The World at My Back

Description

Books written out of great emotional distress are rarely great literature. Thomas Melles [The World at My Back] is great literature because he pulls it off without a single false note.Deutschlandfunk(German National Radio)Longlisted for the 2024 National Translation Award in Prose A Finalist for the German Book Prize Translated into Eighteen LanguagesAddicted to culture, author Thomas Melle has built up an impressive personal library. His heart is in these books, and he loves to feel them at his back, their promise and challenge, as he writes. But in the middle of a violent dissociative episode, when they become ballast to his increasingly manic self, he disperses almost overnight what had taken decades to gather. Nor is this all he loses: descending further into an incomprehensible madness, he loses friendships and his career as a novelist and celebrated playwright, but the most savage cruelty is that he no longer either knows or understands himself.Vulnerable and claustrophobic, shattering and profoundly moving, Thomas MellesThe World at My Backis a book dedicated to the impossibility of reclaiming what has been lost, its lines both a prayer and reminder that, on the other side of madness, other possibilities await.Praise forThe World at My BackSuch books asThe World at My Backrecount experiences of total frenzy from a vantage point of clarity and calm. What makes Melles stand out is that he seems aware of how blackly funny the intimate details of psychotic breakdown can be. His narrative skill, in Luise von Flotows translation, had me laughing out loud without my losing sight of the sorrow and loneliness behind the succession of outrageous incidents.New York TimesWithThe World at My Back, author Thomas Melle takes us into the harrowing world of bipolar disorder, chronicling the effect it has had on him and his relationships. Yet he does this with such remarkable aplomb that the reader now laughs, now cries at his predicament. As an author, playwright, and translator, Melle is very much embedded in the cultural life of a German writer, and it is against that backdrop that the episodes swing from manic to depressive to clinicalall cleverly captured in Luise von Flotows remarkably nimble translation.Judges Citation, National Translation Award in ProseMelles illuminating memoir, translated by Luise Von Flotow, recounts three prolonged manic episodes he had between 1999 and 2010, events that profoundly affected his life and relationships. He conveys with wit and tragedy what its like to live with bipolar disorder.New York TimesThomas Melles book takes readers on an at times shockingly articulate tour of his nuclear version of bipolar disorder.Globe and MailMelles account of life with bipolar disorder is candid and surprisingly intelligible.Literary Review of CanadaThe World at My Backis in no way an easy read; instead, its a candid and frequently harrowing chronicle of its authors struggles with mental health over the years, and the cyclical nature of its effect on his life. In von Flotows translation, this book becomes a source of insight into what its author went throughand what he gained and lost along the way.Tobias Carroll,Words Without Borders[Melles] goal inThe World at My Back is to show what being mentally ill is really like from the inside. That he is such a talented writer allows him to pull this off powerfully.Ottawa Review of BooksBooks written out of great emotional distress are often embarrassing. They are rarely great literature. Thomas Melles book is great literature because he pulls it off without a single false note.Deutschlandfunk(German National Radio)Haunting insights into a bipolar identity as seen from the inside Precisely because it is not a question of fictioneven if there is much talk of literature, even of a failed novel of educationbut of a poetic of the authentic,The World at My Backis an impressive document.Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungThe author of the book is Thomas Melle, his book is calledThe World at My Back, and it tells of a much greater conflict and a much greater shame than you, as a reader, will probably ever feel Manic-depressive disorder is the tragedy of Thomas Melles life. That we can read about it in this book in this way is a wrenching literary event.Die ZeitThe World at My Backis a book that shakes and disturbs, one that wakes the reader with a punch in the skull, as Franz Kafka wrote Melles text is unique because the author manages to draw you into the action and, as far as possible, give you a realistic impression of the illness In spite of the desperation and darkness of the subject, you can hardly help but smile at the absurditieseven as they immediately stick in your throat. Added to this is Melles lively storytelling style, which alone lifts the book well above the wide selection of memoirs of illness.Literaturkritik