Benjamin’s Crossing
- 5 Aug 2021
- 9781786892850
- £9.99
- 432 pp
- 129×198mm
- 5 Aug 2021
- 9781786892867
- £7.99
- 432 pp
In a few words
A powerful and moving novel recounting the life and death of Walter Benjamin from the award-winning author
In a few words
A powerful and moving novel recounting the life and death of Walter Benjamin from the award-winning author
Inspired . . . a piercing, magnificent novel
Amos Oz
A poignant and eloquent vision of the great critic's personality and fate
Harold Bloom
Inspired . . . a piercing, magnificent novel
Amos Oz
A poignant and eloquent vision of the great critic's personality and fate
Harold Bloom
More about
the book
There is no such thing as history, you see. It’s a dream, perhaps even a dream of a dream . . .
Walter Benjamin is dead. One of the most radiant minds of the twentieth century has been snatched away by death in a small town on the border between Spain and France. His thousand-page manuscript, carried the length of France during his flight from the Nazis, has vanished with him, never to be recovered.
Jay Parini’s extraordinary novel traces Benjamin’s steps back through time, from the salons of Berlin to the winding roads of Catalonia. A tale of escape and pursuit, Benjamin’s Crossing dramatises one of the most moving peripheral episodes of the Holocaust; and above all, it is a love story.
More about
the book
There is no such thing as history, you see. It’s a dream, perhaps even a dream of a dream . . .
Walter Benjamin is dead. One of the most radiant minds of the twentieth century has been snatched away by death in a small town on the border between Spain and France. His thousand-page manuscript, carried the length of France during his flight from the Nazis, has vanished with him, never to be recovered.
Jay Parini’s extraordinary work traces Benjamin’s steps back through time, from the salons of Berlin to the winding roads of Catalonia. A tale of escape and pursuit, Benjamin’s Crossing dramatises one of the most moving peripheral episodes of the Holocaust; and above all, it is a love story.
An exciting adventure story . . . wholly emblematic of our dark age
Gore Vidal
The friends who recall Benjamin come across as vivid individuals, but it is Benjamin himself who dominates the book, and he is wonderfully, infuriatingly alive, an intellectual hopelessly out of touch with his ailing body, curiously and tragically blind to the Europe disintegrating around him
Painstakingly researched and dramatically recounted . . . has something important to say about the role of the intellectual in modern Western Society
Not only carefully researched but also, more importantly, thoroughly imagined
An exciting adventure story . . . wholly emblematic of our dark age
Gore Vidal
The friends who recall Benjamin come across as vivid individuals, but it is Benjamin himself who dominates the book, and he is wonderfully, infuriatingly alive, an intellectual hopelessly out of touch with his ailing body, curiously and tragically blind to the Europe disintegrating around him
Painstakingly researched and dramatically recounted . . . has something important to say about the role of the intellectual in modern Western Society
Not only carefully researched but also, more importantly, thoroughly imagined
