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Book Cover for: The Book of Words, Jenny Erpenbeck

The Book of Words

Jenny Erpenbeck

Reader Score

73%

73% of readers

recommend this book

In The Book of Words, Jenny Erpenbeck captures with amazing virtuosity the inner life of a young girl who survives the totalitarian regime of a curiously unnamed South American country (most likely Argentina during its "dirty war"). Raised by parents whose real identity ends up shocking her, the girl comes of age in a country where gunshots are mistaken for blown tires, innocent citizens are dragged off buses, and tortured and disappeared friends and family return to visit her from the dead.

Book Details

  • Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
  • Publish Date: Dec 1st, 2007
  • Pages: 112
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.04in - 5.39in - 0.32in - 0.25lb
  • EAN: 9780811217064
  • Categories: • Literary• Coming of Age• Magical Realism

About the Author

Bernofsky, Susan: - Susan Bernofsky is the acclaimed translator of Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and Jenny Erpenbeck, and the recipient of many awards, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and the Hermann Hesse Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation at Columbia University and lives in New York.
Erpenbeck, Jenny: -

An epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature, Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. She studied theater at the Humboldt University in Berlin and directed operas in the nineties. She is also author of such books as The Old Child & Other Stories, The Book of Words, and The End of Days.

Praise for this book

Her restrained unvarnished prose is overwhelming.--Nicole Krauss
Jenny Erpenbeck should be praised for asking us to learn from the marginalized what the majority apparently will not see.-- "London Times Literary Supplement"
Jenny Erpenbeck is a rising star of the German literary scene.-- "Cosmopolitan"