The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Healy Patrick Kraus

The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Healy Patrick Kraus

Intended 'for a theatre on Mars', with a cast of nearly 500 and running to over 200 scenes, Karl Kraus's apocalyptic tragedy The Last Days of Mankind is the longest, most elaborate play ever written. It is also a bitingly satirical commentary on the outbreak and subsequent course of World War I. Kraus (1874-1936) ranks as one of the greatest twentieth-century satirists. In 1899 he established his own journal, Die Fackel (The Torch), to 'drain the marsh of empty phrase-making.' His work comprises essays, short stories, poetry and aphorisms, and culminated in the five-act play presented here. First published in 1920, The Last Days employs a collage of modernist techniques to evoke a despairing and darkly comical vision of the Great War from the perspective of the author's hometown, Vienna. At its centre, Kraus places a cabal of war-mongering press barons and self-serving hacks, whose strategies of mass manipulation he holds responsible for the very atrocities they report. With this translation of the play in its entirety, Patrick Healy completes the work begun in 2014 when he published the first ever English-language version of the Prologue and Act I in In These Great Times, a selected anthology of Kraus's work. This edition features an introduction and a glossary of relevant names and terms. About the translator Patrick Healy is a philosopher, writer and senior lecturer at the Technical University Delft. He lives in Amsterdam. His earlier translations include Karl Kraus, In These Great Times: Selected Writings and Carl Einstein's Negro Sculpture. In the spring of 2016 his translation of Max Raphael's early critical writings will appear as The Invention of Expressionism. For more information, visit www.patrick-healy.com

Intended 'for a theatre on Mars', with a cast of nearly 500 and running to over 200 scenes, Karl Kraus's apocalyptic tragedy The Last Days of Mankind is the longest, most elaborate play ever written. It is also a bitingly satirical commentary on the outbreak and subsequent course of World War I. Kraus (1874-1936) ranks as one of the greatest twentieth-century satirists. In 1899 he established his own journal, Die Fackel (The Torch), to 'drain the marsh of empty phrase-making.' His work comprises essays, short stories, poetry and aphorisms, and culminated in the five-act play presented here. First published in 1920, The Last Days employs a collage of modernist techniques to evoke a despairing and darkly comical vision of the Great War from the perspective of the author's hometown, Vienna. At its centre, Kraus places a cabal of war-mongering press barons and self-serving hacks, whose strategies of mass manipulation he holds responsible for the very atrocities they report. With this translation of the play in its entirety, Patrick Healy completes the work begun in 2014 when he published the first ever English-language version of the Prologue and Act I in In These Great Times, a selected anthology of Kraus's work. This edition features an introduction and a glossary of relevant names and terms. About the translator Patrick Healy is a philosopher, writer and senior lecturer at the Technical University Delft. He lives in Amsterdam. His earlier translations include Karl Kraus, In These Great Times: Selected Writings and Carl Einstein's Negro Sculpture. In the spring of 2016 his translation of Max Raphael's early critical writings will appear as The Invention of Expressionism. For more information, visit www.patrick-healy.com

The Austrian Jewish author Karl Kraus (1874-1936) was the foremost German-language satirist of the twentieth century. As editor of the journal Die Fackel (The Torch) he conducted a sustained critique of propaganda and the press, expressed through polemical essays, witty aphorisms, and resonant poems. Edward Timms, founding director of the University of Sussex Centre for German-Jewish Studies, is best known for his two-volume study Karl Kraus--Apocalyptic Satirist. The title of his memoirs, Taking Up the Torch, reflects his long-standing interest in Kraus's journal. Fred Bridgham is the author of wide-ranging studies in German literature, history, and the history of ideas. His translations of lieder and opera include Hans Werner Henze's The Prince of Homburg for performance by English National Opera.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9789492027030
ISBN 10	9492027038
Title	The Last Days of Mankind
Author	Karl Healy Patrick Kraus
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	November Editions
Year published	2016-02-11
Number of pages	658
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable