{"title":"Books by Agota Kristof","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780241774052","title":"I Don't Care","description":"Never before translated short stories by the legendary Ágota Kristóf 'One of the 20th century's greatest writers' Camilla Grudova'Pure genius' Max PorterI don’t care: it’s not even pretty. The song is sad, and old, so old.   I Don't Care presents the best short fiction by the Hungarian master Ágota Kristóf, selected by the author herself and available in English for the first time. Written immediately before her acclaimed Notebook trilogy, the works here oscillate between parables, surrealist anecdotes, and stories animated by a realism stripped to the bone. By turns harrowing and whimsical, cruel and sharply funny, Kristóf’s world shifts our gaze to a shared reality, past and present. Here exile and existential alienation are undeniable – as is the force of every sentence, making for extraordinary and essential reading.   Translated from French by Chris Andrews","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232032076149,"sku":"9780241774052","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241774052_30931bf0-62d5-4589-9308-2a9f41e33612.jpg?v=1786012595"},{"product_id":"9780486839134","title":"Yesterday","description":"First U.S. publication. In spare, elegant prose, this modern novella recounts a troubled young villager's flight to the comfortable anonymity of a city — a respite that's shattered by the appearance of his boyhood love, along with husband and child. \"Many of Kristof's stark vignettes, reported in unflinching detail . . . have a cool, disturbing power — part documentary-like, part surreal — that is fierce and distinctive.\" — Kirkus Reviews.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56290293842293,"sku":"9780486839134","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780486839134_92573081-02c2-425a-bb66-ac716dff1a77.jpg?v=1786013917"},{"product_id":"9781909585485","title":"The Illiterate","description":"Narrated in a series of brief vignettes, The Illiterate is Kristof ’s memoir of her childhood, her escape from Hungary in 1956 with her husband and small child, her early years working in factories in Switzerland, and the writing of her first novel, The Notebook.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308845543797,"sku":"9781909585485","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781909585485_75315c06-1351-4611-a6cb-a5f272eed8dc.jpg?v=1786029682"},{"product_id":"9780811234856","title":"The Illiterate","description":"Narrated in a series of stark, brief vignettes, The Illiterate is Agota Kristof's memoir of her childhood, her escape from Hungary in 1956 with her husband and small child, her early years working in factories in Switzerland, and the writing of her first novel, The Notebook. Few writers can convey so much in so little space. Fierce yet almost pointedly flat and documentarian in tone, Kristof portrays with a disturbing level of detail and directness an implacable message of loss: first, she is forced to learn Russian as a child (with the Soviet takeover of Hungary, Russian became obligatory at school); next, at age 21, she finds herself required to learn French to survive: It is in this way that, at the age of twenty-one, when I arrive in Switzerland and when, completely by chance, I arrive in a city where French is spoken, I confront a language that is totally unknown to me. It is here that my battle to conquer this language begins, a long and arduous battle that will last my entire life. I have spoken French for more than thirty years, I have written in French for twenty years, but I still don't know it. I don't speak it without mistakes, and I can only write it with the help of dictionaries, which I frequently consult. It is for this reason that I also call the French language an enemy language. There is a further reason, the most serious of all: this language is killing my mother tongue.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56368203891061,"sku":"9780811234856","price":11.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780811234856_b2006c93-79be-4cd7-9664-be28c85f6dc9.jpg?v=1786033195"},{"product_id":"the-notebook-trilogy","title":"The Notebook Trilogy","description":"Sent to a remote village to live with their grandmother, twins Claus and Lucas devise physical and mental exercises to render themselves invulnerable to the ongoing horrors of war and living under a totalitarian regime. When their bond is tested, their collective ‘we’ shatters and the boys become isolated in different countries. Lucas is challenged to prove his identity and that of his missing brother, a defector to ‘the other side’.   Kristóf’s haunting and unforgettable masterpiece has been an international phenomenon ever since its first publication in French 40 years ago. Distilling the brutally fracturing effects of war and displacement onto identity and memory, and our need for stories in our search for unity and meaning, The Notebook Trilogy is stark fable of timeless relevance.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499449524597,"sku":"9780241805671","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241805671.jpg?v=1786694758"},{"product_id":"i-dont-care-1","title":"I Don't Care","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57695187534197,"sku":"9780241774069","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-agota-kristof.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}