Happy 2012. We are pleased to announce that the first NYRB Classic of the year is the first complete English translation of Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol, with an introduction by Daniel Kehlmann. An Ermine in Czernopol, along with Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and The Snows of Yesteryear, are available at a limited-time 25% off.
An Ermine in Czernopol
By Gregor von RezzoriIntroduction by Daniel Kehlmann
A new translation from the German by Philip Boehm
“The city lies somewhere in the godforsaken southeastern part of Europe and is named Czernopol,” Gregor von Rezzori writes in the prelude to this major early novel, the first part of a trilogy based on the author’s childhood that would grow to include some of his finest work: the scintillating memoir The Snows of Yesteryear and the trickily titled novel, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite.
In An Ermine in Czernopol, the author summons the disorderly and unpredictable energies of a town where everything in the world is seemingly mixed up together. The novel centers on the curious tragicomic fate of Tildy, an erstwhile officer in the army of the now-defunct Austro-Hungarian empire. Rezzori surrounds Tildy with a host of fantastic characters, each with an unbelievable story, to engage the reader in a kaleidoscopic experience of a city where nothing is as it appears.
Read Daniel Kehlmann’s introduction