Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Night Train

Night Train

Snijders, A. L.
Davis, Lydia

Paperback

General FictionLiterary Fiction

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0811228568
ISBN13: 9780811228565
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: Oct 5 2021
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.35
Height: 0.47 Width: 5.20 Depth: 7.80
Language: English
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.

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