num_pages: 101
description: Set in postwar Switzerland Fleur Jaeggys eerily beautiful novel begins simply and innocently enough: At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell. But there is nothing truly simple or innocent here. With the off-handed knowingness of a remorseless young Eve the narrator describes life as a captive of the school and her designs to win the affections of the apparently perfect new girl Frderique. As she broods over her schemes as well as on the nature of control and madness the novel gathers a suspended unsettling energy. Now translated into six languages I beati anni del castigo in its Italian original won the 1990 Premio Bagutta and the 1990 Premio Speciale Rapallo. In Tim Parks consummate translation (with its spare haunting quality of a prose poem) Sweet Days of Discipline was selected as one of the London Times Literary Supplements Notable Books of 1992: In a period when novels are generally overblown and scarcely portable it is good to be able to recommend [one that is] miraculously short and beautifully written.
language: English
title: Sweet Days of Discipline
publisher: New Directions