Desolation
ABOUT
THE BOOK
He has had a full life. Now, in his later years, retired, his second wife getting on his nerves, his love affairs a distant – yet piquant – memory, there are a few things he wants to get off his chest. One man’s hilarious, heartrending ruminations, addressed to a son he cannot understand, make up this extraordinary first novel from the author of Art.
As he talks, we are introduced to his too-happy wife, Nancy; his housekeeper, Mrs. Dacimiento (who still can’t fit the bag properly over the rim of the rubbish bin); his reassuringly anguished friend Lionel; his daughter and her husband, an enthusiastic member of the Jewish Ramblers; and Marisa Botton, his idiotic, irresistible mistress. Until finally a chance encounter with an old friend, and a story she tells, lead him to his final overtures…
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Carol
Brown Janeway
Carol Brown Janeway, a prize-winning editor, translator and foreign rights director at Knopf Doubleday, died on August 3, 2015. She was 71 years old. She was renowned in the publishing world for her dedication to literature in translation.
The first book she translated for Knopf after joining the publisher in 1970 was Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. She also translated The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard, Crime by Ferdinand von Schirach, The Storm by Margriet de Moor, and Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann, among others.
Carol Brown Janeway, a prize-winning editor, translator and foreign rights director at Knopf Doubleday, died on August 3, 2015. She was 71 years old. She was renowned in the publishing world for her dedication to literature in translation.
The first book she translated for Knopf after joining the publisher in 1970 was Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. She also translated The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard, Crime by Ferdinand von Schirach, The Storm by Margriet de Moor, and Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann, among others.