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New Year

Title:

New Year

Author:

Zeh, Juli, 1974- author.

Price, Alta L., translator.

Summary:

"Lanzarote on New Year's Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children--yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this masterful novel, bestselling author Juli Zeh skillfully turns a New Year's Day bike ride into an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama."-- Amazon.com.

General Note:

First published as Neujahr in Germany in 2019 by Luchterhand Literaturverlag.

Physical Description:

282 pages ; 21 cm

Genre:

Domestic fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Subject Term:

Vacations -- Fiction.

Fathers -- Fiction.

Psychic trauma -- Fiction.

Married people -- Fiction.

Author(s):

Price, Alta L.,

Publisher:

World Editions,

Publication Date:

2021

2019

ISBN:

9781642860993

Publication Information:

New York : World Editions, [2021]

Call Number:

ZEH

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003547745	Adult Fiction	ZEH Juli	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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On Order

Summary

2022 PEN Translation Award FINALIST

In this masterful novel, author Juli Zeh skillfully shifts away from the conventional tale of a middle-aged, middle-class father out for a New Year's Day bike ride to an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.

Lanzarote on New Year's Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children--yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this masterful novel, bestselling author Juli Zeh skillfully turns a New Year's Day bike ride into an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.

Author Notes

Juli Zeh is one of Germany's most successful authors of both literary thrillers and novels. She studied law in Passau and Leipzig, and holds a doctorate in international law. She has worked at the United Nations in New York, taught at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig, and currently lives in Brandenburg, where she is an honorary constitutional judge. Her debut novel Eagles and Angels was an international bestseller and was awarded the Deutscher Bücherpreis, and since then her books have been translated into 35 languages. She has been awarded myriad prizes for her work, including the Carl Amery Literature Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, and the Order of Merit.

Alta L. Price runs a publishing consultancy specialized in literature and nonfiction texts on art, architecture, design, and culture. A recipient of the Gutekunst Prize, she translates from Italian and German into English. Her work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, 3 Quarks Daily, Words Without Borders , and elsewhere. Her latest publications include books by Martin Mosebach, Dana Grigorcea, Anna Goldenberg, and Alexander Kluge.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this wrenching psychological portrait from Zeh (Empty Hearts), a character's buried traumatic past distorts his memory and loosens his grip on reality. The author locks the reader inside the mind of Henning, a publishing professional who is on holiday on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands with his wife and two young children. Over the course of a solitary bike ride up the steep hills to Femés, Henning labors to fend off what he thinks of as "it"--the uncontrollable panic attacks that have dogged him for much of his adult life. As he struggles for control and begins lashing out mentally at his work, his loved ones, and anything else that could be a potential catalyst, the landscape grows increasingly ominous--and familiar to him. The tale's startling climax, which reveals the roots of Henning's neuroses and the unreliability of his perspective, is perfectly executed, with the author adopting a child's-eye view of past events that is colored by nostalgia and terrifying vulnerability. Zeh's novel skillfully asks how a person can come to terms with a painful past that has been intentionally misremembered for the purpose of sustaining one's mental health. Readers, though, will have no trouble remembering this. (Nov.)