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Night of Amber - SAVE 50%!

Night of Amber - SAVE 50%!

by Sylvie Germain
Translated by Christine Donougher

$12.50 USD
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Format

Product Details

Verba Mundi

Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-56792-090-1
Pages: 272
Size: 6.12" x 8.7"
Published: July 2000
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The sequel to Sylvie Germain's highly acclaimed The Book of Nights (Godine, 1993; a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Night of Amber continues the grotesque, fantastic, and riveting story of the Peniel family. It ranges from the terror and atrocity of the Algerian War to the frenzied Paris of May '68. Like The Book of Nights, which it brings to a dramatic conclusion, this is "an unusual and passionate" novel (Times Literary Supplement) that skillfully blends myth, history, memorable characters, and pure emotional intensity. The hero of the novel is Charles-Victor Peniel, called "Night-of-Amber," whose lonely and angry childhood eventually lands him in Paris at the time of the May '68 riots. There, Charles-Victor becomes involved with a band of dangerous companions, and in a whirlwind situation that spins uncontrollably into sadism and murder.
Arguably the greatest writer of her generation. —BBC World Service
There is little that can be said which would do justice to the controlled brilliance of Sylvie Germain's writings. Night of Amber is a fantastic book, a wildly inventive novel about childhood, death, war, and much else. It creates a rich fantasy world, yet it is also very moving, and deals with the emotions of grief and love with an understanding and insight which few writers can match. —The [London] Sunday Times
Germain's visualization of her character is first-class and her descriptions of his crazy visions have plenty of vigor and imagination. —Interzone
Original and compelling… takes [magic and realism] to the outer limit and then fearlessly hurls one against the other. —New York Times Book Review (Notable Book of the Year, 1993)
It's hard to avoid thinking of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but the comparison does no disservice to Germain's novel, so powerful is it…a brilliant book, beautifully translated. —Literary Review
Little by little, the novel's miraculous births and deaths project archetypal family situations as unflinchingly as the tales of the Brothers Grimm. —Robert Tayler, Boston Globe
Sylvie Germain
Sylvie Germain was born in Chateauroux in Central France in 1954. She read philosophy at the Sorbonne, being awarded a doctorate. From 1987 until the summer of 1993 she taught philosophy at the French School in Prague. She now lives in Angouleme. Sylvie Germain is the author of thirteen works of fiction. Her work has been translated into twenty one languages and has received worldwide acclaim. Sylvie Germain's first novel The Book of Nights was published to France to great acclaim in 1985. It has won five literary prizes as well as the TLS Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize in England.The novel's story is continued in Night of Amber in 1987. Her third novel Days of Anger won the Prix Femina in 1989. Her next novel Magnus, was written in fragments, and creates a powerful study of the Holocaust and the long shadow it left. It won the Goncourt Lyceen Prize for the best French novel of 2005.
Christine Donougher
Christine Donougher was born in England in 1954. She read English and French at Cambridge and after a career in publishing is now a freelance translator and editor. Her translation of The Book of Nights won the 1992 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize.