While the Gods Were Sleeping

'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.

Info autore

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.

Riassunto

'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.

Prefazione

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 ...

Testo aggiuntivo

"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

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Erwin Mortier, Erwin (Author) Mortier, Paul Vincent
• Con la collaborazione di: Paul Vincent (Traduzione), Paul (Translator) Vincent (Traduzione)
• Editore: Pushkin Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 03.07.2014
• EAN: 9781782270171
• ISBN: 978-1-78227-017-1
• Pagine: 368
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi