War and Turpentine

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / General / Hertmans, Stefan, Fiction / Hertmans, Stefan
On Shelf At: Malletts Creek Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Hertmans, Stefan	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Hertmans, Stefan	4-week checkout	Due 05-31-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Hertmans, Stefan	4-week checkout	Due 05-16-2024

Previously published in Dutch as Oorlog en terpentijn (Amsterdam : De Bezige Bij, 2013); English translation originally published by Harvill Secker in 2016, in London,
"In this vivid and masterful novel, a Flemish man reconstructs his grandfather's story--his life, loves, and art, all disrupted by the first World War--from the unflinching notebooks he left behind. Short Description War and Turpentine centers on two men distanced by time: a religious painter whose life is changed forever by World War One; and his grandson, a writer reckoning with his grandfather's story. The life of Urbain Martien--artist, soldier, survivor of the incomprehensible--lies contained in two notebooks written before his death in 1981. His grandson, a writer, imagines his way into the locked chambers of Urbain's memory: retouching church paintings as a boy, dodging death in an iron foundry, and, ultimately, fighting the war that altered the course of human history. There is Urbain's father, the lowly church painter; Urbain's wife, Gabrielle, his true love's sister; and Urbain's canvas, the ever-present reminder of the artist he wanted to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this story, the narrator straddles past and present, searching for a place in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints the extraordinary story of one man's life and the echo of its impact resounding through the generations. Translated from the Dutch by David McKay"-- Provided by publisher.

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