Agnomia - Gál, Róbert

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Résumé :
In this miniature masterpiece, R?bert G?l?whom Joshua Cohen has called ?a phenomenon??conducts a noble experiment in uncategorizable prose. One long, unbroken paragraph, blending memoir, fiction, and philosophy, Agnomia takes the reader on a transcontinental journey from Lower Manhattan to the Little Quarter of Prague, but most of all it takes the reader on a tour of the writer?s mind. Meditations on tautology, sexuality, and art culminate in an attentive evocation of a concert given by the composer and saxophonist John Zorn. For readers of Thomas Bernhard, Georges Bataille, and E. M. Cioran, Agnomia is a book to relish.

Biographie:

Róbert Gál is a Slovak-born writer and editor living in Prague. He is the author of several books of aphorisms, fiction, and philosophical fragments available in English translation, including Tractatus (Schism Press, 2022), Naked Thoughts (Black Sun Lit, 2019), Agnomia (Dalkey Archive Press, 2018), On Wing (Dalkey Archive Press, 2015), and Signs & Symptoms (Twisted Spoon Press, 2003). Find more on www.robert-gal.com.

David Short taught Czech and Slovak at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, from 1973 to 2011. In addition to academic books in the fields of art, literature, linguistics, and semantics, he has translated many works by modern Czech authors, above all, Bohumil Hrabal. In 2018 he received the Jiří Theiner Award, which recognizes those who significantly help spread and promote Czech literature abroad.