Rombo

In May and September 1976, two severe earthquakes rip through north-eastern Italy, causing severe damage to the landscape and its population. About a thousand people die under the rubble, tens of thousands are left without shelter, many will leave their home in Friuli forever. The displacement of material as a result of the quakes is enormous, new terrain is formed that reflects the force of the catastrophe and captures the fundamentals of natural history. But it is far more difficult to find expression for the human trauma, the experience of an abruptly shattered existence.

In Esther Kinsky’s new novel, seven inhabitants of a remote mountain village, men and women, talk about their lives, which have been deeply impacted by the earthquake that has left marks they are slowly learning to name. From the shared experience of fear and loss, the threads of individual memory soon unravel and become haunting and moving narratives of a grave past hurt.

»A lyrical, meticulous inquiry into the alchemy of memory.« Kirkus Reviews

»The Italian word rombo refers to the sound that foreshadows an earthquake. Kinsky uses this term to create a novel of great sensitivity and precision. Rombo has arrived just in time to become one of the biggest books of 2024 in Portugal.« Isabel Lucas, Público (Portugal)

»It reads cinematically; the cuts are determined and stylistic. ... The book excels when it manages to balance the grand geology of its subject matter on the tiny gestures of daily life. ... Rombo is staggering. There is something epic about it.« Magnus Rena, Review 31

»Kinsky expertly animates the natural world around her while removing her human hand. ... If trauma is the inability to redescribe, Rombo offers a powerful antidote in language and the infinite possibilities of description.« Matthew Janney, Financial Times

»Esther Kinsky has more eyes than most; in her novel Rombo she evokes the entire life of an Italian village before, during, and after the two devastating earthquakes of 1976, but each plant and animal central to the village is also a character, and the most important character of all is the landscape itself. The book becomes as much about the futures as the past, for our natural disasters are increasingly man-made, and we need more than ever this reminder of universal impermanence and the marks of memory we leave in its wake.« Mary Ruefle

»In Esther Kinsky’s new novel language becomes the highest form of compassion and solidarity — not only with us human beings, but with the whole world, organic, non-organic, speaking out with many mouths and living voices. A miracle of a book; should be shining when it gets dark.« Maria Stepanova, author of In Memory of Memory

»A tragic travelogue to the underworld-turned-world that recasts a newly lost Italian past with a climate-wise chorus straight out of the most harrowing Greek drama.« Joshua Cohen, author of The Netanyahus

»The book approaches the earthquake of 6 May 1976, which devastated north-eastern Italy, through the different approaches of the writer-geographer-painter-(fairy tale) narrator (my attributions...) [...] No clichés in the character portraits. Everything is only possible in exactly this or that way. After reading Rombo, one gets the feeling of really having experienced an earthquake. Everything is a question of style, and Esther Kinsky's writing is fluid, musical and not without hints of humour.« Catherine Weinzaepflen, Diacritic

»Kinsky is a goldsmith of language. After Am Fluss (Gallimard, 2017) and Hain (Grasset, 2020), comes the confirmation of this with Rombo.« Nicole Bary, Etudes

»Esther Kinsky has created a literary oeuvre of impressive stylistic brilliance, thematic diversity and stubborn originality. [...] It is always clear that for her the only landscape worth describing is the one in which she is currently situated. Far from ›eco-dreaming‹, without sorrow or critique, Kinsky’s novels and poems position humanity in relation to the ruins it has produced and what still remains of nature.« 2022 Kleist Prize jury

»In Esther Kinsky, German literature has an author whose books are full of poetic intelligence. The understanding of the world seems to be intensified here because it also recognises the ambivalences and the irrational elements of this world as its sources. This isn’t a meaningless ritual but an adventure, as we can see in this brilliant new novel that leaps entirely carefree but confidently through the spheres and registers. Philosophy is the enigmatic part of Rombo, the characters’ stories are full of abysses.« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»of uncompromising poetic sincerity and subtle linguistic beauty« Marianna Lieder, Literarische Welt

»The language nestles up against the stones, the dust and the animal sounds, and when it’s time to go up the mountains because a person wants to save themselves or kill themselves, a knowledge of geology and biology unfolds that, despite the many names for everything that exists there and grows and crawls and flies, remains astonishingly vivid.« Thomas Steinfeld, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»The book sensitises us to the fragile balance that underlies all concepts of existence, and pushes the contrast between the descending force of nature and human comprehension to the extreme.« Ingeborg Harms, DIE ZEIT

»With almost encyclopaedic meticulousness, Kinsky works her way through the fauna, flora and geology of the valley, placing a different emphasis in each of the seven chapters.« Eva Behrendt, taz am wochenende

»a moving novel that masterfully interweaves natural history and memory« Thomas Hummitzsch, der Freitag

»What this text holds will not be lost. The book manifests memory, preserves what has been physically erased or reshaped by the passage of time and not least by the earthquake. ... All existence endures in unpredictable evolution. Only this book, Rombo, is likely to outlast the maelstrom of transience.« Björn Hayer, neues deutschland

»an exceptional and highly poetic book« Sigrid Löffler, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»Every word in this text fits. […] An art work of language of emotional force.« Carsten Otte, SWR2

»Kinsky meticulously assembles many different perspectives into an artistic mosaic.« ORF