| The Nightwatches of Bonaventura Contributor(s): Bonaventura (Author), Gillespie, Gerald (Translator) |
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ISBN: 022614142X ISBN-13: 9780226141428 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $51.48 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 2014 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2014008635 |
| Physical Information: 0.76" H x 6.08" W x 8.8" (0.85 lbs) 216 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: First published in German in 1804, under the nom de plume "Bonaventura," The Nightwatches of Bonaventura is a dark, twisted, and comic novel, one part Poe and one part Beckett. The narrator and antihero is not Bonaventura but a night watchman named Kreuzgang, a failed poet, actor, and puppeteer who claims to be the spawn of the devil himself. As a night watchman, Kreuzgang takes voyeuristic pleasure in spying on the follies of his fellow citizens, and every night he makes his rounds and stops to peer into a window or door, where he observes framed scenes of murder, despair, theft, romance, and other private activities. In his reactions, Kreuzgang is cynical and pessimistic, yet not without humor. For him, life is a grotesque, macabre, and base joke played by a mechanical and heartless force. Since its publication, fans have speculated on the novel's authorship, and it is now believed to be by theater director August Klingemann, who first staged Goethe's Faust. Organized into sixteen separate nightwatches, the sordid scenes glimpsed through parted curtains, framed by door chinks, and lit by candles and shadows anticipate the cinematic. A cross between the gothic and the romantic, The Nightwatches of Bonaventura is brilliant in its perverse intensity, presenting an inventory of human despair and disgust through the eyes of a bitter, sardonic watcher who draws laughter from tragedy. Translated by Gerald Gillespie, who supplies a fresh introduction, The Nightwatches of Bonaventura will be welcomed by a new generation of English-language fans eager to sample the night's dark offerings. |
Contributor Bio(s): Bonaventura: - Bonaventura is the nom de plume of a ninenteenth-century German writer, now believed to be the theater director Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann, who lived in Braunschweig and directed the first staging of Goethe's Faust in 1829.Gillespie, Gerald: - Gerald Gillespie is professor emeritus at Stanford University and a former president of the International Comparative Literature Association. |