Agnes: A Novel - Hardcover

Stamm, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159051811X ISBN 13: 9781590518113

Publisher: Other Press, 2016

Synopsis

Peter Stamm's best-selling debut novel, Agnes, now available for the first time in the United States.
 
"Write a story about me," Agnes said to her lover, "so I know what you think of me." So he started to write the story of everything that had happened to them from the moment they met.
    
At first, he works with Agnes to create a narrative that is most true to life, but as time passes and he grows more enamored with the narrative he has begun, he continues writing on his own, imagining a future for them after he reaches the present. Happy couples do not necessarily make for compelling reading, and as Agnes sees the unexpected plot he has planned for her, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur.
    
In this unforgettable and haunting novel Stamm incisively examines the power of storytelling to influence thought and behavior, reaching a chilling conclusion.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Stamm is the author of the novels All Days Are Night, Seven Years, On a Day Like This, and Unformed Landscape, and the short-story collections We’re Flying and In Strange Gardens and Other Stories. His prize-winning books have been translated into more than thirty 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 Hölderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland.
 
Michael Hofmann has translated the work of Gottfried Benn, Hans Fallada, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and many others. In 2012 he was awarded the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His Selected Poems was published in 2009, and Where Have You Been? Selected Essays in 2014. He lives in Florida and London.

Review:

“A kind of parable...simple and haunting.” —New York Review of Books
 
“Agnes is a moody, unsettled, and elusive little fable—and it’s always interesting.” —Wall Street Journal
 
“A haunting psychological study.” —The New Yorker
 
“A provocative and mesmerizing book.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“An urgent and unsettling read.” —Library Journal
 
“This short novel should appeal to readers enchanted by [Stamm’s] elliptical style...an extended meditation on the interrelationship between life and fiction.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This tale moves briskly and plausibly toward the dark conclusion it announces at the outset. Stamm manages to dramatize the truism that writers become caught up in the world their words create, that readers become enamored of characters in fiction, and both mourn when characters suffer...gripping...unsettling.” —Booklist

About this edition

• Publisher: Other Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 159051811X
• ISBN 13: 9781590518113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160