London Fragments: A Literary Expedition

by Rüdiger Görner

Ten strolls through some of the most interesting areas, exploring the literary landscape of the capital.

Genres: London, Travel, Nonfiction

254 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This German guy is obsessed with London. He portrays it as this kind of giant chimera that you can't look at or describe. Like Cthulu. But he tries to describe London anyway, everything that it ever was and everything it is now, by walking through it. He visits all the great literary locations, which seems to be every neighborhood in London and through his own observations and the observations of everyone who came before he describes poets and plague and fire and execution and exiles, underground rivers and girls in track suits on hands free cell phone head sets and confused whales swimming up the Thames and umbrella shops and general squalor. Its fun to read him overwhelming himself with this walking fever dream of a city I've never been to.
Zine quality rambling from a scholar who seems to know everything there is to know about the city.

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr kurzweilige Lektüre, die viele Anregungen zum Weiterlesen vermittelt. Besonders gut gefallen haben mir die Abschnitte, in denen die atmosphärische Wirkung des Gaslichts (die auch Stevenson in seiner Geschichte um Dr. Jekyll und Mr. Hyde verwendete) und die städtebauliche Besonderheit der Squares im Vergleich zu den Pariser Passagen. Auch würdigt er der Verfasser die wunderbaren London-Werke von Peter Ackroyd.