Author: Andrzej Tichy and translated by Nichola Smalley
Brand: And Other Stories
Number Of Pages: 176
Release Date: 02-06-2020
Details: Product Description Waiting by the canal, a young cellist meets a junkie, high and drifting. He gives him twenty krona and they exchange a few words; the encounter is unremarkable. Yet for the cellist – who grew up a poor immigrant in the outskirts of Malmö, and who lost friends and family to drug abuse, crime and death – a barrier in his mind has collapsed, and he leaves the canal chased by a creeping floodtide of memories, all of which threaten to drag him back to where he came from. Tearing through sprawling social housing estates, basement clubs and squat parties, Wretchedness is a tumultuous and raging journey into the underbelly of Europe. With a rhythmic, mesmerising flow, Tichý probes the bittersweet pleasures of escaping one’s origins, and of loving one’s neighbour without question – even when that neighbour is an addict, a criminal, wretched. Review Andrzej Tichý was born in Prague to a Polish mother and a Czech father. He has lived in Sweden since 1981. The author of five novels, a short story collection and a wide range of nonfiction and criticism, Tichy is widely recognized as one of the most important novelists of his generation. His latest novel Eländet (Wretchedness) is a postpolitical foray into modern day Swedish society. It was shortlisted for the 2016 August Prize, and won the 2018 Eyvind Johnson Prize. TRANSLATOR BIO A translator Swedish and Norwegian literature, Nichola Smalley is also publicist at And Other Stories. In 2015 she finished a PhD exploring the use of contemporary urban vernaculars in Swedish and UK rap and literature at UCL. Her translations range from a Swedish book about Brazilian football (Jogo Bonito by Henrik Brandão Jönsson (Yellow Jersey Press)), to the latest novel by Norwegian superstar Jostein Gaarder, An Unreliable Man (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). ‘Visceral . . . a fascinating read, the real-life details of which further bolster the fiction . . . This is nightmarish, impressionistic literature whose disjointed sentences have an associative flow that accumulates to a shocking whole.’Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times ‘There is a kind of unholy music in this powerful, punchy, perceptive novel.’ Eithne Farry, Daily Mail ‘The polyphony of voices is tightly interwoven . . . arranged into a narrative resembling a complex musical composition . . . The book ends abruptly, as an avant-garde piece of music might, but the vibrations continue to fill the air.’ Anna Aslanyan, The Guardian ‘A blurry tornado of voices and timelines, this short novel unspools over eight paragraphs of run-on sentences swirling around the memories of a cellist raised on an estate outside Malmö . . . the novel builds to an unexpectedly heart-stopping . . . finale, with a frame-breaking time-slip that invites us to reconsider everything we’ve just read as a stylistically radical expression of survivor’s guilt.’Anthony Cummins, Book of the Day, The Observer ‘Graphic depictions of crime, racism, poverty, drug use and violence are rendered through paragraph-free slabs of text that propulsively veer between voices and minds, times and locations. As well as the Swedish estates, the novel draws on Tichý’s experiences of living in Hamburg and London to paint a picture of a pan-European community of the excluded passing through squats, underground clubs, petty scams and cash-only employment. [...] Tichý’s early creative life centered on music and there is a sense of musicality inherent Wretchedness.' Nicholas Wroe, The Guardian/,/b> 'An inventive, linguistically adept experiment.' Kirkus Reviews‘Wretchedness is a social novel whose descent into hardship is haunting, and whose lead character is an example of the hazy line between surviving a lifestyle or falling prey to it.’ Foreword Reviews‘An utterly phenomenal read: a masterclass in hyper-modernist experimentation, voice and form. Embracing the bitter realities of addiction, prejudice and inner-city turmoil, Tichý’s rapid prose roves internal dialogues, places,
EAN: 9781911508762
Languages: English
Binding: Paperback
Item Condition: New