A fifteen-year-old girl and her father, Johannes, take a cruise to Greece on the SS Proleterka. Jaeggy recounts the girl's youth in her distinctively strange, telescopic prose: the remarried mother, cold and unconcerned; the father who was allowed only rare visits with the child; the years spent stashed away with relatives or at boarding school. For the girl and her father, their time on the ship becomes their `last and first chance to be together.' On board, she becomes the object of the sailors' affection, receiving a violent, carnal education. Mesmerised by the desire to be experienced, she crisply narrates her trysts as well as her near-total neglect of her father.Proleterka is a ferocious study of distance, diffidence and `insomniac resentment.'
Fleur Jaeggy is a true original of European writing and has been translated into over twenty languages. The Times Literary Supplement named Proleterka as a Best Book of the Year, and her Sweet Days of Discipline won the Premio Bagutta and the Premio Speciale Rapallo.Alastair McEwen has published over 60 book-length translations, essays, articles, and poems, plus several feature film scripts and operatic librettos. He has worked with some of Italy's finest living writers, including Baricco, Busi, Eco, Jaeggy, Tabucchi, and Veronesi.
Title: Proleterka
Author: Jaeggy, Fleur
ISBN: 9781911508564
Binding:
Publisher: And Other Stories
Publication Date: 2019-03-28
Number of Pages: 96
Weight: 0.1200 kg
` Incorruptible crystal is an apt description of Jaeggy's style. Her sentences are hard and compact, more gem than flesh. Images appear as flashes, discontinuous, arresting, then gone . . . this feels appropriate for a writer who is a stranger and an enemy to the familial.' Sheila Heti, The New Yorker ---- `Jaeggy's works are a translator's dream: short, lucid and complex. Her distinctive vocabulary and syntax move elegantly and it would seem effortlessly into the English language.' Margaret Drabble, The New Statesman ---- `. . . an elegantly structured and stubbornly moving study of innocence destroyed and love denied. Very accomplished indeed.' Kirkus Reviews ---- `. . . an elegantly structured and stubbornly moving study of innocence destroyed and love denied. Very accomplished indeed.' Kirkus Reviews ---- `[Jaeggy] has a startling ability to go beyond: beyond the sentimental heart, the writerly niceties, the conventions that bind us, and the messy effusions of contemporary life.' The New Yorker ---- `[Jaeggy] has a startling ability to go beyond: beyond the sentimental heart, the writerly niceties, the conventions that bind us, and the messy effusions of contemporary life.' The New Yorker --- Praise for Fleur Jaeggy --- `Fleur Jaeggy's pen is an engraver's needle depicting roots, twigs, and branches of the tree of madness-extraordinary.' Joseph Brodsky ---- 'The fierceness of her words erupts from the seams of her tiny sentences ... Jaeggy's highly unusual work is finally gaining recognition in the English-speaking world.' Emily Rhodes, The Spectator---`Proleterka is a ferocious study - a masterclass in distance , diffidence, death, and `insomniac resentment.' Barbara Epler
