DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

A Mountain to the North, A Lake to The South, Paths to the West, A River to the East

Laszlo Krasznahorkai author Ottilie Mulzet translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Profile Books Ltd

Published:9th May '24

Should be back in stock very soon

This paperback is available in another edition too:

A Mountain to the North, A Lake to The South, Paths to the West, A River to the East cover

An exquisitely beautiful novel from one of the world's greatest living writers - now in paperback

The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him. This novel by International Booker Prize winner László Krasznahorkai - perhaps his most serene and poetic work - describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area, making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being.

Krasznahorkai throws down a challenge: raise your game or get your coat... the intensity of his commitment to the art of fiction is indisputable...exhilarating, even euphoric. -- Hari Kunzru
László Krasznahorkai writes prose of breathtaking energy and beauty ... He has elevated the novel form and is to be ranked among the great European novelists -- Colm Toibin
The universality of Krasznahorkai's vision rivals that of Gogol's Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing -- W.G. Sebald
Intensely thought-provoking * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Beautiful ... through Mulzet's exceptional work, we can appreciate the enchantment of language that is attentive to precise details * Irish Times *
Explores the beatific, languorous, and even beautiful possibilities of extreme syntax ... One of the impressive achievements of A Mountain to the North is how well it maintains its reverie - how dull it isn't * Asymptote *
This is fiction as hypnosis ... there is so much beauty in this patch of serenity * Telegraph *

ISBN: 9781800814592

Dimensions: 196mm x 128mm x 14mm

Weight: 120g

144 pages

Main