Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities (1972-) [IT, EN, CZ, TR, SK, PT, ES]
Filed under fiction | Tags: · city
Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times.
“The book, because of its approach to the imaginative potentialities of cities, has been used by architects and artists to visualize how cities can be, their secret folds, where the human imagination is not necessarily limited by the laws of physics or the limitations of modern urban theory. It offers an alternative approach to thinking about cities, how they are formed and how they function.” (Wikipedia)
Originally published in Italian as Le città invisibili, Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1972
English edition
Translated by William Weaver
Publisher Harcourt Brace & Company, San Diego/New York/London, 1974
ISBN 0156453800
165 pages
wikipedia (EN)
Le città invisibili (Italian, 1972)
Invisible Cities (English, trans. William Weaver, 1974)
Neviditelná města (Czech, trans. Vladimír Hořký, 1986, no OCR, added on 2013-6-28)
Görünmez Kentler (Turkish, trans. Işıl Saatçioğlu, 1990)
Neviditeľné mestá (Slovak, trans. Pavol Koprda, 2000)
As cidades invisíveis (Portuguese, trans. Diogo Mainardi, 2003)
Las ciudades invisibles (Spanish, 2008)
Teju Cole: Open City: A Novel (2011)
Filed under fiction | Tags: · identity, memory, migration, new york, race
A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss, dislocation, and surrender, Teju Cole’s Open City seethes with intelligence. It is a profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our country and our world.
Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly, reflecting on his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. Though he is navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation. But it is not only a physical landscape he covers; Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey—which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.
Winner of the 2012 PEN/Hemingway Award.
Publisher Random House, 2011
ISBN 0812980093, 9780812980097
259 pages
review (Boyd Tonkin, The Independent)
review (James Wood, The New Yorker)
review (Miguel Syjuco, The New York Times)
wikipedia
publisher
google books
W. G. Sebald: Austerlitz (2001)
Filed under fiction | Tags: · history, memory
“Austerlitz is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion. This tenth anniversary edition of W. G. Sebald’s celebrated masterpiece includes a new Introduction by acclaimed critic James Wood.”
Originally published in German by C. Hanser, Munich, 2001.
Translated by Anthea Bell
Introduction by James Wood
Publisher Random House, 2001
ISBN 0812982614, 9780812982619
review (James Wood, London Review of Books)
review (Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian)
review (Charles Saumarez Smith, The Observer)