The Weight of Things - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1786632969 ISBN 13: 9781786632968

Publisher: Verso Books

Synopsis

A lost tale of domestic nightmares This rediscovered modernist classic tells the story of a young woman who, while still traumatized by the Second World War, struggles to resign herself to domesticity and motherhood. Slowly consumed by a weight of circumstances beyond her control, Berta endures the deep hypocrisies and the abiding cruelty of everyday life, behind which bloody tragedy threatens to break free. The Weight of Things was Fritz's debut novel and the first of her books to be translated into English. It won her tremendous acclaim and was awarded the Robert Walser Prize in 1978. Fritz subsequently embarked on a brilliant and ambitious literary project called The Fortress , which earned her cult status, comparisons to James Joyce, and admirers including Elfriede Jelinek and W. G. Sebald. In her lyrical debut, she reveals herself as a brilliant and masterful satirist, whose work is philosophically minded yet raging with anger and wit.

About this title

About the Author

Marianne Fritz (1948-2007) was an Austrian novelist. Her first book, THE WEIGHT OF THINGS, marked the beginning of an ambitious cycle of novels with the overarching title of Festung, or "The Fortress," comprising Das Kind der Gewalt und die Sterne der Romani, Dessen Sprache du nicht verstehst, and the gargantuan Naturgemäß, the third volume of which she was preparing at the time of her death.

Translator Adrian Nathan West is the author of The Aesthetics of Degradation as well as the translator of numerous works of contemporary European literature. He lives between Spain and the United States with the cinema critic Beatriz Leal Riesco.

Review

"Fritz won the Kafka Prize in 2001 and her work, like his, is both deeply upsetting and profound. Her translator writes in his 'Afterword' that 'there is a class of artists whose work is so strange and extraordinary that it eschews all gradations of the good and the mediocre: genius and madness are the only descriptors adequate to its scale,' and he situates Fritz quite forcefully in this class. He seems to be correct." CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"A harrowing book about the horrors of motherhood, jealousy, and war trauma." KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Not an easy read, but surely an important one." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"If the presentation, shifting back and forth across the years and events, seems at first confusing it ultimately works very well, and what seems like a low-intensity narrative comes to pack a devastating punch." THE COMPLETE REVIEW

"Fritz's poetic auscultation of this weight, this madness, is absolutely astounding, both in its scope and its subtlety. It is difficult to summarize her methods, as they are woven so seamlessly into the narrative: its pacing, its movement through time, coalescing into a sensory experience. She describes a palpable environment of disorientation and loss, set against a tapestry of gray skies, war-ruined structures, and dark woods into which people disappear." ENTROPY

"Starts out simply and gently and then wades into resonant darkness. A tiny, shattering masterpiece." BRIAN EVENSON

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• ISBN 10: 1786632969
• ISBN 13: 9781786632968
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144