Tranquility

Zusatztext Winner of Three Percent's Best Translated Book Award 2009 Reading like the bastard child of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek! Tranquility is political and personal suffering distilled perfectly and transformed into dark! viscid beauty. It is among the most haunted! most honest! and most human novels I have ever read. Brian Evenson A venerableeven Endgame-ishaddition to the literature of unhappy families. Rivka Galchen With impressive force of language! Bartis succeeds in laying bare the ambivalences of his characters! their love-hate relationships and self destructive energies . . . The play that mother and son perform . . . is part Strindberg and part Chekhov! but mostly sheer Beckett or even pure theater of cruelty. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Oddly beautiful and unsettling! the novel boldly illustrates the lengths people go to in securing their own private hells. Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Informationen zum Autor Attila Bartis, born in Targu Mures (Marosvasarhely), Romania, has been hailed by readers across Europe as one of the most highly inventive Central European literary mavericks writing today. After completing his degree in photography, Bartis published his first novel A Séta in 1995 along with a collection of short stories. He has also been awarded the Tibor Déry Prize and the Sandor Márai Prize in 2001 for Tranquility (A nyugalom). He lives in Budapest. Tranquility is his first novel to appear in English. Imre Goldstein has translated from the Hungarian A Book of Memories, The End of a Family Novel, Love, Fire and Knowledge, and A Lovely Tale of Photography by Péter Nádas, A Feast in the Garden by György Konrad, The House of Sorel by Pál Salamon, as well as many plays, stories, poems, and essays from both Hungarian and Hebrew. He received a PhD in drama from CUNY and has written and directed many plays. Goldstein has also published several collections of poetry and a novel, November Spring (Novemberi tavasz). Klappentext Tranquility is a living seismograph of the internal quakes and ruptures of a mother and son trapped within an Oedipal nightmare amidst the suffocating totalitarian embrace of Communist Hungary. Andor Weér, a thirty-six-year-old writer, lives in a cramped apartment with his shut-in mother, Rebeka, who was once among the most celebrated stage actresses in Budapest. Unable to withstand her maniacal tyranny but afraid to leave her alone, their bitter interdependence spirals into a Sartrian hell of hatred, lies, and appeasement. Then Andor meets the beautiful and nurturing Eszter, a woman who seems to have no past, and they fall wildly in love at first sight. With a fulfilling life seemingly within reach for the first time, Andor decides that he is ready to bring Eszter home to meet Mother. Though Bartis's characters are unrepentantly neurotic and dressed in the blackest humor, his empathy for them is profound. A political farce of the highest ironic order, concluding that "freedom is a condition unsuitable for humans," Tranquility is ultimately, at its splanchnic core, a complex psychodrama turned inside out, revealing with visceral splendor the grotesque notion that there's nothing funnier than unhappiness.The funeral was at eleven in the morning on Saturday, though I would have liked to have waited a few more days, in case Eszter showed up, but they wouldn't continue with the refrigeration, not even for extra payment. The woman in the office quoted some new regulation and then asked why not cremate the body; it would be cheaper and much more practical since I could pick a time convenient for everybody in the family, to which I replied that I would not incinerate my mother, let the funeral be on Saturday, and I paid in advance for the three days of storage; she gave me a receipt, entered casket number 704-Saturday-Kerepesi-cemetery into the del...

Winner of Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award 2009

Reading like the bastard child of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, Tranquility is political and personal suffering distilled perfectly and transformed into dark, viscid beauty. It is among the most haunted, most honest, and most human novels I have ever read. —Brian Evenson

A venerable—even Endgame-ish—addition to the literature of unhappy families. —Rivka Galchen

With impressive force of language, Bartis succeeds in laying bare the ambivalences of his characters, their love-hate relationships and self destructive energies . . . The play that mother and son perform . . . is part Strindberg and part Chekhov, but mostly sheer Beckett or even pure theater of cruelty. —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Oddly beautiful and unsettling, the novel boldly illustrates the lengths people go to in securing their own private hells. —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Autorentext
Attila Bartis, born in Targu Mures (Marosvasarhely), Romania, has been hailed by readers across Europe as one of the most highly inventive Central European literary mavericks writing today. After completing his degree in photography, Bartis published his first novel A Séta in 1995 along with a collection of short stories. He has also been awarded the Tibor Déry Prize and the Sandor Márai Prize in 2001 for Tranquility (A nyugalom). He lives in Budapest. Tranquility is his first novel to appear in English.

Imre Goldstein has translated from the Hungarian A Book of Memories, The End of a Family Novel, Love, Fire and Knowledge, and A Lovely Tale of Photography by Péter Nádas, A Feast in the Garden by György Konrad, The House of Sorel by Pál Salamon, as well as many plays, stories, poems, and essays from both Hungarian and Hebrew. He received a PhD in drama from CUNY and has written and directed many plays. Goldstein has also published several collections of poetry and a novel, November Spring (Novemberi tavasz).

Klappentext

Tranquility is a living seismograph of the internal quakes and ruptures of a mother and son trapped within an Oedipal nightmare amidst the suffocating totalitarian embrace of Communist Hungary. Andor Weér, a thirty-six-year-old writer, lives in a cramped apartment with his shut-in mother, Rebeka, who was once among the most celebrated stage actresses in Budapest. Unable to withstand her maniacal tyranny but afraid to leave her alone, their bitter interdependence spirals into a Sartrian hell of hatred, lies, and appeasement. Then Andor meets the beautiful and nurturing Eszter, a woman who seems to have no past, and they fall wildly in love at first sight. With a fulfilling life seemingly within reach for the first time, Andor decides that he is ready to bring Eszter home to meet Mother. Though Bartis's characters are unrepentantly neurotic and dressed in the blackest humor, his empathy for them is profound. A political farce of the highest ironic order, concluding that "freedom is a condition unsuitable for humans," Tranquility is ultimately, at its splanchnic core, a complex psychodrama turned inside out, revealing with visceral splendor the grotesque notion that there's nothing funnier than unhappiness.

Leseprobe
The funeral was at eleven in the morning on Saturday, though I would have liked to have waited a few more days, in case Eszter showed up, but they wouldn’t continue with the refrigeration, not even for extra payment. The woman in the office quoted some new regulation and then asked why not cremate the body; it would be cheaper and much more practical since I could pick a time convenient for everybody in the family, to which I replied that I would not incinerate my mother, let the funeral be on Saturday, and I paid in advance for the three days of storage; she gave me a receipt, entered casket number 704-Saturday-Kerepesi-cemetery into the delivery log, and then put some papers before me, showing with a ballpoint pen where to sign…