A journey along this famous river described by the author, Claudio Magris, who unravels the amazing history of the many towns along its banks.

Danube

Magris, Claudio

Collins, Harvill

Early this century Enrico, a young intellectual, leaves the abundantly diverse Austro-Hungarian city of Gorizia with its mixed population and culture, to spend several years living on the Patagonian pampas, alone with his ancient Greek texts, his flocks and every now and then a woman. He has been taught by his closest friend, Carlo, a philosopher/poet who commits suicide in his early twenties, to search for an authentic life, free of social falsehoods. But in his search for this unattainable goal, Enrico destroys every chance he has of a normal existence; even after his return to live a life of ever-increasing isolation by the Istrian seashore, his attempts at human intercourse, at meaningful love, are thwarted. In recounting the life and character of Enrico, ostensibly one of Life's failures, Claudio Magris paints a remarkably shrewd and observant picture of a whole world in ferment, that of the decaying Austro-Hungarian empire, shaken to its foundations by the Great War, and emerging from the German occupation and the Communist revolution ripe for disintegration and forever seeking, as does Enrico, for a reason to go on living.

A Different Sea

Literature & Fiction

Harpercollins

From one of Europe’s most revered authors, a tale of one man’s obsessive project to collect the instruments of death, evil, and humanity’s darkest atrocities in order to oppose them Claudio Magris’s searing new novel ruthlessly confronts the human obsession with war and its savagery in every age and every country. His tale centers on a man whose maniacal devotion to the creation of a Museum of War involves both a horrible secret and the hope of redemption. Luisa Brooks, his museum’s curator, a descendant of victims of Jewish exile and of black slavery, has a complex dilemma: will the collections she exhibits save humanity from repeating its tragic and violent past? Or might the display of articles of war actually valorize and memorialize evil atrocities? In Blameless Magris affirms his mastery of the novel form, interweaving multiple themes and traveling deftly through history. With a multitude of stories, the author investigates individual sorrow, the societal burden of justice aborted, and the ways in which memory and historical evidence are sabotaged or sometimes salvaged.

Blameless (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Literary

Yale University Press

A collection of brief, but intimate meditations on life and culture ranging from controversial matters to private moments The internationally acclaimed author Claudio Magris offers a collection of brief “snapshots” reflecting on life and culture from 1999 to 2013 through his very personal lens. Some pieces portray private, intimate moments, while others offer views on public, sometimes controversial matters; the tone is sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, sometimes ironic, but always engaging. The panoramic nature of the vignettes is broad in scope, encompassing a variety of subjects rendered in quick, decisive brushstrokes. It is a little like leafing through a photo album of our times and our society while a learned companion seated beside us offers a perceptive running commentary. Magris’s wit—at times pungent, at times self‑deprecating, always keen—is refreshingly affable. A continuing adventure by the author who has reinvented “travel literature.”

Snapshots (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Essays & Correspondence

A writer for whom the journey has always mattered reinvents the very form itself in this inviting collection of in-the-moment impressions of his journeys A writer of enormous erudition and wide-ranging travels, Claudio Magris selects for this volume writings penned during trips and wanderings over the span of several decades. He has traveled through these years with many beloved companions, to whom he dedicates the book, and sought the kind of journey “that occurs when you abandon yourself to [the gentle current of time] and to whatever life brings.” Taken together Magris’s essays share a clearly identified theme. They represent the motif of the journey in all its aspects—literary, metaphysical, spiritual, mythical, philosophical, historical—as well as the author’s comprehensive understanding of the subject or, one might say, of his own way of being in the world. Traveling from Spain to Germany to Poland, Norway, Vietnam, Iran, and Australia, he records particular moments and places through a highly personal lens. A writer’s writer and a reader’s traveler, Magris proves that wandering is equal part wondering.

Journeying (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

An Italian critic of culture recounts both his personal adventures and ancient lore and literature surrounding the Danube River and Middle European civilization, including references to Kafka, Freud, Marcus Aurelius, and Ovid

Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea

History

World

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

In this acclaimed international bestseller, Claudio Magris tracks the Danube River, setting his finger on the pulse of Central Europe, the crucible of a culture that draws on influences of East and West, Christianity and Islam. In each town he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments, from Ovid and Marcus Aurelius to Kafka and Canetti, in "a fascinating blend of anecdote and history" (San Francisco Examiner).

Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea (FSG Classics)

Europe

Who is the mysterious narrator of Blindly? He is clearly a recluse and a fugitive. It is Jorgen Jorgenson, the nineteenth-century adventurer who became king of Iceland but was condemned to forced labour in the Antipodes. But it is also Comrade Cippico, militant Italian communist, imprisoned for years in Tito’s gulag on the “naked island” of Goli Otok. And it is the many partisans, prisoners, sailors, and stowaways who recount the perils of travel, war, and adventure. 
In a shifting, choral monologue—part confession, part psychiatric session—a man recounts (invents, falsifies, hides, screams out) his life, which has passed through the horrors, the hopes, and the revolutions of the last century and through widely different lands and seas. Hailed as a masterpiece upon its initial publication in Italy, Blindly is a novel of highly original, poetic intensity, a Jacob’s Ladder reversed to descend into the nether regions of history and, in particular, of the twentieth century.

Blindly

Hamish Hamilton

In his acclaimed work Danube, Claudio Magris painted a vast canvas stretching from the source of the river to the Black Sea. Now he focuses on the tiny borderlands of Istria and Italy where he was born and where he has lived most intensely. From the forests of Monte Nevoso, to the hidden valleys of the Tyrol, to a Trieste café, Microcosms pieces together a mosaic of stories—comic, tragic, picaresque, nostalgic—from life's minor characters. Their worlds might be small, but they are far from minimalist: in them flashes the great, the meaningful, the unrepeatable significance of every existence.

Microcosms (Vintage Classics)

Short Stories & Anthologies

Vintage Classics

In this fascinating journey Claudio Magris, whose knowledge is encyclopaedic and whose curiosity limitless, guides his reader from the river's source in the Bavarian hills through Austro-Hungary and the Balkans to the Black Sea. Along the way he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments - from Ovid and Marcus Aurelius to Kafka and Canetti - and in so doing sets his finger on the pulse of Central Europe, the vital crucible of a culture that draws on influences of East and West, of Christendom and Islam.

Travel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Magris, Claudio. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Magris, Claudio

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Magris, Claudio. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Danube

A Different Sea

Blameless (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Snapshots (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Journeying (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea

Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea (FSG Classics)

Blindly

Microcosms (Vintage Classics)

Danube