Friedrich Torberg

«Un libro elegante, bonito, divertido y triste. Una breve incursión en un tiempo ya perdido, el panóptico de un mundo con chispa y mucha gracia.» Dieter Hildebrandt, Die Zeit«Que un hombre sea más ap

En una brumosa mañana de noviembre de 1940, un hombre espera en el muelle de Nueva Jersey la llegada de unos amigos procedentes de Europa. En más de una ocasión su mirada se detiene en la figura frágil y encorvada de un extranjero que arrastra inquieto su pierna izquierda por la sala de espera y el muelle. Cuando el hombre le pregunta a quién espera, el extranjero le responde que son muchos, exactamente setenta y cinco, aquellos que deberían llegar. Y sin embargo, nunca llega nadie. Luego, en una larga conversación, el extranjero evoca con todo detalle el estremecedor recuerdo de lo sucedido años atrás en el campo de concentración de Heidenburg, y el dilema planteado entre los judíos allí encerrados: Abandonar toda resistencia y conceder la venganza a Dios, o morir ejecutando al verdugo. Mía es la venganza, es un perturbador y lúcido relato publicado originalmente 1943 durante el exilio de su autor en Estados Unidos. La presente edición también incluye el relato El regreso del Golem.

Friedrich Torbergs Young Gerber (Der Schuler Gerber) is an almost unbearably moving classic novel, which tells of a schoolboy driven to madness, and ultimately tragedy, by his bullying form teacher.Kurt Gerber is an 18-year-old Austrian boy starting is last year at school, and preparing for the final exam which will determine his entire future career. However, his initial enthusiasm quickly turns into despair as he allows himself to be drawn into a war of wills and personalities with his sadistic, almost psychopathic, form teacher Lord God Kupfer. Soon the formerly ordered classroom turns into their battlefield, and as Kurts once-promising future begins to dissolve before his eyes, it seems that there is ultimately only one way out for him.Written in 1930 and prompted by a recent wave of schoolboy suicides, Friedrich Torbergs Young Gerber is a classic of Austrian literature. This is a deeply-felt, unforgettable novel about teenage conflict and classroom angst, taking in the timeless subjects of pupil-teacher confrontation, the pain of unrequited love, the struggle with parental love and authority, psychological disintegration and suicide. More than a schoolboy novel, Torbergs Young Gerber stands as an allegory of life itself.Translated from the German by Anthea Bell, Young Gerber is published by Pushkin Press.A perceptive...visionary insight into the panorama of our existence Max Brod[Kupfer] is magnificently conceived, with a sizzling hate that burns through the pages ... For many years I have not held a book in my hands which expresses that ... "school-feeling" as memorably as here ... It is a living book.Kurt TucholskyFriedrich Torberg (1908-1979) was a novelist, poet, essayist, sports journalist, critic, translator and, briefly, a Hollywood screenwriter.Born, like Franz Kafka, into a German-speaking Jewish family, Torberg began his career in Vienna and Prague (where he also became a champion water polo player). In 1938, facing Nazi persecution, he emigrated to France and eventually to the US. Following a spell in Hollywood with Bertold Brecht and Thomas Mann, Friedrich Torberg worked as a journalist, theatre critic and translator in New York before returning to Vienna in 1951.Having passed his final-year school exam only at the second attempt, Torberg wrote his debut novel Young Gerber (Der Schuler Gerber) at the startling age of 22; it marked his fiction debut, and was championed by Max Brod and published by Paul Zsolnay in 1930.From 1951 until his death in 1979, he lived as a celebrated novelist, editor of the anti-communist magazine FORVM and translator (of Ephraim Kishon amongst others). Later works by Torberg include the novels Aunt Jolesch (Tante Jolesch), The Team (Die Mannschaft), Vienna Was that, Too (Auch das War Wien, filmed by Wolfgang Gluck in 1986 and nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film), as well as poetry and non-fiction. When he died, he was buried alongside Arthur Schnitzler in Viennas Central Cemetery.

Al cronista de esta esplendorosa e hilarante colección de recuerdos, «desde siempre las anécdotas le han parecido más concluyentes y esclarecedoras que los análisis excesivamente detallados». Friedri

Kurt Gerber es un adolescente que se esfuerza por armonizar sus dos facetas: la de estudiante inteligente y rebelde, y la de novelista principiante empeñado en que su destino y el de Lisa, su gran amor, se entrelacen. Pero durante el ultimo año de estudios, cuando el profesor de matematicas comience una cruzada personal contraKurt, el joven se sentira extraviado, indefenso y profundamente angustiado. FriedrichTorberg desmenuza los mecanismos que alimentan el sistema escolar y convierten a los profesores en dioses y a los alumnos en miserables condenados a la obediencia y la humillacion. Inspirada no solo en la propia experiencia del autor sino tambien en los suicidios de diez estudiantes en una sola semana del invierno de 1929, El alumno Gerber es un relato atemporal que nos habla de la fragilidad en la primera juventud y del inquietante papel de las instituciones educativas en las sociedades represivas.