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Describe your latest book. It is titled Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, and it is coming out in May from Doubleday. This is the first... Continue »

$18.17 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man
Mark KurlanskyMark Kurlansky 9780385527057

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1	Remote Warehouse	Literature- A to Z

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A House in Istria

by Richard Swartz

ISBN13: 9780811215015
ISBN10: 0811215016
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In formerly communist Eastern Europe, there are many empty houses. Inhabited in turn by very different families — Jews, fascists, communists — the houses now stand empty, decaying, the objects of countless lawsuits.<P>Richard Swartz's quirky and marvelous first novel revolves around one such house and the Western European man obsessed with it. Narrated by his wife, the action takes place over just seven blazing hot days in Istria, formerly Yugoslavia. His obsession drags his poor wife, a native of Istria, into long burlesque conversations with lawyers and owners; her out-of-control husband (who doesn't speak the language) involves them in surreal scenes with nearly insane characters. Since everything the husband knows (and everything the reader knows) must be channeled through the wife, we enter a world in which nothing is directly intelligible and everything is skewed. The unusual, antic, hilarious style calls Capek, Gogol, and Kafka all to mind.

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: Sharif, July 31, 2007 (view all comments by Sharif)
Really enjoyed reading this book, interesting writing style. Istria, is an island off Trieste. The narrator lives in a small village with her foreign husband, her ?sweetiepie?. He becomes obsessed with an empty house next door, for not so apparent reason. He just wants the house, that's it.

The beauty of the book is, nothing happens, yet the reader is gripped to the end, if something might happen. He is obsessed and tries to find out the owner. That's the whole premise. On the way we meet few other characters, filled with witty dialogs and stream of thoughts. Swartz has a interesting writing style, dialogs are not quoted -- just he said, she said format.

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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780811215015
Author:: Swartz, Richard
Author:: Paterson, Anna
Publisher:: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Location:: New York
Subject:: General
Subject:: Croatia
Subject:: Istria
Subject:: Literature-A to Z
Series Volume:: no. C 3
Publication Date:: 20021031
Binding:: Hardcover
Language:: English
Pages:: 224
Dimensions:: 8.48x6.02x.88 in. .94 lbs.

Related Subjects

Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z

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