Night Train
- ISBN-10
- 0811228576
- ISBN-13
- 9780811228572
- Series
- Night Train
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 128
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-10-05
- Publisher
- New Directions Publishing
- Author
- A. L. Snijders
Description
Brevity is the soul of beauty in these tiny masterworks of short short fiction Gorgeously translated by Lydia Davis, the miniature stories of A. L. Snijders might concern a lost shoe, a visit with a bat, fears of travel, a dream of a man who has lost a glass eye: uniting them is their concision and their vivacity. Lydia Davis in her introduction delves into her fascination with the pleasures and challenges of translating from a language relatively new to her. She also extols Snijders’s “straightforward approach to storytelling, his modesty and his thoughtfulness.” Selected from many hundreds in the original Dutch, the stories gathered here—humorous, or bizarre, or comfortingly homely—are something like daybook entries, novels-in-brief, philosophical meditations, or events recreated from life, but—inhabiting the borderland between fiction and reality—might best be described as autobiographical mini-fables. This morning at 11:30, in the full sun, I go up into the hayloft where I haven’t been for years. I climb over boxes and shelving, and open the door. A frightened owl flies straight at me, dead quiet, as quiet as a shadow can fly, I look into his eyes—he’s a large owl, it’s not strange that I’m frightened too, we frighten each other. I myself thought that owls never move in the daytime. What the owl thinks about me, I don’t know.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Night Train
By Martin AmisThe book hangs around in the mind like smoke in a jazz club’ Telegraph Magazine
-
Night Train, Night Train
By Robert BurleighRide the rails of the night train in this beautifully rendered journey conducted by renowned artist Wendell Minor and frequent collaborator Robert Burleigh.
-
Night Train to Lisbon
By Pascal MercierThe bestselling novel of love and sacrifice under fascist rule, and “a treat for the mind. One of the best books I have read in a long time” (Isabel Allende).
-
Night Night, Train
By Amy ParkerChug-a-chug, the night night train Is a’rumblin’ ’round the track!
-
Night Trains: The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper
By Andrew MartinIn her 1968 memoir The Past is Myself, Christabel Bielenberg described how 'propaganda posters hung unnoticed in red and black tatters from the shrapnelpitted walls ... the windowless trains ... carried a rudderless crowd of soldiers, ...
-
The Night Train: A Novel
By Clyde EdgertonIn The Night Train, Edgerton's trademark humor reminds us of our divided national history and the way music has helped bring us together.
-
The Night Train to Berlin
By Melanie Hudson‘A mesmerising story of love and hope...the best book that I have read this year’ Penny, Reader Review The most heartbreaking historical fiction novel you will read this year from the USA Today bestseller!
-
Night Train: Stories
By Liselotte ErdrichWhat does it mean to be a "fully processed" Indian in America today? In Night Train, Lise Erdrich offers a sharp-humored and powerful primer. Largely set in the small towns...
-
Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road
By Stuart StevensThe author describes his experiences traveling with three companions from Beijing to India via Kashgar in order to retrace the route followed by Peter Fleming in 1936
-
The Secret of the Night Train
By Sylvia BishopWhen Max is sent to Istanbul to stay with her boring Great Aunt-Elodie, little does she expect to be plunged into a thrilling nighttime adventure across Europe.