The Site of Memory
2.990 kr.The Site of Memory describes Toni Morrison’s work of literary archaeology. She offers insights into how she arrives at a text through the act of imagination bound up with memory and shows how she explores two worlds – the actual and the possible – via the nimbus of emotion surrounding the journey of an image: from picture to meaning to text.
Exploring the radical possibilities of literature and the limits of history, Morrison finds a truth deeper than documentation in the silences and omissions in African American narratives of the past. Fiction, for Morrison, is a practice of ethical restoration: a means to recover what history has neglected through the ‘flooding’ of a rush of imagination. In The Site of Memory, ancestral presence, emotion and imagination converge. If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
Siddhartha
3.490 kr.Dissatisfied with the ways of life he has experienced, Siddhartha, the handsome son of a Brahmin, leaves his family and his friend, Govinda, in search of a higher state of being. Having experienced the myriad forms of existence, from immense wealth and luxury to the pleasures of sensual and paternal love, Siddhartha finally settles down beside a river, where a humble ferryman teaches him his most valuable lesson yet.
Hermann Hesse’s short, elegant novel, echoing the life of the Buddha, has been cherished by readers for decades as an unforgettable spiritual primer. A tender and unforgettable moral allegory, it is an undeniable classic of modern literature.
Hermann Hesse (1877-1963) is counted among the leading novelists and thinkers of the twentieth century.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946 for a body of literature renowned for its humanist, philosophical and spiritual insight. His most famous works include Siddhartha, Journey to the East, Demian, Steppenwolf, and Narcissus and Goldmund.
Nausea
3.490 kr.Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which “spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time ― the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain.”
Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (though he declined to accept it), Jean-Paul Sartre ― philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist ― holds a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters. La Nausée, his first and best novel, is a landmark in Existential fiction and a key work of the twentieth century.
The Books of Jacob
4.990 kr.In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank—a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day—is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries—those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is—The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.
In a nod to books written in Hebrew, The Books of Jacob is paginated in reverse, beginning on p. 955 and ending on p. 1 – but read traditionally, front cover to back.
The Young Man
3.190 kr.In her latest work, Annie Ernaux recounts a relationship with a student thirty years her junior – an experience that transforms her, briefly, back into the ‘scandalous girl’ of her youth. When she is with him, she replays scenes she has already lived through, feeling both ageless and closer to death. Laid like a palimpsest on the present, the past’s immediacy pushes her to take a decisive step in her writing – producing, in turn, the need to expunge her lover. At once stark and tender, The Young Man is a taut encapsulation of Ernaux’s relationship to time, memory and writing.
Ég er annar – Sjöleikurinn III-IV
4.890 kr.Önnur bókin af þremur í stórvirki norska Nóbelshöfundarins. Sjöleikurinn er magnþrungið verk um baráttuna við að rata rétta leið í lífinu og bregður jafnframt upp lýsandi myndum af aðstæðum og tíðaranda í norsku samfélagi á liðinni öld.
Listmálarinn Ási er að undirbúa jólasýningu í galleríi í Björgvin. Í borginni býr annar Ási sem líka er listmálari. Þeir nafnar eru vinir og á vissan hátt spegla þeir hvor annars líf.
Í þessum hluta verksins fær lesandinn innsýn í uppvaxtarár Ása í Bugðu. Við sögu koma feimnislegir kossar, reykingar og áfengisneysla, hljómsveitaræfingar og slagsmál, nöldrandi mamma og þolinmóður pabbi, flutningur að heiman og menntaskólaár. Fljótlega heldur listamaðurinn ungi og upprennandi sína fyrstu sýningu og vekur óvænta athygli sem veitir honum brautargengi.
Jon Fosse (f. 1959) er einn þekktasti og virtasti samtímahöfundur Norðmanna. Allt frá fyrstu bók sinni, Raudt, svart (1983) hefur hann helgað sig ritstörfum og sent frá sér skáldsögur, ljóð, leikrit, barnabækur og ritgerðir. Verk hans hafa verið þýdd og gefin út á meira en fimmtíu tungumálum og leikritin sviðsett um allan heim. Fosse hefur einnig lagt stund á bókmenntaþýðingar. Hann hefur hlotið fjölda verðlauna bæði í heimalandinu og erlendis. Árið 2015 hlaut hann Bókmenntaverðaun Norðurlandaráðs fyrir þríleikinn Andvaka, Draumar Ólafs og Kvöldsyfja, sem kom út á íslensku 2016. Frá árinu 2011 hefur Fosse búið í Grotten, heiðursbústað norska ríkisins fyrir listamenn.
Jon Fosse hlaut Bókmenntaverðlaun Nóbels 2023.
Síðasti úlfurinn
3.590 kr.Síðasti úlfurinn er afar sértök frásögn, rakin af mælskum sögumanni sem staddur er á krá í Berlín og eini hlustandinn er fremur áhugalítill barþjónn. Í ljós kemur að hann hefur (fyrir mistök eða gráglettni örlaganna) verið ráðinn til að skrifa skýrslu um síðasta úlfinn í hinu hrjóstruga Extremadura-héraði á Spáni. Frásögnin – skráð í einni setningu – fer fram og til baka í tíma og rúmi, þannig að lesandinn verður að hafa sig allan við til að missa ekki af neinu.
Ungverski verðlaunahöfundurinn László Krasznahorkai er mörgum Íslendingum að góðu kunnur fyrir samstarf sitt við kvikmyndaleikstjórann Béla Tarr, en myndirnar Sátántangó og Werckmeister harmóniák eftir bókum hans teljast til meistaraverka kvikmyndalistarinnar.
Vaim
3.990 kr.Jatgeir has come from Vaim to the big city, Bjørgvin, on his wooden boat, Eline, named after the long-lost love of his teenage years. He intends to buy a needle and thread to sew a button but he is cheated, twice. That night, while sleeping on his boat, he hears a familiar voice: unexpectedly, it is Eline, who wants to come home to Vaim with him.
She leaves a note for her husband Frank, packs her bags and runs away while he is out fishing. Vaim, Jon Fosse’s first novel since he received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, is the story of this triangle, a novel about little boats and big boats, love and death, passive men and an incredibly determined woman. And all, of course, was strange…
