Strange Traffic: Stories

by Irene Dische

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"The stories of Irene Dische deal in the emotional contraband people inadvertently smuggle - guilt, love, loyalty, deceit, disappointment: A staid and affluent American Jew returns to Germany to claim an ambiguous patrimony. A homosexual restaurateur gets the chance to cook another meal for his first lover. Ghosts haunt the New York apartment of a retired Viennese scientist whose past has been obscured by time and self-delusion." "With biting humor, Dische recounts the small tragedies of show more people condemned by the vagaries of modern existence to a restless mobility: the Polish maid in Berlin; the Irish nanny in New York; the American hippie in Tripoli; the East German defector born in Mongolia, bred in Shanghai, and with mistresses and bank accounts in three countries. Defectors, tourists, refugees - wishful travelers all - expect freedom and change to lift their spirits, only to stumble under the weight of nostalgia. But what they miss are not the predictable objects of consolation - the gold wedding ring, the fading love letter, the home left behind - but their lifelong habits of paranoia." "Dische's prose is as highly and strangely flavored as the lives and circumstances she describes. Sure-handed and quirky, driven by a provocative eccentricity of vision, Irene Dische's stories signal the arrival of a major new literary talent."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved show less

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21+ Works 743 Members

Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
DDC/MDS
813.54Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican fiction in English1900-19991945-1999
LCC
PS3554 .I825 .S77Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1961-

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Languages
English
Media
Paper
ISBNs
2