Seeing Further

‘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, author of Madness, Rack, and Honey (praise for Rombo)

‘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 (praise for Rombo)

‘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 (praise for Rombo)

Esther Kinsky grew up by the river Rhine and lived in London for twelve years. She is the author of six volumes of poetry, five novels (Summer Resort, Banatsko, River, Grove, Rombo), numerous essays on language, poetry and translation and three children’s books. She has translated many notable English (John Clare, Henry David Thoreau, Iain Sinclair) and Polish (Joanna Bator, Miron Białoszewski, Magdalena Tulli) authors into German. Both River and Grove won numerous literary prizes in Germany. Rombo was awarded the newly founded W.-G.-Sebald-Literaturpreis 2020. In 2022, Kinsky was awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize for her oeuvre. 

Caroline Schmidt was born in Princeton. She translated Esther Kinsky’s Grove and Rombo, and has translated poetry by Friederike Mayröcker, and art historical essays, museum catalogues and exhibition texts for Albertina in Vienna and Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, among others. She lives in Berlin.