The shunra and the schmetterling / Yoel Hoffmann ; translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoffmann, Yoel, 1937-2023

Contributor:

Cole, Peter.

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

New Directions paperbook

Standardized Title:

Shunra ṿeha-shmeṭerling. Hebrew

Language:

English

Hebrew

Genre:

Fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

1 volume (unpaged) ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions Pub., 2004.

Summary:

Shunra is Aramaic for "cat." Schmetterling is German for "butterfly." In Yoel Hoffmann's new book, these and numerous other creatures, cultures, and languages meet in a magical shimmering hymn to childhood. Hoffmann traces his hero's developing consciousness of the ways-and-wonders of the world as though he were peering through a tremendous kaleidoscope: all that was perceived, all that is remembered, is rendered in fluid fragments of color and light. With remarkable delicacy and sweep, Hoffmann captures childhood from the amazed inside out, and without the backward-looking wash of grown-up sentiment. Instead, the boy's deadpan registration of the human comedy around him is offered up as strangely magical fact. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, The Shunra & the Schmetterling is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction--a small marvel of a book, and one of the author's finest to date.

ISBN:

0811215679

OCLC:

54066079