Magdaléna Platzová
Auteur de The Attempt
A propos de l'auteur
Œuvres de Magdaléna Platzová
Life After Kafka 2 exemplaires
Anarchista 1 exemplaire
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- 1972-03-08
- Sexe
- female
- Nationalité
- Czech Republic
France - Lieu de naissance
- Prague, Czechoslovakia
Membres
Critiques
Prix et récompenses
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 10
- Membres
- 84
- Popularité
- #216,911
- Évaluation
- 3.7
- Critiques
- 13
- ISBN
- 13
- Langues
- 5
But The Attempt (Anarchista) by Czech author Magdaléna Platzová is very much my kind of book.
Now based in Lyon, France, Magdaléna Platzová was born in 1972 Prague under Soviet Occupation, and though educated in the US and UK, she writes in Czech, including two novels available in English: Aaron's Leap, (Aaronův skok, 2006), and The Attempt (Anarchista, 2013). Both these books interrogate the fraught history of the 20th century in Europe, canvassing issues of idealism in a real world that suppresses it. The Attempt derives in part from the true story of the Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman and his partner Emma Goldman and the 1892 attempt to kill the industrialist, financier and patron of the arts Henry Clay Frick.
In Platzová's novel, these people are re-named Andrei B, Louise G, and John C Kolman. They become the subject of a Czech historian's quest to complete the book of his dead friend Josef, and he travels to America to finish the research. It turns out to be more difficult than Jan expected because he is denied access to some documents by the descendants of John C Kolman, and — distracted by (a) the Occupy Wall Street movement and (b) his unsuccessful love-life — he undergoes a transformation in his own sense of idealism.
This plot outline enables Platzová to interrogate the trial-and-error processes of political change. At social gatherings amid the Occupy Wall Street crowd Jan hears discussions about whether violence is always necessary for change because wealthy people won't give up what they have, in order to achieve equality. In conversation with Sr Michaela, Kolman's descendant who's become a nun, he hears her argue that people who have amassed obscene wealth can't be forgiven simply by amassing an art collection and then allowing people to view it for free. In Louise's texts, Jan finds her musing on Father Jerome, a French catholic priest in the US, who advocated poverty at a time when Protestant preachers were roaming the country, spreading word that it was man's duty to accumulate wealth.
TO read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/09/26/the-attempt-2013-by-magdalena-platzova-trans...… (plus d'informations)