Synopses & Reviews
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Praise for Hugo Claus's PEN Translation Prize-winning Wonder:
"Fine and ambitious. . . . A work of savage satire intensely engaged with the moral and cultural life of the author's Belgium. . . . Packed with asides, allusions, and fierce juxtapositions, a style created to evoke a world sliding into chaos where contrast and contradictions are so grotesque that we can only 'wonder'. . . . [Wonder is] a reminder of the energy and experimental verve with which so many writers of the Fifties and Sixties (Malaparte, Bernhard, Grass, Böll, Burgess, Pynchon) conjured up [a] disjointed and rapidly complicating world." --The New York Review of Books
"To speak today of a still largely-unknown major work on European Fascism . . . seems presumptuous, rather like announcing the existence of, if not a new continent, at least a land mass of strange and significant proportions. But in discussing Wonder, it would be churlish not to admit to an explorer's exhilaration at discovery." --The National
"While fully aware that such an honorable title can only be used in great exceptions in Flemish literature, I would call Wonder a masterpiece." --Paul de Wispelaere, Vlaamse Gids (Belgium)
Synopsis
Beautifully translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, the IMPAC Award-winning translator of Gerbrand Bakker’s The Twin, Hugo Claus’s poems are remarkable for their dexterity, intensity of feeling, and acute intelligence. From the richly associative and referential “Oostakker Poems” to the emotional and erotic outpouring of the “mad dog stanzas” in “Morning, You,” from his interpretations of Shakespeare’s sonnets to a modern adaptation of a Sanskrit masterpiece, this volume reveals the breadth and depth of Claus’s stunning output. Perhaps Belgium’s leading figure of postwar Dutch literature, Claus has long been associated with the avant-garde: these poems challenge conventional bourgeois mores, religious bigotry, and authoritarianism with visceral passion.
About the Author
The prose, poetry, and paintings of Hugo Claus (pron: HUE-go Clowss) (1929-2008) were as influential as they were groundbreaking. His novels include Wonder (Archipelago Books), The Sorrow of Belgium, his magnum opus of postwar Europe, as well as Desire, The Swordfish, Mild Destruction, Rumors, and The Duck Hunt. In addition to his writing, he was a painter, playwright, and director. Claus was the recipient of seven state prizes in Belgium, the Prize for Dutch Literature, and the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his body of work. The author lives in n/a.