Chasing Homer : good luck, and nothing else : Odysseus's cave

by Krasznahorkai, László,

Format: Print Book 2021
Availability: Available at 1 Library 1 of 1 copy
Available (1)
Location Collection Call #
Mt. Lebanon Public Library Fiction KRASZNAHORKAI Laszlo
Location  Mt. Lebanon Public Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  KRASZNAHORKAI Laszlo
 
 
Summary
In this thrilling chase narrative, a hunted being escapes certain death at breakneck speed--careening through Europe, heading blindly South. Faster and faster, escaping the assassins, our protagonist flies forward, blending into crowds, adjusting to terrains, hopping on and off ferries, always desperately trying to stay a step ahead of certain death: the past did not exist, only what was current existed--a prisoner of the instant, rushing into this instant, an instant that had no continuation ...
Krasznahorkai--celebrated for the exhilarating energy of his prose--outdoes himself in Chasing Homer. And this unique collaboration boasts beautiful full-color paintings by Max Neumann and--reaching out of the book proper--the wildly percussive music of Szilveszter Miklós scored for each chapter (to be accessed by the reader via QR codes).
Published Reviews
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Krasznahorkai's strange and engrossing novella (after Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming) reads like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie dreamed up by Beckett and Kafka. Killers with an unknown motive are chasing the narrator, who has become by necessity an autodidact of survival skills, through Croatia along the Adriatic Coast. At a tourist bar in Korčula, holed up after being chilled to the bone by ominous gusts of the "Bora," the hero overhears a tour guide convince a couple to let him lead them on a tour of Mljet, a small island believed by its inhabitants to be the true location of Odysseus's sojourn with Calypso, and follows them there. The hero's account up to this point has been filled with reports of fast, chaotic, unpredictable movement to ward off the hunters, and of pledges to resist the animalistic pleasures in life, which would lead to doom, but at Korčula, something changes. Batki's translation exquisitely captures the grace underlying the hero's frenetic mindset ("I must plunge, from the edge of a moment right into its midst, just like some Moby-Dick, or a dying butterfly between two flower petals"), as do the vignettes scored by free jazz drummer Szilveszter Miklós for each chapter (accessible via QR codes that appear in the text). Whether on a large canvas or small, Krasznahorkai never ceases to impress. (Nov.)"
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Additional Information
Subjects Alienation (Social psychology) -- Fiction.
Survival -- Fiction.
Novellas.
Publisher New York :New Directions Publishing Corporation,2021
Other Titles Mindig Homérosznak.
Contributors Neumann, Max, 1949- illustrator.
Miklós, Szilveszter, 1983- musician.
Bátki, John, translator.
Language English
Notes "A New Directions book."
Description 91 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm
ISBN 9780811227971
0811227979
Other Classic View