• ISBN13: 9780857425799
• Binding: Paperback
• Subject: English Literature
• Publisher: Seagull Books
• Publisher Imprint: Seagull Books
• Publication Date: August 12, 2017
• Pages: 144
• Original Price: INR 499.00
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 140 grams

About the Book In these 99 meditations, poet and novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger celebrates the tenacity of the normal and routine in everyday life, where the survival of the objects we use without thinking—a pair of scissors, perhaps—is both a small, human victory and a quiet reminder of our own ephemeral nature. He sets his quotidian reflections against a broad historic and political backdrop—the cold war and its accompanying atomic threat, the German student revolt, would-be socialism in Cuba, China and Africa and World War II as experienced by the youthful poet. Enzensberger’s poems are conversational, skeptical and serene; they culminate in the extended set of observations which gives the collection its title. Clouds, alien and yet symbols of human life, are for Enzensberger at once a central metaphor of the Western poetic tradition and “the most fleeting of all masterpieces.” “Cloud archaeology,” writes Enzensberger, is “a science for angels.” About the Author Hans Magnus Enzensberger, often considered Germany’s most important living poet, is also the editor of the book series Die Andere Bibliothek and the founder of the monthly TransAtlantik. His books include Lighter Than Air: Moral Poems and Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia.