An Inventory of Losses

Fiction by Judith Schalansky

Translated by Jackie Smith

Named a best book of 2021 by The Wall Street Journal: “Disappearance may be a forlorn theme, but it has rarely been granted such reverent contemplation, or been made to feel so powerfully tangible.” Each disparate object described in this book—a Caspar David Friedrich painting, a species of tiger, a villa in Rome, a Greek love poem, an island in the Pacific—shares a common fate: it no longer exists, except as the dead end of a paper trail.…
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The stylistic flair, and variety of voice, in Jackie Smith’s mesmerizing translation turn Schalansky’s reminder that ‘Being alive means experiencing loss’ into a journey full of colour, contrast and bittersweet pleasures. An Inventory of Losses is a thoroughly memorable winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation – and one that will surely endure.
—Warwick Prize winners citation, Boyd Tonkin
The translation from the German by Jackie Smith…is a triumph of subtle accuracy.
The Wall Street Journal
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