Spadework for a Palace

28 October 2022

László Krasznahorkai (Author), John Batki (Translator)

Description

A joyful ode—in a single soaring, crazy sentence—to the interconnectedness of great (and mad) minds

Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle “Entering the Madness of Others” and offers an epigraph: “Reality is no obstacle.” Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles, fueled by the idées fixe of a “gray little librarian” with fallen arches whose name—mr herman melvill—is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (“I too resided on East 26th Street . . . I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office”), which itself is just one aspect of his also being “constantly conscious of his connectedness” to Lebbeus Woods, to the rock that is Manhattan, to the “drunkard Lowry” and his Lunar Caustic, to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville, but also tracing the paths to “a Serene Paradise of Knowledge.” Driven to save that Palace (a higher library he also serves), he loses his job and his wife leaves him, but “people must be told the truth: there is no dualism in existence.” And his dream will be “realized, for I am not giving up: I am merely a day-laborer, a spade-worker on this dream, a herman melvill, a librarian from the lending desk, currently an inmate at Bellevue, but at the same time—may I say this?—actually a Keeper of the Palace."

Reviews

"Krasznahorkai establishes his own rules and rides a wave of exhilarating energy. Apocalyptic, visionary, and mad, it flies off the page and stays lodged intractably wherever it lands." — Publishers Weekly

"One of the most important—and eccentric—writers working today." — Hari Kunzru, The Spectator

"A single eighty-page-long sentence, scrawled in the journal of a “gray little librarian” who is named “herman melvill,” and who is losing his mind. By choosing this difficult form and this metafictional name, Krasznahorkai comes dangerously close to replicating the brainy but predictable tropes of deconstructionist archive fiction. Yet Spadework for a Palace also attempts to diagnose a fresh variant of archive fever—a kind of repulsion, native to an age of incomprehensible databases and sublime technology, that drives its sufferer to give up the task of archival interpretation altogether." — Tadhg Larabee, Boston Review

"Breathtaking and hypnotic, this unorthodox novella boldly merges fiction, travelogue and literary criticism into one 96-page sentence." — Thuy Dinh, National Public Radio

"If Spadework has a moral, as storybooks are supposed to, it is that ‘There is no duality in existence.’ We have one life to live, this storybook tells us, and it is not ours." — J.W. McCormack, The New Left Review

Also By: László Krasznahorkai

A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East
László Krasznahorkai, Ottilie Mulzet
Paperback, 2022
A quiet, poetic, and exquisitely gorgeous novel describing a wandering mythic figure in a Kyoto monastery, by the National Book Award winner
A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East
László Krasznahorkai, Ottilie Mulzet
E Book, 2022
A quiet, poetic, and exquisitely gorgeous novel describing a wandering mythic figure in a Kyoto monastery, by the National Book Award winner
Chasing Homer
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, Max Neumann, Szilveszter Miklós
Hardback, 2021
A classic escape nightmare, Chasing Homer is sped on not only by Krasznahorkai’s signature velocity, but also by a unique musical score and intense illustrations
Chasing Homer
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, Max Neumann, Szilveszter Miklós
E Book, 2021
A classic escape nightmare, Chasing Homer is sped on not only by Krasznahorkai’s signature velocity, but also by a unique musical score and intense illustrations
The Last Wolf & Herman
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, George Szirtes
E Book, 2019
Now in paperback, two novellas from the Hungarian master László Krasznahorkai—“one of the most mysterious artists now at work” (Colm Toíbín)

Also By: John Batki

Chasing Homer
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, Max Neumann, Szilveszter Miklós
Hardback, 2021
A classic escape nightmare, Chasing Homer is sped on not only by Krasznahorkai’s signature velocity, but also by a unique musical score and intense illustrations
Chasing Homer
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, Max Neumann, Szilveszter Miklós
E Book, 2021
A classic escape nightmare, Chasing Homer is sped on not only by Krasznahorkai’s signature velocity, but also by a unique musical score and intense illustrations
The Last Wolf & Herman
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, George Szirtes
E Book, 2019
Now in paperback, two novellas from the Hungarian master László Krasznahorkai—“one of the most mysterious artists now at work” (Colm Toíbín)
The Last Wolf & Herman
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, George Szirtes
Paperback, 2019
Now in paperback, two novellas from the Hungarian master László Krasznahorkai—“one of the most mysterious artists now at work” (Colm Toíbín)
The Last Wolf & Herman
László Krasznahorkai, John Batki, George Szirtes
Hardback, 2016
Twoshort masterworks by the most recent winner of the Man Booker International Prize: here, in miniature, is every reason why he won

Hardback

9780811228404

160 x 239 mm • 80 pages

£12.99

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Ebook

9780811228411

£12.99

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