An Exclusive Love - Rilegato

Johanna Adorján

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0307399532 ISBN 13: 9780307399533

Casa editrice: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

Riassunto

Two people who have grown old together decide to take their own lives. He is terminally ill; she doesn't want to be without him. One Sunday in autumn 1991, they carry out their plan. Vera and István go to their deaths holding hands. It is the logical end of a love that shut out the entire rest of the world, even their own children. They used the formal "Sie" form of address for each other throughout their whole lives together, chain-smoked and were incredibly good-looking. They also had a past they did not speak about — a past they did not want to remember. As Hungarian Jews, they had survived the Holocaust, had become Communists and during the uprising in Budapest in 1956 had fled the country. They started a new life in Denmark and — so it seemed — never looked back. Sixteen years after her grandparents' deaths, Johanna Adorján ignored the family rule of "That's something we don't talk about." She set out to look for the blind spots in the lives of her grandparents and in the process found out things that have more to do with herself than she had expected. Against the backdrop of the disasters of twentieth-century European history, she brings Vera and István back to life — a fascinating couple, unconventionally elegant, often going against the grain.

Su questo libro

Recensione

A Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Pick
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
A Vogue Australia Required Reading Pick

“A spare, beautiful exploration. . . . This fascinating couple . . . come slowly into focus for the author and the reader simultaneously, or so Adorján makes it seem. That’s what makes a good memoir—it’s not a regurgitation of ordinariness or ordeal, not a dart thrown desperately at a trendy topic, but a shared discovery.”
— Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times Book Review
 
“Elegant. Is this what makes their last day so fascinating? Elegance is magnetic, and so is lifelong love. The reader cannot take her eyes from them.”
— Los Angeles Times

"This is an intense, complex, uplifting, passionate, painful and often hilarious story of love. And a story of searching for love. And a story of searching for a history that is at once personal and universal. A past that is part of the present."
— Lily Brett

"The fact that the author does not tire in inquiring into this riddle, that she scrutinizes everything anew, courageously and with a biting wit, makes her book about a grim Sunday a sparkling work."
— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"Despite its sadness, this book is very uplifting, and the author writes in a beautiful and very authentic voice."
— German Book Office

"A powerful, reflective and thought-provoking work, with echoes of similar recent treatments of the theme but distinct in its own right."
— New Books in German

“I was very much moved by An Exclusive Love—such clarity of thought and feeling. What I think of Anthea Bell as a translator is little short of reverence, after what she did for W. G. Sebald: one trusts her absolutely, so I know for sure that Johanna Adorján writes with beautiful precision and suppleness. It’s a truly memorable book.”
 — Diana Athill, author of Somewhere Towards the End
 
“A wonderful, extraordinary book.”
 — Judith Kerr, author of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
 
“What we have here is a sophisticated intelligence, coupled with the sensibility of an artist, creating a narrator who tells a familiar tale, as though for the first time. This book is, indeed, the memoir as literature.”
 — Vivian Gornick, author of The Men in My Life

L'autore

JOHANNA ADORJÁN, born in 1971 in Stockholm, studied theatre and opera directing. She has worked as an editor and freelance author for various newspapers and magazines. Since 2001 she has been an editor of the culture section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin. She has written theatre pieces, as well as a screenplay that has been filmed by Ed Herzog. Johanna Adorján lives in Berlin.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: W. W. Norton & Company
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0307399532
• ISBN 13: 9780307399533
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 192