Brother in Ice - Softcover

Kopf, Alicia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1911508202 ISBN 13: 9781911508205

Publisher: And Other Stories, 2018

Synopsis

“She thought that it was precisely when things get uncomfortable or can’t be shown that something interesting comes to light. That is the point of no return, the point that must be reached, the point you reach after crossing the border of what has already been said, what has already been seen. It’s cold out there.”

This hybrid novel―part research notes, part fictionalised diary, and part travelogue―uses the stories of polar exploration to make sense of the protagonist’s own concerns as she comes of age as an artist, a daughter, and a sister to an autistic brother. Conceptually and emotionally compelling, it advances fearlessly into the frozen emotional lacunae of difficult family relationships. Deserved winner of multiple awards upon its Catalan and Spanish publication, Brother in Ice is a richly rewarding journey into the unknown.

About this title

About the Author:

Alicia Kopf, born Girona, 1982, holds degrees in Fine Arts and Comparative Literature. Brother in Ice is the culmination of an artistic cycle of several exhibitions entitled Àrticantàrtic, including a 2013 solo show in Barcelona, Seal Sounds Under The Floor. She has participated in many prestigious exhibitions. Her awards include the GAC-DKV Prize for best young artist gallery exhibition, the Premi Documenta literary prize, and the Premi Llibreter awarded by booksellers.

Based between Barcelona and Brooklyn, Mara Faye Lethem translates from Catalan and Spanish. She has translated many contemporary novelists, and is a reviewer for the New York Times. Two of her translations were nominated for the 2016 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Review:

"This is fast, fluid, exciting narrative; random, philosophical, alive, questioning, full of precise set pieces, sensations, regret, emotion, self-doubt, defiance, curiosity and a feel for history, fact and human behaviour . . . Brother in Ice is a living book and one to give your most discerning friends." Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

"Brother in Ice is actually a culmination of Alicia Kopf's art exhibitions. Prose weaves around line drawings, archival photos and diary entries, creating a style of writing that reassesses the seemingly arid and barren landscapes of frozen climes to instead encompass what Kopf describes as "live beings with voluptuous, nourishing forms".' Alexandra Kreese, The Story of Things podcast

"In another country this book would have changed the course of its history." Enrique Vila-Matas, author of The Illogic of Kassel

"As if by sleight of hand, Kopf displays a wide range of emotions before us. Like the Poles, they are constantly shifting, and inevitably epic." Agustín Fernández Mallo, author of Nocilla Dream

"In an epistolic, polar update of Melville's Moby-Dick, Alicia Kopf's genre-defying book rises as clear and cold as an Arctic sea, floating with ideas that, like icebergs, are buoyed up by meaning and memory below their surface. This is an icy dissection of actuality and history, a frozen etymology of meaning. Slipping from Catalunya to the Ultima Thule, echoing a rapidly changing environment, Brother in Ice deals in personal retrieval and magical supposition in the whiteness of a disappearing world. In the process, it achieves a fugitive poetry all of its own.’ Philip Hoare, author of The Whale

"A unconventional look at a world that makes [Kopf] feel uncomfortable . . . a text in which the feats of polar explorers give way to a central autobiographical story about the equally harsh and arid trips through family relationships and within oneself." El Pais

"Simultaneously serious and light, incidental and yet trascendental." El Periodico

"A book, part essay and part autobiography, that is also a chronicle of a generation stalled in a world without horizons or certainties . . . An unusual book and the deserving winner of the Premi Documenta literary prize." La Vanguardia

About this edition

• Publisher: And Other Stories
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1911508202
• ISBN 13: 9781911508205
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320