Two Lives - Couverture rigide

Seth, Vikram

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0060599669 ISBN 13 : 9780060599669

Editeur : Harper, 2005

Synopsis

Physical description; 503 p., [24] p. of plates : ill., ports. ; 25 cm. Subjects; Seth, Vikram 1952- - Family. Caro, Henny Gerda. Twentieth century Jews - German - England - London - Biography.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

A heartrending new book -- the story of a marriageand the story of two lives -- from the author of theinternational bestselling novel A Suitable Boy

Shanti Behari Seth was born on the eighth day of the eighth month in the eighth year of the twentieth century; he died two years before its close. He was brought up in India in the apparently vigorous but dying Raj and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin -- though he could not speak a word of German -- to study medicine and dentistry. It was here, before he migrated to Britain, that Shanti's path first crossed that of his future wife.

Helga Gerda Caro, known to everyone as "Henny" was also born in 1908, in Berlin, to a Jewish family -- cultured, patriotic, and intensely German. When the family decided to take Shanti as a lodger, Henny's first reaction was, "Don't take the black man!" But a friendship flowered, and when Henny fled Hitler's Germany for England just one month before war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person in the country she knew: Shanti.

Vikram Seth has woven together their astonishing story, which recounts the arrival into this childless couple's lives of their great-nephew from India -- the teenage student Vikram Seth. The result is an extraordinary tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, postwar Germany and 1970s Britain.

Two Lives is both a history of a violent century seen through the eyes of two survivors and an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage, and abiding yet complex love. Part biography, part memoir, part meditation on our times, this is the true tale of two remarkable lives -- a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.

Revue de presse :

“[A] thoughtful, evocative, moving book . . . [Seth] is an amazingly gifted, accomplished, resourceful and charming writer.” (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World)

“A great love story, involving two remarkable people.” (New York Times)

“Seth turns biography into powerful literature, distilling the universal human emotions of passion, grief and the will to survive.” (Denver Post)

“Full of affection and tenderness . . . An unfailingly respectful memoirist.” (Anita Desai, New York Review of Books)

“A subtle portrait of the complexities of a long companionship . . . A wonderful book.” (The Economist)

“I cannot remember ever being quite so moved by a memoir... [Seth’s] achievement has exceeded all possible expectations.” (Simon Winchester)

“Irresistible... Another triumph for one the most versatile and engaging of all contemporary writers... An immensely moving narrative.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred))

“Eloquent and elegiacal . . . An intricate study of the way lives and worlds can intertwine.” (Los Angeles Book Review)

“Sensitive and compassionate... Fulfills the obligation Primo Levi once defined for writers on the Holocaust: it is unadorned and clear.” (Pankaj Mishra, New York Times Book Review)

“Seth has few equals as a literary techinician.” (The New Yorker)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Harper
• Date d'édition: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060599669
• ISBN 13: 9780060599669
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 512