Wow! eBook
The Last of the Vostyachs First Edition, First Printing Edition
Author(s): Diego Marani (Author)
- Publisher: Dedalus Ltd
- Publication Date: 18 May 2012
- Edition: First Edition, First Printing
- Language: English
- Print length: 166 pages
- ISBN-10: 1907650563
- ISBN-13: 9781907650567
Book Description
As a child, Ivan and his father worked as forced labourers in a mine in Siberia, the father having committed some minor offence against the regime. He is then murdered in front of his young son, after which Ivan – who is a Vostyach, an imaginary ethnic group of whose language he is the last remaining speaker – is struck dumb by having witnessed his father’s murder. Some twenty years later the guards desert their posts and Ivan walks off free, together with the other inmates. Guided by some mysterious power, he returns to the region he originally came from. The Last of the Vostyachs won two literary prizes in Italy: the Premio Campiello and the Premio Stresa.
Editorial Reviews
Review
A ‘genius’ Helsinki mystery with a touch of The Killing … So, we have: 1. An intellectual puzzle. 2. A wild man of nature adrift in a big city. 3. A policier set near the Arctic Circle. (If that alone doesn’t make you put down your copies of Fifty Shades of Whatever then I despair. It has that Killingesque atmosphere.) 4. Magic, and a sense of the immensity of the primeval universe. 5. An unmistakable dash of humour, even when your nerves are being shredded. 6. Wolves, and a Siberian tiger, let loose from a zoo. 7. A happy ending against all odds. And 8. All hanging together. When I reviewed Grammar, I edged towards using the word ‘genius’ to describe Marani. I’m doing so again now. –Nick Lezard’s Choice in The Guardian
For Italian fiction in translation, there is nobody more important being published today. This is a beautiful, intelligently funny novel. –Italia Magazine
The Last of the Vostyachs, Diego Marani’s second novel to appear in English, in a dazzling translation from the Italian by Judith Landry, is a riot of comic unpredictability. –Max Liu in The Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Diego Marani was born in Ferrara in 1959. He works as a senior linguist for the European Union in Brussels. Every week he writes a column for a Swiss newspaper about current affairs in Europanto, a language that he has invented. His collection of short stories in Europanto, Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot has been published by Dedalus. In Italian he has published six novels,including the highly acclaimed New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the Vostyachs.
