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English
NYRB Classics
12 September 2023
A brief, potent, and audaciously written novel about a husband caring for his dying wife, and the shifting nature of their relationship as the end approaches.

A brief, potent, and audaciously written novel about a husband caring for his dying wife, and the shifting nature of their relationship as the end approaches.

Anna, an Englishwoman, has married, quite late in life, a merchant marine officer, an Italian. Beginning-and ending-at a point shortly before her death, the story told in The Limit focuses attention on her past and his future along lines of narrowing perspective. In the ten years of this odd couple's life together, the limits of devotion have somehow been reached. And yet, when Anna can no longer speak and appears to understand nothing, Ilario feels closer to her than ever. But Anna, so old, ill, and wasted, is a child again.

This altogether singular, remarkable novel has been as good as unobtainable for decades. Its reissue has been long awaited by Rosalind Belben's admirers.
By:  
Introduction by:  
Imprint:   NYRB Classics
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 203mm,  Width: 126mm,  Spine: 8mm
Weight:   136g
ISBN:   9781681377520
ISBN 10:   1681377527
Pages:   112
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Rosalind Belben's work has been consistently admired. Her novels include Choosing Spectacles, Is Beauty Good, Hound Music and Dreaming of Dead People. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews for The Limit

“I can’t think of anyone writing in English (with the possible exception of Beckett) whose prose is so beautiful.” —David Plante “The grotesquerie is Swiftian, but the compassion is uniquely Miss Belben’s. The Limit becomes a great tribute to the overcoming strength of human love, and to the resilience of a human being even at the extremest margins of life. The book possesses the dying woman so amply as to make her, as we say—broaching fiction’s deepest paradox—live.” —Valentine Cunningham, The New Statesman “I’ve always admired the work of Rosalind Belben, a truly original writer, who has gone her own way all her life.” —Gabriel Josipovici


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