Payback - Couverture souple

Ledig, Gert

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1862075654 ISBN 13 : 9781862075658

Editeur : Granta Books, 2003

Synopsis

The effects of an Allied air raid, over seventy minutes, on an unnamed German city in July 1944 are recounted in horrifying detail. As American planes discharge their bombs over the city, far below, in the midst of the inferno, an elderly couple trapped in their appartment try to live out their last moments with dignity. Elsewhere, a man searches desparately for his son, only to run into a troop of drunken soldiers. And as hundreds of civilians wait in an air-raid shelter, an American pilot drifts gently down on his parachute, unaware that he is about to join them ... Payback was one of the first German novels to describe the Allies' bombardment of Germany during the Second World War. Based on Gert Ledig's experiences of German air raids in 1944, and first published in 1956, it paints a savage and unflinching picture of the realities of warfare for ordinary men and women.

A propos du livre

À propos des auteurs

Gert Ledig (1921-99) was born in Leipzig and grew up in Vienna. At the age of eighteen he volunteered for the army and was wounded at the battle of Leningrad in 1942. He drew on his experiences for his novel The Stalin Organ. Sent back home, he trained as a ship-building engineer and was caught in several air raids, which led him to write Payback. Its reissue in 1999 in Germany led to the author's much publicized rediscovery there.

Michael Hofmann is a poet and German translator. His most recent collection of poems is One Lark, One Horse. He is a Granta contributing editor.

Shaun Whiteside has translated over 50 books from German, French, Italian and Dutch, including novels by Amélie Nothomb, Luther Blissett, Wu Ming and Marcel Möring. A former chair of the Translators Association, he sits on the editorial board of New Books in German and the Advisory Panel of the British Centre for Literary Translation, where he regularly teaches at the summer school. He lives in London.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Granta Books
• Date d'édition: 2003
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1862075654
• ISBN 13: 9781862075658
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 256
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible