Adalbert Stifter Libri

The first complete English translation of the nineteenth-century Austrian innovator's evocative, elemental cycle of novellas. For Kafka he was “my fat brother”; Thomas Mann called him “one of the most peculiar, enigmatic, secretly audacious and strangely gripping storytellers in world literature.” Often misunderstood as an idyllic poet of “beetles and buttercups,” the nineteenth-century Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter can now be seen as a radical experimenter with narrative and a forerunner of nature writing’s darker currents. One of his best-known works, the novella cycle Motley Stones now appears in its first complete English translation, a rendition that respects the bracing strangeness of the original. In six thematically linked novellas, including the beloved classic “Rock Crystal,” human dramas play out amid the natural cycles of the Alps or the urban rhythms of Vienna—environments so keenly observed that they emerge as the tales’ most indomitable protagonists. Stifter’s human characters are equally haunting—children braving perils, eccentrics and loners harboring enigmatic torments. “We seek to glimpse the gentle law that guides the human race,” Stifter famously wrote. What he glimpsed, more often than not, was the abyss that lies behind the idyll. The tension between his humane sensitivity and his dark visions is what lends his writing its heartbreaking power.

In "Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters" setzt Adalbert Stifter seiner Heimat Böhmerwald ein eindrucksvolles Denkmal. Dieses Werk, sein "Lieblingskind", reflektiert tiefgründige Gedanken über das Leben und den Tod. Stifter, ein bedeutender Biedermeier-Autor, widmete sich diesem Stoff von den 30er Jahren bis zu seinem Tod.

"Victor leaves the home of his foster mother to begin his working life. His journey takes him to a remote island, where he visits his only relative, an uncle he has never met. The old man, who has never known love, lives in a barricaded mansion, surrounded by an atmosphere of death and decay." "Victor finds himself a virtual prisoner on this mysterious island and must confront his own past in order to regain control of his life."--BOOK JACKET.

A beautiful, enigmatic story by one of the greatest German-language novelists