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Alfred Kern | ||
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1960, Collins, hbk In stock, click to buy for £8.50, not including p&p Alternative online retailers to try: Or click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Alibris Or click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Ebay
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Storyline: The hero of this novel is the clown as artist, his stage the fast-vanishing Europe of the earlier part of this century. Born in Switzerland-like other great modern [modern as in the 1960s] clowns-Hans Schmetterling, son of a working-class widow, seemed a boy of little promise for whom destiny held nothing more than a post as accountant in a department store. Like many quite ordinary boys Hans longed to see the world; but unlike most he saw his immediate world in terms of burlesque. Leaving home, he presently attached himself to a travelling circus as casual hand. By a mixture of good fortune and effrontery, he soon attracts the notice of the proprietress, Martha, a lioness of a woman with a domineering will, boundless ambition and gargantuan appetites. Given a chance in the ring, Hans quickly becomes a favourite with the public; he also becomes Martha's lover, vice Franz, the enigmatical Hungarian ex-aristocrat, and in due course her man of affairs. But here lies the germ of Hans's inner conflict: he is not by vocation a man of business, not even-despite his immense talent-primarily a mummer; he is an artist, an inventive satirist who creates the material of his performances out of the contemporary world-all the wonderfully varied Europe of the Kaiser and the Czar, Edward VII and Victor Emmanuel III-which the circus traverses on its perennial round. Nothing in this book is more fascinating than the fertile brain of Hans the Clown observing, noting and bringing to life in hilarious parody, the attitudes and absurdities of his contemporaries. When first published in France, this book was chosen as the book of the month by Société des Lecteurs Chapters: Part I: Imperial Splendours Part II: The End of the Hapsburgs Part III: Laughter and Tears Part Four: Martha's Tomb |
Alfred Kern Books |
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