Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer (Paperback)

Ernst Weiss

ISBN 10: 0980033039 / ISBN 13: 9780980033038

Published by Archipelago Books, New York, 2010

About this Item

Paperback. First published in 1931 and now appearing for the first time in English, Georg Letham- Physician and Murderer is a disquieting anatomy of a deviant mind in the tradition of Crime and Punishment. Letham, the treacherously unreliable narrator, is a depraved bacteriologist whose murder of his wife is, characteristically, both instinctual and premeditated. Convicted and exiled, he attempts to atone for his crimes through science, conceiving of the book we are reading as an empirical report on himself-whose ultimate purpose may be to substitute for a conscience. Yet Letham can neither understand nor master himself. His crimes are crimes of passion, and his passions remain more or less untouched by his reason-in fact they are constantly intruding on his "report," rigorous as it is intended to be. Both feverish and chilling, Georg Letham explores the limits of reason and the tensions between objectivity and subjectivity. Moving from an unnamed Central European city to arctic ice floes to a tropical island prison, this layered novel-with its often grotesquely comic tone and arresting images-invites us into the darkest chambers of the human psyche. Mixing Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock with Dostoevsky, a chilling exploration of a deviant mind. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780980033038

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer (Paperback)
• Publisher: Archipelago Books, New York
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0980033039
• ISBN 13: 9780980033038
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

First published in 1931 and now appearing for the first time in English, Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer is a disquieting anatomy of a deviant mind in the tradition of Crime and Punishment. Letham, the treacherously unreliable narrator, is a depraved bacteriologist whose murder of his wife is, characteristically, both instinctual and premeditated. Convicted and exiled, he attempts to atone for his crimes through science, conceiving of the book we are reading as an empirical report on himself—whose ultimate purpose may be to substitute for a conscience. Yet Letham can neither understand nor master himself. His crimes are crimes of passion, and his passions remain more or less untouched by his reason—in fact they are constantly intruding on his "report," rigorous as it is intended to be. Both feverish and chilling, Georg Letham explores the limits of reason and the tensions between objectivity and subjectivity. Moving from an unnamed Central European city to arctic ice floes to a tropical island prison, this layered novel—with its often grotesquely comic tone and arresting images—invites us into the darkest chambers of the human psyche.

About the Author

Ernst Weiss, born in 1882 in Bruunn, Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a trained physician. His years as a ship’s doctor are apparent in much of the detail in Georg Letham. Weiss’ work emerges from an expressionist background but belongs with the modernist classics.

Joel Rotenberg translated Chess Story and The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s The Lord Chandos Letter for the New York Review Books Classics series.