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Unformed Landscape

A Novel

Peter Stamm Michael Hofmann

$39.99

Paperback

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English
Other Press LLC
17 April 2006
Unformed Landscape begins in a small village on a fjord in the Finnmark, on the northeastern

coast of Norway, where the borders between Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia lie

covered in snow and darkness, where the real borders are between day and night, summer

and winter, and between people.

Here, a sensitive young woman like Kathrine finds

few outlets for her desires. Half Norwegian, half Sami (an indigenous people), Kathrine

works for the customs office inspecting the fishing boats arriving regularly in the

harbor. She is in her late 20s, has a son from an early marriage, and has drifted

into a second loveless marriage to a man whose cold and dominating conventionality

forms a bold stroke through the unformed landscape of her life. After she makes a

discovery about her husband that deeply wounds her, Kathrine cuts loose from her

moorings and her confusion and sets off in search of herself.

Her journey begins

aboard a ship headed south, taking her below the Arctic Circle for the first time

in her life. Kathrine makes her way to France and has the bittersweet experience

of a love affair that flares and dies quickly, her starved senses rewarded by the

shimmering beauty of Paris. Through a series of poignant encounters, Kathrine is

led to the richer life she was meant to have and is brave enough to claim.

Using

simple words strung together in a melodic alphabet, Peter Stamm introduces us, through

a series of intimate sketches, to the heart of an unforgettable woman. Her story

speaks eloquently about solitude, the fragility of love, lost illusions, and self-discovery.
By:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   Other Press LLC
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 178mm,  Width: 126mm,  Spine: 10mm
Weight:   154g
ISBN:   9781590512265
ISBN 10:   159051226X
Pages:   168
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Peter Stammis the author of the novelsThe Sweet Indifference of theWorld,Tothe Back of Beyond, All Days Are Night, Seven Years, On a Day Like This, Unformed Landscape, andAgnes, and the short-story collectionsWe're FlyingandIn Strange Gardens and Other Stories. His award-winning books have been translated into more than forty languages. For his entire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigious Friedrich H lderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland. Michael Hofmann has translated the work of Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Peter Stephan Jungk, and many others. He is the author of several books of poems and a book of essays, Behind the Lines, and is the editor of the anthology Twentieth-Century German Poetry. In 2012 he was awarded the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida and London.

Reviews for Unformed Landscape: A Novel

The New Republic Online Chlo� Schama As the title of his novel Unformed Landscape (Other Press, 2005) and his collection of short stories Strange Gardens and Other Stories (Other Press, 2006) imply, Swiss author Peter Stamm's characters are deeply affected by their surroundings. The Norwegian fishing village where Katharine, the central character in Unformed Landscapes, resides is a gray place, enlivened only by her increasingly complicated affairs and fantasies of life elsewhere. Like the landscapes of his novels, Stamm's prose is spare and graceful. Unformed Landscape is a masterpiece of minimalism but with deep undercurrents... --Boston Review


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