Shipyard

First published in 1961, "The Shipyard" chronicles an anti-hero named Larsen who returns to a fictional place, Santa Maria, to try to revive a useless and abandoned shipyard. With all the enthusiasm of a man condemned to be hanged, Larsen takes up his new post. Like the other workers at the shipyard, he routinely goes through the motions. Every so often, his sense of reality is shaken by a tremor of self-deception and then it is possible to believe that the yard's glory is not just a thing of the past. In spite of its melancholy and sense of alienation, Onetti's novel conveys, through its unique poetic language, a real sense of transcendence and hope. Allegorical, reflecting the decay and breakdown of Uruguayan society and modern urban life, "The Shipyard" is a landmark of Latin American literature.

ISBN 1852424818   Pages 192 ISBN13 9781852424817 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Profile Books Ltd   Weight (grammes) 154 Imprint Serpent's Tail   Published in London Format Paperback   Previous ISBN 9781852421915 Publication date 04 Dec 2006   Height (mm) 198 Translator Nick Caistor   Width (mm) 129 Library of Congress PQ   Spine width (mm) 14 DEWEY 863.64   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

"'The Graham Greene of Uruguay... foreshadowing the work of Beckett and Camus'. Sunday Telegraph 'The Onetti experience is a curious one: readers end up feeling that they understand life better after a stay in this ghostly, tantalising world, only to lose the wisdom they have gained after a few hours of release from the spell. The form is subtle and delicate, the message sordid and bleak, the flavour inimitable' Guardian 'Onetti's voice and subject matter are his own... his work is always on a knife-edge... He is laconic, elegant, literary' London Review of Books"

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