered during her life, from the Rhine, her childhood river, to the Saint Lawrence, and a stream in Tel Aviv. Filled with poignancy and poetic observation, River is an ode to nature, edgelands, and the transience of all things human.

Esther Kinsky grew up at the River Rhine and lived in London for twelve years. She is the author of three volumes of poetry and two novels (Summer Resort and Banatsko) and has translated many notable English (Henry David Thoreau, Iain Sinclair) and Polish (Joanna Bator, Olga Tokarczuk) authors into German. River won the Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Prize 2016, the Franz Hessel Prize 2014, the Kranichsteiner Literature Prize 2015, and the SWR Prize for the best fiction book 2015, and was longlisted for the German Book Prize 2014.

Iain Galbraith is a widely published translator of German into English. He has translated W. G. Sebald and Jan Wagner, notably. He won the John Dryden Prize for Literary Translation in 2004.