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Beschreibung
What was it you said again? "You have a strange look in your eyes -- like a bystander observing the world. You're not French, are you?"

So the letter from one near stranger to another begins, and so begins Tonu Onnepalu's novel of a life lived on the margin where East and West uneasily meet. At home in neither his native land nor his adopted country, the unnamed narrator writes from a border state that transcends national boundaries. His letter, this novel, is a precise depiction of that state, of a consciousness forged by poverty so harsh that even the sunlight is a treasure: "I come from a country where the sun is as rare as a diamond, an incredible gold coin which is examined in the light and tested by biting....In the autumn the sun is stashed with potatoes and rutabagas in cellars".

Driven by the need to confess, the narrator recounts the circumstances surrounding the murder of his wealthy male lover. His confession is a painfully sharp rendering of what it means to straddle the lines between East and West, rich and poor, light and dark -- to live flush within "a series of impoverished, dark countries which helplessly bemoan their still-born histories".

A story of misguided passion, Border State offers a rare, brilliantly realized account of a lost man in the grip of Western excess, emotionally crippled by the world that is subsuming his own and inhabiting a West in which "all countries have become imaginary deserts of ruins where crowds of nomads roam from one attraction to the other". The tale of his journey, in which disillusion and murder become inextricably linked, is a compelling map of the vexed territory between scarcity and surfeit, longing and greed, lucidity andmadness.

What was it you said again? "You have a strange look in your eyes -- like a bystander observing the world. You're not French, are you?"

So the letter from one near stranger to another begins, and so begins Tonu Onnepalu's novel of a life lived on the margin where East and West uneasily meet. At home in neither his native land nor his adopted country, the unnamed narrator writes from a border state that transcends national boundaries. His letter, this novel, is a precise depiction of that state, of a consciousness forged by poverty so harsh that even the sunlight is a treasure: "I come from a country where the sun is as rare as a diamond, an incredible gold coin which is examined in the light and tested by biting....In the autumn the sun is stashed with potatoes and rutabagas in cellars".

Driven by the need to confess, the narrator recounts the circumstances surrounding the murder of his wealthy male lover. His confession is a painfully sharp rendering of what it means to straddle the lines between East and West, rich and poor, light and dark -- to live flush within "a series of impoverished, dark countries which helplessly bemoan their still-born histories".

A story of misguided passion, Border State offers a rare, brilliantly realized account of a lost man in the grip of Western excess, emotionally crippled by the world that is subsuming his own and inhabiting a West in which "all countries have become imaginary deserts of ruins where crowds of nomads roam from one attraction to the other". The tale of his journey, in which disillusion and murder become inextricably linked, is a compelling map of the vexed territory between scarcity and surfeit, longing and greed, lucidity andmadness.

Details
Erscheinungsjahr: 2000
Medium: Taschenbuch
Reihe: Writings from an Unbound Europe|Writings from an Unbound Europ
Inhalt: Kartoniert / Broschiert
ISBN-13: 9780810117808
ISBN-10: 0810117800
Sprache: Englisch
Einband: Kartoniert / Broschiert
Autor: Onnepalu, Tonu
Übersetzung: Puhvel, Madli
Hersteller: Northwestern University Press
Verantwortliche Person für die EU: preigu, Ansas Meyer, Lengericher Landstr. 19, D-49078 Osnabrück, mail@preigu.de
Maße: 202 x 122 x 9 mm
Von/Mit: Tonu Onnepalu
Erscheinungsdatum: 30.05.2000
Gewicht: 0,127 kg
Artikel-ID: 133150164

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