2025
A01=Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
apocalyptic
Author_Laszlo Krasznahorkai
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B06=John Batki
Category1=Fiction
Category=FA
Category=FB
Category=FF
Category=FFL
Category=FYB
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_crime
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
hungarian
joy
Language_English
laureate
literature
long sentence
madness
manhattan
medal
melville
nobel prize winner
nobel prize winning book
ode
one sentence
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780811228404
- Weight: 286g
- Dimensions: 160 x 239mm
- Publication Date: 27 Sep 2022
- Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle “Entering the Madness of Others” and offers an epigraph: “Reality is no obstacle.” Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles, fueled by the idées fixe of a “gray little librarian” with fallen arches whose name—mr herman melvill—is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (“I too resided on East 26th Street . . . I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office”), which itself is just one aspect of his also being “constantly conscious of his connectedness” to Lebbeus Woods, to the rock that is Manhattan, to the “drunkard Lowry” and his Lunar Caustic, to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville, but also tracing the paths to “a Serene Paradise of Knowledge.” Driven to save that Palace (a higher library he also serves), he loses his job and his wife leaves him, but “people must be told the truth: there is no dualism in existence.” And his dream will be “realized, for I am not giving up: I am merely a day-laborer, a spade-worker on this dream, a herman melvill, a librarian from the lending desk, currently an inmate at Bellevue, but at the same time—may I say this?—actually a Keeper of the Palace."
WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PRIZE
László Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954. He worked for some years as an editor until 1984, when he became a freelance writer. He now lives in reclusiveness in the hills of Szentlászló. His many accolades include the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature, and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement. Starting in 2000, New Directions has published fourteen of his books.
John Batki is a kilimologist, writer, translator, and visual artist. He was born in Hungary and has lived in the United States since age fourteen.
