Kleinzeit

Description

A richly strange and funny novel follows one man grappling with love, life and creativity On an ordinary day in a strangely unfamiliar London, Kleinzeit is fired from his advertising job and told he must go to hospital with a skewed hypotenuse. There on Ward A4, he falls in love with the divine, rosy-cheeked Sister and is sent spinning into a quest involving, among other things, a glockenspiel, sheets of yellow paper, Orpheus, the Underground and that dirty chimpanzee, Death.

On his death in 2011, The Times described Russell Hoban as 'perhaps the most consistently strange writer of the late 20th century'. He thought and wrote in an extraordinary range of genres, becoming first a bestselling writer of children's books, particularly the immortal Frances stories and his first novel, The Mouse and His Child (1968). After its publication he continued to write for children (most notably perhaps the Captain Najork books with Quentin Blake and The Marzipan Pig), but focussed most of his energies on a sequence of wonderful novels, which began with The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973) and ended with Angelica Lost and Found (2010). He also wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Second Mrs Kong (1994). His novels were wildly various, but share his obsession with objects, animals, specific works of art and pieces of music, his love of words and sense of humour. Penguin Modern Classics publishes his first eight novels- The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit, Turtle Diary, Riddley Walker, Pilgermann, The Medusa Frequency, Fremder and Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer.

A very funny quest for creativity and sanity ... There are no boring sentences in a Hoban novel. -- Richard Preston * The Times * Russell Hoban is one of our greatest, timeless novelists. * The Times * Masterly ... a mosaic in which each tiny fragment of wit or dirt or profundity has its appointed place. * Times Literary Supplement * A second tour-de-force... entirely delightful. -- Auberon Waugh * Evening Standard * Brimming with humanity and humour... brilliant handling of language. * Glasgow Herald * Russell Hoban is our Ur-novelist, a maverick voice that is like no other. * Sunday Telegraph *