Rombo

(Paperback)

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Description

In May and September 1976, two severe earthquakes ripped through north-eastern Italy, causing severe damage to the landscape and its population.About a thousand people died under the rubble, tens of thousands were leftwithout shelter, and many ended up leaving their homes in Friuli forever. Thedisplacement of material as a result of the earthquakes was enormous. Newterrain was formed that reflects the force of the catastrophe and captures thefundamentals of natural history. But it is far more difficult to find expressionfor the human trauma, the experience of an abruptly shattered existence.

InRombo, seven inhabitants of a remote mountain village talk about their lives,which have been deeply impacted by the earthquake that has left marks theyare slowly learning to name. From the shared experience of fear and loss, thethreads of individual memory soon unravel and become haunting and movingnarratives of a deep trauma.

Reviews

In Kinskys novel, the land speaks...Kinsky expertly animates the natural world around her while removing her human hand. Kinsky lets nature uphold its own intractable logic If trauma is the inability to redescribe,Rombooffers a powerful antidote in language and the infinite possibilities of description; like the trembling Friulian landscape, forever writing itself anew.
Matthew Janney,Financial Times

Esther Kinsky has more eyes than most; in her novel Rombo she evokes the entire life of an Italian village before, during, and after the two devastating earthquakes of 1976, but each plant and animal central to the village is also a character, and the most important character of all is the landscape itself. The book becomes as much about the futures as the past, for our natural disasters are increasingly man-made, and we need more than ever this reminder of universal impermanence and the marks of memory we leave in its wake.
Mary Ruefle, author of Madness, Rack, and Honey

A tragic travelogue to the underworld-turned-world that recasts a newly lost Italian past with a climate-wise chorus straight out of the most harrowing Greek drama.
Joshua Cohen, author of The Netanyahus

In Esther Kinskys new novel, language becomes the highest form of compassion and solidarity not only with us human beings, but with the whole world, organic, non-organic, speaking out with many mouths and living voices. A miracle of a book; should be shining when it gets dark.
Maria Stepanova, author of In Memory of Memory

Esther Kinsky has created a literary oeuvre of impressive stylistic brilliance, thematic diversity and stubborn originality. ... It is always clear that for her the only landscape worth describing is the one in which she is currently situated. Far from eco-dreaming, without sorrow or critique, Kinskys novels and poems position humanity in relation to the ruins it has produced and what still remains of nature.
2022 Kleist Prize jury

[Kinsky] has a poets ear for rhythm and precision, elegantly rendered in Caroline Schmidts translation. The author has a great gift for describing landscape; she lingers meticulously over rocks and ridges and the ancient formation of mountains.
Charlie Lee,Times Literary Supplement

In Esther Kinsky, German literature has an author whose books are full of poetic intelligence. ... A brilliant new novel.
Neue Zrcher Zeitung

Rombois staggering. There is something epic about it Its about how we make places habitable homes, memories, the past and carry on.
Magnus Rena,Review 31

Gracefully translated by Caroline Schmidt,Rombois ambitious in its aim of presenting the total ecosystem of an area: geology, gossip, flora and folktales rub up against each other in an accumulating series of vignettes. Each voice remains distinct, however, in Kinskys delicately insistent prose, which draws its reader into the confidence of the village communityThe notion of tales written into the landscape underpins a central preoccupation of Kinskys intimate and poised novel: what happens when a landscape loses its legibility
Damian Walsh,Literary Review

The quality of Esther Kinskys writing is so good that you cannot fail to be spellbound by it.
The Modern Novel

Author Bio

Esther Kinsky grew up by the river Rhine and lived in London for twelve years. She is the author of six volumes of poetry, five novels (Summer Resort, Banatsko, River, Grove, Rombo) numerous essays on language, poetry and translation and three children's books. She has translated many notable English (John Clare, Henry David Thoreau, Iain Sinclair) and Polish (Joanna Bator, Miron Bialoszewski, Magdalena Tulli) authors into German. Both River and Grove won numerous literary prizes in Germany.