{"title":"Lars Gustafsson","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the profound and philosophical world of Lars Gustafsson. Explore his insightful novels, poetry, and essays, blending intellectual curiosity with deep humanism. Discover a unique voice in Swedish literature.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"winnie-the-pooh-find-a-friend-book-editors-of-publications-intern-9781450806947","title":"Winnie the Pooh - Find a Friend","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49600136937745,"sku":"GOR006400119","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50654233362705,"sku":"GOR008919483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50669594935569,"sku":"CIN1450806945VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1450806945.jpg?v=1751178344"},{"product_id":"elegies-and-other-poems-book-lars-gustafsson-9780811214414","title":"Elegies and Other Poems","description":"Lars Gustafsson is one of Sweden's leading and most prolific men of letters; a poet, philosopher, and fiction writer with dozens of books to his credit since his literary debut, at the age of twenty, in 1956. Although known in the English-speaking world primarily for his novels, Gustafsson is nevertheless one of the most frequently translated of contemporary Swedish poets. Elegies and Other Poems is a companion volume to The Stillness of the World before Bach (New Directions, 1988). As in that earlier volume, editor Christopher Middleton has made his selection from several of the poet's books and included his own translations as well as those of others, Yvonne Sandstroem, Bill Brookshire, and Philip Martin. Readers of Gustafsson's fiction will recognize in his verse the elegant mix of intellect and sheer play, the ruminations of a mind that apprehends humanity in the riddles of the universe.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49614352285969,"sku":"GOR012316441","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53076332445969,"sku":"CIN0811214419VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811214419.jpg?v=1751362014"},{"product_id":"tiler-s-afternoon-book-lars-gustafsson-9780811212403","title":"A Tiler's Afternoon","description":"Take a stroll through the real Paris with this beautifully photographd and gorgeously packaged book. Organized by arrondissement, Paris takes readers through the city's most charming streets, revealing best-kept secrets and little gems at every turn: ateliers overflowing with notions, cafes with their neat rows of macarons, markets abundant with fresh flowers, shaded parks, and creative hotspots. Packed with vibrant color photographs that capture the spirit of Paris and packaged as a hefty flexi-bound paperback with a ribbon page marker, the book is a beautiful object in its own right. The accessible writing invites readers to dip in and out and provides history and context for each spot on the journey. Visually rich and totally inspiring, Paris is a treasure for lovers of art, style, design, food, and, of course, Paris","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49622376251665,"sku":"GOR010191648","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49665729888529,"sku":"GOR013567056","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50366913511697,"sku":"CIN0811212408G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007864373521,"sku":"NIN9780811212403","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811212408.jpg?v=1751201963"},{"product_id":"death-of-a-beekeeper-book-lars-gustafsson-9780002710879","title":"The Death of a Beekeeper","description":"In this novel, a schoolteacher turned apiarist learns at the beginning of the winter thaw that he has cancer and will not live through the spring. Told through his journals, this is his gentle, courageous, and sometimes comic meditation on living with pain.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49628066808081,"sku":"GOR002976712","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49943630512401,"sku":"GOR002814222","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50606751973649,"sku":"GOR003301956","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0002710870.jpg?v=1751162611"},{"product_id":"tennis-players-pa-book-lars-gustafsson-9780811208628","title":"TENNIS PLAYERS PA","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49675526996241,"sku":"CIN0811208621G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811208621.jpg?v=1751233663"},{"product_id":"smile-of-the-midsummer-night-book-lars-gustafsson-9781909961043","title":"Smile of the Midsummer Night","description":"Lars Gustafsson and Agneta Blomqvist have written a personal guide to their Swedish homeland. Setting off from the south their journey leads them all the way up to Norrland, from the farms of Scania to the Laponian area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it is the idyllic fjord in Bohuslan, in the Vastmanland region, as well as Lake Malar and Stockholm that they call home. Alive with their varied interests and entertaining suggestions for excursions - from journeys across the forests and moors to collect berries and mushrooms, encountering the odd elk or wolf along the way, to visits to the graves of Kurt Tucholsky and Strindberg, Smile of a Midsummer Night is knowledgeable, loving and poetic. A must-have for all fans of Sweden.