The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

This edition, as so many Oxford World's Classics editions do, has just the perfect cover image... [an] excellent introduction by Robert Vilain. (Lisa Hill, ANZLitLovers)

For its notes this edition will be invaluable. (Charlie Louth, Times Literary Supplement)

A brilliant new translation. (JC, the Lady)

masterly translation (Translation and Literature)

Reading Notebooks had a strange, dreamlike effect on me; the lines between past and present, real and unreal seemed blurred and it's a book that in many ways is hard to get a handle on.g the effort worthwhile, and I'm keen now to read some of Rilke's poetry. (Shiney New Books)

"Notebooks" was an absorbing read, with the often beautiful and evocative prose making the effort worthwhile, and I'm keen now to read some of Rilke's poetry. (Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings)

'An indescribable, aching, futile longing for myself'

The young Danish aristocrat Malte Laurids Brigge has been left rootless by the early death of his parents. Now living in Paris, Malte begins to record his life in a series of loosely connected notes, diary entries, prose poems, parables and stories, ostensibly collected by a fictional editor to form the Notebooks. Focusing on Malte's observations and experiences in the present, recollections of his childhood and family, and his reflections on historical events, these notes in highly crafted poetic prose explore the themes of life in the metropolis, poverty, sickness and death, love, memory and time, and perception and language.

The only extended prose work by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a landmark in the development of the twentieth-century novel. It marks a radical departure from nineteenth-century realism, transcending conventions of linear narrative to reflect a consciousness in crisis, and an archetypal confrontation with the modern.

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