Book record
Father’s on the Phone with the Flies
Herta Müller
Translated from German by Thomas Cooper
Father's on the Phone with the Flies, by Herta Müller and translated by Thomas Cooper from German, brings Romanian German-language poetry into English through Herta Müller's flies, fathers, dictatorship, and the absurd collage logic of memory under surveillance. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem begins making its own weather. I would read it for flies, father, collage, and the unnerving humor that appears when terror invades domestic language, not as a fixed lesson about a nation, period, or school. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Father's on the Phone with the Flies belongs in the translated poetry library because it brings Romanian German-language poetry into the library through compression, cut-up, and menace.
- Published
- 2018
- Publisher
- Seagull Books, Limited
- Language
- German
- Country
- Romania
- ISBN
- 9780857424723