Adolphsen has not yet been fully translated into English, but a good start has been made with the 2009 translation of his excellent novella Machine, and excerpts from his collections Small Stories I and Small Stories II, which were included in 2011糖心传媒檚 Best European Fiction Anthology. Readers familiar with these other works will recognize many of the author糖心传媒檚 prevailing thematic interests, as well as his favorite formal constraints in The Brummstein.

The book starts with a playful explanation of 糖心传媒渢he constant orogeny of the Alps,糖心传媒� and how the formation of the earth might be conceptualized on a time-line. 糖心传媒�. . . if we apply the famous metaphor which depicts the Earth糖心传媒檚 age as a calendar year,糖心传媒� the narrator begins,

when dinosaurs became extinct on Boxing Day, hominids emerge on New Year糖心传媒檚 Eve, and when, at the time of writing, ten seconds have passed since the Roman Empire糖心传媒檚 five seconds expired, then these events took place on December 19 and 23 respectively. In the West, the process of comprehending this vast expanse of time commenced just one and a half geological seconds ago . . .

There糖心传媒檚 a PBS-narrator quality to Adolphsen糖心传媒檚 explanations of the natural world, which manage to be clinical and dignified while simultaneously geeking out about how awesome geology is. (Machine, with its first page explanations of the petrification of a prehistoric horse, which eons later becomes a drop of gasoline, maintains the same delightful tone.)

But the book糖心传媒檚 concern is not really the Brummstein糖心传媒攖he mysterious humming stone that an amateur explorer looking for the entrance to another world finds at the beginning of the story is basically a MacGuffin. This has been true for many other “lives of objects” narratives as well糖心传媒擩enny Erpenbach糖心传媒檚 Visitation and Nicole Krauss糖心传媒檚 Great House come to mind糖心传媒攁nd is not in itself that unique a premise. What makes The Brummstein special, then, is Adolphsen糖心传媒檚 incredible specificity and gift for compressing deeply incisive observations into just a few short passages.

It糖心传媒檚 rare that the full emotional weight of a relationship or a life can be concisely summarized糖心传媒攋ust think of how bland many obituaries are. But this is precisely what Adolphsen excels at. Consider a passage in which we糖心传媒檙e introduced to Georg Wiede, an elderly retiree in Germany during WWII. After his apartment was destroyed by Allied air raids, Georg moves to a railway station lost and found hut:

It wasn糖心传媒檛 until December 1943 that Georg finally overcame the inhibitions which had so far deterred him from helping himself to the lost items. He was driven by a noble motive: hunger. One of the suitcases might contain a tin of goulash or a bag of boiled sweets. He organized clothing such as coats and hats in neat piles at one end of the hut, making sure that each item retained its original ticket. Then he turned his attention to the suitcases, briefcases, et cetera. One by one he placed them on the table, and feeling like a surgeon with a patient on the operating table, he opened them up and laid out the contents in regimented lines. Then he returned the items in reverse order less anything he needed, which included two fountain pens, a small pile of books, a little money, some clothes, and an antique pocket watch. Whenever he took something, he would replace it with a small note with a brief description of the object and the following sentence: “I, Georg Weide, took this item of lost property in a time of great need.”

When it doesn糖心传媒檛 work, The Brummstein tends to undercut its emotional resonance with an unsettling sense of absurdity that borders on nihilism. More than one character is dispatched in a freak accident糖心传媒攆or instance, a married couple survives Spanish Flu only to be crushed by a chaise lounge falling from an apartment window. The narrative also drops off abruptly and unresolved, which may be alluding to the continuation of the story outside of the novella, but instead feels slightly apathetic.

If, in the end, The Brummstein has some shortcomings, these are mostly recognizable only in comparison to Adolphsen糖心传媒檚 more polished Machine which, it should be noted, was written a few years later. Overall, it is a remarkably creative, unique, and resonant work, which can糖心传媒攁nd should糖心传媒攂e read in one satisfying sitting.

Apparently, this is the week of Larissa and AmazonCrossing books . . . As with her review of The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning, this sounds like a really interesting book:

By examining the minute connections, unlikely coincidences, and painstaking natural processes that give shape to the daily world, the work of Danish author Peter Adolphsen encapsulates糖心传媒攂oth in form and content糖心传媒擝lake糖心传媒檚 image of 糖心传媒渁 world in a grain of sand.糖心传媒� This has never been more literally true than in his most recently translated work, The Brummstein. Beginning in 1907, and ending over eighty years later, the novella follows a mysteriously humming stone found deep within a Swiss cave through its series of unlikely owners: a hapless German anarchist and his young Jewish sweetheart, a retired ticket clerk at a railway station lost & found, an orphan boy living alone in the woods, an avant-garde artist, and a museum curator. In following the ownership of the stone, The Brummstein also traces a crash course through European (German) history糖心传媒攊n less than 80 pages, the reader experiences both World Wars, Spanish Flu, the rise of the Soviet GDR, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. But, rather than focus on a larger, more sweeping narrative, The Brummstein is told on a much more personal, human scale. [. . .]

