Who Is Martha

(Paperback)

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Description

96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savouring music in a gilded concert hall. Luka was born in 1914, the same year that Martha - the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons - died. Luka himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species...

Reviews

"Hilarious, beautiful and compassionate ... exquisitely rendered."--World Literature Today "A sweet, sad, sunny meditation on birds and music and the gentle approach of death." -- John Rockwell, former New York Times arts critic and editor and founding director of Lincoln Center Festival "A deeply compassionate meditation on one man's life and its impending finality. Amusingly digressive and philosophically rich ... Gaponenko, at just thirty-four, remains a serious young talent and someone to keep an eye out for in the coming years."--Rain Taxi "A book like a fantastic party, as unshakeable as a child's faith... Astonishes to the very end."--Neue Zurcher Zeitung "With layers of inventive language, vividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom, this is a brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torte."--Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology "A celebration of creation and all its wonders, full of the joy of life."--Der Spiegel "A work of unbridled imagination. Marjana Gaponenko is exuberantly talented, and here she pulls out all the stops."--Die Welt "A panorama of twentieth century Central European history."--Citation for the 2013 Adelbert von Chamisso Prize

Author Bio

Marjana Gaponenko was born in 1981 in Odessa, Ukraine. She fell in love with the German language as a young girl, and began writing in German when she was sixteen. After spending time in Crakow and Dublin, she now lives in Mainz and Vienna. Gaponenko won the 2013 Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Prize for Who is Martha Arabella Spencer studied German & Phi-losophy at King's College London and Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. She has lived in Munich and Seville and currently lives in London.