About this item
Highlights
- An absurdly dark tragi-comedy of language and literature.
- Author(s): Aleksandra Lun
- 128 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Humorous
Description
About the Book
"Przesnicki, an Eastern-European immigrant writer, has survived long toilet paper lines of communist Poland, the loss of his lover Ernest Hemingway following a passionate affair, and the beatings of the Antarctic literary community for his forays into novel-writing in their native tongue. In The Palimpsests, Aleksandra Lun's debut novel, we find him languishing in a Belgium asylum (a country, we are persistently reminded, that has had no government for the past year!), undergoing Bartlebian therapy to strip away his knowledge of any language that is not Polish, his native tongue. Despite or perhaps because of its absurdity (by turns comic and tragic), The Palimpsests is characterized by an unquestionable timeliness, relevant to today's discussions about immigration, senses of cultural belonging and ownership, and personal relationships to language, complicated and simple, adopted and native. Peppered with darkly comic cameos from famous writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and of course, Przesnicki's former lover Ernest Hemingway"--Book Synopsis
An absurdly dark tragi-comedy of language and literature. Czeslaw Przęśnicki is an Eastern-European immigrant writer who survived the long toilet paper lines of communist Poland, the loss of his lover Ernest Hemingway following a passionate affair, and the beatings of the Antarctic literary community for his forays into novel-writing in their native tongue. In The Palimpsests, we find him languishing in a Belgium asylum (a country, we are persistently reminded, that has had no government for the past year), undergoing Bartlebian therapy to strip away his knowledge of any language that is not Polish, his native tongue.
Despite, or perhaps because of, its absurdity, The Palimpsests (originally written in Spanish by Polish writer Aleksandra Lun) is characterized by an unquestionable timeliness, relevant to today's discussions on immigration, senses of cultural belonging and ownership, and personal relationships to language, complicated and simple, adopted and native. Peppered with appearances by Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and of course, Przęśnicki's former lover Ernest Hemingway, it is the perfect book for lovers of the art of writing.
Review Quotes
Praise for The Palimpsests
"I was in the Jewish cemetery of Bucharest and saw the look that the gravedigger's dog gave its owner, and I knew I was in the presence of a love come late in life.' So goes the perspective on life by Czeslaw Przęśnicki, an imaginary hero/survivor from the mad, beautiful, unbearable, funny, tragic, hilarious, tender, suffocating, lovable, world of his exile and his mind. Aleksandra Lun has produced a virtuoso concerto in these pages, the kind of verbal music that is strangely relevant for our moment, and yet also for any moment. My gratitude to Elizabeth Bryer for her crisp, clear translation. This book is a wild ride that you won't soon forget."--Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic
"A fantastic romp--with great cameos--that brilliantly showcases the linguistic and literary loves of author and translator alike."--Jennifer Croft, translator of the Man Booker International Prize-winning Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
"Dark, hilarious--with cameos from Beckett, Conrad, Melville & more, all in a Belgian asylum! A meditation on language & mother tongues. It's a jewel in under 100 pages."--Mark Haber, author of Reinhardt's Garden
