Search results for ""author steve sem-sandberg""

A reimagining of Buechner’s classic play Woyzeck, the tale of jealousy, love turned to hate, and murder and its consequences propels this internationally acclaimed novelThe novel W. is a literary prequel to one of modern literature’s touchstone texts, the play Woyzeck—the basis of films, operas, and numerous translations and adaptations. Considered the first modern drama, Woyzeck tells the story of a loyal foot soldier who, in a fit of jealous rage, kills the woman he loves. In 1836 this true story inspired Georg Buechner to write the play, unfinished at his death at just 23 years old. W., the astonishing new novel by August Prize–winning author Steve Sem-Sandberg, grippingly recounts the lovers’ relationship, the murder case, and the solder’s execution, while digging deeper into the world and motivations of the characters.Taking this classic and enduring work as his starting point, in poetic and controlled prose, Sem-Sandberg reveals a ruthless, moving, and unforgettable story of human vulnerability and the abyss that Buechner felt was a part of every person. Larger forces such as the horrors of war and the dehumanizing nature of psychiatry collide with the soldier’s own small world, and love devolves into hatred as Woyzeck desperately and humanly struggles to make something of the life given to him.

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Winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger The Am Spiegelgrund clinic, in glittering Vienna, masqueraded as a reform school for wayward boys and girls and a home for chronically ill children. The reality however, was very different. Through the eyes of a child inmate, and a nurse, Steve Sem-Sandberg explores the very meaning of survival. This extraordinary novel offers invaluable and compelling insight on an intolerable chapter of Austria's past.

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A compelling tale of power, corruption and compromise from one of Scandinavia's most revered authors.In February 1940, the Nazis established what would become the second largest Jewish ghetto in Poland, in the city of Lódz. Its chosen leader: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a sixty-three-year-old Jewish businessman. Mysterious, ambiguous and monarchical, 'King Chaim' forced adults and children alike to work punishing hours providing supplies for the German military. Thousands of others were transported and never seen again.Was Rumkowski an accessory to the Nazi regime, driven by lust for power, or was he a pragmatic strategist, actively saving Jewish lives through apparent collaboration? Steve Sem-Sandberg draws on genuine chronicles of life in the Lódz ghetto to capture the full panorama of human resilience, and to question the nature of good and evil.

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