I wouldn't have met Piti if it hadn't been for a chichigua. To translate chichigua as a kite does not do justice to these beautiful creations of...
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Why it is that my fellow Americans have refused to embrace this book is beyond me. Its themes of impulse and culpability are brilliantly etched. Its language is stunning (at least in the translation from the French by Charlotte Mandell),its story and characters are as disturbing as they are compelling, its literary and historical importance are beyond doubt.
I don't know... maybe its the brutality of the subject matter, or the brutality of the prose, or the brutality of its heft. Maybe Americans simply aren't willing or able, anymore, to take seriously the literary and political implications of what Littell has offered us.
Make no mistake. Buy it. Read it. Pass it on.
~David
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The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
foretimes, November 27, 2009
Why it is that my fellow Americans have refused to embrace this book is beyond me. Its themes of impulse and culpability are brilliantly etched. Its language is stunning (at least in the translation from the French by Charlotte Mandell),its story and characters are as disturbing as they are compelling, its literary and historical importance are beyond doubt.I don't know... maybe its the brutality of the subject matter, or the brutality of the prose, or the brutality of its heft. Maybe Americans simply aren't willing or able, anymore, to take seriously the literary and political implications of what Littell has offered us.
Make no mistake. Buy it. Read it. Pass it on.
~David
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)