Showing results by author "Judith Schalansky" in All Categories

Each disparate object described in this book - a Caspar David Friedrich painting, a species of tiger, a villa in Rome, a Greek love poem, an island in the Pacific - shares a common fate: It no longer exists, except as the dead end of a paper trail. Recalling the works of W. G. Sebald, Bruce Chatwin, or Rebecca Solnit, An Inventory of Losses is a beautiful evocation of 12 specific treasures that have been lost to the world forever, and, taken as a whole, opens mesmerizing new vistas of how we can think about extinction and loss. 

La historia de la humanidad está llena de cosas perdidas, relegadas al olvido en ocasiones, o destruidas por el hombre o la erosión de los días. Algunos de esos dispares objetos, reales o imaginarios, quedan recogidos e inventariados en este libro: los enigmáticos fragmentos que han pervivido de los poemas de Safo, el Palacio de la República de Berlín, el tigre del Caspio o el supuesto esqueleto de un unicornio. Una obra cautivadora e inclasificable que nos brinda la oportunidad de reflexionar sobre el significado de la pérdida...

In zwölf virtuosen Erzählungen widmet sich Judith Schalansky dem, was das Verlorene hinterlässt: Gerüchte und Legenden, Auslassungszeichen und Phantomschmerzen. Ihre Protagonisten kämpfen auf unterschiedlichste Weise gegen die Vergänglichkeit: ein alter Mann, der das Wissen der Menschheit hortet, ein Ruinenmaler, der die Vergangenheit erschafft, wie sie niemals war, die gealterte Greta Garbo, die durch Manhattan streift und sich fragt, wann genau sie wohl gestorben sein mag, und Schalansky selbst, die in den Leerstellen ihrer eigenen Kindheit die Geschichtslosigkeit der DDR aufspürt.

Adaptation is everything. Inge Lohmark is well aware of that; after all, she's been teaching biology for more than 30 years. But nothing will change the fact that her school is going to be closed in four years: in this dwindling town in the eastern German countryside, there are fewer and fewer children. Inge's husband, who was a cattle inseminator before the reunification, is now breeding ostriches. Their daughter, Claudia, emigrated to the U.S. years ago and has no intention of having children. Everyone is resisting the course of nature that Inge teaches every day in class.

Nella vita, la concorrenza tra le specie e la capacità di adattamento sono tutto ciò che conta. È questo che insegna ai suoi alunni Inge Lohmark, professoressa di Biologia vecchia maniera, in una sperduta cittadina dell'ex DDR, che con il tasso di natalità a picco non ha più nessuno che abiti le case né bambini da iscrivere a scuola.

Anpassung ist alles, weiß Inge Lohmark. Schließlich unterrichtet die schrullige Lehrerin seit mehr als dreißig Jahren Biologie...