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  • Book cover of Leavetaking
    Peter Weiss

     · 2014

    "I was on my way to look for a life of my own." A brilliant, brutally honest autobiographical novel, long out of print, from one of the great artistic polymaths of the 20th century. This is a Sebaldian account of the narrator's attempt to break free of a repressive upper-middle-class upbringing and make his way as an artist and individual, written in a single incantatory paragraph. Leavetaking is the story of an upper-middle-class childhood and adolescence in Berlin between the wars. In the course of the book, Weiss plumbs the depths of family life: there is the early death of his beloved sister Margit, the difficult relationship with his parents, the fantasies of adolescence and youth, all set in the midst of an increasing anti-Semitism, which forces the Weiss family to move again and again, a peripatetic existence that only intensifies the narrator's growing restlessness. The young narrator is largely oblivious to world events and focused instead on becoming an artist, an ambition frustrated generally by his milieu and specifically by his mother, who, herself a former actress, destroys his paintings during one of the family's moves. In the end, he turns to an older mentor, Harry Haller, a fictionalized portrait of Hermann Hesse, who encouraged and supported Weiss, and with Haller's example before him, the narrator takes his first steps towards a truly independent life. Intensely lyrical, written with great imaginative power, Leavetaking is a vivid evocation of a world that has disappeared and of the narrator's developing consciousness. THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY champions books from around the world that have been overlooked, underappreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored. They are issued in handsome, well-designed editions at reasonable prices in hopes of their passing from one reader to another—and further enriching our culture.

  • Book cover of The Investigation

    "A shattering drama about the holocaust by the author of Marat/Sade. The stark stage contains nothing more than rows of wooden chairs and small tables for the judge, defense attorney and prosecuting attorney. The top rows are filled by those acused in the Frankfurt trial of the atrocities of Auschwitz. The house lights are kept on which, together with seating the attorneys and the judge in the audience, contributes to the sense of spectator participation. This play is based on actual testimony and impact is devastating!"--Back cover.

  • Book cover of Marat/Sade ; The Investigation ; and The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman
    Peter Weiss

     · 1998

    Peter Weiss (1916-1982) was virtually unknown in the mid-1960s when Peter Brook made Marat/Sade into a film. The weaving of time, space, plot, real-and-imagined characters, sexual liberation, and surrealist imagery made Marat/Sade a sensation. Little did audiences realize that this counterculture classic was written by a German Jew. At that time, Weiss was also at work on a play about Auschwitz: The Investigation. These two dramas are in this volume along with The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman. All are cogently introduced and edited by Robert Cohen.

  • Book cover of The Investigation
    Peter Weiss

     · 1959

    Ambassador Theatre, Alan King and Walter A. Hyman, Ltd. Eugene V. Wolsk and Emanuel Azenberg present "The Investigation," by Peter Weiss, English version by Jon Swan and Ulu Grosbard, scenery by Kert Lundell, costumes by Anna Hill Johnstone, lighting by Martin Aronstein, directed by Ulu Grosbard.

  • Book cover of Conversation of the Three Wayfarers
    Peter Weiss

     · 2022

    This fast-moving, tightly-wound, and gleefully dark novella contains an entire universe in miniature Conversation of the Three Wayfarers is a tale overheard, rather than told directly. Abel, Babel, and Cabel, the wayfarers, carry on a three-sided monologue, each reporting curious incidents—the effect is of three capers rolled into one: a steeplechase performed on a floating pontoon. But are they really three distinct individuals? Why do their lives blend in such a fantastic manner? Weiss’s strikingly original prose has an impossibly contained quality, with each sentence doing a perfect double-double backflip before neatly landing. This essential rediscovered work, from the masterful and acclaimed German modernist Peter Weiss, will be a delightful discovery for readers of Kafka, Musil, and Gombrowicz.

  • Book cover of Trotsky in Exile
    Peter Weiss

     · 1972

    This drama deals with the fate of a revolutionary. This individual's fate is inseparably linked to the historical destiny of the revolutionary in the 20th century. The real theme of Trotsky in Exile is the forty-odd years of contemporary socialist revolution, just as the theme of Marat-Sade concerns the bourgeois revolution.

  • Book cover of The Investigation
    Peter Weiss

     · 1996

    Proceedings of the April 1995 meeting. After an overview of nitration and of changes in the field in the past 20 years, papers discuss theoretical aspects of nitration and the production of polynitro compounds, N2O5 technology, the production and use of N2O5 as a nitrating agent, and industrial aspects of nitration. Specific topics include continuous manufacturing of solid dinitrogen pentoxide, and commercial dinitrotoluene production processes. Of interest to chemists, engineers, administrators, researchers, students, industrial employees, and government workers involved in nitration applications. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

  • Book cover of Peter Weiss' The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat
    Peter Weiss

     · 1964

    Total theatre is the expression critics have used to describe this unique theatrical event which is designed for production on a nearly bare stage by a large and flexible cast. The Marquis de Sade, when an inmate at the Asylum of Charenton, staged plays that were performed by fellow inmates. With this point of departure, Peter Weiss has created one of the most powerful and exciting plays of the century.

  • Book cover of Peter Weiss
  • Book cover of The New Trial
    Peter Weiss

     · 2001

    DIVFirst-time publication in English, one of Peter Weiss' last works which takes a surreal look at the fortunes of "Josef K," attorney, whose law firm appears to be sincere and appealing to the public while masking a dark, fascistic impulse to ach/div