{"product_id":"9781934824146","title":"Landscape in Concrete","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"It is this book that confirms Lind's status as an author of international importance.\"— \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSergeant Gauthier Bachmann is the perfect Nazi soldier. But after a horrifying defeat at Voroshenko, where most of his Eighth Hessian Infantry Regiment was slaughtered in a single instant, Bachmann was declared mentally unfit to serve. Incapable of accepting this judgment, and of returning to his girlfriend and a quiet life as a gold- and silversmith, Bachmann wanders the war-ravaged countryside, trying to find a way to rejoin his regiment, or any regiment, and return to the front.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile trying to find his regiment and come to terms with the horrors he has seen and committed, the increasingly unstable Bachmann is manipulated by a series of figures from the war's underbelly—deserters and collaborators, corrupt officers and sexual predators—who induce him to carry out their venal missions, which they've justified against the background of institutionalized murder going on all around them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eContaining dark echoes of Jaroslav Hasek's \u003ci\u003eThe Good Soldier Svejk\u003c\/i\u003e , Jakov Lind's \u003ci\u003eLandscape in Concrete\u003c\/i\u003e is an \"astonishing and highly original imagining of (the) dimensions of evil including sadistic cruelty, of the condition of being a victim and the madness abroad which constitutes the virtual victory of Hitler if we fail to translate survival into freedom\" (Anthony Rudolf).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cb\u003eJakov Lind\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Vienna and survived the Second World War by fleeing into Germany, where he disguised himself as a Dutch deckhand. Regarded in his lifetime as a successor to Beckett and Kafka, Lind was posthumously awarded the Theodor Kramer Prize in 2007.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cb\u003eRalph Manheim\u003c\/b\u003e was one of the great translators of the twentieth century. He translated Günter Grass, Bertolt Brecht, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Hermann Hesse, Peter Handke, and more. In 1982, PEN American Center created an award for translation in his name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Letter","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47039631917296,"sku":"9781934824146","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781934824146_p0.jpg?v=1763655475","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781934824146","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}