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Published Oct 2016
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the brilliant and incisive author of Mislaid - "a writer of extraordinary talent and range" (Jonathan Franzen) whose "capacity for inventions is immense" (BookForum) - comes a new collection of her earliest work: two wildly funny novellas (Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats and European Story for Avner Shats) available in one compact volume.
Years ago, Nell Zink resolved to write a book for her friend, the Israeli novelist Avner Shats, that would mirror his remarkable style. Unable to read his Hebrew, she was forced to start from scratch. Now, this tongue-in-cheek homage is available to Nell's growing readership for the first time, accompanied by a second dazzling and imaginative work that breathes - at Shats's request - the perfumed air of the Old Europe and stars a figure very much like Shats.
Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats is Zink's faux-translation of Shats's 1998 novel Lashut El Hashkia ("Sailing Towards the Sunset"). It flows with a narrative spin only the singular Zink could pull off - including both authentic and fictional versions of characters from Shats's life and work such as the author herself.
A fast-moving portrait of expat artists, authors, and academics on fellowships at the Villa Romana in Florence, European Story for Avner Shats centers on a trio of three indelible characters: an Israeli writer vaguely reminiscent of Shats, a German specialist in ancient lint, and a beautiful and fraudulent Russian performance artist.
Demonstrating the hallmarks of Zink's unique talent, Private Novelist is an intimate look into this acclaimed novelist's early work that will please her coterie of admirers and further burnish her lustrous reputation.
"Proof that experimental fiction can be fun." - Kirkus
"Initially written in three weeks' time and for Shats's eyes only, the writing can be at times pleasingly uninhibited, at other times recklessly dashed off. It's a tension that strangely fits this eccentric book, in style and in substance, binding its disparate parts together." - Publishers Weekly
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Photo: Fred Filkorn
Nell Zink was born in 1964 in southern California and grew up in rural Virginia. She attended Stuart Hall School and the College of William and Mary, where she majored in philosophy. Rather late in life she got a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen, Germany. She works as a translator for Zeitenspiegel Reportagen and lives in Bad Belzig, south of Berlin. This is her first book.
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