Michael Hofmann es un aclamado poeta y traductor cuya obra se caracteriza por sus agudas perspectivas sobre la condición humana y su magistral dominio del lenguaje. Su poesía y ensayos profundizan en las intrincadas relaciones entre cultura, identidad y memoria, a menudo con un ingenio irónico y una profunda empatía. La amplitud de Hofmann como traductor es notable, abarcando obras tanto clásicas como contemporáneas, en las que captura hábilmente la voz y el espíritu únicos de los textos originales. Sus escritos son admirados por su profundidad intelectual y su gracia poética.
The first poem in Gottfried Benn's first book, Morgue (1912) - written in an hour, published in a week, and notorious ever after, or so the poet claimed - with its scandalous closing image of an aster sewn into a corpse by a playful medical student, set him on his celebrated path.
Exploring the relationship between a reader and literature, the essays in this collection provide sharp insights to help readers appreciate and reconsider various writers. Michael Hofmann, known for his critical acumen, offers guidance on what to read and how to engage with texts, all while sharing his personal journey and affection for books. Through his reflections, readers are invited to deepen their understanding of contemporary literature and the joy it can bring.
Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the nervous Frau Rosenthal, the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm, and the unassuming working-class couple Otto and Anna Quangel.
A través del ejemplo de la familia Trota, vinculada al emperador Francisco José de manera casi legendaria, Joseph Roth describe la decadencia austrohúngara y las condiciones sociales de su país en el siglo XVIII. La novela narra la historia de tres generaciones: el fundador de la dinastía salva la vida al joven emperador durante la batalla de Solferino, su hijo se convierte en fiel servidor y funcionario del monarca y el nieto hará carrera en el ejército, abrumado por el peso de su apellido. La marcha Radetzky es uno de los grandes clásicos de la novela histórica y la que mejor ha reflejado la decadencia de un imperio.
This collection of poems touches on personal and political watersheds and examines various kinds of patrimony. It is characterized by a drastic honesty and rhythmic force.
Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the great works in classical literature, and a primary source for our knowledge of much of classic mythology, in which the relentless theme of transformation stands as a primary metaphor for the often cataclysmic dynamics of life itself. For this book, British poets Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun have invited more than forty leading English-language poets to create their own idiomatic contemporary versions of some of the most famous and notorious myths from the Metamorphoses. Apollo and Daphne, Pyramus and Thisbe, Proserpina, Marsyas, Medea, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice--these and many other immortal tales are given fresh and startling life in exciting new versions. The contributors--among them Fleur Adcock, Amy Clampitt, Jorie Graham, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Lawrence Joseph, Kenneth Koch, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Les Murray, Robert Pinsky, Frederick Seidel, Charles Simic, and C. K. Williams--constitute an impressive roster of today's major poets. After Ovid is a powerful re-envisioning of a fundamental work of literature as well as a remarkable affirmation of the current state of poetry in English.
Approaching his sixtieth birthday, the poet explores where he finds himself, geographically and in life, treating with wit and compassion such universal themes as ageing and memory, place, and the difficulty for the individual to exist at all in an ever bigger and more bestial world.
La historia del joven Gregorio Samsa, convertido de la noche a la mañana en un insecto, tiene elementos de la peor pesadilla (la naturalidad con la que asume la transformación irreversible, la inminencia del inevitable desenlace), pero puede ser leída como una parábola sobre la vida familiar. No es extraño entonces que La metamorfosis sea hoy un texto de culto entre los jóvenes.
Thomas Bernhard combined a searing wit and an unwavering gaze into the human condition. His debut novel, Frost, marked the beginning of one of the century’s most provocative literary careers. Visceral, raw, singular, and unforgettable, Frost is the story of a friendship between a young man beginning his medical career and a painter in his final days. The youth has accepted an unusual assignment, to travel to a miserable mining town in the middle of nowhere in order to clinically—and secretly—observe and report on his mentor’s reclusive brother, the painter Strauch. Carefully disguising himself as a law student with a love of Henry James, he befriends the aging artist and attempts to carry out his mission, only to find himself caught up in his subject’s apparent madness.
Publicada en 1927 por Max Brod como obra póstuma con el título "América", Franz Kafka (1883-1924) escribió los capítulos destinados a "El desaparecido", su «novela americana», entre el otoño de 1912 y enero del año siguiente, publicándose el primero de ellos –«El fogonero»– de forma independiente en mayo de 1913. El relato de las aventuras de Karl Rossmann –un muchacho de dieciséis años que embarca para el Nuevo Continente en busca de fortuna– constituye, pese a quedar inconcluso, una de las piezas magistrales del gran escritor praguense.
