Christmas Presents - & Happy New Year for 2026!

Lutz Seiler: Star 111 (2020)

Mostly, in the past, we've asked each other for contributions towards particularly desirable Christmas presents in my family. It takes out the element of serendipity, but it does mean that nobody ends up with anything they don't want.

Given that both Bronwyn and I have a tendency to buy the things we want throughout the year, though, this year I asked her to surprise me with something I hadn't asked for. I was expecting a few pairs of socks or a t-shirt, so when I saw she'd got me a pair of new books instead, I was definitely surprised.

Lamplight Books (Parnell, Auckland)

She bought both of them from Lamplight Books in Parnell. Art-lovers tend to gravitate towards this shop, as it stocks some really remarkable illustrated books and graphic novels from all over the world. They also have a good selection of literature, and are always ready to advise on appropriate presents for those pesky "people who have everything" in our lives.

Lutz Seiler: In Case of Loss (2020)

I must admit that I'd never heard of Lutz Seiler before encountering these two books: his novel Star 111, about the reunification of Germany in 1990, is apparently considered one of the best fictional recreations of those times to date. But it comes as the culmination of a lifetime of work as a poet, fiction-writer and essayist. The best of his essays are collected in the volume above.

I can already tell that I'm going to like him. I've looked through of the essays, and his matter-of-fact, pared-back style appeals to me greatly. There's something very concrete and exact about his writing. And to someone who's spent so much time reading Böll and Celan and Grass and other post-war German writers, I guess I understand just a little about the terrain he's working in.

The Peter Huchel Museum (2020)

In writing, there are always those moments when you cannot make progress. Days when you pace round the room endlessly, around the material, when in actual fact you are circling yourself, repeatedly mouthing something aloud, to your ear, only to hear the same thing over and over again: it's not right.

- 'In the Anchor Jar' [p.113]

Seiler is the curator of the Peter Huchel Museum in Wilhelmshorst, on the outskirts of Berlin. He gives a fascinating account in the first essay in In Case of Loss of having to gain entry by breaking into the house - at the instigation of Huchel's widow - when the local council refused him permission to live there. Poet as man of action! I like it.

I may not be able to match him there, but (as it turns out), he's almost exactly my contemporary. I was born in November 1962 in Auckland, New Zealand; he in June 1963 in Gera, East Germany.

I remember in November 1989, when I was studying in the UK, watching the Berlin wall being demolished on TV as Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" blared out. It was undeniably moving: history as spectacle - but perhaps just a little too cinematic for comfort. As if we could only understand such things now in terms of Hollywood blockbusters, with the appropriate background music.

Seiler instinctively resists such grand gestures: his material is, of course, the past, as it is for all of us, but his past is a skein of particulars: the underground uranium deposits which made Gera one of the 'tired villages' of Thuringia, and gradually irradiated everyone who worked there; the careful way his father taught him to repair machinery, tools and brushes in perfect alignment, the two working silently together in the cramped workshed.

Art Deco in Mairangi Bay, Auckland (2023)

I, too, live in a kind of museum - but it's one that's consecrated to my family's relentless, acquisitive hoarding. No matter how much you throw out, there's always more left behind: my father's guns and militaria, my mother's bags of all our childhood clothes, Bronwyn's pictures and pottery, and books, books, books from everyone. Disconcertingly, it looks quite a lot like the Huchel House.

Perhaps his past isn't so different from mine, after all. In any case, he seems like a writer after my own heart.

Peter Horvath: Fall of the Berlin Wall (10/11/1989)

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Michelle Porte: The Places of Marguerite Duras (2025)

This is the front cover of the book Bronwyn's friends at the Objectspace gallery in Ponsonby gave her as a Christmas present this year. I guess they'd noticed her passion for decoding and interpreting spaces in both her critical and creative work.