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733770805521,"sku":"NGR9781909961043","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50469543477521,"sku":"GOR007506938","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53497092374801,"sku":"CIN1909961043VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1909961043.jpg?v=1773313517"},{"product_id":"selected-poems-book-lars-gustafsson-9781852249977","title":"Selected Poems","description":"Poet, novelist, and philosopher Lars Gustafsson (1936-2016) was one of Europe's leading literary figures. Much of his writing is concerned with the search for moral consciousness and the relationship between personal experience and self-awareness, imbued with a philosophically founded scepticism toward language. His poetry is renowned for relating the metaphysical to the mundane with a particular clarity and precision, illuminating the potency of ordinary objects and everyday events as he addresses critical issues that have concerned great thinkers over the centuries. Introduction by Per W stberg. Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. Shortlisted for the Bernard Shaw Prize 2018 (for Translation from Swedish).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737164554513,"sku":"NGR9781852249977","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51450032718097,"sku":"GOR009219865","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52717161054481,"sku":"NLS9781852249977","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1852249978.jpg?v=1751123069"},{"product_id":"death-of-a-beekeeper-novel-book-lars-gustafsson-9780811208109","title":"The Death of a Beekeeper: Novel","description":"In the beginning of the winter thaw, Lars Lennart Westin has learned that he has cancer and will not live through spring. Told through the journals of this schoolteacher turned apiarist, The Death of a Beekeeper, is his gentle, courageous, and sometimes comic meditation on living with pain. Westin has refused to surrender the time left him to the impersonation of a hospital, preferring to take his fate upon himself, to continue solitary, reflective life in the Swedish countryside. \"I took little walks and noticed that in the last months the pain had actually colored the landscape in a peculiar way. Here and there is a tree where it really hurt, here and there is a fence against whose post I struck my hand in passing.\" His inner landscape is also re-forming: \"This constant concern with an indefinite dangerous secret in one’s own body, this feeling that some dramatic change is taking place, without one’s being able to have any clarity about what really is... reminds me of prepuberty. I even recognize this gentle feeling of shame again.\" The relentlessly intimate burning in his gut provides a point of psychic detachment, rendering his survival \"a unique art form whose level of difficulty is so high that no one exists who can practice it.” Yet he insists, \"We begin again. We never give up.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50255625978129,"sku":"CIN0811208109G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51282266685713,"sku":"GOR006828363","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52105055797521,"sku":"CIN0811208109VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811208109.jpg?v=1750703390"},{"product_id":"funeral-music-for-freemasons-book-lars-gustafsson-9780811210188","title":"Funeral Music for Freemasons","description":"Lars Gustafsson’s Funeral Music for Freemasons (1983), the Swedish writer’s fifth book of fiction to be translated into English, follows the lives of three free spirits of the 1950s, from their aspiring student years in Stockholm to their present realities, so different from their youthful imaginings. Jan Bohman, a brilliant poet become smalltime African merchant––a latterday Rimbaud––is about to be deported from Senegal. Hans (“Hasse” to his friends), an idealistic research physicist, is now a professor at Harvard, leading the protected surburban life of an American academic. Ann-Marie Nöhme, the promising Mozartean soprano in the bonds of whose love both men agonized, has had a failed career in a provincial repertory. How could so much talent have come to so little? Was there something in the Sweden of their youth, and by extension the whole of the industrial West, that prefigured the death of creativity? Or might it have been spent, drained away in love’s passion? Then again, perhaps these years never did in fact happen, memory following one time-line, existence another, so that their real lives seem to have gone unlived. With his customary psychological delicacy and philosophical aplomb, Lars Gustafsson has composed a novel in Funeral Music for Freemasons that, like the Mozart Trauermusik the title invokes, sings a moving dirge for an age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50291665305873,"sku":"CIN0811210189G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50338445164817,"sku":"CIN0811210189VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007962972433,"sku":"NIN9780811210188","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811210189.jpg?v=1750849317"},{"product_id":"stillness-of-the-world-before-bach-poetry-book-lars-gustafsson-9780811210584","title":"The Stillness of the World Before Bach: Poetry","description":"Lars Gustafsson, one of Sweden’s leading men of letters, is known in the English-speaking world primarily for his novels and short stories, but he is also a distinguished poet with ten discrete volumes published to date in addition to the collective edition of his work for the years 1950-1980. In The Stillness of the World Before Bach: New Selected Poems, readers will recognize in Gustafsson’s verse the playful erudition and imaginative philosophizing that give his fiction its unique appeal. Gustafsson, writes editor Christopher Middleton, “has remained distinctively a poet, insofar as his novels and essays usually combine exploratory and fabulous features with keen observation, a fascination with character in conflict as the subjective (or existential) axis of history, and a delight in story for its own complex or simple sake.” The selections for The Stillness of the World Before Bach were made by Christopher Middleton of the University of Texas at Austin in close association with the author, with whom he also collaborated for his own versions of many of the poems. Other translations were contributed by Robin Fulton, Philip Martin Yvonne L. 