River
ABOUT
THE BOOK
In River, a woman moves to a London suburb for reasons that are unclear. She takes long, solitary walks by the River Lea, observing and describing her surroundings and the unusual characters she encounters. Over the course of these wanderings she amasses a collection of found objects and photographs and is drawn into reminiscences of the different rivers which haunted the various stages of her life, from the Rhine, where she grew up, to the Saint Lawrence, the Hooghly, and the banks of the Oder. Written in language that is as precise as it is limpid, River is a remarkable novel, full of poignant images and poetic observations, an ode to nature, edge lands, and the transience of all things human.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Iain
Galbraith
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Ester Kinsky’s River is a foreigners’ journey along the river Lea in east London. With a slow pace she explores the landscape of the metropolis where she wallows in memories. Seemingly without a sense of time, the authors’ descriptions are vivid and memorable, reminiscent of Thoreau’s style that transforms the mundane object into something romantic. There are encounters with outcasts that are equally misplaced as the landscape itself but the focus rests on nature and environment. Kinsky’s beautiful language is complemented with blurry Polaroids, shot by the protagonist, that are vague, just like the books’ non-linear timeline. An almost-biographical novel which is built upon previous poetry by Kinsky that delved into the river subject.