[erepsysoulptnw]

He has been discussed as a potential Nobel candidate, he's won the Premio Strega and, at least in German, he's currently being translated as if the publisher's life depended on it.

I have read and finished Microcosms (in German translation: excellent translation, btw., as far as I can see) and I am awestruck.

It's a great, great, great book, wonderful, insightful (even though I dislike its politics) and rich...it's a couple of pieces on towns and villages in italy, mixing invented stories with real characters, essayistic musings and heartbreakingly wonderful descriptions of the landscape. It's like hundreds of tiny stories, wonderfully told. If Bernhard liked people I'd say it's almost Bernhardesque at times, but it's not because Magris deep love for the landscape and its inhabitants is clearly one of the determining factors in tthis wonder of a book.

I've quotes from the German here

[erepsysoulptnw]

Claudio Magris, author of the wondrous book that is Microcosms, writing this in an essay for AlmostIsland

Our identity is our way of looking at things. If I were asked to speak about myself, I would instinctively begin to speak about other people ? my parents, my wife, my sons, people I love, friends of both sexes, teachers, landscapes, perhaps even animals ? but certainly not about myself. I would relate stories of what has happened to others, but which are in some way integrated with my own. And through the way I spoke about other things and other people, one could perhaps understand something of my ability or inability to love, my courage, my fears, my obsessions, my beliefs, my disillusionments.
the German quotes I mentioned above can now be found here Korrekt shigekuni. and here Geld/Poesie shigekuni.