Availability
Availability Label | Location | Shelfmark | Availability | Reservations |
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Central Branch | Fiction Hertm | Copies Available |
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Full Record Details Table
Title Statement | War and turpentine: a novel / Stefan Hertmans ; translated from the Dutch by David McKay. |
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Author | Hertmans, Stefan |
Additional Contributors | McKay, David,1973- |
Publication | New York: Pantheon Books,[2016]©2016 |
Edition | First American edition. |
Extent of Item | 290 pages |
ISBN | 1101874023 9781101874028 |
Other Number | 2909783 |
General Notes | Translation of: Oorlog en terpentijn. |
Summary | "In this vivid and masterful novel, a Flemish man reconstructs his grandfather's story--his life, loves, and art, all disrupted by the first World War--from the unflinching notebooks he left behind. Short Description War and Turpentine centers on two men distanced by time: a religious painter whose life is changed forever by World War One; and his grandson, a writer reckoning with his grandfather's story. The life of Urbain Martien--artist, soldier, survivor of the incomprehensible--lies contained in two notebooks written before his death in 1981. His grandson, a writer, imagines his way into the locked chambers of Urbain's memory: retouching church paintings as a boy, dodging death in an iron foundry, and, ultimately, fighting the war that altered the course of human history. There is Urbain's father, the lowly church painter; Urbain's wife, Gabrielle, his true love's sister; and Urbain's canvas, the ever-present reminder of the artist he wanted to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this story, the narrator straddles past and present, searching for a place in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints the extraordinary story of one man's life and the echo of its impact resounding through the generations.--Provided by publisher. |
Subjects & Genres | |
By Topic | Grandfathers--Fiction |
Grandsons--Fiction | |
Life change events--Fiction | |
World War, 1914-1918--Fiction--Influence | |
Artists--Fiction--Belgium | |
By Location | Belgium--Fiction |
By Genre | Historical fiction |
Domestic fiction |