The Country Road: Stories
Description
Although a famous Swiss author, Regina Ullmann has never appeared before in English: her oracular, strange, singular voice astonishes.
Never before in English, Regina Ullmann's work is distinctive and otherworldly, resonant of nineteenth-century village tales and of authors such as Adalbert Stifter and her contemporary Robert Walser. In the stories of The Country Road, largely set in the Swiss countryside, the archaic and the modern collide, and "sometimes the whole world appears to be painted on porcelain, right down to the dangerous cracks." this delicate but fragile beauty, with its ominous undertones, gives Ullmann her unique voice.
Praise for The Country Road: Stories
A pure poetic talent: everything is full of mystery.
— Hermann Hesse
To read your book for me is such a multiplicity of joys that I can only gradually cope with it.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to Regina Ullmann
Regina Ullmann has a sense of authenticity and a touch of genius.
— Robert Musil
Her voice is something holy.
— Thomas Mann
A
triumphant translation.
— Publishers Weekly
Its
language feels timeless—rich and cavernous and haunted.
— Kevin Nguyen - Grantland
Ullmann delicately balances each of her characters’ emotions on a pinpoint, presenting both the beauty and fragility of every momentary feeling.
— Jan Anspach - Words Without Borders
It’s as if Ullmann takes biblical wisdom literature, strips it of all moral judgment, and then spins it with rotating moments of natural bliss and existential fear.
— Jonathan Sturgeon - Flavorwire
Ullmann is a one-off, an original, a really deeply peculiar writer.
— Michael Hofmann - NYRB
