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In search of lost books / Giorgio van Straten ; translated from the Italian by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Van Straten, Giorgio, 1955- author.
- Standardized Title:
- Storie di libri perduti. English
- Language:
- English
- Italian
- Subjects (All):
- Lost books.
- Lost literature.
- Literature, Modern--History and criticism.
- Literature, Modern.
- Physical Description:
- 130 pages ; 20 cm
- Place of Publication:
- London : Pushkin Press, 2018.
- Summary:
- The gripping and elegiac stories of eight lost books, and the mysterious circumstances behind their disappearances.
- "They exist as a rumour or a fading memory. They vanished from history leaving scarcely a trace, lost to fire, censorship, theft, war or deliberate destruction, yet those who seek them are convinced they will find them. This is the story of one man's quest for eight mysterious lost books. Taking us from Florence to Regency London, the Russian Steppe to British Columbia, Giorgio van Straten unearths stories of infamy and tragedy, glimmers of hope and bitter twists of fate. There are, among others, the rediscovered masterpiece that he read but failed to save from destruction; the Hemingway novel that vanished in a suitcase at the Gare du Lyon; the memoirs of Lord Byron, burnt to avoid a scandal; the Magnum Opus of Bruno Schulz, disappeared along with its author in wartime Poland; the mythical Sylvia Plath novel that may one day become reality. As gripping as a detective novel, as moving as an elegy, this is the tale of a love affair with the impossible, of the things that slip away from us but which, sometimes, live again in the stories we tell"--Page 4 of cover.
- Contents:
- Introduction: The risk of an impossibility
- Florence, 2010 : the book that I actually read (but did not photocopy)
- London, 1824 : 'scandalous' memoirs
- Paris, 1922 : memory is the best critic
- Poland, 1942 : the Messiah has arrived in Sambor
- Moscow, 1852 : a 'divine comedy' of the steppes
- British Columbia, 1944 : it isn't easy living in a cabin
- Catalonia, 1940 : a heavy black suitcase
- London, 1963 : I guess you could say I've a call.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 123-126) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9781782273745
- 1782273743
- OCLC:
- 1055766469
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