The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompani

By Adam Thirlwell

Book Overview

Having slept with a prostitute in Egypt, a young French novelist named Gustave Flaubert at last abandons sentimentality and begins to write. He influences the obscure French writer Edouard Dujardin, who is read by James Joyce on the train to Trieste, where he will teach English to the Italian novelist Italo Svevo. Back in Paris, Joyce asks Svevo to deliver a suitcase containing notes for Ulysses, a novel that will be viscerated by the expat Gertrude Stein, whose first published story is based on one by Flaubert. This carousel of influence shows how translation and emigration lead to a new and true history of the novel. We devour novels in translation while believing that style does not translate. But the history of the novel is the history of style. The Delighted States attempts to solve this conundrum while mapping an imaginary country, a country of readers: the Delighted States. This book is a provocation, a box of tricks, a bedside travel book; it is also a work of startling intelligence and originality from one of our finest young writers.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374137226
• ISBN13: 9780374137229
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 506 Pages
• Weight: 1.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.7" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A breath of fresh air

Most writing about literature is pompous, long-winded and self-important. This book is a delightful exception. Thirlwell writes in plain English and shares his ideas about classic authors and their works with infectious enthusatism and simplicity. I don't know that I agreed with everything he says but at least he has something comprehensible to say. I hadn't read a fiction book in 15 years and this got me to go out and read Madame Bovary (which was excellent). Well done.

Wot larks!

This book is amusing, intriguing, entertaining. And what a mine for ideas on what to read next. Damn! He's about got me ginned up to start reading "Ulysses" again..... If this is what Thirlwell produces at thirty years of age, long may he live and write!

Essential, though flawed

The Washington Post review above is accurate, but no matter: The Delighted States is a must-read for any writer, aspiring or practicing. Yes, it's a young man's work, and Thirlwell can be twitty. But every other page or so, there's a startlingly wise line worth the price of the book.