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Jens Bjorneboe
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The Sharks
Set at the end of the 19th century, this novel is a tale of mutiny and shipwreck. The narrator, Peder Jensen, is both competent second mate and unworldly philosopher. Esther Greenleaf Muerer has previously translated other works by Jens Bjorneboe, including Moment of Freedom.
Moment of Freedom
The first novel in the acclaimed "History of Bestiality" trilogy. Living high in the Alps in a German principality, our narrator tells us he's dutifully fulfilling his obligations as a Servant of Justice and acting as a daily witness to injustice masquerading as a court of law. One day he notices that the judge is much too engrossed in looking at pornographic photographs showing various other pillars of the town engaged in a variety of sexual activities with minors. The incident propels him on a mental journey back through his life: black-humor fantasies and suicidal drinking binges; the Roman catacombs, warm summer nights in Brooklyn; brothels in Stockholm, his childhood in Norway, and wanderings in Germany. But aside from court records he has been keeping his own long and detailed account of man's cruelty to man in a massive twelve-volume study he calls his History of Bestiality. --
Powderhouse
Powderhouse is a novel which is set in an asylum for the criminally insane, where the narrator functions as a kind of porter, observing and commenting on the foibles of inmates and keepers alike. The patients are a motley collection, and their treatment is unorthodox to say the least; part of their treatment consists of composing and delivering a series of lectures on subjects dear to their hearts, such as the history of witchhunting and the most humane methods of execution. The doctors themselves have their own troubled history; and the narrator finds rich material amongst both for his study of the follies and evil of which mankind is capable. Yet he is not just a gloomy philosopher, but al...
Powderhouse
The second in a trilogy of books examining the evil inherent in the human race. Here the narrator is a janitor in a lunatic asylum, observing the inhabitants whose vicious tendencies are no longer inhibited by the veneer of civilisation.
Ere the Cock Crows
Norwegian author Jens Bjørneboe's chilling novel follows the ethical quandaries--or not--of Germans involved in Nazi concentration camps and human medical experiments in World War II. Dr. Reynhardt rejects Nazi ideology, while compartmentalizing his life as a loving family man and his work on horrific medical experiments performed on prisoners of war. Head of camp Heidenbrand is more self-aware of his Nazi complicity and his reasons for doing so--his own drive for power and wealth. The situation is complicated by the arrival at the camp of Samuel, a Jewish prisoner and childhood friend of both Reynhardt and Heidenbrand. Themes of man's inhumanity to man, the ethics of modern science, and the responsibilities inherent in free will are explored, presaging concerns that continue throughout Bjørneboe's body of work. Originally written as a play but eventually published as a novel, this first English-language edition includes a re-creation of the original play by the translator.
The Bird Lovers
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Semmelweis
Translated from the Norwegian and with an introduction by Joe Martin. Novelist and essayist Jens Bjorneboe turned to playwriting during the 1960's, as a genre in which he might "stage his literary assault on hierarchical society with an aggressive, extroverted form of theater" (from the Introduction). This play had its world premiere in Oslo in 1969, and recounts the tragic history of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, the founder of modern antiseptic techniques, whose biography illustrates "the pitfalls and even horrors of the man or woman of science who is naively in search of truth and improvement in the human condition, in a society who is naively in search of truth and improvement in the human condition, in a society that reveres prestige and power and its own received belief systems to the exclusion of any new 'truths'" (from the Introduction). Brechtian in style and somewhat anarchic in its politics, "Semmelweis" provides a biting critique of obtuse authority.
Without a Stitch
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The World of Yesterday
Stefan Zweig's memoir The World of Yesterday, (Die Welt von Gestern) is a unique love letter to the lost world of pre-war Europe The famous autobiography is published by Pushkin Press, with a cover designed by David Pearson and Clare Skeats. Translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell. Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of pre- war Europe its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall. Through the story of his life, and his relationships with the leading literary figures of the day, Zweig s passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. This new translation by the award- winn...
