The Melancholy of Resistance

Resumen del libro

The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find - music, cosmology, fascism.

The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender centre of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, 'is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type'.

Biografía del autor

László Krasznahorkai (nascut el 5 de gener de 1954 a Hongria) és un escriptor hongarès reconegut per les seves novel-les denses, filosòfiques i apocalíptiques. La seva prosa es caracteritza per llargues frases hipnòtiques i una atmosfera inquietant. Va guanyar el Premi Man Booker Internacional el 2015 pel conjunt de la seva obra. Entre els seus llibres més coneguts hi ha Sátántangó (1985), que Béla Tarr va adaptar al cinema, i La melancolia de la resistència (1989). La seva obra sovint explora la decadència, lx{0026} x02019;absurd i el col-lapse de la civilització.