BOOK DETAILS
Trade paper ISBN-13: 978-1941147818 List Price: $17.99 U.S. Pages: 184 Published: 2015 |
Kleinzeit (1974)
Russell Hoban Due to copyright restrictions, this title is only available to customers in the U.S. and Canada.
Book Description
When Kleinzeit, an advertising copywriter whose name means either ‘hero’ or ‘smalltime’, depending on who you ask, picks up a sheet of yellow paper in the London Underground, he doesn’t suspect that it will cause him to be fired from his job and admitted to hospital with geometrical pain in his hypotenuse. In Hospital Ward A4, Kleinzeit discovers he is not alone: his fellow patients also suffer from nonsensical but possibly deadly ailments which all have something strange in common. With the help of the beautiful night nurse and armed with a glockenspiel and a paperback of Thucydides, Kleinzeit escapes from hospital and finds himself plunged headlong into a wild and flickering netherworld of mystery involving the Underground, an enigmatic red-bearded man, a key, sheets of yellow paper, and Death himself ... A hilarious, surreal and completely unpredictable novel about one man’s search for reality, Kleinzeit (1974) is one of Russell Hoban's best-loved works. |
reviews
‘Russell Hoban is one of our greatest, timeless novelists.’ – London Times
‘Hoban is as funny and unusual as any writer around ... Kleinzeit is a sort of holy fool, a fierce, lonely intelligence desperately trying to make sense of a hopeless world. A tour de force.’ – Evening Standard
‘Hoban is an extraordinarily talented novelist, an original mind in the era of mass-produced philosophers.’ – Irish Times
‘Delightful ... Kleinzeit's language is forever astonishing.’ - Boston Globe
‘Hoban is as funny and unusual as any writer around ... Kleinzeit is a sort of holy fool, a fierce, lonely intelligence desperately trying to make sense of a hopeless world. A tour de force.’ – Evening Standard
‘Hoban is an extraordinarily talented novelist, an original mind in the era of mass-produced philosophers.’ – Irish Times
‘Delightful ... Kleinzeit's language is forever astonishing.’ - Boston Globe
ALSO AVAILABLE THROUGH ONLINE RETAILERS
MORE TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR
|
|
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Photograph courtesy of Lisa Greenstein
Russell Hoban was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania in 1925, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. After high school, Hoban attended art school in Philadelphia and served in the army in Europe during the Second World War, earning a Bronze Star. He married his first wife in 1944 and worked as a commercial illustrator, storyboard artist and television art director from the late 1940s until 1957, and for the next decade as a freelance illustrator for magazines and advertising agencies.
In 1959, Hoban began publishing children’s books; he would write several dozen over the next few decades, the best known of which are the series of books featuring Frances the badger and the classic The Mouse and his Child (1968).
In the late 1960s, Hoban moved to London, in part, he said, to summon inspiration from the ghosts of Victorian England. There he began to write the adult fiction that would define the rest of his career. His first novel for adults, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, was published in 1973 and earned favorable reviews and comparisons to the fantasies of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. It was followed by Kleinzeit (1974), a surreal and comic novel that is among his best loved and of which Hoban said, “I think there’s most of me in Kleinzeit.” The post-apocalyptic Riddley Walker (1980), told in an invented future dialect of English, is regarded by most critics as Hoban’s masterpiece and is considered by many to be one of the great English novels of the 20th century. Other notable works include Turtle Diary (1975), adapted for a 1985 film version starring Ben Kingsley and Glenda Jackson, the metaphysical fantasy Pilgermann (1983) and The Medusa Frequency (1987).
Later in life, Hoban began to publish novels at a more prolific pace, producing an additional ten volumes after age 70. Regrettably, many of these remain unpublished in the United States; however, several of them, including Fremder (1996), Amaryllis Night and Day (2001) and The Bat Tattoo (2002) are extraordinary and deserve rediscovery. Russell Hoban died in 2011 at age 86.
In 1959, Hoban began publishing children’s books; he would write several dozen over the next few decades, the best known of which are the series of books featuring Frances the badger and the classic The Mouse and his Child (1968).
In the late 1960s, Hoban moved to London, in part, he said, to summon inspiration from the ghosts of Victorian England. There he began to write the adult fiction that would define the rest of his career. His first novel for adults, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, was published in 1973 and earned favorable reviews and comparisons to the fantasies of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. It was followed by Kleinzeit (1974), a surreal and comic novel that is among his best loved and of which Hoban said, “I think there’s most of me in Kleinzeit.” The post-apocalyptic Riddley Walker (1980), told in an invented future dialect of English, is regarded by most critics as Hoban’s masterpiece and is considered by many to be one of the great English novels of the 20th century. Other notable works include Turtle Diary (1975), adapted for a 1985 film version starring Ben Kingsley and Glenda Jackson, the metaphysical fantasy Pilgermann (1983) and The Medusa Frequency (1987).
Later in life, Hoban began to publish novels at a more prolific pace, producing an additional ten volumes after age 70. Regrettably, many of these remain unpublished in the United States; however, several of them, including Fremder (1996), Amaryllis Night and Day (2001) and The Bat Tattoo (2002) are extraordinary and deserve rediscovery. Russell Hoban died in 2011 at age 86.