I was pleased to see that they'd chosen something by (and about) Marguerite Duras, who's one of my favourite twentieth-century French writers. Not that I've read - or seen - all her work by any means. For me, until the mid-1980s she was just another name in the honour roll of the Nouveau roman, alongside such luminaries as Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon. But there was so much fuss over her Prix Goncourt-winning novel L'Amant (1984) when it first appeared in English that it would have been hard to ignore it.

The laconic, matter-of-fact way in which she wrote greatly attracted me. The book took place in a Conradian setting, but the events were outlined as dryly as only a Cartesian French writer could have achieved. The lush external landscapes of Duras' native Indochina were taken for granted - the outrageousness of the actions she recorded, again, described as brutally and directly as in a police dossier.

Jean-Jacques Annaud, dir.: The Lover (1992)

But all that was lost in the movie, I'm afraid. I enjoyed that, too, but unfortunately it's almost impossible to avoid evoking Emmanuelle and its sequels when filming an explicit French love story in the steamy Far East.

Duras, though - she was clearly something else. I decided to try reading her next novel in French to see if it had the same effect on me. That novel - for want of a better word: it's really more of an episodic series of mini-novellas and notebook entries - was called La Douleur.

Marguerite Duras: La Douleur (1985)

How do you translate that? In French, it just means pain. Barbara Bray, Duras's most faithful and assiduous English translator, retitled it The War A Memoir. Not a bad choice, as it's an intensely painful chronicle of the heroine (virtually indistinguishable from Duras herself) and her mostly futile attempts to find out what had happened to her husband, recently arrested by the Gestapo, near the end of the war.

Paris has just been liberated. Everything is in chaos. The narrator lurches from office to office, official to official, trying to get any scraps of information she can. Virtually all of this actually happened - only the names have been changed. The book, however, ends with her still in suspense, whereas in actuality Robert Antelme survived his imprisonment by the Gestapo, and even the forced death march towards Dachau in late 1945.

I'd never read anything quite like it. It was experimental, yes: the multiplicity of levels and narrative styles; the constantly shifting viewpoints. But all of that served simply to convey the intensity of the experience. There are aspects of that, too, in George Perec's earlier, rather more oblique masterpiece W ou le souvenir d'enfance [W, or the Memory of Childhood], which also hinges on the war: in that case, growing up without ever knowing that his mother died in Auschwitz.

George Perec: W ou le souvenir d'enfance (1975)

I'm not sure if I've actually seen the documentary The Places of Marguerite Duras is based on. Possibly not, because the documentary I remember watching had a number of scenes in it from her film Le Camion (1977), which came out after 1976, when Les Lieux de Marguerite Duras was shown on French TV.

The documentary I saw was extremely detailed, though - ranging from her childhood in what is now Vietnam, to the various regions of France she's also associated with. It gave at least as much attention to her work as a director as to her novels and other writing. She was always immensely prolific, and (dare I say it?) somewhat repetitive in the way she recycled situations and themes from her life and elswhere.

Marguerite Duras, dir. & writ.: India Song (1975)

One of the best examples is her film India Song, with its slightly time-lagged dialogue, never quite in synch with the actors' lips. A year later she released a film called Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert [Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta], which uses precisely the same sound-track, only this time juxtaposed against pictures of headstones and graves.

Marguerite Duras, dir. & writ.: Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976)

It's not true to say, then, that when you've read one novel by Duras you've read them all. Even when they traverse much the same territory - as The North China Lover (1991) does The Lover (1984) - the new text seems designed to question and even undermine the previous version.

Since the publication of La Douleur, for instance, Duras's original wartime journals have been found and published. The multiple layers of her reinventions still continue to unfold some thirty years after her death.

