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Life Stories
Nora Ikstena and Margita Gailitis (Translator)
Guernica Editions, Spring 2013
122 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781550716696
ISBN10: 1550716697
English
Translated from the Latvian
$15.00 Canada, $15.00 US
Read more from the Essential Translations Series
I have written Life Stories virtually in the space of one breath -- these stories have been imagined in such concentration, that I had to free myself from them. They came so naturally, that I am very happy to have returned to the short-story format. It seems to me that in these eight stories each individual and different life is so strikingly intense that it was not possible to place all into one novel … Also in terms of style, I searched and found a different approach to each of the stories. I wanted to express myself more clearly and more simply.
A deceptive simplicity, a desire to make language burst into life, a care for the deep but none too reliable emotions that bind us – whether Nora Ikstena is describing a blossom-strewn porch in spring, a misunderstood daughter or an ingenuous prostitute’s inner world, her stories mine both sharp reality and storytelling gold from the overlooked ore of everyday.
Julian Evans
With each new literary work, Nora Ikstena creates a world more thoughtful and emotional, revealing a soul of greater scope, yet more concentration. Compared to her previous work, the message delivered in this text [Life Stories] has become seemingly simpler, but precisely because of this it reaches the boundary of the impossible and the indescribable. A contained style combined with the multiple interpretations possible of the text so characteristic of the author’s work, cannot fail but convince the reader, not allowing for loss of attention.
Eva Mārtuža, journalist, Latvijas avīze
Nora Ikstena’s daring, charming, and often mischievous fiction opens up new paths not only for Latvian literature in English translation but for English literature itself.
Jeremy Davies, Senior Editor, Dalkey Archive Press
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