F
2016 Longlist

F (a novel)

Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway
artwork-image

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Artful and subversive, F tells the story of the Friedland family – fakers, all of them – and the day when the fate in which they don’t quite believe catches up with them.

Having achieved nothing in life, Arthur Friedland is tricked on stage by a hypnotist and told to change everything. After he abandons his three young sons, they grow up to be a faithless priest, a broke financier and a forger. Each of them cultivates absence. One will be lost to it.

A novel about the game of fate and the fetters of family, F never stops questioning, exploring and teasing at every twist and turn of its Rubik’s Cube-like narrative.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Daniel
Kehlmann

Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Vienna, Berlin and New York. He has published six novels: Measuring the World, Me and Kaminski, Fame, F and You Should Have Left and has won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Doderer Prize, The Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature.

Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Vienna, Berlin and New York. He has published six novels: Measuring the World, Me and Kaminski, Fame, F and You Should Have Left and has won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Doderer Prize, The Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Carol
Brown Janeway

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

How an encounter with a hypnotist changes the lives of a father and his three sons.

Daniel Kehlmann’s F delights on a highly philosophical level. F is several things at once: a family saga, a fable, a novel about faith, and first of all a great book about falsehood and truth.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
21/05/2015
Country
Germany
Original Language
German
Publisher
Quercus Publishing
Translator
Carol Brown Janeway
Translation
Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway

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