Marguerite Duras: Cahiers de la guerre et autres textes (2006)

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Marguerite Duras (1914-1996)

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu
[Marguerite Duras]
(1914-1996)

Fiction:


1. Les Impudents (1943)
   • The Impudent Ones. Trans. Kelsey L. Haskett (2021)
2. La Vie tranquille (1944)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • The Easy Life. Trans. Olivia Baes & Emma Ramadan (2022)
3. Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • The Sea Wall. 1950. Trans. Herma Briffault. 1952. London: Faber, 1986.
   • A Sea of Troubles. Trans. Antonia White (1953)
4. Le Marin de Gibraltar (1952)
   • The Sailor from Gibraltar. 1952. Trans. Barbara Bray. 1966. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., n.d.
5. Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia (1953)
   • The Little Horses of Tarquinia,. Trans. Peter DuBerg (1960)
6. Des journées entières dans les arbres: Le Boa, Madame Dodin, Les Chantiers (1954)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • Whole Days in the Trees: Le Boa, Madame Dodin, Les Chantiers. Trans. Anita Barrows (1984)
7. Le Square (1955)
   • The Square,. Trans. Sonia Pitt-Rivers and Irina Morduch (1959)
8. Moderato cantabile (1958)
   • Moderato Cantabile. Trans. Richard Seaver (1960)
9. Dix heures et demie du soir en été (1960)
   • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
   • 10:30 on a Summer Night. Trans. Anne Borchardt (1961)
10. L'Après-midi de M. Andesmas (1962)
    • The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas. Trans. Anne Borchardt and Barbara Bray (1964)
11. Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The Ravishing of Lol Stein. Trans. Richard Seaver (1964)
    • The Rapture of Lol V. Stein. Trans. Eileen Ellenbogen (1967)
12. Le Vice-Consul (1965)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The Vice-Consul. Trans. Eileen Ellenborgener (1968)
13. L'Amante anglaise (1967)
    • L'Amante anglaise. Trans. Barbara Bray (1968)
14. Détruire, dit-elle (1969)
    • Destroy, She Said. Trans. Barbara Bray (1970)
15. Abahn Sabana David (1970)
    • Abahn Sabana David. Trans. Kazim Ali (2016)
16. Ah! Ernesto (1971)
17. L'Amour (1972)
    • L'Amour. Trans. Kazim Ali and Libby Murphy (2013)
18. Vera Baxter ou les Plages de l'Atlantique (1980)
19. L'Homme assis dans le couloir (1980)
    • The Man Sitting in the Corridor. Trans. Barbara Bray (1991)
20. L'Homme atlantique (1982)
    • The Atlantic Man. Trans. Alberto Manguel (1993)
21. La Maladie de la mort (1982)
    • The Malady of Death. Trans. Barbara Bray (1986)
22. L'Amant (1984)
    • The Lover. 1984. Trans. Barbara Bray. 1985. Flamingo. London: Fontana Paperbacks / Collins Publishing Group, 1986.
23. La Douleur (1985)
    • La Douleur. 1985. Collection Folio, 2469. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1997.
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The War. Trans. Barbara Bray (1986)
24. Les Yeux bleus, Cheveux noirs (1986)
    • Blue Eyes, Black Hair. Trans. Barbara Bray (1987)
25. La Pute de la côte normande (1986)
    • The Slut of the Normandy Coast. Trans. Alberto Manguel (1993)
26. Emily L. (1987)
    • Emily L. 1987. Trans. Barbara Bray. 1989. Flamingo. London: Fontana Paperbacks / Collins Publishing Group, 1990.
27. La Pluie d'été (1990)
    • Summer Rain. Trans. Barbara Bray (1992)
28. L'Amant de la Chine du Nord (1991)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The North China Lover (L’Amant de la Chine du nord). 1991. Trans. Leigh Hafrey. 1992. Flamingo Original. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
29. Yann Andréa Steiner (1992)
    • Yann Andrea Steiner. Trans. Barbara Bray (1993)
30. Écrire (1993)
    • Writing. Trans. Mark Polizzotti (2011)

Non-fiction:


