| Description |
252 pages ; 21 cm |
| Note |
Translated from the German. |
|
"A New Directions paperbook original." |
| Summary |
"The Memoirs of a Polar Bear is a novel that stars three generations of talented writers and performers who happen to be polar bears. The Memoirs of a Polar Bear has in spades what Rivka Galchen hailed in The New Yorker as "Yoko Tawada's magnificent strangeness"--Tawada is an author like no other. Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous, both as circus performers and writers in East Germany: they are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world. In Chapter One, the grandmother matriarch in the Soviet Union accidentally writes a bestselling autobiography. In Chapter Two, Tosca, her daughter (born in Canada, where her mother had emigrated) moves to the DDR and takes a job in the circus. Her son--the last of their line--is Knut, born in Chapter Three in a Leipzig zoo, but raised by a human keeper in relatively happy circumstances in the Berlin zoo, until his keeper, Matthias, is taken away... Happy or sad, each bear writes a story, enjoying both celebrity and "the intimacy of being alone with my pen.""-- Provided by publisher. |
| Subject |
Polar bear -- Fiction.
|
|
Polar bear. |
| Genre/Form |
Fiction.
|
| Subject |
Emigration and immigration -- Fiction.
|
|
Emigration and immigration. |
|
Human-animal relationships -- Fiction.
|
|
Human-animal relationships. |
| Genre/Form |
Allegorical fiction.
|
| Added Author |
Bernofsky, Susan, translator.
|
| Added Title |
Etüden im Schnee. English https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2016028378
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Tawada, Yōko, 1960- Memoirs of a polar bear First edition. New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2016 9780811225793 (DLC) 2016024407 |
| ISBN |
081122578X paperback |
|
9780811225786 paperback |
|
9780811225793 electronic book |
| Standard No. |
40026606309 |
|
