Research Catalog

Title

Bright magic : stories / Alfred Döblin ; Selected and translated from the German by Damion Searls ; introduction by Günter Grass.

Author

Döblin, Alfred, 1878-1957

Publication

New York : New York Review Books, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Searls, Damion

Description

xiv, 210 pages; 21 cm.

Summary

"Alfred Doblin was a titan of modern German literature. This collection of stories--astonishingly, the first collection of his stories ever published in English--shows him to have been equally adept in shorter forms. Included in its entirety is Doblin's first book, The Murder of a Buttercup, a work of savage brilliance and a landmark of literary expressionism. Mortality roams the streets of nineteenth-century Manhattan, with a white borzoi and a quiet smile. A ballerina duels to the death with the stupid childish body she is bound to. We experience, in the celebrated title story, a dizzying descent into a shattered mind. The collection is then rounded off with two longer stories written when Doblin was in exile from Nazi Germany in Southern California, including the delightful "Materialism: A Fable," in which news of humanity's soulless doctrines spreads to the animals, elements, and molecules of nature"--

Series Statement

New York Review Books classics

Uniform Title

• Short stories. Selections. English
• New York Review Books classics

Alternative Title

Short stories.

Subject

Short stories, German

Genre/Form

• Short stories
• Short stories, German.
• Fiktionale Darstellung
• Erzählende Literatur

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• Part 1: Early stories: The murder of a buttercup (written 1904-11, published 1912) -- The sailboat ride -- The ballerina and the body -- Astralia -- The immaculate conception -- The metamorphosis -- She who helped -- The wrong door -- The murder of a buttercup -- Bluebeard the knight -- The other man -- Memoirs of a jaded man -- The canoness and death.
• Part 2: Late tales: A fiary tale of technology (1935) -- A little fable (1937) -- Bright magic (written 1940-45, published 1948) -- Traffic with the beyond -- Materialism, a fable -- Five incomprehensible stories (1947-48) -- The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius -- The origins of caviar -- The library -- Max -- What people mean by cow's cheese.

ISBN

• 9781590179734
• 1590179730

LCCN

^^2015040622

OCLC

• 929917282
• SCSB-12700938

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library