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Andrea Bajani Elizabeth Harris If You Kept A Record Of Sins (Paperback)
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eBay item number:335187213593
Item specifics
- Condition
- Book Title
- If You Kept a Record of Sins
- Publication Name
- If You Kept A Record Of Sins
- Title
- If You Kept A Record Of Sins
- Format
- Trade Paperback
- ISBN-10
- 1939810965
- EAN
- 9781939810960
- ISBN
- 9781939810960
- Publisher
- Steerforth Press
- Genre
- Fiction
- Release Date
- 23/03/2021
- Release Year
- 2021
- Language
- English
- Country/Region of Manufacture
- US
- Item Height
- 0.8in
- Item Length
- 6.5in
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Topic
- Psychological, Family Life
- Item Width
- 5.5in
- Item Weight
- 8.4 Oz
- Number of Pages
- 200 Pages
About this product
Product Information
A prismatic novel that records the indelible marks a mother leaves on her son after she abandons their home in Italy for a business she's building in Romania. Lorenzo, just a young boy when his mother leaves, recalls the incisive fragments of their life - when they would playfully wrestle each other, watch the sunrise, or test out his mother's newest scientific creation. Now a young man, Lorenzo travels to Romania for his mother's funeral and reflects on the strangeness of today's Europe, which masks itself as a beacon of Western civilization while iniquity and exploitation run rampant. With elliptical, piercing prose, Bajani tells a story of abandonment and initiation, of sentimental education and shattered illusions, of unconditional love.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Steerforth Press
ISBN-10
1939810965
ISBN-13
9781939810960
eBay Product ID (ePID)
6050418518
Product Key Features
Book Title
If You Kept a Record of Sins
Format
Trade Paperback
Language
English
Topic
Psychological, Family Life
Publication Year
2021
Genre
Fiction
Number of Pages
200 Pages
Dimensions
Item Length
6.5in
Item Height
0.8in
Item Width
5.5in
Item Weight
8.4 Oz
Additional Product Features
Lc Classification Number
Pq4862.A35245s413
Reviews
"A slim, astonishing book . . . Bajani etches an impressionistic portrait of a young man -- like the foreign city outside his window -- trapped in a shadow land between past and present." -- Anderson Tepper, The New York Times "[Bajani''s] calm, elegant prose stands on its own, defying commentary. Bajani understands how the wounded often remain wounded, cut off from others and themselves. Such is the tragedy of the human story, which is somehow made less tragic by his remarkable ability to illuminate it for us." -- Elaine Margolin, Los Angeles Review of Books "After years of gradually widening distance between them, a man learns some truths about his absent mother when he travels abroad to bury her and settle her business affairs...Bajani''s spare prose delivers startling imagery...as well as quiet reflection as Lorenzo addresses the departed Lula as he moves around her chosen home away from home....Bajani''s lovely, quiet novel lives at the intersection of love and misunderstanding." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ". . . Throughout, family trauma parallels the collective trauma of an oppressed people, with no solace in the past and no real agency in the future. Bajani brings the full weight of his qualities as a poet, journalist, and professor of European Studies to bear, revealing in finely wrought prose the lasting scars of heartbreak on his characters and the body politic. This is deeply affecting." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Beautifully written, If You Kept a Record of Sins reverberates profoundly with the loneliness of its characters -- haunting in the voice of Lorenzo, reaching out to a mother who is no longer -- and never really was -- there." -- M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review "Subtle and searing, an Italian man called Lorenzo visits the country to attend the funeral of his long-absent mother...The adept, patient style of the novel leaves lots of room for the reader to make their own appraisal of the choices of his mother, Lula, and their impact on the life of the child Lorenzo was and the adult he is now." -- D eclan O''Driscoll, Irish Times "How are we remembered? Where do blame and grief meet? . . . Rather than judgement, Bajani''s method is one of lyrical indirection. From resentment to alienation, tenderness to anger, and indifference to joy, Lorenzo''s feelings are never stated outright, instead emerging sideways - from the background noise he doesn''t recognise . . . Bajani''s irresistibly spare narrative tracks our attempts to make sense of and judge one another." -- Jessica Payn, the Arts Desk "Elizabeth Harris has done incredible work in her translation, which in its continually sharp, clipped language reflects the stripped-down nature of the original. These qualities are not only relevant on a linguistic or stylistic level, but also in terms of the novel''s central characters, the hollowed-out voice of Lorenzo, a man who never describes his own emotions, as if he too wanted to be as empty as that infamous egg, an inheritance from his mother." -- Brian Robert Moore, Reading in Translation "This is a story of abandonment that lets fall revelations in delicate, tight prose the way a child might drop pennies into a creek. The ripples are deeply felt." -- Bibi Deitz, Coveteur "This is a novel of alienation - and a great one. Bajani is a master of emotional restraint and stylistic economy, his sparse Italian prose (admirably rendered, in equally sparse English, by Elizabeth Harris) amplifying the novel''s sense of estrangement . . . a book of haunting, unsettling beauty." -- Costica Bradatan, the TLS "The magic of this story lies entirely in the telling--in the delicate balancing of select, sharply depicted images within a spare, measured narrative that simmers with barely restrained emotional tension . . . Reading fiction this well-crafted is a joy." --Joseph Schrieber, Rough Ghosts, "A slim, astonishing book . . . Bajani etches an impressionistic portrait of a young man -- like the foreign city outside his window -- trapped in a shadow land between past and present." -- Anderson Tepper, The New York Times "[Bajani's] calm, elegant prose stands on its own, defying commentary. Bajani understands how the wounded often remain wounded, cut off from others and themselves. Such is the tragedy of the human story, which is somehow made less tragic by his remarkable ability to illuminate it for us." -- Elaine Margolin, Los Angeles Review of Books "After years of gradually widening distance between them, a man learns some truths about his absent mother when he travels abroad to bury her and settle her business affairs...Bajani's spare prose delivers startling imagery...as well as quiet reflection as Lorenzo addresses the departed Lula as he moves around her chosen home away from home....Bajani's lovely, quiet novel lives at the intersection of love and misunderstanding." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ". . . Throughout, family trauma parallels the collective trauma of an oppressed people, with no solace in the past and no real agency in the future. Bajani brings the full weight of his qualities as a poet, journalist, and professor of European Studies to bear, revealing in finely wrought prose the lasting scars of heartbreak on his characters and the body politic. This is deeply affecting." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Beautifully written, If You Kept a Record of Sins reverberates profoundly with the loneliness of its characters -- haunting in the voice of Lorenzo, reaching out to a mother who is no longer -- and never really was -- there." -- M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review "Subtle and searing, an Italian man called Lorenzo visits the country to attend the funeral of his long-absent mother...The adept, patient style of the novel leaves lots of room for the reader to make their own appraisal of the choices of his mother, Lula, and their impact on the life of the child Lorenzo was and the adult he is now." -- D eclan O'Driscoll, Irish Times "How are we remembered? Where do blame and grief meet? . . . Rather than judgement, Bajani's method is one of lyrical indirection. From resentment to alienation, tenderness to anger, and indifference to joy, Lorenzo's feelings are never stated outright, instead emerging sideways - from the background noise he doesn't recognise . . . Bajani's irresistibly spare narrative tracks our attempts to make sense of and judge one another." -- Jessica Payn, the Arts Desk "Elizabeth Harris has done incredible work in her translation, which in its continually sharp, clipped language reflects the stripped-down nature of the original. These qualities are not only relevant on a linguistic or stylistic level, but also in terms of the novel's central characters, the hollowed-out voice of Lorenzo, a man who never describes his own emotions, as if he too wanted to be as empty as that infamous egg, an inheritance from his mother." -- Brian Robert Moore, Reading in Translation "This is a story of abandonment that lets fall revelations in delicate, tight prose the way a child might drop pennies into a creek. The ripples are deeply felt." -- Bibi Deitz, Coveteur, * "Andrea Bajani's haunting portrait of a mother-son relationship accumulates with the quiet urgency of a snowstorm. The impact is shattering, pure. With themes of distance and dislocation at its heart, this celebrated novel by one of Italy's most talented young writers now resonates in English thanks to Elizabeth Harris' limpid translation." -- Jhumpa Lahiri * "A beautiful, original, and deeply moving work of art. It would be a gift at any time in history and is all the more so now, as the world moves through one of its darker periods." -- Michael Cunningham * "If You Kept a Record of Sins is written with grace and calm control. It deals with loss, especially the loss of a mother, with a chiseled sense of truth. Each image and each moment are captured with exquisite emotional accuracy. The connection between the past and the present is dramatized with skill. The protagonist is, like the author himself, someone on whom nothing is lost." -- Colm Tóibín * "One of Italy's greatest writers . . . An elegy, a requiem, a reckoning, a broken portrait of an absent mother, If You Kept a Record of Sins is a jewel of a book. You will hold it to your heart when you are done." -- Andrew Sean Greer, winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Less * Every search is a search for oneself. In Andrea Bajani's novel, the search for the lost mother reveals not only the true protagonist of the story, but a scathing portrait of Western culture and its greed and selfish lust for power. Bajani has written a wise, lyrical, beautifully stylized book that clings for long in the reader's memory. I couldn't put it down. -- Alberto Manguel * Borgesian brevity, a lesson in intensity. A book of rare beauty. -- Enrique Vila-Matas * "Writing such as this makes me happy again, and it gives me comfort, because it is itself a form of resistance." -- Antonio Tabucchi * "What do you say to the dead, especially if the one who died is the one who bore you? This is the question Andrea Bajani wrestles with in this beautifully rendered letter from a son to his estranged mother. The story is woven together around a handful of central mysteries: who was this person, where did she go, what was left unsaid? The way is marked by a handful of enigmatic images: an egg you can climb inside, a palace you can see from the moon, a river you cross to take a photograph on the far bank, a photograph you will leave for your son, which will tell him all he needs to know." -- Nick Flynn * "A short, stoic novel, of a realism reaching toward hallucination and a squalor leading to despair, a love letter and a requiem for an absent mother--Andrea Bajani's If You Kept a Record of Sins is an unforgettable book. Together with the author, we wait, enthralled, for the break of dawn, when all the lights will go out." -- Mircea Cartarescu * "Part of a brilliant new generation of Italian writers that includes names like Paolo Giordano, Elena Ferrante, and Mirko Sabatino." -- Fernando Hernández Urías * "Bajani is confirmed as a keen and sensitive traveler, one of the best Italian writers of the moment." -- Francis M. Cataluccio
Afterword by
White, Edmund
Lccn
2020-030903
Dewey Decimal
853.92
Intended Audience
Trade
Dewey Edition
23
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