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The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

E.T.A. Hoffmann Anthea Bell Jeremy Adler

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Paperback

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German
Penguin Classics
14 July 1999
Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser and brawler, and the moody, hypochondriac genius Kreisler. In his exuberant and bizarre novel, Hoffmann brilliantly evokes the fantastic, the ridiculous and the sublime within the humdrum bustle of daily life, making The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1820-22) one of the funniest and strangest novels of the nineteenth century.
By:  
Introduction by:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   Penguin Classics
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 129mm,  Spine: 22mm
Weight:   281g
ISBN:   9780140446319
ISBN 10:   0140446311
Pages:   384
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

E T A Hoffmann (1776 - 1822) was born in Konigsberg and became one of the best known and influential authors of his time. He exploited the grotesque and the bizarre in a manner unmatched by any other Romantic writer. Jeremy Adler is Professor of German at King's College London. Anthea Bell has received many awards for her translations including the Mildred L. Batchelder Award in 1979, 1990 and 1995.

Reviews for The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

Hoffman is a supreme storyteller, and this is his funniest and most readable novel. First published in 1820, it is a light-hearted exploration of the romantic fascination with the individual and the imagination, with nature and the supernatural, and with art itself. Murr, a vain and bourgeois tomcat, is writing his memoirs, using as a blotting pad a biography of Kreisler, a moody but brilliant musician. By a printer's error the two lives are spliced together, commenting implicitly on each other. Hoffman's playfulness and experimentation introduced techniques that were later used by writers as various as Dickens, Kafka, Poe and Garcia Marquez. (Kirkus UK)


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