Synopses & Reviews
A powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. The Melancholy of Resistance, Lszl" Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumors. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, "is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type." And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of The Guardian, "lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds."
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"The universality of its vision rivals that of Gogol's ." W. G. Sebald
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"An inexorable, visionary book by the contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse who inspires comparison with Gogol and Melville." Susan Sontag
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"In Krasznahorkai's deft hands, the effect is a layered, freewheeling, amazingly persuasive tour of living human consciousness, in varied states of self-awareness." Chris Lehmann
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"Krasznahorkai's artistry merits serious notice. May further translations grant him the wider notice he deserves among English-speaking readers." Newsday
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"Ingeniously composed and fascinating." Review of Contemporary Literature
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" is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type." Kirkus Reviews
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"Lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds." George Szirtes
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"One of the great novels of the last quarter-century - like a MittelEuropean ." The Guardian
Synopsis
A powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. , László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumors. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, , as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, "is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type." And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of , "lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds."
About the Author
László Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954 and lives in the hills of Szentlászló, Hungary. He has written several novels and won numerous prizes, including Best Book of the Year in Germany in 1993 for The Melancholy of Resistance and the 2010 Brücke Berlin Prize for Seiobo. His other books include Animalinside, Satantango, and War and War.