34%OFF
Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.
The Tower: Tales from a Lost Country
Uwe Tellkamp
€ 25.99
€ 17.27
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for The Tower: Tales from a Lost Country
Paperback. Num Pages: 1024 pages. BIC Classification: FV. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 131 x 199 x 47. Weight in Grams: 696.
In derelict Dresden a cultivated, middle-class family does all it can to cope amid the Communist downfall. This striking tapestry of the East German experience is told through the tangled lives of a soldier, surgeon, nurse and publisher. With evocative detail, Uwe Tellkamp masterfully reveals the myriad perspectives of the time as people battled for individuality, retreated to nostalgia, chose to conform, or toed the perilous line between East and West. Poetic, heartfelt and dramatic, The Tower vividly resurrects the sights, scents and sensations of life in the GDR as it hurtled towards 9 November 1989. Uwe Tellkamp was born in 1968 in Dresden. After completing his military service, he lost his place to study medicine on the grounds of 'political sabotage'. He was arrested in 1989, but went on to study medicine in Liepzig, Dresden and New York, later becoming a surgeon. He has won numerous regional prizes for poetry, as well as the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for The Sleep in the Clocks. In 2008, he won the German Book Prize for The Tower.
Product Details
Publisher
Penguin Books Ltd
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2016
Condition
New
Weight
695g
Number of Pages
1024
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780141979250
SKU
V9780141979250
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
Ref
99-46
About Uwe Tellkamp
Uwe Tellkamp was born in 1968 in Dresden. After completing his military service, he lost his place to study medicine on the grounds of 'political unreliability'. He was arrested in 1989 but went on to study medicine in Liepzig, Dresden and New York, later becoming a surgeon. He has won numerous regional prizes for poetry, as well as the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for The Sleep in the Clocks. In 2008, he won the German Book Prize for The Tower.
Reviews for The Tower: Tales from a Lost Country
Chosen by Boyd Tonkin
Independent - Best Fiction in Translation
There's no way to recommend The Tower enough
The Gryphon
So blunt, so radical, so void of illusion - life in the GDR has never before been portrayed in such a meticulous way . . . The struggle for materials, the camp mentality, and the ubiquitous mistrust: the GDR rises again in all of its now-almost-forgotten guises
Die Zeit
Set in the ivory tower inhabited by the educated Dresden bourgeoisie, Uwe Tellkamp's The Tower paints a grandiose panorama of the demise of the GDR
Die Welt
In Mike Mitchell's English, Tellkamp's prose is polished, vivid and observationally acute
Telegraph
A lush tapestry of characters, composed of a thousand scenes and situations, and punctuated by poetic digressions, The Tower brings a German ghost to life . . . The Tower stands as a monument against forgetting
Le Monde
The awfulness of life under the socialist regime is brilliantly done
Sunday Times Culture
Memories and impressions grow wild across the lattice of the plot, bringing the symphonic book to - but never over - the brink of cacophony
Jane Yager
The Times Literary Supplement
Tellkamp depicts the grotesque idiosyncrasies of the GDR's bureaucracy. He speaks with the slowness and sobriety that comes with growing up in a system where the wrong word at the wrong time can set one's existence ablaze...he displays masterfully the intellectual shackles and the sheer suffocation the younger generation of intellectuals must have felt in the twilight of the GDR
Standpoint
Independent - Best Fiction in Translation
There's no way to recommend The Tower enough
The Gryphon
So blunt, so radical, so void of illusion - life in the GDR has never before been portrayed in such a meticulous way . . . The struggle for materials, the camp mentality, and the ubiquitous mistrust: the GDR rises again in all of its now-almost-forgotten guises
Die Zeit
Set in the ivory tower inhabited by the educated Dresden bourgeoisie, Uwe Tellkamp's The Tower paints a grandiose panorama of the demise of the GDR
Die Welt
In Mike Mitchell's English, Tellkamp's prose is polished, vivid and observationally acute
Telegraph
A lush tapestry of characters, composed of a thousand scenes and situations, and punctuated by poetic digressions, The Tower brings a German ghost to life . . . The Tower stands as a monument against forgetting
Le Monde
The awfulness of life under the socialist regime is brilliantly done
Sunday Times Culture
Memories and impressions grow wild across the lattice of the plot, bringing the symphonic book to - but never over - the brink of cacophony
Jane Yager
The Times Literary Supplement
Tellkamp depicts the grotesque idiosyncrasies of the GDR's bureaucracy. He speaks with the slowness and sobriety that comes with growing up in a system where the wrong word at the wrong time can set one's existence ablaze...he displays masterfully the intellectual shackles and the sheer suffocation the younger generation of intellectuals must have felt in the twilight of the GDR
Standpoint