31. L'Été 80 (1980)
32. Outside (1981)
    • Outside. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1986)
33. La Vie matérielle (1987)
    • Practicalities: Marguerite Duras Speaks to Jérôme Beaujour. 1987. Trans. Barbara Bray. Flamingo Original. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1990.
34. Les Yeux verts (1980 / 1987)
    • Green Eyes. Trans. Carol Barko (1990)
35. C'est tout (1995)
    • No More. Trans. Richard Howard (1998)
36. Cahiers de la guerre et autres textes: 1943-1949 (2006)
    • Wartime Notebooks and Other Texts. Ed. Sophie Bogaert & Olivier Corpet. 2006. Trans. Linda Coverdale. MacLehose Press. London: Quercus, 2008.

Plays:


37. Les Viaducs de la Seine et Oise (1959)
    • "The Viaducts of Seine-et-Oise". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Three Plays (1967)
38. Théâtre I: Les Eaux et Forêts; Le Square; La Musica (1965)
    • "Les Eaux et Forêts" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "The Square". Trans. Barbara Bray and Sonia Orwell, in Three Plays (1967)
    • "La Musica" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "La Musica". Trans. Barbara Bray (1975) [in Four Plays (1992)]
39. L'Amante anglaise (1968)
    • L'Amante anglaise. Trans. Barbara Bray (1975)
40. Théâtre II: Suzanna Andler; Des journées entières dans les arbres; Yes, peut-être; Le Shaga; Un homme est venu me voir (1968)
    • Suzanna Andler. Trans. Barbara Bray (1975)
    • "Des journées entières dans les arbres" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "Days in the Trees". Trans. Barbara Bray and Sonia Orwell, in Three Plays (1967)
41. India Song (1973)
    • "India Song" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • "India Song". Trans. Barbara Bray (1976) [in Four Plays (1992)]
42. L'Eden Cinéma (1977)
    • "Eden Cinema". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)
43. Agatha (1981)
    • Agatha. Trans. Howard Limoli, in Agatha / Savannah Bay: 2 Plays (1992)
44. Savannah Bay (1982 / 1983)
    • "Savannah Bay". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)
    • "Savannah Bay". Trans. Howard Limoli, in Agatha / Savannah Bay: 2 Plays (1992)
45. Théâtre III: La Bête dans la jungle; Les Papiers d'Aspern; La Danse de mort (1984)
46. La Musica deuxième (1985)
    • "La Musica deuxième". Trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)

Cinema

Screenplays:

47. Hiroshima mon amour (1960)
    • Included in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • Hiroshima mon amour. Trans. Richard Seaver (1961)
48. Une aussi longue absence (with Gérard Jarlot) (1961)
    • Une aussi longue absence. Trans. Barbara Wright (1961)
49. Nathalie Granger, suivi de La Femme du Gange (1973)
50. Le Camion, suivi de Entretien avec Michelle Porte (1977)
    • The Darkroom. Trans. Alta Ifland and Eireene Nealand (2021)
51. Le Navire Night, suivi de Cesarée, les Mains négatives, Aurélia Steiner (1979)
    • "Le Navire Night: Cesarée, les Mains négatives" in: Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.
    • The Ship "Night". Trans. Susan Dwyer

Director:

52. La Musica (1967)
53. Destroy, She Said (1969)
54. Jaune le soleil (1972)
55. Nathalie Granger (1972)
56. La Femme du Gange (1974)
57. India Song (1975)
58. Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976)
59. Des journées entières dans les arbres (1977)
60. Le Camion (1977)
61. Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977)
62. Les Mains négatives (1978)
63. Césarée (1978)
64. Le Navire Night (1979)
65. Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne) (1979)
66. Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver) (1979)
67. Agatha et les lectures illimitées (1981)
68. L'Homme atlantique (1981)
69. Il dialogo di Roma (1983)
70. Les Enfants (1985)

Actor:

71. Jean-Luc Godard, dir. Every Man for Himself (1980)

Collections:


