The Story of My Baldness: A Novel
The ingenious comic novel named one of the “best books of 2004” by The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun.In The Story of My Baldness, Viennese philosophy student Marek van der Jagt tells the story of his quest for l’amour fou. Van der Jagt introduces a host of unforgettable characters...
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The ingenious comic novel named one of the “best books of 2004” by The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun.In The Story of My Baldness, Viennese philosophy student Marek van der Jagt tells the story of his quest for l’amour fou. Van der Jagt introduces a host of unforgettable characters and weaves a web of shameful secrets in this novel that uses Vienna the way Kafka used Prague—as the (strangely familiar) landscape where the narrator’s obsessions are given free rein.“Van der Jagt’s dysfunctional family may be the most wondrous and most marvelously entertaining in recent memory. . . . He looses the spirit of J.P. Donleavy—and more—once again upon the world. Wonderful.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Marek’s voice . . . is what gives his romantic misadventures (first kiss, deflowering, anxiety about physical endowment) their fun air of droll farce.”—Entertainment Weekly“Dark, funny and penetrating.”—The New York Observer“Archly tongue in cheek.”—Publishers Weekly“This whimsical novel, written pseudonymously by a Dutch novelist, masquerades as the confessions of an Austrian philosophy student . . . [who] decides to assert his existence by pursuing l’amour fou.”—The New Yorker
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781590511954 (1590511956)
Publish date: February 17th 2006
Publisher: Other Press
Pages no: 264
Edition language: English
This was surely one of the most simple stories I have ever read. I don't know why I feel like this, because on the back of the book and on the net people praise it and say that it's a good book and an unpredictable story. I didn't find it "unpredictable", I actually took it for a very simple and cle...
From the first page, I said to myself: I'll love this novel! Which was almost true. This is the kind of book that you browse in a bookstore and immediately decide to buy (if you are not averse to coming-of-age novels, that is).The writing is juicy, witty and funny. I especially loved Marek's recolle...