Ergo

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Wacholder lives and works at a Custom House with his adopted son Aslan and a lodger named Leo. Aslan spends his days copying out the novels of Kleist, Schiller and Goethe; Leo never leaving his bed, mentally composes his philosophical masterwork, Placental Theory of Existence; Wacholder's only apparent responsibility is keeping watch over a towering mountain of paper. Wacholder's consuming passion is his only true friend and nemesis, Wurz. Wurz hasn't left his home in over 17 years, his only contact with the outside world is Wacholder's letters.

Reviews

"Jakov Lind has a splendid theatrical talent, sardonic and Pinteresque, gruff and Brechtian, with some old master, some Gogol, as his Ariadne. . . . Intricate, black, bestial."New York Review of Books "A feverishly comic novel."Barnes & Noble Review

Author Bio

Jakov Lind (19262007) was born Heinz Jakov Landwirth in Vienna in 1927 to an assimilated Jewish family. Arriving in the Netherlands as a part of the Kindertransport in 1939, Lind survived the Second World War by fleeing into Germany, where he disguised himself as a Dutch deckhand on a barge on the Rhine. Following the war, he spent several years in Israel and Vienna before finally settling in London in 1954. It was in London that he wrote, first in German and later in English, the novels, short stories, and autobiographies that made his reputation, including his masterpieces: Landscape in Concrete, Ergo (forthcoming from Open Letter), and Soul of Wood. Regarded in his lifetime as a successor to Beckett and Kafka, Lind was posthumously awarded the Theodor Kramer Prize in 2007. Ralph Manheim was one of the great translators of the twentieth century. He translated Gnter Grass, Bertolt Brecht, Louis-Ferdinand Cline, Hermann Hess, Peter Handke, and more. In 1982, PEN American Center created an award for translation in his name.