The Collected Stories of Wolfgang Hildesheimer (English and German Edition) - Hardcover

Wolfgang Hildesheimer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0880011319 ISBN 13: 9780880011310

Publisher: Ecco Press, 1987

Synopsis

A collection of nineteen stories about such eccentric characters as an insomniac who makes a midnight visit to his bird dealer to purchase an owl to take to Athens, and a world-famous pianist whose lifelong dream is to be an insurance agent

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, German (translation)

From Publishers Weekly:

The 19 pieces in this collection are less conventional stories than jeux d'esprit, after-dinner performances, fanciful jests told in a mocking tone. In "The End of the World," the guests at a soiree given on her artificial island by the Marchesa Montetristo (nee Waterman from Little Gidding, Ohio) are too engrossed in a recital of rococo music performed by musicians dressed in period costumes to notice that the island is sinking. Music and talk of music is a recurrent strain, jokey, sometimes amusing and always sophisticated, as one would expect of the author of a highly regarded biography of Mozart. The playful tone is that of a literary intellectual and man of wide culture who has no stomach for philistines and charlatans. The targets of the satiric barbs are perhaps too obvious, and the humor is often rather broad in the Teutonic manner, but these pieces are nothing if not civilized.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0880011319
• ISBN 13: 9780880011310
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 197