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War and turpentine : a novel / Stefan Hertmans

By:

Hertmans, Stefan

Contributor(s):

McKay, David, (1973 -)

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: New York : Pantheon Books , 2016Description: 290 p. ; 25 cmISBN:

9781101874028

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

DDC classification:

FIC HER

LOC classification:

PT6466.18.E76 O5713 2016

Summary: A novel about a Flemish man who reconstructs his grandfather's story - his hopes, loves, and art, all disrupted by the First World War - from the unflinching notebooks he filled with pieces of his life. The life of Urbain Martien - artist, soldier, survivor of World War I - lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. His grandson, a writer, retells his story, the notebooks giving him the impetus to imagine his way into the locked chambers of Urbain's memory. He vividly recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father's work; dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this story, Urbain's grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both.

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Fiction / Ficción	Biblioteca Pública de San Miguel de Allende, A.C. Sala Ingles	General	FIC HER (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		004470

A novel about a Flemish man who reconstructs his grandfather's story - his hopes, loves, and art, all disrupted by the First World War - from the unflinching notebooks he filled with pieces of his life. The life of Urbain Martien - artist, soldier, survivor of World War I - lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. His grandson, a writer, retells his story, the notebooks giving him the impetus to imagine his way into the locked chambers of Urbain's memory. He vividly recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father's work; dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this story, Urbain's grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both.

Translated from the Dutch to English.

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