{"product_id":"agathe-isbn-9781681373836","title":"Agathe","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the author of 'A Man without Qualities,' a novel about spirituality in the modern world.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e Agathe is the sister of Ulrich, the restless and elusive “man without qualities” at the center of Robert Musil’s great, unfinished novel of the same name. For years Agathe and Ulrich have ignored each other, but when brother and sister find themselves reunited over the bier of their dead father, they are electrified. Each is the other’s spitting image, and Agathe, who has just separated from her husband, is even more defiant and inquiring than Ulrich. Beginning with a series of increasingly intense “holy conversations,” the two gradually enlarge the boundaries of sexuality, sensuality, identity, and understanding in pursuit of a new, true form of being that they are seeking to discover.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Robert Musil’s \u003ci\u003eThe Man Without Qualities \u003c\/i\u003eis perhaps the most profoundly exploratory and unsettling masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction. \u003ci\u003eAgathe, or, The Forgotten Sister \u003c\/i\u003ereveals with new clarity a particular dimension of this multidimensional book—the dimension that meant the most to Musil himself and that inspired some of his most searching writing. The outstanding translator Joel Agee captures the acuity, audacity, and unsettling poetry of a book that is meant to be nothing short of life-changing.Shortlisted for the 2020 Helen \u0026amp; Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eAgathe\u003c\/i\u003e is 350 pages, a respectable length, and yet it feels—especially against the perspective of the nihil alienum, all-singing, all-dancing \u003ci\u003eMan Without Qualities\u003c\/i\u003e—almost like a novella…. It reads like a book Agee was born to translate. I wonder if I have ever read a better translation. The book shines with pleasure, the complex sentences opening in front of you, balanced and sequential and easy to follow in all their twists and curlicues...  A superlative translation, it is equally good over long distances (making it less susceptible to quotation), and in bravura passages timed to perfection[.]\"—Michael Hofmann, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eAgathe\u003c\/i\u003e represents a kind of concentrate of the quests and questions of its monumental source material: in it, as George Steiner once wrote about part three of the original novel, ‘what was previous a kaleidoscope narrows to a laser’. . . . Musil’s sentences are never less than elegant (a handsome precision reflected in Joel Agee’s translation).” —Julian Evans, \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"In Agee’s vividly contemporary and sensuous translation, \u003ci\u003eAgathe \u003c\/i\u003ezeroes in on a quasi-mystical adventure in living and loving.\" —Lisa Appignanesi, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] valuable addition to modernist European literature.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Incredibly erotic.” —BBC4's \u003ci\u003eSaturday Sounds\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Musil’s writing is so disciplined, his word choice so exact, that sentence follows sentence with a pointedness that seems to come naturally.”—J.M. Coetzee, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Musil, as much as Joyce, is an intensely personal and domestic bard, although all great writers can of course be seen, or can see themselves, as prophets of political doom, civilization’s collapse.”—John Bayley, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert Musil\u003c\/b\u003e (1880–1942) is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Confusions of Young Törless\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFive Women\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Man Without Qualities\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Posthumous Papers of a Living Author\u003c\/i\u003e.  His works were banned by the Nazis, and he and his Jewish wife went  into exile during World War II. He died of a stroke in 1942.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoel Agee\u003c\/b\u003e is a writer and translator. He has received several prizes, including the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin in 2008 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist's verse play \u003ci\u003ePenthesilea\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the author of two memoirs--\u003ci\u003eTwelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eIn the House of My Fear\u003c\/i\u003e. His translation of \u003ci\u003ePrometheus Bound\u003c\/i\u003e was produced at the Getty Villa in 2013 and is published by NYRB Classics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300317024485,"sku":"NP9781681373836","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681373836.jpg?v=1767721138","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/agathe-isbn-9781681373836","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}