Giddy instinct for plot and pace...openhearted enjoyment of sexual eccentricity"" - Publishers Weekly. ""A brilliant novella...a disturbing and yet dazzling picture of small-town conflict and crisis"" - Kirkus Reviews. Hugo Claus is Belgium's most celebrated author, shortlisted for the Nobel Prize and the recipient of numerous literary awards. Translated into over nine languages, The Swordfish is ostensibly the story of a summer moment in the lives, fantasies, and sensibilities of Martin, a seven year-old boy, his single mother, and the village headmaster. A senseless murder is committed and it affects Martin most of all. His fertile imagination inspires him to identify with the swordfish, as well as Clint Eastwood and Jesus Christ. With a masterfully light touch, Claus brings his readers into contact with the perplexing matters of loss, truth, religion, desire, and passion. Chosen for the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
A brilliant novella that incisively portrays a lonely boy's passage through obsessive religiosity toward madness, from the great Belgian author of The Sorrow of Belgium (1990) and other highly acclaimed works as yet mostly untranslated. Written in Flemish and originally published in 1989, this latest from Claus succinctly contrasts the fantasy life of preadolescent Martin Ghyselen with the passions that divert and all but destroy his family and neighbors in a tightly knit and isolated village rife with ethnic, religious, and sexual tensions. Martin's divorced mother Sybille surrenders to the fevered attentions of Headmaster Goossens, whose ``lyric drama'' being prepared for an upcoming ``Culture Weekend'' reveals his fascination with her namesake ``the goddess Cybele.'' The Ghyselens' hired man Richard, a former veterinarian, now impoverished and homeless, diverges dangerously from his former habit of ``helping women'' (who were pregnant and unmarried). And young Martin, imagining himself variously as the heroic Clint Eastwood, the ``terror of the seas,'' and especially as the misunderstood and martyred Jesus, distorts and rejects reality in ways that are crucially and mockingly mirrored in the affairs of his adult counterparts. Written in an elliptical prose whose harshness and sardonic wit are expertly caught by Levitt's graceful translation, this hypnotic short novel reveals the erratic pulse of a culture in the manner of Gnter Grass's also short book Cat and Mouse. Patterns of conflicting and provocative imagery (fertility-barrenness, Christ as a fish) further enrich a disturbing and yet dazzling picture of small-town conflict and crisis. The good news is that much more of Claus's fiction remains to be translated into English. The sooner the better. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Dutch
Original Language: Dutch
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