Luck

(Paperback)

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Description

'A wonderful book, combining a light touch with underlying pathos, ironic humour with real empathy for the heartbreak of ordinary lives. Read it.' Guardian A child's-eye view of a family in decline, Gert Hofmann's Luck mixes humour and suspense with a heartbreaking pathos. This is the story of a nuclear family- father, mother, daughter and son. But all is not as it seems, for the mother is in love with Herr Herkenrath, and now father and son will have to leave home. Or will they Mother sits in her room, waiting for her new man to arrive and her old one to go. Father sits in his room, planning another novel. The little sister is the lucky one- she gets to stay at home. But the son won't have to put up with Herr Herkenrath's annoying habits and his smelly feet. So maybe he's lucky to be going. Only time will tell, but time is running out. The removal van is on its way.

Reviews

Hofmann is one of the finest 20th century German writers, extraordinarily versatile, a writer of surprises-He is one of those novelists of which it must be said - read this book, no, wait, read everything he wrote * The Irish Times *
The most singular writer to come out of Germany since Heinrich Boll * The Times *
An extraordinarily striking novel, tense, horror with a breeze of humour, almost embarrassingly honest and frank * New Statesman *
'The ironic naivete of the child heroes makes Hofmann's description of a wrecked provincial town humid with unarticulated doom-the effect is mesmerising' * Independent *

Author Bio

Gert Hoffman was born in Limbach, Saxony, in 1931, and died in Erding near Munich, in 1993. For many years he made a living lecturing on German Literature at universities in Europe and America. Although a prolific writer of radio plays, he did not become a full-time writer until 1979, when his first prose work was published. Thereafter, he produced a novel a year for the rest of his life.