The best possible holiday read

Irish Times

A hugely enjoyable idiosyncratic month by month narrative, in which the frenzy of artistic activity in London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Trieste is conveyed with vigour and humour

Daily Telegraph

A vivid, richly textured book that chronicles a world crackling with talent, energy and foreboding

FT

Se alle

A brilliant game of original quotations and tracings

Der Spiegel

Illies shapes his material not as a scholar, but as a wordsmith, as a story-teller with a strong sense for dramatic effect and composition...the most enjoyable book I've read in years

Die Welt

Illies makes the hundred years between 1913 and his readers disappear. A beautiful book.

Süddeutsche Zeitung

Illies is as astute a researcher as he is an observer of the zeitgeist ... reads like something out of a magic realist novel.

- Philip Oltermann, Guardian

I couldn't stop reading - Illies' stories are simply magnificent

- Ferdinand von Schirach,

Thorough and fascinating

Time Out

An absolute gem of a book. His snapshot approach to the year, recorded month by month, is the most original historical account I've come across ... Illies's genius turn of phrase, beautifully retained by Shaun Whiteside and Jamie Lee Searle's elegant translation, can be found throughout ... The entries read like history's footnotes, but as anyone who's read Freud knows, the footnotes always tell the best story.

- Lucy Scholes, Observer

A witty yet moving narrative worked up from sketched biographical fragments, 1913 is an intimate vision of a world that is about to change forever. The stuffy conventions of the nineteenth century are receding into the past, and 1913 heralds a new age of unlimited possibility. Kafka falls in love; Louis Armstrong learns to play the trumpet; a young seamstress called Coco Chanel opens her first boutique; Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract; and new drugs like cocaine usher in an age of decadence. Yet everywhere there is the premonition of ruin - the number 13 is omnipresent, and in London, Paris and Vienna, artists take the omen and act as if there were no tomorrow. In a Munich hotel lobby, Rilke and Freud discuss beauty and transience; Proust sets out in search of lost time; and while Stravinsky celebrates the Rite of Spring with industrial cacophony, an Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf Hitler sells his conventional cityscapes.
Les mer
From James Joyce to Coco Chanel, 1913 is an irreverent but poignant portrait of Europe on the brink of war.
From James Joyce to Coco Chanel, 1913 is an irreverent but poignant portrait of Europe on the brink of war, now in paperback.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781846689611
Publisert
2014-06-12
Utgiver
Profile Books Ltd; The Clerkenwell Press
Vekt
240 gr
Høyde
196 mm
Bredde
128 mm
Dybde
20 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
288

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Florian Illies was born in 1971. He has worked as literary editor for major German newspapers and magazines, and co-founded art magazine Monopol. His previous four books have sold over one million copies.