Child of All Nations (Penguin Modern Classics)
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A delicious novel about an irreverent thirteen year old, Child of All Nations smokes and so does its heroine (Erica Jong )
Nothing short of a revelation ... I am still haunted by it (Evening Standard )
Hugely engaging... [with] room for everything -- shrewdness, forgiveness, wit and loneliness -- while love makes all its hopeless deals with hope (Anne Michaels, Author Of Fugitive Pieces )
Nothing short of a revelation ... I am still haunted by it (Evening Standard )
Hugely engaging... [with] room for everything -- shrewdness, forgiveness, wit and loneliness -- while love makes all its hopeless deals with hope (Anne Michaels, Author Of Fugitive Pieces )
Product Description
Kully knows some things you don’t learn at school. She knows the right way to roll a cigarette and pack a suitcase. She knows that cars are more dangerous than lions. She knows you can’t enter a country without a passport or visa. And she knows that she and her parents can’t go back to Germany again – her father’s books are banned there. But there are also things she doesn’t understand, like why there might be a war in Europe – just that there are men named Hitler, Mussolini and Chamberlain involved. Little Kully is far more interested where their next meal will come from and the ladies who seem to buzz around her father.
Meanwhile she and her parents roam through Europe. Her mother would just like to settle down, but as her restless father struggles to find a new publisher, the three must escape from country to country as their visas expire, money runs out and hotel bills mount up.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
First published in 1938 this is the first English-language publication of this charming novel, whose unique perspective is that of a young girl travelling around 1930s Europe with her exiled parents. The girl's voice is what captivates and makes this novel worth your time. And in the masterful hands of award-winning translator Michael Hofmann it reads beautifully. Hofmann's afterword is compelling too. If you enjoy the work of Joseph Roth - Keun's partner at the time - you'll find much to please you in this novel.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Kully is a nine year old girl growing up in 1930's Europe. Along with her father and mother the family move from country to country as exiles because;
"...we can't return to Germany, because then the government would lock us up, ever since my father told the French newspapers and other newspapers, and he even wrote it in a book, about how much he hates the government."
Kully's narrative voice (and Michael Hoffman's excellent translation) moves this novel along at quite a pace. As you can see it is a voice of innocence and experience at the same time. Not only is she a child living in dangerous times but her parents a far from model. Her father in particular is not to be relied upon. A writer constantly in search of the next publisher, borrowing money from all and sundry and dragging his wife and daughter around to leave as surety when he needs to borrow more. Kully remembers vividly a time when he almost forget to come back for her, an episode which captures strikingly the trust a child places in their parents. And so often in this story Kully and her mother are left waiting, suffering the indignity of the changing attitudes of hotel staff as telegrams and letters keep them posted on the progress of earning enough to pay the hotel bill.
A young narrator is a risk but Keun hits just the right note, avoiding sentimentality and often cutting to the heart of the matter. She has a unique way of looking at the adult world.
"A border has nowhere for you to set your foot. It's a drama that happens in the middle of a train, with help from actors who are called border guards."
She is also very funny, her unique take on things often throwing up hilarious observations.
"She ordered bouillabaisse, which is a kind of soup that's made out of the Mediterranean; all the creatures in the Mediterranean float around it in a hard-to-identify way, and some of them of course are poisonous. When people have had enough of life, they can choose to die either by mushrooms or bouillabaisse, but in either case I think they have to order it specially from the hotel kitchen."
Keun's novel was first published in 1938, before war broke out and certainly before the true scale of Nazi atrocities would be known. It is amazing therefore with the benefit of hindsight to see the prescience of this novel. Not so much in foretelling the scale of destruction but in showing with an observer's eye the impact of diaspora on any community. What do you call home if it isn't a place and it isn't your family?
Michael Hoffman's excellent afterword explains a little more about Keun, who was the partner of Joseph Roth in the last years of his life (and may have provided inspiration for the character of Kully's father), as well as correctly identifying the weakness of the ending. As soon as Kully boards the boat to America there is a dissipation of tension from which the novel never quite recovers. It's charting of their nomadic existence in Europe is finely observed however and makes a compelling case for Keun to emerge from the shadow of her partner and hopefully for more off her work to become available in English.
"...we can't return to Germany, because then the government would lock us up, ever since my father told the French newspapers and other newspapers, and he even wrote it in a book, about how much he hates the government."
Kully's narrative voice (and Michael Hoffman's excellent translation) moves this novel along at quite a pace. As you can see it is a voice of innocence and experience at the same time. Not only is she a child living in dangerous times but her parents a far from model. Her father in particular is not to be relied upon. A writer constantly in search of the next publisher, borrowing money from all and sundry and dragging his wife and daughter around to leave as surety when he needs to borrow more. Kully remembers vividly a time when he almost forget to come back for her, an episode which captures strikingly the trust a child places in their parents. And so often in this story Kully and her mother are left waiting, suffering the indignity of the changing attitudes of hotel staff as telegrams and letters keep them posted on the progress of earning enough to pay the hotel bill.
A young narrator is a risk but Keun hits just the right note, avoiding sentimentality and often cutting to the heart of the matter. She has a unique way of looking at the adult world.
"A border has nowhere for you to set your foot. It's a drama that happens in the middle of a train, with help from actors who are called border guards."
She is also very funny, her unique take on things often throwing up hilarious observations.
"She ordered bouillabaisse, which is a kind of soup that's made out of the Mediterranean; all the creatures in the Mediterranean float around it in a hard-to-identify way, and some of them of course are poisonous. When people have had enough of life, they can choose to die either by mushrooms or bouillabaisse, but in either case I think they have to order it specially from the hotel kitchen."
Keun's novel was first published in 1938, before war broke out and certainly before the true scale of Nazi atrocities would be known. It is amazing therefore with the benefit of hindsight to see the prescience of this novel. Not so much in foretelling the scale of destruction but in showing with an observer's eye the impact of diaspora on any community. What do you call home if it isn't a place and it isn't your family?
Michael Hoffman's excellent afterword explains a little more about Keun, who was the partner of Joseph Roth in the last years of his life (and may have provided inspiration for the character of Kully's father), as well as correctly identifying the weakness of the ending. As soon as Kully boards the boat to America there is a dissipation of tension from which the novel never quite recovers. It's charting of their nomadic existence in Europe is finely observed however and makes a compelling case for Keun to emerge from the shadow of her partner and hopefully for more off her work to become available in English.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Interesting to read a contemporary account life in pre-war Europe, and how it impacted upon families in both a practical and emotional sense.
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