Leaving Sardinia: A Novel - Hardcover

Treichel, Hans-Ulrich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375422617 ISBN 13: 9780375422614

Publisher: Pantheon, 2004

Synopsis

An ordinary young man and a hopeless romantic with a host of private obsessions, mostly about sex, Albert falls in love with Elena, a beautician from Sardinia, and accompanies her back to Sardinia, where things begin to fall apart. By the author of Lost. 12,500 first printing.

About this title

From Booklist:

The contemporary habit of laughing at pain may lead to this devastatingly critical short novel being called a comedy. Not that the trials of its grad-student protagonist, Albert, aren't ludicrous. A German enraptured with Italy, he fails ignominiously in his attempts to live in Rome, only to discover a bit of Italy--Sardinia, to be precise--back in Berlin: a harshly lit, sparsely patronized bar in the backroom of which a party of male regulars endlessly gambles. Serving them in back, and Albert and whomever else out front, is beautiful, noncommittal Elena, with whom Albert becomes laconically involved. The relationship persists despite competition for Elena, and when she, having saved enough to set up as a cosmetologist, goes home, Albert goes, too. But it doesn't work out because--and here is the dismal reality that Treichel's cool dissection of his feckless protagonist discloses--Albert doesn't know what love is. He just knows sex, and it isn't enough to build a life around. One closes the book wondering to what extent we aren't all Alberts. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0375422617
• ISBN 13: 9780375422614
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256