The country road
Subtitle: stories
By: Regina Ullmann ; translated from the German by Kurt Beals
Contributors: Beals, Kurt
Series: New Directions paperbook -- 1298; New Directions paperbook -- 1298.
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 147
ISBN-13: 9780811220057
Subjects: Translations into English
Work titles: Landstrasse
Description: "Admired by Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and particularly Rainer Maria Rilke, Swiss author Regina Ullmann has never appeared before in English: her oracular, strange, singular voice astonishes. The stories in this volume are largely set in the Alpine countryside, and though resonant of nineteenth-century village tales and of authors such as Adalbert Stifter, Ullmann's distinctive, otherworldly voice has inspired comparisons to her contemporary Robert Walser. In her stories, the archaic and the modern collide. In one tale, a young woman on an exhausting country walk recoils at a passing bicyclist, but accepts a ride from a wagon, taking her seat on a trunk with a snake coiled inside. As Ullmann writes, "sometimes the whole world appears to be painted on porcelain, right down to the dangerous cracks." This delicate but brittle beauty, with its ominous undertones, gives Regina Ullmann her unique voice" --
Notes: "Originally published as Die Landstrasse in 1921" -- Title page verso.

Translated from the German.
Table of contents: title: The country road --; title: Old tavern sign ---; title: The mouse --; title: The old man --; title: Strawberries --; title: The hot air balloon --; title: The Christmas visit --; title: Retold --; title: The hunchback --; title: Susanna --; title: The girl.