The Chess Garden or the Twilight Letters of Gustav Uyterhoeven.

Hansen, Brooks

ISBN 10: 0374160155 / ISBN 13: 9780374160159

Edité par Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY. 1995. First edition., New York, 1995

A propos de cet article

8vo. 481 pgs. Fine hardcover in Fine jacket. Frontis and text illustrations by Miles Hyman. Set in 1900, Dr. Gustav Uyterhoeven leaves his wife and their chess garden in Ohio to serve in the British concentration camps of the Boer War in South Africa. In a series of letters and chess pieces sent to his wife, he describes an imaginary land called Antipodes, where all the game pieces of the garden come to life to guide the doctor through his last adventure. A blending of history and allegory within the context of game pieces which come to life in the chess garden. ISBN 0374160155. #553. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

N° de réf. du vendeur 553

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Chess Garden or the Twilight Letters of Gustav Uyterhoeven.
• Éditeur: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY. 1995. First edition., New York
• Date de parution: 1995
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0374160155
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780374160159
• Reliure: Hard Cover
• Illustrateur: Miles Hyman
• Édition: First Edition, First Printing.
• État de l'article: Fine
• État de la jaquette: Fine
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Complete Catalog
  • Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Classics
  • First Editions, Collectible

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Book by Hansen Brooks

Présentation de l'éditeur

Star Pine Books celebrates the 20th anniversary of this most unusual, magical, and moving novel...

In the fall of 1901, in the town of Dayton, Ohio, a series of mysterious letters begins arriving at the garden home of Dr. and Mrs. Uyterhoeven. All are written by the doctor, who left only months before to serve in the relief camps set up for the Boer in South Africa, yet the letters make no mention of refugees or the war. Instead, they tell of a fantastic land the doctor has discovered, a floating island populated entirely by games pieces – chess, checkers, marbles, dice, and more -- all living, congregating, and feuding, and all embroiled in the final stages of a secret revolution that is both deeply troubling, but also strangely hopeful...

Dr. Uyterhoeven’s journey in that enchanted land, and the quiet ceremony with which his wife Sonja shares his tale with the neighborhood children, provide the main threads of this extraordinary work, weaving through a brilliant tapestry of dreams, histories, visions and meditations. What finally emerges, though, is the story of a man and a woman, born in the lowlands to two different worlds, joined by love, rent by loss, and reunited by the inspired life they would create together in their new American home.

“an improbable, brilliant tale…a Bidlungsroman, a novel of ideas, a love story and...a spiritual guide. Comparisons toNabokov and Calvino are doubtless in order...But THE CHESS GARDEN stands by itself, a marvel of attention to the things of this world, and worlds beyond.

- New York Times Book Review

”Like Garcia Marquez, Borges, even Poe, Hansen …is a true inventor of fiction, and a protean, generous one at that.”

- Village Voice Literary Supplement

“Everything in the stories is new, unexpected, strange, and mysterious…With a richness of invention that makes the world of Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis seem impoverished.”

- The Boston Sunday Globe

“These tales form an allegory not only of the Doctor’s exemplary life but also of the wisdom he has gained in it – a quietude and a benevolence that in today’s world really do seem fabulous.”

- The New Yorker

“A masterpiece of surreal storytelling."

Library Journal