Proleterka - Softcover

Fleur Jaeggy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1911508563 ISBN 13: 9781911508564

Publisher: And Other Stories, 2019

Synopsis

Compressed, delicate and brutally precise, Proleterka is a fierce coming-of-age story.

A fifteen-year-old girl and her father, Johannes, take a cruise to Greece on the Proleterka. Jaeggy recounts the girl’s youth in her distinctively strange, telescopic prose: the remarried mother, cold and unconcerned; the father who was allowed only rare visits with the child; the years spent stashed away with relatives or at boarding school. For the girl and her father, their time on the ship becomes their ‘last and first chance to be together.’ On board, she becomes the object of the sailors’ affection, receiving a violent, carnal education. Mesmerised by the desire to be experienced, she crisply narrates her trysts as well as her near-total neglect of her father. Proleterka is a ferocious study of distance, diffidence and ‘insomniac resentment’.

About this title

Review:

‘An elegantly structured and stubbornly moving study of innocence destroyed and love denied. Very accomplished indeed.’ Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Fleur Jaeggy

‘“Incorruptible crystal” is an apt description of Jaeggy’s style. Her sentences are hard and compact, more gem than flesh. Images appear as flashes, discontinuous, arresting, then gone.’ . . . this feels appropriate for a writer who is a “stranger” and an “enemy” to the familial.’ Sheila Heti, The New Yorker

‘Jaeggy’s works are a translator’s dream: short, lucid and complex. Her distinctive vocabulary and syntax move elegantly and it would seem effortlessly into the English language.’ Margaret Drabble, The New Statesman

‘Fleur Jaeggy’s pen is an engraver’s needle depicting roots, twigs, and branches of the tree of madness—extraordinary.’ Joseph Brodsky

‘Intensely beautiful and original.’ The Guardian

About the Author:

Fleur Jaeggy is a true original of European writing and has been translated into over twenty languages. The Times Literary Supplement named Proleterka as a Best Book of the Year upon its US publication, and her Sweet Days of Discipline won the Premio Bagutta and the Premio Speciale Rapallo.

Alastair McEwen has published over 60 book-length translations, essays, articles, and poems, plus several feature film scripts and operatic librettos. He has worked with some of Italy’s finest living writers, including Baricco, Busi, Eco, Jaeggy, Tabucchi, and Veronesi.

About this edition

• Publisher: And Other Stories
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1911508563
• ISBN 13: 9781911508564
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96