‘For me, writing has a lot to do with the desire to explore this diffuse space of longing and make it narratively fruitful.’
An Inventory of Losses
Written by Judith Schalansky
Translated by Jackie Smith
- Original language:
- German
- Longlisted
- The International Booker Prize 2021
- Published by MacLehose Press
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With an engaging intensity of feeling, Judith Schalansky's strange and wonderful book pays elegant homage to past beauty now lost to this world
Each of the pieces within An Inventory of Losses follows the conventions of a different genre, as it considers something that is irretrievably lost to the world. These include: the paradisal pacific island of Tuanaki, the Caspian Tiger, the Villa Sacchetti in Rome, Sappho’s love poems, Greta Garbo’s fading beauty, a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, and the former East Germany’s Palace of the Republic.
Judith Schalansky
Judith Schalansky was born in Greifswald in the former East Germany. She works as a freelance writer and book designer in Berlin
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Jackie Smith
Jackie Smith studied German and French at Selwyn College, Cambridge, then undertook a post-graduate diploma in translation and interpreting at the University of Bradford
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