The Tower
Tales from a Lost Country
1st Edition
Published on 6. November 2014
1200 pages
978-0-241-00490-6 (ISBN)
Description
In derelict Dresden a cultivated, middle-class family does all it can to cope amid the Communist downfall. This striking tapestry of the East German experience is told through the tangled lives of a soldier, surgeon, nurse and publisher. With evocative detail, Uwe Tellkamp masterfully reveals the myriad perspectives of the time as people battled for individuality, retreated to nostalgia, chose to conform, or toed the perilous line between East and West. Poetic, heartfelt and dramatic, The Tower vividly resurrects the sights, scents and sensations of life in the GDR as it hurtled towards 9 November 1989.
Reviews / Votes
A lush tapestry of characters, composed of a thousand scenes and situations, and punctuated by poetic digressions, The Tower brings a German ghost to life . . . The Tower stands as a monument against forgetting * Le Monde * Memories and impressions grow wild across the lattice of the plot, bringing the symphonic book to - but never over - the brink of cacophony -- Jane Yager * The Times Literary Supplement * Set in the ivory tower inhabited by the educated Dresden bourgeoisie, Uwe Tellkamp's The Tower paints a grandiose panorama of the demise of the GDR * Welt * So blunt, so radical, so void of illusion - life in the GDR has never before been portrayed in such a meticulous way . . . The struggle for materials, the camp mentality, and the ubiquitous mistrust: the GDR rises again in all of its now-almost-forgotten guises - * Die Zeit *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
File size
3,31 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-241-00490-6 (9780241004906)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Uwe Tellkamp was born in 1968 in Dresden. After completing his military service, he lost his place to study medicine on the grounds of 'political unreliability'. He was arrested in 1989 but went on to study medicine in Liepzig, Dresden and New York, later becoming a surgeon. He has won numerous regional prizes for poetry, as well as the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for The Sleep in the Clocks. In 2008, he won the German Book Prize for The Tower.
