Agaat - Brossura

Van Niekerk, Marlene

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0982503091 ISBN 13: 9780982503096

Casa editrice: Tin House Books, 2010

Riassunto

Focuses on the relationship between Milla, an aging white female farmer in South Africa, and Agaat, her black maidservant, in a story set near the end of apartheid.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

[Agaat] is absolutely the most extraordinary book I've read in a long time. You must read it.” Toni Morrison

"I was immediately mesmerized...Its beauty matches its depth and her achievement is as brilliant as it is haunting." Toni Morrison, author of A Mercy

"Books like 'Agaat'...are the reason people read novels, and the reason authors write them." The New York Times Book Review

"Clearly an allegory for race relations in South Africa, the novel succeeds on numerous other grounds: a rich evocation of family dynamics; a chilling portrait of bodily and mental decay; and a successful experiment in combining diaries, the second-person, and stream of consciousness."
--Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Few books I’ve read carry the visceral impact of Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat. . . it is stunning. . . . each dichotomy love, sorrow, purity, shame, betrayal, fidelity, goodness, and brute political will is equally and tragically real." Mary Gaitskill, Bookforum

"This is a frank novel about a white South African landowner and her lifelong servant in a radically changing country." #1 in the "Ten Titles to Pick Up Now" in O, The Oprah Magazine, August 2010

"Lyrical, yet potent prose..." Kirkus Reviews

Agaat is a tangle of language and rhyme, of wordplay and digressions. . . Both absorbing in its minutiae and provocative in its allegorical approach to apartheid, Agaat explodes the domestic sphere to encompass the world.” Portland Mercury

"In addition to its vivid emotional resonance, Agaat is notable for the wealth of detail it imparts about rural life in South Africa before industrialized farming..." Hemispheres Magazine

"[Agaat] is a family saga of mothers and daughters; a deconstruction of the Little-House-on-the-Veldt romanticism in which noble white settlers tame a hostile land; a massive, wrenching catalog of illness (physical and metaphysical); and a poetic exploration of control and the loss of control. It's a stylishly inventive book..." The Rumpus

Van Niekerk has created a work of stunning breadth and emotional potency.” Publishing Perspectives

An exceptional book tough and brutal, lyrical and sensitive’
--Henk Propper, Vrij Nederland

Fascinating and moving, this is, above all, a love story.’
--Kate Saunders, The Times (London)

A wonderful read for dark January nights.’
--Good Housekeeping Book of the Month

"The most important South African novel since Coetzee's Disgrace."
The Times Literary Supplement

"A masterpiece has arrived" South African Sunday Times

"Voluminous, detailed, momentous . . . It is an allegory of colonial exploitation, apartheid, and the precarious steps toward reconciliation" Independent

Product Description:

Set in apartheid South Africa, "Agaat" portrays the unique relationship between Milla, a 67-year-old white woman, and her black maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat. Through flashbacks and diary entries, the reader learns about Milla's past. Life for white farmers in 1950s South Africa was full of promise -- young and newly married, Milla raised a son and created her own farm out of a swathe of Cape mountainside. Forty years later her family has fallen apart, the country she knew is on the brink of huge change, and all she has left are memories and her proud, contrary, yet affectionate guardian. With haunting, lyrical prose, Marlene Van Niekerk creates a story of love and family loyalty. Winner of the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2007, "Agaat" was translated as "The Way of the Women" by Michiel Heyns, who received the Sol Plaatje Award for his translation.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Tin House Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0982503091
• ISBN 13: 9780982503096
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 581