Nightmare of the embryos : selected short writings / Mariella Mehr ; translated from the German by Caroline Froh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mehr, Mariella, 1947-2022, Author.

Contributor:

Froh, Caroline, translator.

Series:

New Directions paperbook ; 1656.

New Directions paperbook ; NDP1656

Standardized Title:

Widerworte. English http://id.loc.gov/resources/hubs/3cdfaca0-fbf1-27eb-cf1f-39f9dd8d2387

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Short stories, German--Translations into English.

Short stories, German.

Genre:

short stories.

Short stories.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

105 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2026.

Language Note:

Text in English, translated from German.

Summary:

"Nightmare of the Embryos is a stunning collection of short fictional works by the Swiss writer Mariella Mehr (1947-2022), one of the most groundbreaking German-language writers of her time and simultaneously one of the most neglected. Mehr, a Yenish author, was subjected to the Swiss government-funded assimilationist campaign targeting nomadic or 'Gypsy' populations. Her experiences drove her to use her writing to explore systems of violence, power, and abuse. Over the course of her career, she drew from a dark interior space, inventing new ways to depict pain and write the body. These magnificent, short pieces are drawn from published and unpublished works (many have never even appeared in German) and reveal Mehr as a master stylist. The title story surreally traces Mehr's emergence into adulthood after growing up in Swiss children's homes ('I woke up on a mountain of rubble that should have been called childhood'); another, 'Island Body,' is a love story gone sour, narrated on a beach island surreally by sea grass and sand dunes; 'Did You Hear' describes the writer, who, with her questioning, longing, and fear, visits St. Lawrence's chapel in the Rhine valley where 'for someone like me, brought up Catholic, mortal sin has remained the secret par excellence.' As in a psychic panopticon, these pieces give us glimpses into the Yenish community, nighttime bars, imagined landscapes and dreams, and the Holocaust. Translated brilliantly and with an afterword by Caroline Froh, Nightmare of the Embryos is a rich, imagistic, and linguistically inventive collection of works, by an author who has been described as the 'Joan of Arc of the Yenish people.'"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Memories

When chestnut blossoms grew into your bedroom

Homeland in the word

The tree

We have opinions

"Did you know he wanted a sin he had to a very grave mortal sin"

Nightmare of the embryos

On the aversion to sensuality in clay-piteon shooting, or on the pleasure the hawk takes in killing the hen

Island body, or the beach grass's failed attempt to defeat the north wind's laughter

A severed finger, or the arrival of the whale after Sunday mass

Italian migrant workers are doing construction next door

imparting worldless, empty spaciousness

I would like to leave this borderless white undescribed

It is screaming again

The cell

Came down to the valley, leaving now

The souls of my sisters and brothers are singing in my dreams

Joseph sketch

Always the same

Snow-sister

The checkerboard woman

What do they accuse us of?

B?cklin on Monte Generoso

Eyes

Holzpferdchen's journey

Dorina dreamed.

Notes:

Translation of: Widerworte.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Miller Fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9780811239738

081123973X

OCLC:

1519441760