StartGroepenDiscussieMeerTijdgeest
Doorzoek de site
Onze site gebruikt cookies om diensten te leveren, prestaties te verbeteren, voor analyse en (indien je niet ingelogd bent) voor advertenties. Door LibraryThing te gebruiken erken je dat je onze Servicevoorwaarden en Privacybeleid gelezen en begrepen hebt. Je gebruik van de site en diensten is onderhevig aan dit beleid en deze voorwaarden.

Resultaten uit Google Boeken

Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.

Bezig met laden...

The Post Office Girl (1982)

door Stefan Zweig

Andere auteurs: Zie de sectie andere auteurs.

LedenBesprekingenPopulariteitGemiddelde beoordelingDiscussies / Aanhalingen
1,1275517,640 (4.1)1 / 192
Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:Wes Anderson on Stefan Zweig:  "I had never heard of Zweig...when I just more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I loved this first book.  I also read the The Post-Office GirlThe Grand Budapest Hotel has elements that were sort of stolen from both these books. Two characters in our story are vaguely meant to represent Zweig himself — our “Author” character, played by Tom Wilkinson, and the theoretically fictionalised version of himself, played by Jude Law. But, in fact, M. Gustave, the main character who is played by Ralph Fiennes, is modelled significantly on Zweig as well."

2009 PEN Translation Prize Finalist

The logic of capitalism, boom and bust, is unremitting and unforgiving. But what happens to human feeling in a completely commodified world? In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan Zweig, a deep analyst of the human passions, lays bare the private life of capitalism.Christine toils in a provincial post office in post–World War I Austria, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from Christine’s rich American aunt inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Christine is immediately swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose. Christine returns to the post office, where yes, nothing will ever be the same.

Christine meets Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran and disappointed architect, who works construction jobs when he can get them. They are drawn to each other, even as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation, of anger and shame. Work, politics, love, sex: everything is impossible for them. Life is meaningless, unless, through one desperate and decisive act, they can secretly remake their world from within.

Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig’s haunting and hard-as-nails novel, completed during the 1930s, as he was driven by the Nazis into exile, but left unpublished at the time of his death. The Post-Office Girl, available here for the first time in English, transforms our image of a modern master’s achievement.
… (meer)
Bezig met laden...

Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden.

Groep OnderwerpBerichtenNieuwste bericht 
 Author Theme Reads: Zweig: The Post Office Girl6 ongelezen / 6jfetting, mei 2010

» Zie ook 192 vermeldingen

Engels (48)  Spaans (2)  Italiaans (1)  Duits (1)  Catalaans (1)  Frans (1)  Bosnisch (1)  Alle talen (55)
1-5 van 55 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
I’m a fan of his short stories. But this novel didn't particularly impress me. A screed of sorts against capitalism, the story is almost unbelievably melodramatic: the rural post-office girl in post World War I Austria who gets exposed to exceptional wealth in a one-week vacation to St. Moritz (courtesy of an estranged aunt). She later meets a veteran nearly crushed by the capitalist system and they…. Well, that would be telling. The overwrought description on the jacket says “Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde.” Uh, no. Wonderful writing, but not up to the quality of his short stories, imho. ( )
  Gypsy_Boy | Aug 25, 2023 |
Las dos partes de la novela, cuya acción se desarrolla en el año 1926, guardan una estrecha relación, pero están claramente separadas en cuanto a los hechos y al ambiente. Así como al principio el núcleo está constituido por las experiencias vividas en el mundo brillante de una estación de verano suiza, en la segunda parte, la atención se centra en la atmósfera opresiva de la época de postguerra y de una existencia pequeño burguesa, que hace madurar el proyecto de un desfalco de grandes proporciones.
  Natt90 | Jan 24, 2023 |
This has been on my shelf for years, and I'm kicking myself for letting it languish there for so long. It's a Cinderella story with a twist.

Christine lives an impoverished life with her mother in a small Austrian village, barely eking out a living as the postmistress. Then one day a postcard arrives from a long-forgotten aunt, who left for America years before under questionable circumstances, inviting Christine to visit at a luxurious resort in the Alps.

Christine arrives at the resort, and Zweig is masterful at describing her embarrassment at her own shabbiness and awe at the luxury and wealth surrounding her. But soon, after her aunt has purchased her beautiful clothes, and has treated her to the beauty parlor, Christine is having the time of her life.

Unfortunately, it doesn't last, and Christine must return to her desolate life, only now more disheartened. Then she meets Ferdinand, and things take a surprising turn.

This book was unpublished at the time of Zweig's death (a suicide after the rise of Hitler), and was not published until about 40 years after his death. Because of this, and because of the somewhat abrupt ending, there are some who question whether the book was actually finished. I actually liked the way it ended.

4 stars ( )
  arubabookwoman | Dec 17, 2022 |
this made me want to quit my job. There was a lot of parts of this that were really astute especially if you've worked customer service. the bit where she is caught up in the frivolities of being rich and so is the reader then suddenly the perspective switches to the aunt and you see how she's changed was genius, it reminded me of the part in Mean Girls when linsday lohan becomes a bitch. ( )
  jooniper | Sep 10, 2021 |
We cannot rewind self-awareness! Once we have that glimpse of ourselves, deleting is not an option. But, is oblivion bliss? Are the self-ignorant happier?

Zweig doesn’t try to answer this question explicitly, his focus remains in the protagonist, Christine, and her late coming of age self-discovery and her sudden awareness of the limited life she leads on post WWI Austria.

