The Evenings: A Winter's Tale

Reve, Gerard

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1782271783 ISBN 13: 9781782271789

Casa editrice: Pushkin Pr Ltd, 2016

THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF A POSTWAR MASTERPIECE

'I work in an office. I take cards out of a file. Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again. That is it.'

Twenty-three-year-old Frits - office worker, daydreamer, teller of inappropriate jokes - finds life absurd and inexplicable. He lives with his parents, who drive him mad. He has terrible, disturbing dreams of death and destruction. Sometimes he talks to a toy rabbit.

This is the story of ten evenings in Frits's life at the end of December, as he drinks, smokes, sees friends, aimlessly wanders the gloomy city street and tries to make sense of the minutes, hours and days that stretch before him.

Darkly funny and mesmerising, The Evenings takes the tiny, quotidian triumphs and heartbreaks of our everyday lives and turns them into a work of brilliant wit and profound beauty.

Recensione:

'A cornerstone manqué of modern European literature... What can I say that will put this book where it belongs, in readers' hands and minds?... Reve keeps the reader breathless right through to the grand finale' -- Tim Parks, Guardian

'It's like BS Johnson and Kafka wandering the crepuscular streets of 1940s Amsterdam together - in a good way' -- Alex Preston, Observer Best Fiction of 2016

'As funny as it is ultimately profound' -- Eileen Battersby, Irish Times, Books of the Year 2016

'This much lauded book, finally available in English, [is] the perfect January read' -- Spectator

'A masterwork of comic pathos... one of the finest studies of youthful malaise ever written... Should cause many readers to revise their opinions of The Catcher in the Rye. In all fairness to Salinger, The Evenings is so much better' -- Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

'The Evenings is packed with the minutiae of life: luckily, the minutiae are fascinating... Reve isn't the kind of novelist to give you a straightforward answer but the journey is quite a ride' -- The Times

'Fascinates the more you read of it... A fantastic novel' -- Andre Van Loon, Sunday Telegraph

'Fascinating, hilarious and page-turning. The publication of this novel marks the exciting introduction of a wonderful writer to an Anglophone audience' -- Publishers Weekly

'Hats off to Pushkin Press and the outstanding translator, Sam Garrett, for making this odd, orphaned masterpiece available at last to an English-speaking readership' -- Times Literary Supplement

'The funniest, most exhilarating novel about boredom ever written. If The Evenings had appeared in English in the 1950s, it would have become every bit as much a classic as On the Road and The Catcher in the Rye' -- Herman Koch, author of The Dinner

'Dark masterpiece... It is a powerful story of an alienated young office worker who is cynical about his loving, middle-class parents and friends' -- Observer

'Reve's keen eye for absurdity manages to cast the mundane in a new, albeit macabre, light' -- Financial Times

'This 1947 Dutch novel, considered the Netherlands' greatest in the 20th century... is a savage novel, full of strange, cold laughter' -- Daily Mail

'It is now time for a wider audience to discover its weird textures and dark delights' -- The National

'Unlike John Williams, Gerard Reve's work was critically acclaimed and sold exceptionally well during his lifetime. But, just like Stoner, The Evenings is brilliantly written, and has a maximum impact on the reader's soul' -- Oscar van Gelderen, the Dutch publisher who rediscovered John Williams's Stoner

'This book, an important classic in the Netherlands and long, long overdue in English, is as funny as it is peculiar. Reve really deserves more attention in the Anglophone world' --Lydia Davis, winner of the Man Booker International Prize

'I warmly recommend Gerard Reve's hilariously gloomy The Evenings... I see it as a Dutch version of Kafka's Metamorphosis' -- Geoff Dyer, Observer, Best Summer Reads

'A canonical work of postwar European fiction... flares of pathos and despairing love light up the novel's empty nighttime landscape' -- Wall Street Journal

'Reviewers have compared it favourably to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Albert Camus's The Stranger and Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle' -- New York Times

'Captivating' -- The Atlantic

'The Evenings earns its status as a little masterpiece' -- LA Review of Books

'A masterpiece' -- National Post

'Like Camus's The Plague, the strength of The Evenings lies in its evocation of atmosphere' -- The Tablet

'The Evenings comes across as softer, funnier, more humane, and more conservative than other masterpieces of postwar European writing... a little masterpiece - a provocative reminder that life goes on even in the bleakest of circumstances' -- LARB

'Reading The Evenings is a little like playing the knife game. It's bloody, violent and you have no idea where it's going to end' -- The Australian

'An understated novel that's funny, bizarre and yet emotionally renewing' -- Attitude

'Gives Kafka a run for his money... gripping, often very funny... bizarre, enchanting' --Big Issue

'Bleak, droll and exquisitely expressed... Diabolically funny... From the deep midnight of shattered Europe, Reve crafted not only an existential masterwork worthy to stand with Beckett of Albert Camus but an oblique historical testament' -- The Economist

'It's a testament to Reve's writing and imagination that the question of Frits will haunt the reader long after they've finished' -- Pop Matters

'Batavophile bookworms can rejoice now possibly the greatest Amsterdam novel is now available in English... for a testament to ennui it's strangely gripping' -- A-Mag

'It's hard to believe it has taken 70 years for Gerard Reve's The Evenings to reach the English speaking world... Reminiscent of Samuel Beckett, The Evenings is justly regarded by the Dutch as one of their greatest novels' -- Sydney Morning Herald

'This really is an excellent work' --Tony's Reading List

L'autore:

Gerard Reve (1923-2006) is considered one of the greatest post-war Dutch authors, and was also the first openly gay writer in the country's history. A complicated and controversial character, Reve is also hugely popular and critically acclaimed- his 1947 debut The Evenings was chosen as one of the nation's 10 favourite books by the readers of a leading Dutch newspaper while the Society of Dutch Literature ranked it as the Netherlands' best novel of all time.