Across the Ice - by Peter Kurzeck (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The first English translation of Peter Kurzeck's work offers a warm alternative to autofictions by authors like Knausgård.

Across the Ice is the first book in Peter Kurzeck's chronicle The Old Century, in which everyday occurrences, thoughts, memories and minute observations combine to form a tender, bluesy account of a particular life.

1984 gets off to an inauspicious start for the narrator, Peter: he and his girlfriend, Sibylle, have split up after nine years, he's lost his job and the only place he can find to live is a 'junk room' in someone else's flat. The dismal Frankfurt winter doesn't help; it's always either raining or snowing. Peter takes refuge in his writing, or roams the city looking for work. But every street holds memories of happier times with Sibylle or family days out with their daughter Carina. Now Peter can see four-year-old Carina only occasionally; the treasured hours with her are almost all that remain to him of his old life.

Review Quotes

"He was one of the few really great German writers of the last decades." --Esther Kinsky

"It is rare to find an author who paints so precise and obsessive, so vivid and detailed a picture of the era in which his books are set as Peter Kurzeck does of 1980s Frankfurt in his novel cycle The Old Century." --ZEIT

About the Author

Peter Kurzeck (1943-2013) was a German writer. He lived between Frankfurt and Uzès, in the South of France. He has won numerous literary prizes (Alfred-Döblin in 1991, Hans-Erich-Nossack in 2000, and Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg in 2008). His main project, an autobiographical chronicle in twelve volumes called The Old Century, had a great impact on German literature.

Imogen Taylor was born in London in 1978 and has been living in Berlin since 2001. She has translated work by Alfred Döblin, Julia Franck and Dana Grigorcea. In 2024 she was runner-up in the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for her translation of Sasha Salzmann's Glorious People.