The first complete English translation of the nineteenthcentury Austrian innovators evocative, elemental cycle of novellas.For Kafka he was my fat brother Thomas Mann called him one of the most peculiar, enigmatic, secretly audacious and strangely gripping storytellers in world literature. Often misunderstood as an idyllic poet of beetles and buttercups, the nineteenthcentury Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter can now be seen as a radical experimenter with narrative and a forerunner of nature writings darker currents. One of his bestknown works, the novella cycle Motley Stones now appears in its first complete English translation, a rendition that respects the bracing strangeness of the original. In six thematically linked novellas, including the beloved classic Rock Crystal, human dramas play out amid the natural cycles of the Alps or the urban rhythms of Viennaenvironments so keenly observed that they emerge as the tales most indomitable protagonists. Stifters human characters are equally hauntingchildren braving perils, eccentrics and loners harboring enigmatic torments. We seek to glimpse the gentle law that guides the human race, Stifter famously wrote. What he glimpsed, more often than not, was the abyss that lies behind the idyll. The tension between his humane sensitivity and his dark visions is what lends his writing its heartbreaking power.

Binding: Paperback;296 pages; Publisher: New York Review Books; Classification: FA; Weight: 424 g; Dimensions: 128 x 201 x 19

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