Esther Kinsky is the author of six volumes of poetry and
four novels, most recently Grove, which won the 2018 Leipzig
Book Fair Prize. A prolific translator, Kinsky has translated many
notable English and Polish writers into German, including John
Clare, Henry David Thoreau, and Olga Tokarczuk. Her novel
River was longlisted for the German Book Prize in 2014.
Caroline Schmidt has translated poetry by Friederike
Mayroecker, as well as art historical essays, museum catalogues,
and exhibition texts for Albertina in Vienna and Pinakothek der
Moderne in Munich, among others. She lives in Berlin.
"A lyrical, meticulous inquiry into the alchemy of memory."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Written in the form of a travelogue, this fictional
narrative-named for the Italian word for 'rumble'-records the
memories of survivors of two earthquakes that devastated the Friuli
region of Italy in the nineteen-seventies. Kinsky threads their
stories with descriptions of native flora. . . . While the narrator
offers insights about collective trauma and the transformative
impact of nature's whims on one's sense of home, the book is filled
with the voices of the landscape's inhabitants." -The New
Yorker
"A chorus of seven villagers narrate the novel from a vantage point
close to the present day . . . . Kinsky is also a poet, and she has
a poet's ear for rhythm and precision, elegantly rendered in
Caroline Schmidt's translation. The author has a great gift for
describing landscape." -Charlie Lee, TLS
"It reads cinematically; the cuts are determined and stylistic. . .
.The book excels when it manages to balance the grand geology of
its subject matter on the tiny gestures of daily life. . . .
Rombo is staggering. There is something epic about it."
-Magnus Rena, Review 31
"Kinsky expertly animates the natural world around her while
removing her human hand. . . . If trauma is the inability to
redescribe, Rombo offers a powerful antidote in language and
the infinite possibilities of description." -Matthew Janny,
Financial Times
"Esther Kinsky has more eyes than most; in her novel Rombo
she evokes the entire life of an Italian village before, during,
and after the two devastating earthquakes of 1976, but each plant
and animal central to the village is also a character, and the most
important character of all is the landscape itself. The book
becomes as much about the futures as the past, for our natural
disasters are increasingly man-made, and we need more than ever
this reminder of universal impermanence and the marks of memory we
leave in its wake." -Mary Ruefle
"A tragic travelogue to the underworld-turned-world that recasts a
newly lost Italian past with a climate-wise chorus straight out of
the most harrowing Greek drama." -Joshua Cohen
"In Esther Kinsky's new novel language becomes the highest form of
compassion and solidarity - not only with us human beings, but with
the whole world, organic, non-organic, speaking out with many
mouths and living voices. A miracle of a book; should be shining
when it gets dark." -Maria Stepanova
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