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Hans Henny Jahnn
River without Banks. Part three. Epilogue

 

"Epilogue" is the fourth book that completes the publication of the great experimental novel "The River without Banks". This novel is a revolution in sensory perception, a unique phenomenon of the world literature of the twentieth century. "Epilogue" (published posthumously in 1961) is a fragment of the unfinished third part of "River without Banks", the main work of the German writer, created in 1935-1947 on the Danish island of Bornholm. The novel is a reflection of the fragmentary nature that Jahnn, towards the end of his life, perceived as a characteristic feature of all his activities: "My own life is a series of incomplete processes," he wrote to the publisher Peter Suhrkamp in May 1958. At the center of the story of growing up is the meeting of Nikolai, the illegitimate son of the composer Gustav Anias Horn and Gemma, and Ajax, the murderer of his father, posing as Horn's friend, Alfred Tutein. In this part, events that previously branched out in various ways in time and space are considered from a new angle. The book contains comments by the translator and philologist Tatiana Baskakova, as well as a detailed article about the novel's cross-cutting images, supplemented by a color tab with dozens of works of art that help to understand Jahn's work.

ISBN 978-5-89059-392-4