Fleur Jaeggy
I Am the Brother of XX
Winner of the John Florio Prize for its translation
A wife is suspended in a bird cage; a thirteenth-century visionary senses the foreskin of Christ on her tongue: Fleur Jaeggy’s gothic imagination knows no limits. Whether telling of mystics, tormented families or famously private writers, Jaeggy’s terse, telegraphic writing is always psychologically clear-eyed and deeply moving, always one step ahead, or to the side, of her readers’ expectations.
In this, her long-awaited return, we read of an ‘eerie maleficent calm, a brutal calm’, and recognise the timbre of a writer for whom a paradoxical world seethes with quiet violence.
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- If you had subscribed to And Other Stories before 12 December 2016, you would have received the first edition of I Am the Brother of XX – in which all subscribers are thanked by name – before its official publication, as well us up to five other And Other Stories titles per year. Find out about subscribing to upcoming titles here.
- Translator Gini Alhadeff won the 2019 John Florio Prize for this brilliant translation.
- Find out more about Fleur Jaeggy.
Print status: Available
Author: Fleur Jaeggy
Translator: Gini Alhadeff
Original language: Italian
Format: B-format paperback
Publication date: 6 July 2017
ISBN: 9781911508021
Ebook ISBN: 9781911508038
Availability: UK, Europe and Commonwealth (excl. Canada)
Number of pages: 142
Reviews
Claire-Louise Bennett
'Thank the gods and tip the devil for Fleur Jaeggy!'
Sheila Heti
The New Yorker
‘It is hard not to be impressed by Jaeggy’s own spiritual and aesthetic grandeur, which casts her stories in such a compellingly cool light. She, too, has a startling ability to go beyond: beyond the sentimental heart, the writerly niceties, the conventions that bind us, and the messy effusions of contemporary life.’
Daniel Johnson
The Paris Review
‘This book is twisted and hypnotizing and, somehow, downright lovely. Reading it is not unlike diving naked and headlong into a bramble of black rosebushes, so intrigued you are by their beauty: it’s a swift, prickly undertaking, and you emerge the other end bloodied all over.’
Publishers Weekly, starred review
‘The stories in Jaeggy’s collection are masterpieces of fury and restraint . . . These chilling, beguiling stories dig up reflections on solitude, regret, and sometimes even on love. It is thrilling to live in Jaeggy’s worlds, which are so intense they threaten to boil over, yet pull back just enough to keep their secrets.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘Jewels of intellect and compassion . . . In prismatic translation from the Italian, these tiny tales sparkle with wit and worldly wisdom.’
Amanda DeMarco
Financial Times
‘Jaeggy is a master of the short form . . . her stories without fail are complex and devastating. [Her] prose is superb (and as superbly translated) as ever, her characteristic desolation as self-possessed as it is recherché.’
Claire Hazelton
‘‘An intensely beautiful and original collection that bristles with a strange and often disturbing magic. [...] Jaeggy is a master of the short form.’
Los Angeles Review of Books
‘Jaeggy's astute compression of narrative detail is at once serene and startling. Beneath a placid, opalescent surface lurks a threat or violence that may or may not be realized, but which contributes to the profound impression that people and their lives are unpredictable, coursing with icy, barren wildness.’