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Or maybe all three Berard Foys are conceived of in a beehive within a skull, lodged deep in a Swedish forest. Although Swedish, Gustafsson spends most of the year at the University of Texas, Austin.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50479643033873,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50479643525393,"sku":"CIN0811210863A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811210863.jpg?v=1751139183"},{"product_id":"stories-of-happy-people-book-lars-gustafsson-9780811209786","title":"Stories of Happy People","description":"What is happiness in an age of packaged needs and liberated desires? Lars Gustafsson’s Stories of Happy People is a collection of ten short fictions that maps the range of contentment, from inner joy to the edges of despair. “Uncle Sven and the Cultural Revolution” finds a politically indifferent Swedish research engineer, in Mao’s China as an industrial consultant, surprised by his own imagination. “The Four Railroads of Iserlohn” lead to poignant, illusionary journeyings. The half-felt yearnings of displaced intellectuals, trying to break out of the stasis of their existence, are explored in “The Art of Surviving November,” “What Does Not Kill Us, Tends to Make Us Stronger,” and “The Fugitives Discover That They Knew Nothing.” “A Water Story” is a sketch of the elusive staying power of love. The protected, private universes of the mentally retarded, the insane, and the senile are opened to view in “Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases,” “The Bird in the Breast,” and “Out of the Pain.” In all of these stories, Gustafsson, one of Sweden’s leading men of letters and philosophical writer par excellence, places lives of seeming smallness within the wider context of the culture and history of our hapless era.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51007991972113,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007994659089,"sku":"NIN9780811209786","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811209784.jpg?v=1751139183"},{"product_id":"death-of-a-beekeeper-book-lars-gustafsson-9781910701935","title":"The Death Of A Beekeeper","description":"In the beginning of the winter thaw, Lars Lennart Westin has learned that he will not live through the spring. 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A mongrel that kept upsetting his dustbins as it rooted about in them, until the judge went after it and secretly beat its brains out with the edge-trimmers.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52571256324369,"sku":"NGR9781910701959","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781910701959.jpg?v=1760789915"},{"product_id":"time-in-xanadu-book-lars-gustafsson-9781556592751","title":"A Time in Xanadu","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Lars Gustafsson has an uncompromising vision of the utter complexity of modern life.\"--\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Gustafsson's \u003ci\u003eA Time in Xanadu\u003c\/i\u003e, his third translated collection of poems, manages to be personal and quirky while also deeply philosophical.\" --\u003ci\u003eForeWord\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003eFew poets today can so easily without overwriting bridge 'centuries and minutes,' to use the title of one of Gustafson's poems.\"--\u003ci\u003eHarvard Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom the moment it begins, Lars Gustafsson's \u003ci\u003eA Time in Xanadu\u003c\/i\u003e throws open questions of geography and narration. Where are we? How do we know? Throughout the book, the speaker's voice proves a powerful one as it muses on questions of travel, war, philosophy, and thought itself. The language of Gustafsson's poems is sparse, and his lines are compact and taut. But beneath the neat surfaces of these poems lie surreal and sometimes eerie landscapes: a castle in Cremona, Italy; \"those white, strangely meaningless \/ days between Christmas and New Year;\" a library which is \"a kind of subway.\" There are strains of Ezra Pound in this work, and allusions to great continental thinkers--Goethe, Fichte, Nietzsche, Einstein--drift across it. Yet tracing those allusions to their source is neither desirable nor, ultimately, possible. For in the wake of Gustafsson's highly evocative poems, we can only wonder just how much time we have spent, or lost, in Xanadu, or where we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Khan leaves Xanadu and milk\u003cbr\u003e from white goats only\u003cbr\u003e is hurled high into the air on his departure\u003cbr\u003e to nourish the spirits of the air.\u003cbr\u003e So says Marco Polo,\u003cbr\u003e our Venetian witness.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eLars Gustafsson\u003c\/b\u003e is a renowned Swedish poet, novelist, and philosopher who has written dozens of books. He taught philosophy for many years at the University of Texas, Austin. He now lives in Sweden.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52685575127313,"sku":"NLS9781556592751","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53252243882257,"sku":"NIN9781556592751","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781556592751.jpg?v=1762325923"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-lars-gustafsson.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}