Night Train
α’αααΈααααα βα’αα‘α·α ααααΌαα·αααα
Β Β Β Β Β Β Selected from many hundreds in the original Dutch, the stories gathered hereβhumorous, or bizarre, or comfortingly homelyβare something like daybook entries, novels-in-brief, philosophical meditations, or events recreated from life, butβinhabiting the borderland between fiction and realityβmight best be described as autobiographical mini-fables.
This morning at 11:30, in the full sun, I go up into the hayloft where I havenβt been for years. I climb over boxes and shelving, and open the door. A frightened owl flies straight at me, dead quiet, as quiet as a shadow can fly, I look into his eyesβheβs a large owl, itβs not strange that Iβm frightened too, we frighten each other. I myself thought that owls never move in the daytime. What the owl thinks about me, I donβt know.
ααΆαααΆααααααΆα αα·αααα·ααΆαααααα
α’αααΈβα’ααααα·αααα
A. L. Snijders was born in 1937 in Amsterdam. In 1971, he moved to Achterhoek, a quiet, wooded region in the east of the Netherlands where many of his animal stories are set. In 2006, his first collection of zkvβs (βzeer korte verhalenβ or βvery short storiesββa term he invented) was published, bringing the writer quickly to public attention. Several collections followed, including the volume from which the present stories are taken, De Mol en andere dierenzkvβs (The Mole and Other Very Short Animal Stories, AFdH, 2009). In November 2010, Snijders was awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize, one of the three most important literary prizes in Holland, in recognition of his work as a whole and especially his zkvβs. Snijders has by now written approximately 1,500 zkvβs.
Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and seven story collections. Her collection Varieties of Disturbance: Stories was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Lettersβ Award of Merit Medal, and was named a Chevalier of the Order of the Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust. Lydia Davis is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.
