Young Gerber
Young Gerber
By Friedrich Torberg
Translated by Anthea Bell
“A perceptive… visionary insight into the panorama of our existence.”―Max Brod
“[Kupfer] is magnificently conceived, with a sizzling hate that burns through the pages… For many years I have not held a book in my hands which expresses that… ‘school-feeling’ as memorably as here… It is a living book.”―Kurt Tucholsky
“Anthea Bell’s translation has a nightmarish clarity that puts one in mind of Tom Brown’s Schooldays re-written by Kafka.”―Guardian
Kurt Gerber embarks hopefully on his last year at school, leading to the all-important exam, but finds that he is constantly at odds with the sadistic class teacher Professor Kupfer, known to his students as "Lord God Kupfer", who particularly dislikes him.
Inspired partly by its author’s own experience of his final school-leaving examination, which he passed only at the second attempt, and partly by the suicides of no less than ten school students in a single week in the winter of 1929, Young Gerber is a timeless tale of classroom angst, and an undisputed classic of Austrian literature.
Please note that Rare/Out-of-Print titles are very limited in stock.
Paperback
314 pages
Pushkin Press, 2012
Originally Published in 1930
4.7 x 1.2 x 6.5 inches
ISBN 9781906548896
Fiction