Kirjahaku

In this autobiographical novel by a leading German author and translator, the narrator attempts to revive a run-down Hungarian movie theater--an unpromising endeavor that soon leads into a consideration of the building's history and an homage to the power of the cinema, imperiled as it may be in our time. While travelling through the Great Alf ld, the vast plain in southeastern Hungary, the narrator of Seeing Further stops in an all but vacant town near the Romanian border. There she happens upon a dilapidated movie theater. Once the heart of the village, it has been boarded up for years. Entranced, she soon finds herself embarking on the colossal task of renovating it in order to preserve the cinematic experience. Seeing Further illuminates the cinema's former role as a communal space for collective imagining. For Esther Kinsky and her narrator, it remains a place of wonder, a dark room that unfurls a vastness not beholden to the ordinary rules of time and space. Seeing Further is an homage to cinema in words and pictures.

In May and September 1976, two earthquakes ripped through north-eastern Italy, causing severe damage to the landscape and its population. About a thousand people died under the rubble, tens of thousands were left without shelter, and many ended up leaving their homes in Friuli forever. The displacement of material as a result of the earthquakes was enormous. New terrain was formed that reflects the force of the catastrophe and captures the fundamentals of natural history. But it is far more difficult to find expression for the human trauma, the experience of an abruptly shattered existence. In Rombo, Esther Kinsky’s sublime new novel, seven inhabitants of a remote mountain village talk about their lives, which have been deeply impacted by the earthquake that has left marks they are slowly learning to name. From the shared experience of fear and loss, the threads of individual memory soon unravel and become haunting and moving narratives of a deep trauma.

While travelling through the Great Alföld, the vast plain in south-eastern Hungary, Esther Kinsky stops in a small town near the Romanian border. Like many other things, the cinema, ‘mozi’ in Hungarian, has long since closed. Entranced by the decaying mozi, she soon embarks on the colossal task of reviving it, compelled by the irresistible magic of the cinema, a site rooted in ritual that is steadily disappearing. Beautifully translated by Caroline Schmidt, Seeing Further is a powerfully eloquent declaration of love to the cinema and the collective experience of watching by Esther Kinsky, one of Germany’s most important contemporary writers.

"Summer Resort", the first novel by noted translator Esther Kinsky, is set in a village somewhere on the endless Hungarian plain. It is the hottest summer in memory, and everyone in the village dreams of the sweet life in Udulo, a summer resort on a river. The characters that populate "Summer Resort" tell stories - comic, tragic, or both - of life in rural Hungary. Tales of onion kings and melon pickers, of scrapyards and sugar beet factories, paint a vivid and human picture of their world. In the course of the novel, the storytellers' paths intersect at the summer resort with the bar owner Lacibacsi, the Kozak Boys and their fat and pale wives, and the builder Antal, who introduces a mysterious new woman to the inhabitants of the resort. The stranger disrupts their otherwise staid summer routines - with surprising, unpredictable consequences. Now available for the first time in English, "Summer Resort" brings to a new audience one of the most distinctive emerging voices in recent German writing.

‘After many years I had excised myself from the life I had led in town, just as one might cut a figure out of a landscape or group photo. Abashed by the harm I had wreaked on the picture left behind, and unsure where the cut-out might end up next, I lived a provisional existence. I did so in a place where I knew none of my neighbours, where the street names, views, smells and faces were all unfamiliar to me, in a cheaply appointed flat where I would be able to lay my life aside for a while.’ In River, a woman moves to a London suburb for reasons that are unclear. She takes long, solitary walks by the River Lea, observing and describing her surroundings and the unusual characters she encounters. Over the course of these wanderings she amasses a collection of found objects and photographs and is drawn into reminiscences of the different rivers which haunted the various stages of her life, from the Rhine, where she grew up, to the Saint Lawrence, the Hooghly, and the banks of the Oder. Written in language that is as precise as it is limpid, River is a remarkable novel, full of poignant images and poetic observations, an ode to nature, edgelands, and the transience of all things human.

An unnamed narrator, recently bereaved, travels to Olevano, a small village south-east of Rome. It is winter, and from her temporary residence on a hill between village and cemetery, she embarks on walks and outings, exploring the banal and the sublime with equal dedication and intensity. Seeing, describing, naming the world around her is her way of redefining her place within it. Written in a rich and poetic style, Grove is an exquisite novel of grief, love and landscapes.

"A magnificent novel."--The New Yorker"This is a book to relish."--The GuardianA 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.

An unnamed narrator, recently bereaved, travels to a small village southeast of Rome. It is winter, and from her temporary residence on a hill between village and cemetery, she embarks on walks and outings, exploring the banal and the sublime with equal dedication and intensity. Seeing, describing, naming the world around her is her way of redefining her place within it. In Kinsky's Grove, winner of the 2018 Leipzig Book Prize, grief must bear the weight of the world and full of grief the narrator becomes one with the brittle manifestations of the Italian winter.

?dülö, eine Feriensiedlung am Fluss, wird alljährlich zum Zufluchtsort vor der unerträglichen Hitze. Es ist der Ort der Sehnsucht, der Linderung verspricht und Träume von Liebe und Freiheit weckt. Für jeden hat Üdülö eine andere Bedeutung; als jedoch eine Frau aus der Fremde sich dort ihren Traum von einem anderen Leben erfüllen will, kommt Verwirrung in den Wellenschlag des Ewiggleichen. Der Refrain eines Volkslieds, ?Eile nicht in die Fremde?, geht ihr nicht mehr aus dem Kopf - und doch überhört sie die Warnung. Esther Kinsky führt mit ?Sommerfrische?, ihrem vir?tu?osen ersten Roman, den Leser auf eine Reise, die ihn verändert zurücklässt. Ihre zarte und reiche Sprache wird zum Auge und zur Haut des Lesers, der die drückende Hitze, die Trägheit des Dorfs zu sehen und zu fühlen glaubt. Das Fremde hat im ewiggleichen Rhythmus der Jahreszeiten keine Chance, es wird von der nächsten jahreszeitlichen Flut hinweggeschwemmt.