{"product_id":"ss-proleterka-9780811215503","title":"SS Proleterka","description":"Compressed, delicate, but brutally precise, \u003ci\u003eS. S. Proleterka\u003c\/i\u003e is a fiercely boiled-down \u003ci\u003ebildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e from the presiding genius of dry-ice, Fleur Jaeggy. The S. S. \u003ci\u003eProleterka\u003c\/i\u003e is a Yugoslavian ship; our fifteen-year-old protagonist and her financially ruined, distant, yet somehow beloved father, Johannes, take a cruise together on it to Greece. With a strange telescopic perspective, narrated from the day she receives her father's ashes, our heroine recounts her youth: her re-married mother, cold and far away, allows the father the rare visit to the child, stashed away with relatives or at a school for girls. The journey to Greece, father and daughter. The last and first chance to be together. On board the S. S. \u003ci\u003eProleterka\u003c\/i\u003e, she has a violent, carnal schooling with the sailors: I had no experience of the other part of the world, the male part. Mesmerized by the desire to be experienced, she crisply narrates her trysts as well as her near-total neglect of her father. A ferocious study of distance and diffidence, \u003ci\u003eS. S. Proleterka\u003c\/i\u003e bottles at one hundred and eighty proof the insomniac resentment and cyclical nature of familial pain. Jaeggy's distillation of childhood is brought into English with telegraphic urgency by Alastair McEwen, the acclaimed translator of Umberto Eco and Alessandro Baricco, and the emotions pressed out between Jaeggy's lines are enough to fill a tome of a thousand pages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New Directions Publishing Corporation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/17\/2003\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780811215503\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 122\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.33lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.02h x 5.48w x 0.37d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 10\/01\/2003 pg. 1192\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/12\/2004 pg. 36\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Fleur Jaeggy, Alastair McEwan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43084117835957,"sku":"9780811215503","price":15.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_5bfad635-3af1-402d-be95-fa6da0147780.jpg?v=1692110793","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/ss-proleterka-9780811215503","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}