Little Caesar

Tommy Wieringa (trans. Sam Garrett)

‘Although perfectly charming as picaresque, the tragedy of Unger’s plight registers just as strongly as its understated oddness … Wieringa plays for keeps.’

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

‘The poet Philip Larkin’s famous observation that your mom and dad really mess you up is aptly illustrated in this offbeat, atmospheric novel … [a] haunting book.’

Kirkus Reviews

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‘A potent, emotionally moving, beautifully realized novel about a young man seeking to understand his difficult, eccentric parents … Wieringa masterfully examines the complex and often agonizing work that many of us undertake to live our own healthy, independent, adult lives.’

Library Journal

‘Tommy Wieringa’s inventive coming-of-age novel [involves] deeply flawed characters, maddening in their poor choices, but in Wieringa’s nimble hands, they elicit our sympathy.’

Cleveland Plain Dealer

‘Tommy Wieringa's ambitious novel is a brilliant exploration of the uneasy transition from adolescence into adulthood — the restlessness, yearning for stability, irrational decisions and erotic obsessions.’

The Independent (UK)

‘Though anchored by emotional authenticity, Little Caesar reimagines the coming-of-age novel as surreal picaresque, the search for adult identity a wild and elusive quest with allusions to everything.’

Sydney Morning Herald

Praise for Tommy Wieringa:

‘The best contemporary novels are a quest made out of literary and moral ambition. Those who have successfully pursued this Holy Grail in recent times are Bolaño with his The Savage Detectives, Sebald in Austerlitz, Coetzee with Disgrace and the late Philip Roth. From now on, to that august list must be added the name of Tommy Wieringa.’

Le Figaro

‘Beautifully lyrical storytelling under a banner of gray skies and heavy hearts; one gorgeous, epic reminder than no matter what skeletons we have in our closet, we all try our best and our hardest to do well by the ones we love—as Morrissey has sung: 'That's how people grow up.'’

Dan Kennedy, Host of The Moth Storytelling Podcast, author of Rock On: An Office Power Ballad

Ludwig Unger’s life held such promise. His parents were artists and, from an early age, his own musical genius had marked him out for a stellar career in the world’s concert halls. In his mother’s imagination, Ludwig is already on the way to surpassing her most ambitious dreams for him. But in reality, and for now, he’s playing in local cocktail bars and the two of them are living alone in a storm-lashed clifftop cottage in East Anglia. As the forceful winter seas bash away at the coastline, and Ludwig plunks away at the piano, he begins to tell a woman his story: a story of beauty and decay, of a child’s faith and parental betrayal, and of the importance, in the end, of self-sacrifice.

‘Although perfectly charming as picaresque, the tragedy of Unger’s plight registers just as strongly as its understated oddness … Wieringa plays for keeps.’

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

‘The poet Philip Larkin’s famous observation that your mom and dad really mess you up is aptly illustrated in this offbeat, atmospheric novel … [a] haunting book.’

Kirkus Reviews

View all reviews

Library Journal

‘Tommy Wieringa’s inventive coming-of-age novel [involves] deeply flawed characters, maddening in their poor choices, but in Wieringa’s nimble hands, they elicit our sympathy.’

Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Independent (UK)

Sydney Morning Herald

Praise for Tommy Wieringa:

Le Figaro

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 198mm × 129mm

Extent:336pp

ISBN (13):9781925321043

RRP:$22.99

Pub date:24 Feb 2016

Rights Held: World English ex USA

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2017 Australian Book Design Awards, Series - Short-listed 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - Short-listed 2009 AKO Literature Prize - Long-listed

CATEGORIES / tags

AUTHOR

Tommy Wieringa

Tommy Wieringa was born in 1967 and grew up partly in the Netherlands, and partly in the tropics. He began his writing career with travel stories and journalism, and is the author of several internationally bestselling novels. His fiction has been longlisted for the Booker International Prize, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Oxford/Weidenfeld Prize, and has won Holland’s Libris Literature Prize.

TRANSLATOR

Sam Garrett

Sam Garrett has translated some fifty novels and works of nonfiction. He has won prizes and appeared on shortlists for some of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, and is the only translator to have twice won the British Society of Authors’ Vondel Prize for Dutch–English translation.

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Little Caesar

Tommy Wieringa (trans. Sam Garrett)

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