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The Bells of Bruges
Author: Georges Rodenbach
Translator: Mike Mitchell
Cover design: David Bird
Cover illustration: Frans Masereel
Shortlisted for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for 2008.
The Bells of Bruges is a study of obsessive love which is steeped in the melancholy beauty of Bruges.
There are three loves in the life of Joris Borluut, the town carillonneur of Bruges. He marries the fiery Barbara, whose dark beauty is a reminder of Belgium's Spanish heritage. Repelled by her harshness and violence, he starts an affair with her sister, the gentle, soulful, fair-haired Godelieve. When her sister discovers their affair, Godelieve enters a Beguine convent and Joris devotes himself to his first love, the old city of Bruges.
His opposition to a proposal to sacrifice part of the old town to economic advance loses him his position as town architect, and he withdraws to the belfry and his beloved carillon that seems for him to express the soul of Bruges.
Reviews
- Abi Salter in The Big Issue
- Martin Tierney in The Herald
- Emma Gould in Buzz
- Patrick McGuinness in The Times Literary Supplement
- Helen Dunmore,novelist and chair of the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize judges.
- Nicholas Royle in The Guardian
RRP: £9.99
No. of pages: 244
Publication date: 18 July, 2007
Re-print date: unspecified
Catalogue/ISBN no: 9781903517 54 3
Dedalus World English Language Rights in the translation.
Buy from: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com