Night Work: Amazon.co.uk: Thomas Glavinic: Books

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Gone-away World

by Nick Harkaway

4.3 out of 5 stars (19) �5.17

Cold Earth

by Sarah Moss

3.7 out of 5 stars (52) �6.57

The City & The City

by China Mieville

3.7 out of 5 stars (25) �11.59

Glister

by John Burnside

4.0 out of 5 stars (5) �4.99

Learning Autodesk Maya 2008: Foundation

by Autodesk Maya Press

4.3 out of 5 stars (3) �24.73

› Explore similar items

Product Description

Review

"* 'Glavinic's masterpiece... A wondrous, big novel about the self and others, about fear and courage, about the fragility of the everyday, which only seems to wrap itself around us so firmly, and about the uncertain border between waking and dreaming.' - Daniel Kehlmann, Der Spiegel * 'Glavinic has created a gripping mystery - a book that leaves its readers disturbed yet happy, and full of questions.' - Focus * 'One of the most thrilling novels of the year... a fantastic tale about the fragility of the individual.' - Nurnberger Zeitung"

Nurnberger Zeitung

a fantastic tale about the fragility of the individual.

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

dark fiction(2)

kafka-esque(2)

See all 5 tags...

Customer Reviews

4 Reviews

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

3.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kafka-esque treatment of the "alone in the world" theme, 14 Oct 2008

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Thirty-six-year-old Jonas, a resident of Vienna, Thomas Glavinic's everyman-type protagonist, wakes up one day and finds that everybody but himself has disappeared: gone without a trace. It's not clear whether other forms of life are also gone, but he hears no birds nor does he see any stray dogs. No flies buzz and no mosquitoes bite. He does see trees, and the electricity and the hot water (somehow) work.

This is a familiar science fiction premise, but Glavinic's treatment is pure Kafka. He doesn't attempt in any way to account for the disappearance (much as Kafka did not attempt to explain how Gregor Samsa became "a monstrous verminous bug"); instead he shows us how Jonas copes with this stupendously extraordinary event. Jonas seems to think it has something to do with his mind, and that he is missing something ghostly, and so he sets up cameras to record himself and his surroundings. Turns out that "the Sleeper" walks and does other unremembered things while sleeping. Jonas also seems to think that there is somebody (or something) else about and so he leaves his name and phone number and address everywhere. He carries around a shotgun and a knife for protection from God knows what.

To be honest I almost gave up on this most unusual novel after the first few pages, it seemed so flat; but I'm glad I didn't. Glavinic uses the reader's interest in learning more about what has happened and why, and whether Jonas will find other survivors, as a device to keep the reader wondering, while what the novel is really about unfolds. And what the novel is about is the human predicament.

Jonas is alone physically as we are all alone psychologically. His life with other people now exists only inside his head, in his memory of them. He tries to return to the comfort of his childhood by going back to the apartment he grew up in and restoring the furniture and the artifacts of his childhood. He tries to return his fianc�e Marie to himself by finding her clothes and smelling them.

But ultimately Jonas is besieged by demons and the subconscious forces of self-destruction. He finds little things out of place. He hears sounds that aren't there and movements out of the corner of his eyes. He turns quickly in an attempt to catch something that is going on behind him. He becomes obsessed with the idea that something is happening when he isn't there and can't see it, and so he gets more cameras and more cameras and sets them up at intersections and other places in Vienna and elsewhere and has them run all night hoping to catch what his eyes miss. He spends hours viewing the film, looking for something out of the ordinary, something ghostly. He begins the see that "The Sleeper," has turned perverse and instead of sleeping begins to work against Jonas and his efforts. But Jonas can't catch him in the act. Jonas becomes afraid of the Sleeper and tries not to sleep at all. He drives at high speeds on the empty roads and begins taking pills to stay awake. He seems to be rapidly disintegrating.

