G.
Set in Europe in the years before the First World War, this unusual novel follows G., a young man drifting through an energetic sexual life while politics, revolution, and the first signs of modernity press in around him. Its fragmented movement turns desire and history into a single, uneasy field of vision.
Work Information
A fragmented but forceful novel that rewrites the Don Juan myth amid the upheavals of modern history.
Set in Europe at the turn of the century, the novel follows the wandering and love life of a young man called G. while layering together sexuality, politics, revolution, and the atmosphere of a changing continent. Each time private desire meets the larger sweep of history, the book expands less as plot than as an act of thought.
Review Summaries
-
Responses are mixed, but many readers value the fragmented structure and the way the novel uses sexual experience to reveal the character's loneliness. Others find its abstraction and narrative leaps demanding.
-
It is often received as a demanding but ambitious work that asks readers to engage not only with the characters but also with the novel's historical and philosophical layers. Some find real force in its sequence of fragmented scenes, while others see it as anything but light reading.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Published
- 2012-08-30
- Pages
- 336 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.8 x 2.6 x 19.6 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781408834343
- ISBN-10
- 1408834340
- Price
- 3535 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
In this luminous novel about a modern Don Juan, John Berger relates the story of G., a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of the last century as Europe teeters on the brink of war. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the libertine's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their liaisons with him. Set against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi's attempt to unite Italy, the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War and the dramatic first flight across the Alps, G. is a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in the turmoil of history.
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding , King , and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G . Amongst his outstanding studies of art and photography are Another Way of Telling , The Success and Failure of Picasso, Titian: Nymph and Shepherd (with Katya Berger), and the internationally acclaimed Ways of Seeing . He lived and worked in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours ( Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag ). His collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published in 2001. His latest novel, From A to X , was published in 2008. The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol , produced by Complicite and based on a story by Berger, toured for three years between 1994 and 1997. About Looking , published by Bloomsbury in April 2009, was the follow-up to the seminal Ways of Seeing , one of the most influential books on art in the 20th century. He died in early 2017.
Reviews
-
Cambio de idioma.
Sin darme cuenta he comprado el libro en ingles(lengua que desconozco) podría cambiarlo por su versión en español? Gracias de antemano.
-
Only downside is dark print.
Arrived perfect. Print is very dark and bold.
-
A marvel
A beautifully written meditation on so many aspects of being a human being at a momentous period of the early 20th century.
-
How do you review this?
I really procrastinated over this book after I'd read it. My gut feeling was that I didn't like it, but explaining why was the hard part. I looked up other reviews to seek an answer but all lauded it a masterpiece etc etc. The hard thing was that I really enjoyed parts of it but in others I was perhaps trying to into it than was actually there. Most reviewers came up with something like "an exploration into mam's sexuality" and I guess it was, in parts. However, the thing that stuck me was more that he never seemed to have any friends and was basically a loner seeking out affairs with almost any woman who was available. The book seemed to be wholly less about G than the people who entered his life. The character of G was never really fleshed out. I also found the writing style very demanding and this further added to my frustration by causing me to re-read sections and after doing so was still none the wiser. I thought about if for days after, which is usually a good sign, but in this case not necessarily.
-
Cheap quality
Received a very poor quality and damaged copy of this book. Seems it’s a pirated version. Very disappointing
Related Literary Awards
- Booker Prize Edition 4 (1972) ・Winner