72. Four Novels: The Square, Moderato Cantabile, 10:30 on a Summer Night, The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas (1966)
73. Three Plays: The Square, Days in the Trees, The Viaducts of Seine-et-Oise (1967)
74. Three Novels: The Square, Ten-thirty on a Summer Night, The Afternoon of Monsieur Andesmas (1977)
75. Four Plays: La Musica (La Musica Deuxième), Eden Cinema, Savannah Bay, India Song. Trans. Barbara Bray (1992)
76. Agatha / Savannah Bay: 2 Plays. Trans. Howard Limoli (1992)
77. Two by Duras: The Slut of the Normandy Coast / The Atlantic Man. Trans. Alberto Manguel (1993)
78. Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993 (1997)
    • Duras: Romans cinéma théâtre, un parcours 1943-1993: La Vie tranquille; Un Barrage contre le Pacifique; Des journées entières dans les arbres: Le Boa, Madame Dodin, Les Chantiers; Le Square; Hiroshima mon amour; Dix heures et demie du soir en été; Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein; Le Vice-Consul; Les Eaux et Forêts; La Musica; Des journées entières dans les arbres; India Song; Le Navire Night: Cesarée, les Mains négatives; La Douleur; L'Amant de la Chine du Nord. 1944, 1950, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1973, 1979, 1985 & 1991. Quarto. 1997. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002.

Interviews:


79. [with Xavière Gauthier] Les Parleuses (1974)
    • Woman to Woman. Trans. Katharine A. Jensen (1987)
80. [with Michelle Porte] Les Lieux de Marguerite Duras: Entretiens et photos (1977)
    • The Places of Marguerite Duras. Trans. Alison L. Strayer. Introduction by Durga Chew-Bose. Montreal & New York: Magic Hour Press, 2025.
81. [with Leopoldina Pallotta della Torre] La Passion suspendue (2013)
    • Suspended Passion. Trans. Chris Turner (2016)

Secondary:


82. Adler, Laure. Marguerite Duras: A Life. 1998. Trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen. 2000. A Phoenix Paperback. London: Orion Books Ltd., 2001.

Jean-Jacques Annaud, dir.: The Lover (1992)

•

Lutz Seiler (1963- )

Lutz Seiler
(1963- )

Poetry:


1. Berührt – geführt (1995)
2. Pech & Blende (2000)
   • Pitch & Glint. Poems. Trans. Stefan Tobler (2023)
3. Hubertusweg (2001)
4. Vierzig Kilometer Nacht (2003)
5. Poems. Trans. Andrew Duncan (2005)
6. im felderlatein (2010)
   • in field latin. Poems. Trans. Alexander Booth (2016)
7. schrift für blinde riesen (2021)

Non-fiction:


8. [with Anne Duden & Farhad Showghi] Heimaten (2001)
9. Sonntags dachte ich an Gott (2004)
10. Die Anrufung. Essay und vier Gedichte (2005)
11. Die Römische Saison. Zwei Essays Mit Zeichnungen von Max P. Hering (2016)
12. Laubsäge und Scheinbrücke. Aus der Vorgeschichte des Schreibens. Heidelberger Poetikvorlesung, ed. Friederike Renes (2020)
13. In Case of Loss. Essays. Trans. Martyn Crucefix. Sheffield, London & New York: And Other Stories, 2023.

Fiction:


14. Turksib. Zwei Erzählungen (2008)
15. Die Zeitwaage. Erzählungen (2009)
16. Kruso. Novel (2014)
    • Kruso. Novel. Trans. Tess Lewis. (2017)
17. Am Kap des guten Abends. Acht Bildergeschichten (2018)
18. Stern 111. Roman (2020)
    • Star 111, Novel. Trans. Tess Lewis. Sheffield, London & New York: And Other Stories, 2023.

Lutz Seiler: Star 111 (2020)

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