Bright Magic: Stories (New York Review Books Classics)

Bright Magic: Stories (New York Review Books Classics)

Alfred DÃ¶blinâ€™s many imposing novels, above all Berlin Alexanderplatz, have established him as one of the titans of modern German literature. This collection of his stories â€”astonishingly, the first ever to appear in Englishâ€”shows him to have been a master of short fiction too.

Bright Magic includes all of DÃ¶blinâ€™s first book, The Murder of a Buttercup, a work of savage brilliance and a landmark of literary expressionism, as well as two longer stories composed in the 1940s, when he lived in exile in Southern California. The early collection is full of mind-bending and sexually charged narratives, from the dizzying descent into madness that has made the title story one of the most anthologized of German stories to â€œShe Who Helped,â€ where mortality roams the streets of nineteenth-Âcentury Manhattan with a white borzoi and a quiet smile, and â€œThe Ballerina and the Body,â€ which describes a terrible duel to the death. Of the two later stories, â€œMaterialism, A Fable,â€ in which news of humanityâ€™s soulless doctrines reaches the animals, elements, and the molecules themselves, is especially delightful.
Country USA
Manufacturer NYRB Classics
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-10-25
Format Kindle eBook

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