White Shroud - Softcover

Skema, Antanas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908251840 ISBN 13: 9781908251848

Verlag: VAGABOND VOICES, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

White Shroud (Balta drobule, 1958) is considered by many as the most important work of modernist fiction in Lithuanian. Drawing heavily on the author’s own refugee and immigrant experience, this psychological, stream-of-consciousness work tells the story of an émigré poet working as an elevator operator in a large New York hotel during the mid-1950s. Using multiple narrative voices and streams, the novel moves through sharply contrasting settings and stages in the narrator’s life in Lithuania before and during World War II, returning always to New York and the recent immigrant’s struggle to adapt to a completely different, and indifferent, modern world. Strong characters and evocative utterances convey how historical context shapes language and consciousness, breaking down any stable sense of self.As in other major modernist works, Škema uses language and allusion to destabilise. Narrative, voice and language shift continuously, capturing the anti-hero’s psychological and cultural disorientation — the complexity of experience in a modern world where, in Yeats’ words, “the centre cannot hold.” Like the author’s, Garšva’s frame of reference is vast — quotes from French arias, Kafka and American culture collide with visceral memories of archaic Lithuanian folk song. Garšva’s use of poignant and comical émigré slang in his interactions captures the ironies and absurdities of the immigrant’s situation. By the end of the novel, further grammatical and linguistic disarray mirrors the final unravelling of Garšva’s mind as he descends into madness.Like all powerful fiction, this novel draws the reader into an intimate, culturally and historically specific world to explore universal human themes of selfhood, alienation, creativity and cultural difference. This English translation promises to appeal to various audiences: readers of modernist and world literature, scholars of Baltic literature and refugee studies, and members of the Lithuanian diaspora unable to access this novel in Lithuanian. Written from the perspective of a newcomer to an Anglophone country, White Shroud encourages readers to better understand the complexities of immigrant life.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Antanas Skema was born in Poland in 1910 to Lithuanian parents. He and his family lived in Russia during WWI, and in 1921 returned to Lithuania. He studied law and medicine in university before switching to theatre in 1935. In 1944 he worked with Lithuanian troupes in Germany, and in 1949 he moved to the US and joined a group of Lithuanian exile artists. He was a prolific stage actor and director, and was heavily involved in the arts until his fatal car accident in 1961. White Shroud is his only novel, and is famous for its unconventional style.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: VAGABOND VOICES
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1908251840
• ISBN 13: 9781908251848
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 212
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Anja's; service@anja-karge.de; ; Von-Gumppenberg-Str. 94; Pöttmes; 86554; Deutschland