Description
Book Synopsis"I had just gotten away from it all, by which I mean all those ordinary, boring things like skyscrapers, cigar-smoking industrialists, linoleum, plastics, television, westerns and marihuana. I had either seen or heard about them. Whether they are good or bad is beside the point..." A nameless graphic designer is haunted by the concentration camp in which he was once interned. Obsessed with his past, as well as Italy's present 'economic miracle' he retreats to a rural villa where he decorates the rooms with "arrows, signs, advertisements"; invents a new, purposefully incomprehensible typeface; and attempts to devise a marketing campaign for stones. Upon finally returning to Milan life becomes even more unbalanced. He loses his job and acquires a mistress whom he soon confuses both with his wife and the memory of the young, Czech woman he abandoned at the end of the war... Known primarily as a screenwriter for Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Andrei Tarkovsky among many others, Tonino Guerra also wrote poetry and fiction. Reissued to mark the centenary of Guerra's birth, and with a new introduction by acclaimed cultural critic Michael Bracewell, Equilibrium remains a relevant, powerful, and intensely visual account of a truly (post-)modern man.
Trade Review"A diary, a tragedy, PTSD, madness. A trip worthy of Hunter S. Thompson or Charlie Kaufman, obviously filmic and surreal but succinct and clear like fresh water." Samantha Morton ---------- "Equilibrium, about malaise, sexuality without love, bewilderment, scorn, constantly thwarted relationships and a man trapped in his own head, speaks in a deep way to our ongoing search for intimacy, tenderness, communication, and different attachments to objects and nature. Even now, it's a far more satisfying read than many rushed-to-publisher analyses of the current situation." Review 31 ---------- "A disturbing and gripping mind-boggler, at once hilarious and nightmarish." Mubi's The Notebook ---------- "Fantastic: an absurd novella [...] strange funny and painful." Roland Barf's Film Diary ---------- "A modernity in which things and their values are shifting and loose [...] This is postmodern as in 'after the present.'" Manchester Review of Books ---------- "Guerra as a solo artist turns out to be every bit as talented, original, and challenging as the directors he worked with" a Criterion Collection October Book of October ----------"Powerfully written, and endlessly mesmerising, it's a story both timeless and incredibly resonant in 2020." Left Lion ---------- "At times wildly funny and at others disturbing." A Burley Fisher Book of the Year ---------- A South London Gallery Christmas Book Choice.
