Tessa de Loo visits Albania in the tracks of Lord Byron, the great English poet of the Romantic period: a fascinating travelogue and a personal approach to a dazzling, poetic personality of the early 19th century. Als Tessa de Loo das Land zum ersten Mal erblickt, darf kein Fremder es betreten. Das weckt in ihr grosse Neugier und eine unstillbare Sehnsucht. Von Korfu aus sieht sie jenseits der schmalen Wasserstrasse die Berge Albaniens, und sie kommen ihr vor wie die Ruecken geduldig wartender Elefanten. Kurz darauf entdeckt sie in einem Reisefuehrer Lord Byrons beruehmtes Portraet in albanischer Tracht. Sofort wird jene traeumerische Sehnsucht der 16jaehrigen nach diesem Mann der Gegensaetze, der starken Gefuehle, der ewigen Rebellion wieder gegenwaertig. Ich empfand die Notwendigkeit, Dich auf Deiner Reise zu begleiten. Schon viel zu lange war ich vernuenftig und besonnen gewesen. Doch wuerde Lord Byron sie nach wie vor in seinen Bann schlagen koennen? Schlummerte das schwaermerische Maedchen von frueher immer noch in der erwachsenen Schriftstellerin? Allen Widerstaenden zum Trotz bereist sie schliesslich mit einer kleinen Gruppe von Byron-Verehrern das moderne Albanien. Sie erleidet den harten postkommunistischen Alltag, den ungebremsten Zusammenstoss von Tradition und Moderne. Byrons Reiserlebnisse kontrastieren und ergaenzen die Gegenwart. Die Autorin laesst sich von diesen Texten ermutigen, nicht in der Hoffnungslosigkeit Albaniens zu versinken. Tessa de Loo hat mit Der Traumpalast nicht nur einen faszinierenden Reisebericht in der Tradition von Bruce Chatwin geschrieben, sondern auch eine sehr persoenliche Annaeherung an das Leben und Werk Lord Byrons gewagt und so dem Leser einen Blick auf ihre Person als Frau und Kuenstlerin gewaehrt.

Der Traumpalast (German Edition)

Literature & Fiction

De Loo, Tessa

Literary

New Media German Language

Kata, the daughter of a Jewish father who fled Budapest during World War II, is drawn to a young man named Stefan and later learns that he is her half brother, a situation that is complicated by their mutual attraction. 10,000 first printing.

A Bed in Heaven

Rilke, Ina

Soho Press

"The ordeal of Hungarian Jewry during WWII, survivor guilt, and the unbridgeable distances between people yearning to connect-these are the major motifs sounded in this brisk, elegiac second U.S. appearance by the Dutch author of The Twins. . . . A consummate dramatization of the impenetrable mysteriousness of other people's lives: convincing proof that de Loo is one of Europe's most accomplished novelists."-Kirkus Reviews, starred
"Fascinating. . . . Yet another way to understand the effects of war, the tangled, muddled absurdity of it, how its traces remain in the blood for generations."-Los Angeles Times
Tessa de Loo was born in the Netherlands and writes in Dutch. She lives in Portugal and Paris.

Bed in Heaven

Twin sisters, Lotte and Anna, share a bond that only they can understand. But when war comes between them, they discover that even the deepest bonds have their limits. Over ten years after being cruelly separated as children, Lotte and Anna are at last reunited. Neither had lost of hope of seeing each other again, but with a turbulent Europe now on the verge of war, they find that much between them has changed. Lotte has enjoyed a privileged upbringing in liberal Holland, while Anna endured a life of poverty in a Germany increasingly entranced by Hitler's spell. With Lotte planning to marry a Jewish musician and Anna brainwashed by the anti-semitic propaganda of the Third Reich, it does not take long for the first cracks to appear in their relationship. And this is just the beginning. Can two lives, torn apart by the blood of their separate pasts, ever be reconciled?

