About this item
Highlights
- A New York Times Paperback Row Editor's ChoiceCombining the infectious narration of Nick Hornby's Funny Girl, the philosophical lyricism of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, and the mesmerizing power of Anna North's The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, a breathtaking debut, brimming with youthful brio and irresistible humor, that chronicles a young man's friendship with a most peculiar artist.On a rooftop in Brooklyn on a spring night, a young intern and would-be writer, newly arrived from Copenhagen, meets the intriguing Ana Ivan.
- Author(s): Mikkel Rosengaard
- 336 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
On a rooftop in Brooklyn, a young intern meets the intriguing artist and mathematician Ana Ivan. Ardent and funny, with an air of mystery and melancholia, Ana is living like a prime number: fierce and unbroken and divisible only by herself. Before long, the intern is seduced by Ana's enthralling stories--of her parents' romance under an oppressi
Book Synopsis
A New York Times Paperback Row Editor's Choice
Combining the infectious narration of Nick Hornby's Funny Girl, the philosophical lyricism of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, and the mesmerizing power of Anna North's The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, a breathtaking debut, brimming with youthful brio and irresistible humor, that chronicles a young man's friendship with a most peculiar artist.
On a rooftop in Brooklyn on a spring night, a young intern and would-be writer, newly arrived from Copenhagen, meets the intriguing Ana Ivan. Clever and funny, with an air of mystery and melancholia, Ana is a performance artist, a mathematician, and a self-proclaimed time traveler. She is also bad luck, she confesses; she is from a cursed Romanian lineage.
Before long, the intern finds himself seduced by Ana's enthralling stories--of her unlucky countrymen; of her parents' romance during the worst years of Nicolae Ceaucescu's dictatorship; of a Daylight Savings switchover gone horribly wrong. Ana also introduces him to her latest artistic endeavor. Following the astronomical rather than the Gregorian calendar, she is trying to alter her sense of time--an experiment that will lead her to live in complete darkness for one month.
Descending into the blackness with Ana, the intern slowly loses touch with his own existence, entangling himself in the lives of Ana, her starry-eyed mother Maria, and her raging math-prodigy father Ciprian. Peeling back the layers of her past, he eventually discovers the perverse tragedy that has haunted Ana's family for decades and shaped her journey from the streets of Bucharest to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and finally to New York City.
The Invention of Ana blurs the lines between narrative and memory, perception and reality, identity and authenticity. In his stunning debut novel, Mikkel Rosengaard illuminates the profound power of stories to alter the world around us--and the lives of the ones we love.
From the Back Cover
On a rooftop in Brooklyn, a young intern meets the intriguing artist and mathematician Ana Ivan. Ardent and funny, with an air of mystery and melancholia, Ana is living like a prime number: fierce and unbroken and divisible only by herself. Before long, the intern is seduced by Ana's enthralling stories--of her parents' romance under an oppressive dictatorship; of a Daylight Savings transition gone horribly wrong--and finds himself caught in a bizarre artistic endeavor that will alter the arc of his life.
The Invention of Ana blurs the lines between imagination and reality, narrative and memory. In his stunning debut novel, Mikkel Rosengaard illuminates the profound power of stories to alter the world around us--and the lives of the ones we love.
Review Quotes
"Mikkel Rosengaard's intriguing first novel... weaves story upon story to explore ... the bond between writer and muse." -- New York Times Book Review
"Surprising, suspenseful, and deeply affecting, written in prose as elegant and precise as a mathematical proof. A meditation on time, mortality, and politics, and a beautiful and enlarging read." -- Alena Graedon, author of The Word Exchange
"[Rosengaard] charts the emotional distance between Bucharest under Ceausescu's despotic rule and present-day hipster Brooklyn, resulting in a striking, auspicious debut." -- Publishers Weekly
"[A] stirring debut.... Rosengaard's novel is a swift and memorable meditation on how storytellers struggle to separate the tangible from the contrived." -- Booklist
"This strange story about strange stories, told with intelligence and humor, lingers in the mind like a dream." -- Kirkus Reviews