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    Rivers
    Rivers
    Rivers
    Audiobook4 hours

    Rivers

    Written by Martin Michael Driessen

    Narrated by David de Vries

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A critically acclaimed, award-winning collection drawing sparkling prose from the inspiration of three rivers passing through different times and places.

    On the storm-swollen Aisne in northeastern France, an alcoholic actor combats both his demons and nature’s tempests. Along the Main and Rhine in Germany, a kindhearted logger has but one wish: to travel with the lumber from his small Franconian hometown to the end of the river in the Netherlands, where it feeds into the majestic North Sea. In a bucolic vale in the French region of Brittany, two families, divided by religion and an unnamed stream, sustain a centuries-old feud, their resolve no match for the constantly shifting flow of water.

    These three stories span countries and eras, but they are all connected by, and reliant on, the unpredictable power and languid beauty of rivers that give life as quickly as they take it away.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    TranslatorJonathan Reeder
    Release dateJun 5, 2018
    ISBN9781543686340
    Rivers
    Author

    Martin Michael Driessen

    Martin Michael Driessen is a Dutch opera and theater director, translator, and writer. He made his debut in 1999 with the novel Gars, followed by Vader van God (Father of God, 2012) and Een ware held (A True Hero, 2013), both of which were broadly reviewed and nominated for literary prizes. In 2015 his novel Lizzie, written with the highly acclaimed and award-winning poet Liesbeth Lagemaat, was published under the pseudonym Eva Wanjek. Rivieren (Rivers, 2016) was awarded the prestigious ECI Literature Prize (formerly the AKO), the Readers Prize, and the Inktaap Prize, shortlisted for the Fintro Literature Prize, and nominated for the Halewijn Prize. His latest novel, De pelikaan (The Pelican, 2017), was shortlisted for the Libris Prize. His work has been translated into English, Italian, German, Spanish, Slovenian, and Hungarian.

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    • 4/5
      Translated from Dutch, this book consists of 3 long short stories. It also won the 2016 ECI Literature Prize (which I admit I have never heard of).These stories are so well written and so interesting. Each of the main characters is so attached to his/her river--whether it is their livelihood or vital to their idea of home, the different rivers are key. Driessen manages to capture how vital these rivers are to his characters' lives and senses of self, and how they actually love their river.The stories:Fleuve Sauvage: All Comes to Naught. A drunk canoes down the river in the canoe he bought for his son, who wants nothing to do with himVoyage to The Moon: Life is a Dream. Follows the life of one of the last generation of men to raft logs down the Rodach, Main, and Rhine; and his friend Julius, who inherits his father's logging business (of different classes, they cannot truly be friends). We meet Konrad the first season he gets to stay on shore and work the logs, through the year he first gets to raft, to middle-aged Konrad seeing the end of rafting as Hitler comes to power.Pierre and Adele: He Shall Be Purified by Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Two families share a valley, each on one side of a creek. They have been fighting over the creek's movement for at least 100 years--making multiple generations of lawyers wealthy. Pierre and Adele, and Eduard their lawyer, are the last of the generations who seem to have solved the problem.