Cornelia Funke tells stories of fairies and mud monsters, of adventurous girls, a gang of children in Venice ? and her stories somewhere between fantasy and adventure are Germany?s most successful literary export at the moment....
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Thomas Glavinic: Isn't That Me? (Das bin doch ich)
Hardcover | 240 pages | ISBN 9783446209121 | August 2007 | Hanser Verlag
English excerpt
The Book: "I'm not crazy – which is to say, I'm crazy sometimes, but not right here and now." In a furious torrent of words, Thomas Glavinic unleashes a novel to compete with literature’s most hilarious examples of artful exaggeration and destructive energy.
A man writes a novel. His name is Thomas Glavinic, the title of his book "Die Arbeit der Nacht" (Night Work). He wants what everybody wants: success. He wants a publisher, awards, money. What he has is a manuscript, a literary agent, headaches, fear of testicular cancer, far too much alcohol and, unfortunately, mostly unbearable companions. And he has a good friend who is the author of a novel, too, entitled Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring The World), whose sales figures prompt the writer’s mother to ask: Why can’t you write something like that?
"Das bin doch ich" is a novel like no other. With masterful realism and gonzo humour, Glavinic plays a game of double reality, omitting no embarrassing detail or fleeting joy and sparing nobody at all: the badly-read councillors, the eloquent editors, the over-enthusiastic jury members. And in between our hero, determined to push forward his literary career, finds himself speechless with horror: Is that really me, the man in the mirror?
"Story-tellers tell stories. Great story-tellers like Thomas Glavinic create worlds we lose ourselves in." – Ulrich Weinzierl, Die Welt
Sales to Foreign Countries:
"Die Arbeit der Nacht": France (Flammarion), Italy (Longanesi), USA / UK (Canongate), China (Horizon Media Company), Korea (Younglim Cardinal), Netherlands (Contact), Spain (Siruela)
© Peter-Andreas Hassiepen
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