A composer who has already given up composing - because of his inability to notate the music of the spheres - becomes increasingly fixated on capturing a mysterious, eerie, distant sound, which he soon equates with all the things he desires most: the perfect woman, the perfect city, the perfect work of art. Obsessed with his impossible quest, the man breaks out of the asylum and begins a series of comic, dreamlike, and ultimately haunting adventures as he tries to locate the source of the sound that consumes him... and instead finds the root cause of all his failures.

Told that he recently attempted suicide, a man awakens in an insane asylum with no memory of his actions, or even of his own name...

About the Author
Gert Jonke is counted among Austria's most important authors and dramatists. Among other prizes, he received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Erich Fried Prize, and the Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature. He died in 2009 at the age of 62. Jean M. Snook lives with her husband on the easternmost tip of North America, the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland, where she has taught German language and literature at Memorial University since 1984. She received the 2011 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator s Prize for her translation of Gert Jonke s The Distant Sound.


Book Information
ISBN 9781564785268
Author Gert Jonke
Format Paperback
Page Count 289
Imprint Dalkey Archive Press
Publisher Dalkey Archive Press
Weight(grams) 390g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 139mm * 25mm