{"product_id":"9789492027139","title":"Cocaine: Selected Writings","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eClearly, someone had spoken the word, the fatal word that towered over the firmament of his nights and slowly cut him into pieces, a remorseless machine even in its sound: ‘Co-caine! … Co-caine!’ Bit by bit it cut him up, until someday soon he would be pulverised entirely.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWalter Rheiner\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e \u003c\/strong\u003eremains virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, despite a small but remarkable oeuvre which explores typical Expressionist themes – including metropolitan estrangement, intoxication and the horrors of trench warfare – in a manner as daring and poignant as that of better known contemporaries such as Trakl or Heym.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRheiner’s was a short-lived career; most of his output was originally published between 1917-1918. An attempt to escape active service in World War I by posing as a drug addict marked the onset of his lifelong dependency on cocaine and, later, morphine. In the hallucinatory novella \u003cem\u003eCocaine\u003c\/em\u003e, Rheiner provides the reader with an arresting close-up of Berlin’s underbelly during the war years. The demise of the novella’s protagonist Tobias foreshadows the author’s own tragic end; he died at the age of 30 from an overdose of morphine.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis bilingual edition, the first to present Rheiner in English translation, includes the bulk of his known prose work as well as a small but representative sample of his poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"November Editions","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47065418531056,"sku":"9789492027139","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9789492027139_p0.jpg?v=1763676789","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9789492027139","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}