What happens if after the ball, Cinderella returns to the cinders, rejected by the prince? What happens when war robs our youth, and post war society remains drowned in poverty? What happens when economic poverty translates into intellectual and emotional poverty?

What would I do if like Christine and her – justly so - disgruntled boy-friend, the prospects in front of me were so bleak? Would I contemplate suicide, like they do? Or would I contemplate robbery, as they also do? Would either ever be justifiable, though?

Corruption is a theme that consumes me. Brazil, my birth country is ripe with corruption, and it sadden and irate me in the same proportion. Most Brazilians feel justified in robbing the state, from the highest paid politician to the small clerk taking a miniscule bribe for whatever reason. But maybe my comparison is unfair. In Christine’s case it is not a matter of corruption, but of life or death – existentialism in its most radical form. I don’t know. I am unsure of the ethics of it. Unsure if I have a right to judge. Those are fictional characters, but – in a very surreal correspondence - they do mirror the life story of the author, who at the end did chose suicide.

I should just be grateful that my own life was not wrecked by war and poverty. I should also realize that if totalitarian governments are not ruling Europe any longer, war and totalitarianism still rages in third world countries. Poverty abounds bellow the Equator. How many Christines are there in Haiti, Sudan, or Brazil?

Back to the book, it won the Pen Best Translation of the year sometime ( I am too lazy to find out when). The prose does sound effortless, and very contemporary. The end is too abrupt though, and I am struggling with the idea that it was intentional. This book was published after Zweig’s death, and I have to wonder that he would polish it more had he intended on publishing it. There is a difference in the writing, the first pages where he describes so completely and with the most literary care the post-office of the title differs too much from the point form format of the end. One could argue that it reflects his brilliance, as the vocabulary and pace of his prose seem to change with the changes on Christine. Well, maybe... but I am not convinced.

I am putting his other books published in English on books to check it out.
( )
  RosanaDR | Apr 15, 2021 |
1-5 van 55 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe

» Andere auteurs toevoegen (7 mogelijk)

AuteursnaamRolType auteurWerk?Status
Zweig, StefanAuteurprimaire auteuralle editiesbevestigd
Deresiewicz, WilliamNawoordSecundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd
Rotenberg, JoelVertalerSecundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd

Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)

Je moet ingelogd zijn om Algemene Kennis te mogen bewerken.
Voor meer hulp zie de helppagina Algemene Kennis .
Gangbare titel
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Oorspronkelijke titel
Alternatieve titels
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Oorspronkelijk jaar van uitgave
Mensen/Personages
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Belangrijke plaatsen
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Belangrijke gebeurtenissen
Informatie afkomstig uit de Portugese (Brazilië) Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Verwante films
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Motto
Opdracht
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
One village post office in Austria is much like another: seen one and you've seen them all.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do. [115]
Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a distortion of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. [116]
"You wouldn't believe what a dead finger does to a living hand.
"The smell is suffocating. The smell of stale cigarette smoke, bad food, wet clothes, the smell of the old woman's dread and worry and wheezing."
"Poverty stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an air-shaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage."
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
(Klik om weer te geven. Waarschuwing: kan de inhoud verklappen.)
Ontwarringsbericht
Uitgevers redacteuren
Auteur van flaptekst/aanprijzing
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Oorspronkelijke taal
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Gangbare DDC/MDS
Canonieke LCC

Verwijzingen naar dit werk in externe bronnen.

Wikipedia in het Engels (1)

Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:Wes Anderson on Stefan Zweig:  "I had never heard of Zweig...when I just more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I loved this first book.  I also read the The Post-Office GirlThe Grand Budapest Hotel has elements that were sort of stolen from both these books. Two characters in our story are vaguely meant to represent Zweig himself — our “Author” character, played by Tom Wilkinson, and the theoretically fictionalised version of himself, played by Jude Law. But, in fact, M. Gustave, the main character who is played by Ralph Fiennes, is modelled significantly on Zweig as well."

2009 PEN Translation Prize Finalist

The logic of capitalism, boom and bust, is unremitting and unforgiving. But what happens to human feeling in a completely commodified world? In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan Zweig, a deep analyst of the human passions, lays bare the private life of capitalism.Christine toils in a provincial post office in post–World War I Austria, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from Christine’s rich American aunt inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Christine is immediately swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose. Christine returns to the post office, where yes, nothing will ever be the same.

Christine meets Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran and disappointed architect, who works construction jobs when he can get them. They are drawn to each other, even as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation, of anger and shame. Work, politics, love, sex: everything is impossible for them. Life is meaningless, unless, through one desperate and decisive act, they can secretly remake their world from within.

Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig’s haunting and hard-as-nails novel, completed during the 1930s, as he was driven by the Nazis into exile, but left unpublished at the time of his death. The Post-Office Girl, available here for the first time in English, transforms our image of a modern master’s achievement.

Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden.

Boekbeschrijving
Haiku samenvatting

Actuele discussies

Geen

Populaire omslagen

Snelkoppelingen

Waardering

Gemiddelde: (4.1)
0.5
1
1.5
2 2
2.5 4
3 34
3.5 13
4 85
4.5 21
5 62

Ben jij dit?

Word een LibraryThing Auteur.

NYRB Classics

Een editie van dit boek werd gepubliceerd door NYRB Classics.

» Informatiepagina uitgever

 

Over | Contact | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Voorwaarden | Help/Veelgestelde vragen | Blog | Winkel | APIs | TinyCat | Nagelaten Bibliotheken | Vroege Recensenten | Algemene kennis | 203,186,828 boeken! | Bovenbalk: Altijd zichtbaar