The Twins

Arcadia Books

A woman falls in love with a man who may or may not be her brother in this searing novel by de Loo (The Twins), which traces the effects of WWII on a fractured Hungarian Jewish family. Like de Loo's previous work, this gripping, pared-down narrative hinges on a stunning coincidence. When the novel opens, narrator Kata Roszavolgyi, in her 40s, has just buried her father and is now lying in bed with his son." Kata recalls growing up in Holland in the 1950s with a Dutch mother and Hungarian Jewish father, the latter a renowned composer. As a teenager she falls in love with another student named Stefan; as they grow closer, Kata learns that Stefan's mother, Ida Flinck, hid Kata's father from the Nazis during WWII. From there, the revelations pile up: Kata's father and Ida had become lovers while he hid in her house. To better protect him, Ida also began an affair with a Nazi officer. After the war, Kata's father abruptly left Ida. Soon afterward, Ida gave birth to Stefan. Is Stefan the son of the Nazi officer or the Hungarian Jew? As the novel moves toward a climactic encounter between Kata's father and Stefan, de Loo explores the legacy of the war-loss, guilt, families set adrift-for the generation of Europeans born in its wake. She handles the plot without melodrama, and her simple, deliberate prose and thoughtful compassion make this a virtuoso performance."--Publishers Weekly.

Bed In Heaven

Contemporary

Arcadia Books Ltd

Historical and human perspectives clash in this cool, compassionate, psychological novel that unfolds around the chance meeting of two elderly women at a Belgian health resort. Each woman has come for the famously curative waters, but it is no coincidence that both suffer from debilitating arthritis-the women are twins, separated in childhood by the death of their parents. Anna stayed in their native Germany, while Lotte was taken in by relatives in the Netherlands. Consequently, they lost touch with each other and lived through the rise of Hitler, the second World War, and the postwar era from opposite sides of the war. The narrative unfurls through a series of often thorny conversations, as the sisters probe these and other points of contention. Artfully weaving two fully developed fictional personalities into an expertly realized historical background, this exploration addresses notions of guilt and responsibility in a sensitive, thought-provoking manner, without exonerating or condemning its central characters.

When Tessa de Loo saw Albania for the first time, no foreigners were allowed to enter. Filled with a great curiosity, longing, and a sense of wonderment by this isolated land, de Loo gazed toward the mountains that stood like "the backs of patiently waiting elephants" across the water from Corfu. Inspired by the famous Thomas Phillips portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian national costume, and enthralled by the image of Lord Byron since her teenage years, she sets about exploring not only his physical journey, but attempts to understand his inner one as well. de Loo stole her way in and found a country suffering the hardships of post-communist reality and the constant and sometimes fractious clash between tradition and modernity. In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin, de Loo, the award-winning author of The Twins, has written a fascinating travelogue and a very personal reassessment of the a formative chapter in Lord Byron's short life.

In Byron's Footsteps (Armchair Traveller)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Haus Publishing

Even though he is the son of a Dutch mother, Saeed has a Moroccan first name in memory of the virtuoso oud player his mother fell in love with twenty years ago. When she found out she was pregnant, he ran off and returned to Morocco. Saeed decides to look for his father, in the hope of finding a new identity in a new world. His childhood friend Hassan accompanies him. Back then they shared an imaginary land which they both ruled. Now they only have one starting point: a grocery shop in Fez. From there they follow the trail of the oud player, who leads them from the cedar woods of Ifrane to the red dunes of the desert to the high Atlas, where Kasbahs are locked in a losing battle with decay. Saeed's search sends him deeper into disillusionment and into the arms of Islam, where he tries to find something to hold on to. But there is a disturbing presence. A seemingly fictitious character from their imaginary past infiltrates Saeed's quest. While Saeed desperately tries to get rid of him, different aspects of his life, more and more beyond his control, reach an apotheosis resulting in one final deed affecting man and beast alike.

The Book of Doubt

GEMELAS (Spanish Edition)

Genre Fiction

EDB FICCION

GEMELAS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by De Loo, Tessa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by De Loo, Tessa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by De Loo, Tessa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Der Traumpalast (German Edition)

A Bed in Heaven

Bed in Heaven

The Twins

Bed In Heaven

The Twins

In Byron's Footsteps (Armchair Traveller)

The Book of Doubt

GEMELAS (Spanish Edition)

GEMELAS