The death of a beekeeper

Lars Gustafsson

ISBN 10: 0811208109 / ISBN 13: 9780811208109

Published by Published for J. Laughlin by New Directions Pub. Corp., New York, N.Y., 1981

About this Item

First edition in this translation. Near fine paperback copy; edges very slightly dust-dulled and nicked. Slight discolouration to page edges. Remains well-preserved overall; tight, bright, and clean. Physical Description; 163 pages ; 21 cm. Subjects; Cancer. Cancer Fiction. Fiction. Fictional Work. Neoplasms. Novels. Sweden. Sweden Fiction. Novels. 1 Kg.

Seller Inventory # 455068

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The death of a beekeeper
• Publisher: Published for J. Laughlin by New Directions Pub. Corp., New York, N.Y.
• Publication Date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811208109
• ISBN 13: 9780811208109
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Weight: 1 kilogram

About this title

Synopsis

The celebrated Swedish author's American debut, The Death of a Beekeeper is a gentle, courageous, and sometimes comic meditation on living with pain.

In the beginning of the winter thaw, Lars Lennart Westin has learned that he has cancer and will not live through spring. Told through the journals of this schoolteacher turned apiarist, The Death of a Beekeeper, is his gentle, courageous, and sometimes comic meditation on living with pain. Westin has refused to surrender the time left him to the impersonation of a hospital, preferring to take his fate upon himself, to continue solitary, reflective life in the Swedish countryside. "I took little walks and noticed that in the last months the pain had actually colored the landscape in a peculiar way. Here and there is a tree where it really hurt, here and there is a fence against whose post I struck my hand in passing." His inner landscape is also re-forming: "This constant concern with an indefinite dangerous secret in one’s own body, this feeling that some dramatic change is taking place, without one’s being able to have any clarity about what really is... reminds me of prepuberty. I even recognize this gentle feeling of shame again." The relentlessly intimate burning in his gut provides a point of psychic detachment, rendering his survival "a unique art form whose level of difficulty is so high that no one exists who can practice it.” Yet he insists, "We begin again. We never give up."

About the Author

Lars Gustafsson is one of Sweden's leading and most prolific poets.