Fleur Jaeggy,Tim Parks
Set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggyâ€™s eerily beautiful novel begins simply and innocently enough: "At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell." But there is nothing truly simple or innocent here. With the off-handed knowingness of a remorseless young Eve, the narrator describes life as a captive of the school and her designs to win the affections of the apparently perfect new girl, FrÃ©derique. As she broods over her schemes as well as on the nature of control and madness, the novel gathers a suspended, unsettling energy. Now translated into six languages,Â ,I beati anni del castigo,Â in its Italian original won the 1990 Premio Bagutta and the 1990 Premio Speciale Rapallo. In Tim Parksâ€™ consummate translation (with its "spare, haunting quality of a prose poem"),Â ,Sweet Days of Discipline,Â was selected as one of theÂ ,London Times Literary Supplement,â€™s Notable Books of 1992: "In a period when novels are generally overblown and scarcely portable, it is good to be able to recommend [one that is] miraculously short and beautifully written."
Fiction,Novels,Novella,European Literature,Italian Literature,Historical,Historical Fiction,LGBT,Literature,20th Century,Young Adult,Coming Of Age,Literary Fiction,Female Authors
Sweet Days of Discipline