The Rowing Lesson
Anne Landsman
ISBN: 9781569475287
Published: November, 2008
Pricing
Paperback $12.00
Description
• Winner of the South African M-Net Literary Prize
• Winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize
• Shortlisted for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature
• Shortlisted for the Harold U. Ribalow Prize
• Top 29 Financial Times Fiction Books of the Year Selection
• Top 10 Times South African Books of the Year Selection
Be...
• Winner of the South African M-Net Literary Prize
• Winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize
• Shortlisted for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature
• Shortlisted for the Harold U. Ribalow Prize
• Top 29 Financial Times Fiction Books of the Year Selection
• Top 10 Times South African Books of the Year Selection
Betsy Klein is summoned from her home in the United States to the bedside of her dying father in a South African hospital. Faced with having to say goodbye, she delves into his mind, speaking to him in the lyrical second-person. She imaginatively recreates his life—his struggles to become a doctor after being orphaned young and his fight to win the respect of his Boer patients as a Jew—as well as her own experiences with him as a father.
Media
“Visceral ... Intensely exhilarating.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Amazing.”
—Los Angeles Times
“The beauty of The Rowing Lesson is in its fluid metaphors, its urgent storytelling ... and the lyric desperation of a daughter’s love. ”
—O Magazine
“Rarely in South African writing will we encounter language of such fire and passion.”
J.M. Coetzee
“Beautiful ... Unfailingly original.”
—Jennifer Egan
“Like Joyce or William Gass or John Edgar Wideman, Anne Landsman fashions a sensual web of memory and desire, rescuing a world on the brink of extinction through the power of her lyricism.”
—Stewart O’Nan
“A tour de force.”
—Roxana Robinson
“An adventure in language ... It makes art of a life.”