What happens to the human alone? Can the mind really cope with the silence, the lack of movement, the absence of touch, the utter isolation? Is Jonas' experience in some way akin to being in solitary confinement, but without any hope of ever emerging? Will the last human left on earth patiently travel around the world looking for some other living being, or will he gradually go mad? Or, will he destroy himself?

And if we are all ultimately alone, what is it that allows us to hold onto sanity and to find some purpose in life?

Like Kafka and Freud (two other sometime residents of Vienna), Glavinic writes in German. (The English translation by John Brownjohn is very readable.) And like Kafka and Freud Glavinic sees the absurd in our lives, and in the individual a perverse longing for death.

This is the kind of novel that challenges the reader psychologically and philosophically. It draws the reader in and does not let go until the last page is eagerly read.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alone at last !, 10 Aug 2008

By	Josephine Huys (England) - See all my reviews

When Jonas wakes up one morning like any other, he soon notices that something is wrong. No TV, no Internet,no radio, and worst outside.. a deadly silence and not a soul in sight...He quickly realises that everyone has disapppeared and left behind a city, Vienna, orderly but empty.
Start a gripping and intriging narrative where Jonas is soon fighting himself and the mysterious Sleeper and clings to his memories to keep going. Trying to reach his vanished girlfriend who was abroad at the time when the world stopped, he embarks on a crazy journey to England and back, to no avail but in a increasingly desesperate state till...I won't reveal the ending but I recommend this excellent novel that vivildy brings question about our real inner self and need of others to function.
A metaphysical thriller of sort.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed feelings, 10 Mar 2009

By	EmmaH (Dorset, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

On the one hand I very much enjoyed this book, although I rather thought the writing lacked style. But since I read an English-version of the original German, this could have been a loss in translation. Even so, I was gripped from the beginning and read pretty much all at one gulp.

On the other hand, this story really didn't work for me. My main compulsion in reading it so quickly was to satisfy my curiosity. Why had everyone disappeared? What possible explanation could there be? But as other reviewers have pointed out, you never find out.

However, Glavinic is not Kafka. Kafka creates a self-referential fictional world where things can and do happen that are beyond explanation. You accept that you will never know what crime Josef K is supposed to have committed in 'The Trial', and that the injustice will not be resolved. You accept this because the true theme of the book is clearly not what Josef K has or has not done, but something else entirely.

Glavinic, however, presents a world that is very much our own, only something entirely inexplicable has occurred. And Jonas' complete lack of curiosity about this event is infuriating. He barely speculates on what has happened. Even the rather promising avenue of the antics of the Sleeper is also left largely unexplored. Instead, we're given a series of rather repetitive and frankly not very profound musings on the nature of time passing. More Proust than Kafka, really.

I finished 'Night Work' feeling annoyed and frustrated. It neither worked as a story, nor a more metaphysical novel. I was left feeling that, ultimately, it was as vacuous as the world Jonas wakes up into.

Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 4 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Kafka it aint
Jonas wakes up one day in the city of Vienna to find he is the only person alive on the planet. There are no birds, no animals, no people, no rotting corpses, no signs of human... Read more

Published 1 month ago by E. Shaw

› See all 4 customer reviews...

Listmania!

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1994-2009: A list by M. Dowden
2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Longlist: A list by emma who reads a lot
Italian Crime Novels published in 2008/9/10: A list by K. Meek "Euro Crime"

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Books > Fiction

Look for similar items by subject

Feedback

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.

	84% buy the item featured on this page: Night Work 3.8 out of 5 stars (4)
	8% buy The Gone-away World 4.3 out of 5 stars (19) �5.17
	3% buy Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum 4.1 out of 5 stars (18) �6.48
	2% buy Netherland 3.1 out of 5 stars (108) �4.20

Night Work (Paperback)

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product details

Product Description

Review

Nurnberger Zeitung

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Customer Reviews

Customer Discussions

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight

Start a new discussion

Listmania!

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject

Feedback

Your Recent History