My Father's Book
A European Literature, German Literature, Cultural book. Best book from a Swiss author I read so far. Quite unorthodoxdescription of a man's (the father) life in...
In this companion to Urs Widmer’s novel My Mother’s Lover, the narrator is again the son who pieces together the fragments of his parents’ stories. Since the age of twelve, Karl, the father, has observed the family tradition of recording his life in a single notebook, but when his book is lost soon after his death, his son resolves to rewrite it. Here, we get to know Karl’s friends—a collection of anti-fascist painters and architects known as Group 33. We learn of the early years of Karl’s marriage and follow his military service as the Swiss fear a German invasion during World War II, his political activity for the Communist Party, and his brief career as a teacher. We are told of Karl’s literary translations of his favorite French books, and, most important, the eerie and ever-present coffins outside the houses in the home village of Karl’s father, one reserved for each individual from the day he or she is born. Widmer brilliantly combines family history and historical events to tell the story of a man more at home in the world of the imagination than in the real world, a father who grows on the...
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 173 pages
- ISBN: 9780857420176 / 857420178
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More About My Father's Book
I am becoming addicted to this author. He has a wry, sort of old-fashioned but also very to-the-point style that I find really refreshing. He evokes pictures and people from the past with a mix of melancholy and irony that somehow makes them feel relevant and not dated. This book was an interesting counterpart to Der Geliebte der Mutter,... Best book from a Swiss author I read so far. Quite unorthodoxdescription of a man's (the father) life in Switzerland's first halfof the 20th century. Need to read the sister book "Der Geliebteder Mutter" next. Un fils raconte l'histoire extraordinaire de son pre, traducteur Franais-Allemand, peintre, ivrogne, communiste, etc etc. dans la grande Histoire de la Suisse Almanique (Bauhaus, Emmenthal, Nazis qui ne viennent pas, traditions excentriques qui se perdent, etc.).Une histoire la "Big Fish" o le pre ordinaire devient le hros imaginaire...
