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Zusatztext "Mortier is superb. . . The push and pull of ugliness and beauty Helena witnessed plays into her conviction about humanity's random and godless state of existence! as the title suggests: 'give us back our mealy-mouthed petit-bourgeois world!' she writes! knowing that such comforts have been stripped from her. . . [an] ultimately poised consideration of war's long impact on feeling and faith." — Kirkus Reviews "Like Michael Ondaatje and Anne Michaels! Erwin Mortier! the 49-year old Flemish writer whose four novels have just been published in North America! is a poetic prose artist. Unlike Ondaatje and Michaels! whose stock has fallen rather sharply in the last decade! Mortier writes stories that stick and characters whose oblique relationship to normalcy lodge themselves in our minds like splinters.… a quintessential and literally definitive work of Belgian literature" — The National Post Praise from the UK: "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 "Sumptuously lyrical." — We Love this Book Other praise from Europe: "Mortier writes so well that you are inclined to see everything else as of secondary importance." — NRC Handelsblad "A monumental! phenomenal book." — De Morgen "Splendid control of language." — de Volkskrant "The author skillfully reconstructs the crepuscular atmosphere of an era that ends with the shipwreck of a civilization! but! paradoxically! also with the sensual awakening of a young girl." — Figaro "Threads the heavy folds of history with the needle of poetic sensibility." — Livres hebdo "'Multi-layered' is too bland a word for this subtle! sophisticated novel! which moves between different times with such aplomb that the reader never loses the thread." — Buchmarkt From the Hardcover edition. Informationen zum Autor 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 Songbook: 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. Klappentext The first English translation of a novel from a Dutch author! this tells the story of WWI through the eyes of Helena! a young woman in love with a British soldier. It won the AKO Literature Prize. The story of the First World War told through the eyes of Helena, a young woman in love with a British soldier, who in her diaries tries to master words in order to describe the indescribable ...I have always shrunk from the act of beginning. From the first word, the first touch. The restlessness when the first sentence has to be formed, and after the first the second. The restlessness and the excitement, as if you are pulling way the cloth beneath which a body rests: asleep or dead. There is also the desire, or the fantasy wish to beat the pen into a ploughshare and plough a freshly written sheet clean again, across the lines, f...
