Compressed, delicate, but brutally precise, S. S. Proleterka is a fiercely boiled-down bildungsroman from the presiding genius of dry-ice, Fleur Jaeggy. The S. S. Proleterka is a Yugoslavian ship; our fifteen-year-old protagonist and her financially ruined, distant, yet somehow beloved father, Johannes, take a cruise together on it to Greece. With a strange telescopic perspective, narrated from the day she receives her father's ashes, our heroine recounts her youth: her re-married mother, cold and far away, allows the ...
Read More
Compressed, delicate, but brutally precise, S. S. Proleterka is a fiercely boiled-down bildungsroman from the presiding genius of dry-ice, Fleur Jaeggy. The S. S. Proleterka is a Yugoslavian ship; our fifteen-year-old protagonist and her financially ruined, distant, yet somehow beloved father, Johannes, take a cruise together on it to Greece. With a strange telescopic perspective, narrated from the day she receives her father's ashes, our heroine recounts her youth: her re-married mother, cold and far away, allows the father the rare visit to the child, stashed away with relatives or at a school for girls. "The journey to Greece, father and daughter. The last and first chance to be together." On board the S. S. Proleterka , she has a violent, carnal schooling with the sailors: "I had no experience of the other part of the world, the male part." Mesmerized by the desire to be experienced, she crisply narrates her trysts as well as her near-total neglect of her father. A ferocious study of distance and diffidence, S. S. Proleterka bottles at one hundred and eighty proof the "insomniac resentment" and cyclical nature of familial pain. Jaeggy's distillation of childhood is brought into English with telegraphic urgency by Alastair McEwen, the acclaimed translator of Umberto Eco and Alessandro Baricco, and the emotions pressed out between Jaeggy's lines are enough to fill a tome of a thousand pages.
Read Less
Add this copy of S. S. Proleterka to cart. $9.99, very good condition, Sold by HPB-Diamond rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by New Directions.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of S S Proleterka Pa to cart. $12.43, new condition, Sold by indoo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Avenel, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Add this copy of SS Proleterka to cart. $16.36, new condition, Sold by booksXpress, ships from Bayonne, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Add this copy of S. S. Proleterka to cart. $34.96, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by New Directions.
Add this copy of S. S. Proleterka to cart. $65.86, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by New Directions.
