Disaffected, bored with his career at the French Colonial Ministry (where he has copied out birth and death certificates for eight years), and disgusted by a mistress whose vapid optimism arouses his most violent misogyny, the narrator of The Sailor from Gibraltar finds himself at the point of complete breakdown while vacationing in Florence. After leaving his mistress and the Ministry behind forever, he joins the crew of the Gibraltar, a yacht captained by Anna, a beautiful American in perpetual search of her sometime lover, a young man known only as the "Sailor from Gibraltar." First published in 1952, this early novel of Duras's--which was made into a film in 1967--shows those preoccupations which have so deeply concerned her in her later novels and film scripts: loneliness, boredom, the inevitability and intangibility of love. The lambent poetry of the book, and the limning of a woman's mind, her love and sense of the inevitability of that love are singularly Marguerite Duras.
Disaffected, bored with his career at the French Colonial Ministry (where he has copied out birth and death certificates for eight years), and disgusted by a mistress whose vapid optimism arouses his most violent misogyny, the narrator of The Sailor from Gibraltar finds himself at the point of complete breakdown while vacationing in Florence. After leaving his mistress and the Ministry behind forever, he joins the crew of the Gibraltar, a yacht captained by Anna, a beautiful American in perpetual search of her sometime lover, a young man known only as the "Sailor from Gibraltar." First published in 1952, this early novel of Duras's--which was made into a film in 1967--shows those preoccupations which have so deeply concerned her in her later novels and film scripts: loneliness, boredom, the inevitability and intangibility of love. The lambent poetry of the book, and the limning of a woman's mind, her love and sense of the inevitability of that love are singularly Marguerite Duras.
Marguerite Duras wrote dozens of plays, film scripts, and novels,
including The Ravishing of Lol Stein, The Sea Wall, and Hiroshima,
Mon Amour. She's most well known for The Lover which received the
Goncourt prize in 1984 and was made into a film in 1992.
Barbara Bray translated several works by Marguerite Duras,
including The Malady of Death, The Lover, and The War. In addition,
she has translated Jean Genet, Ismail Kadare, and Tahar Ben
Jelloun, and has received the French-American Foundation
Translation Prize.
"It's not a book to rush through. It's a book to be savored while
drinking cognac and smoking pretentious cigarettes ... Whether
[it's] a lost love or a reason not to go home again, Duras captures
the longing that infects her 'haracters and all of us from time
to time with elegant prose and a story that will set you
blissfully adrift."Jessa Crispin, NPR
"Despite the novel's dizzying pace, Volpi never loses sight of his
characters, and it is their richness that makes "Season of Ash" a
tour de force. Fans of Roberto Bolano, Thomas Pynchon and even Leo
Tolstoy would do well to add this novel to their reading
lists."Rebecca Oppenheimer, The Howard County Times
"Jorge Volpi's Season of Ash is the kind of novel that reminds me
why I read novels in the first place, but it's also the kind that
makes me wonder why I bother to write ... Volpi is a genius, that
you have to buy this book, and that he'll end up with the Nobel
Prize in Literature if there is any justice in the world ...
Translating genius requires itself a certain genius. [Alfred]
MacAdam is already well-lauded for his work as a translator, but
someone needs to give this man a medal for his current
effort."Okla Elliot, Inside Higher Ed
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