But the book糖心传媒檚 concern is not really the Brummstein糖心传媒攖he mysterious humming stone that an amateur explorer looking for the entrance to another world finds at the beginning of the story is basically a MacGuffin. This has been true for many other “lives of objects” narratives as well糖心传媒擩enny Erpenbach糖心传媒檚 Visitation and Nicole Krauss糖心传媒檚 Great House come to mind糖心传媒攁nd is not in itself that unique a premise. What makes The Brummstein special, then, is Adolphsen糖心传媒檚 incredible specificity and gift for compressing deeply incisive observations into just a few short passages.

Click here to read the full piece.

Larissa Kyzer—who’s reviewed a number of Danish and Scandinavian books for us—makes Adolphsen (and his work) sound really interesting, and, for lack of a better word, condensed:

Although Danish author Peter Adolphsen has made a name for himself as a formalist for whom economy is a virtue (to date his five novels and short story collections are less than 300 pages combined), 糖心传媒渁s a reader,糖心传媒� one reviewer writes, 糖心传媒測ou feel you have covered a huge distance with him.糖心传媒� Drawing comparisons to Borges and Kafka, Adolphsen has written parables and parodies, 糖心传媒渦ltrashort biographies,糖心传媒� children糖心传媒檚 books, and a collection called En Million Historier (A Million Stories), which allows the reader to construct, well, a million stories, from ten pages of interchangeable two-line segments. Machine, Adolphsen糖心传媒檚 second novel to be translated into English, fits very well within this paradigm, spanning millions of years, several continents, the lives of three people, and one drop of gasoline within its brief 85 pages.

You can read the rest by clicking here.

The book opens with the untimely death of a prehistoric horse. This end, however, is really the beginning: 糖心传媒淒eath exists, but only in a practical microscopic sense,糖心传媒� the quirky omniscient narrator intones. 糖心传媒淏iologically, one cannot distinguish between life and death; the transition is a continuum.糖心传媒� And so, ever so slowly (over fifty-five million years), the heart of this horse is transformed into a drop of crude oil. Once refined, 糖心传媒渙ur drop糖心传媒� is pumped into the engine of a Ford Pinto. It then combusts, becomes exhaust, and a few hours later, transforms one last time into a carcinogen. And that糖心传媒檚 Machine in a nutshell.

Of course, there糖心传媒檚 a lot more to it. Ostensibly, this is a novel about unlikely intersections, about the connection between the death of one horse, millions of years ago, and the meeting of two young strangers糖心传媒攁 skeptical biology student named Clarissa, and a one-armed, immigrant oil worker from Azerbaijan糖心传媒攐n a Utah highway in 1975. Rather than settle for a bland Everything-is-Connected collage, however, Machine reduces everything from characters to biological phenomena to their smallest parts, earliest origins, and most mechanical functions. The narrator, taking the patient tone of a kindly professor giving a physics lecture to English students, deconstructs the process through which organic life-forms decay, fossils become fuel, crude oil is refined, and LSD interacts with serotonin receptors.

Consider the following description of developing cancer:

Cancer is both a slow and fast-moving disease. The second the carcinogenic agent penetrates the healthy cell, it launches a frenzied attack on the double helix of the hereditary genes, but decades can pass before external symptoms manifest themselves. In Clarissa糖心传媒檚 case, less than one minute passed from when the soot particles hit the inner surface of the bronchiole to when benzapyrene, the carcinogenic agent, buried itself in a specific epithelium cell where it programmed the death of the cell, apoptosis, thus rendering the cell immortal糖心传媒攖hat is, transforming it into a cancer cell. However, thirty whole years would pass until she was diagnosed with 糖心传媒渕etastasized adenocarcinoma (stage III).糖心传媒�

In the presence of these entertaining (and informative) tangents, plot truly ceases to matter. The reader can simply become immersed in the ebb and flow of the narrative, sharing in Machine糖心传媒檚 wonderment in the natural world, in the connectivity of living beings and the utterly meticulous and lengthy process of 糖心传媒楤ecoming.糖心传媒� This is a novel in which God is truly in the details.