
In Case of Loss by Lutz Seiler
In Case of Loss reveals Seiler's essays to be different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry. Beautifully anecdotal and associative, they throw a light on literature and his East German background, including the Soviet-era mining community he grew up in, and are full of insight, humanity and an attention to overlooked objects and lives.
‘If this book were a building, it would surely be a makeshift shack of some kindA shelter for forgotten objects but also a workshop in which wheels are allowed to turn without always having to touch the ground. The views from the window keep changing. No sooner have you glimpsed old tank roads running past dunes in Fischland by the Baltic, than you’re somehow looking out from a hotel room in Los Angeles, or gazing over a lawn, which at first lies outside a proscribed poet’s house in a remote forest, and is then transported to a cultural centre in Rome. There’s a village too, still in the GDR, where everyone is tired thanks to the Cold War decision to convert it into a vast uranium mine. This is an exceptional and absorbing book, in which Lutz Seiler successfully recovers and also recreates the narrative of our times.’ Patrick Wright ---- 'It is never about reconstructing. Memory does not bring back what was forgotten. Indeed, the person who remembers doesn't even know for sure that what is remembered ever existed. . . Seiler's inimitable style as a storyteller, the wilful waywardness and weight of what he has to say, the intensity (and personal tact) of his engagement with the landscapes of others' poetries and lives all make these essays a lively portrait of the writer surrounded by his library. Seiler sets standards for reflection in art today. At the same time, he gives us a sense of the pagan-sacramental importance of objects in poetry.' Sibylle Cramer, Suddeutsche Zeitung
Poet, novelist and essayist Lutz Seiler was born in Gera, Thuringia, in 1963 and today lives in Wilhelmshorst, near Berlin, and in Stockholm. His writing has won many prizes, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, the Ingeborg Bachmann and the German Book Prize, and been translated into twenty-five languages. Martyn Crucefix has published six full collections of poetry. His translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies was shortlisted for the 2007 Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation, while These Numbered Days, translations of poems by Peter Huchel, won the 2020 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize. His new collection Between A Drowning Man was published in 2023.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781913505783 |
| ISBN 10 | 1913505782 |
| Title | In Case of Loss |
| Author | Lutz Seiler |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | And Other Stories |
| Year published | 2023-11-28 |
| Number of pages | 192 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |