Research Catalog

Details

Additional authors

1. Heinrich, Ari Larissa

Description

1. 161 pages; 21 cm.

Summary

1. "An NYRB Classics Original Last Words from Montmartre is a novel in letters that narrates the gradual dissolution of a relationship between two lovers and, ultimately, the complete unraveling of the narrator. In a voice that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to hubris, compulsive repetition to sublime reflection, reticence to vulnerability, it can be read as both the author's masterpiece and a labor of love, as well as her own suicide note. Last Words from Montmartre, written just as Internet culture was about to explode, is also a kind of farewell to letters. The opening note urges us to read the letters in any order. Each letter unfolds as a chapter, the narrator writing from Paris to her lover in Taipei and to family and friends in Taiwan and Tokyo. The book opens with the death of a beloved pet rabbit and closes with a portentous expression of the narrator's resolve to kill herself. In between we follow Qiu's protagonist into the streets of Montmartre; into descriptions of affairs with both men and women, French and Taiwanese; into rhapsodic musings on the works of Theodoros Angelopoulos and Andrei Tarkovsky; and into wrenching and clear-eyed outlines of what it means to exist not only between cultures but, to a certain extent, between and among genders. More Confessions of a Mask than Well of Loneliness, the novel marks Qiu as one of the finest experimentalist and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation"--

Series statement

1. New York Review Books Classics

Uniform title

1. New York Review Books classics.

Subject

1. Psychological fiction
2. FICTION / Biographical
3. Lesbian authors > Fiction
4. Epistolary fiction
5. FICTION / Psychological
6. FICTION / Lesbian
7. Romance fiction
8. Biographical fiction

Genre/Form

1. Psychological fiction.
2. Epistolary fiction.
3. Romance fiction.
4. Biographical fiction.

Call number

1. JFD 14-3662

Language (note)

1. Originally published in 1969.

Author

1. Qiu, Miaojin, 1969-

Title

1. Last Words from Montmartre / Qiu Miaojin ; translated and with an introduction by Ari Larissa Heinrich.

Publisher

1. New York : New York Review Books, 2014.

Type of content

1. text

Type of medium

1. unmediated

Type of carrier

1. volume

Series

1. New York Review Books Classics
2. New York Review Books classics.

Language

1. Originally published in 1969.

Connect to:

1. Cover image

Added author

1. Heinrich, Ari Larissa, translator.
2. Qiu, Miaojin, 1969- Last words from Montmartre. English.

LCCN

1. 2013049765

ISBN

1. 9781590177259 (pbk.)
2. 1590177258 (pbk.)

Research call number

1. JFD 14-3662