Sweet Days of Discipline will be one of the books you will read in one sitting, but you will not forget it easily. The Swiss writer Fleur Jaeggy will become a giant in your eyes because of the characters she creates; you’ll want to read all of her books.
Sweet Days of Discipline takes place in a boarding school in the Appenzell. I have always loved reading books about boarding schools, universities, libraries, etc. This book was no exception. The school is not the main issue here, but the author’s aim is not to tell the school anyway. In this book, we go to the 14-year-old memories of the narrator, whose first sentences will immediately make you admire her. The narrator conveys her experiences to us with all her emotions and is not interested in what you think. But she tells it so well that you don’t want to do anything but sit and listen. How does such a simple narration raise such darkness and emotion? You should read it as soon as possible. Enjoy!
About the book: Sweet Days of Discipline
Set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy’s eerily beautiful novel begins. Simply and innocently enough: “At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell”. But there is nothing truly simple or innocent here. With the off-handed knowingness of a remorseless young Eve, the narrator describes life as a captive of the school and. Her designs to win the affections of the apparently perfect new girl, Frederique. As she broods over her schemes as well as on the. Nature of control and madness, the novel gathers a suspended, unsettling energy. Now translated into six languages. “I Beati Anni del Castigo” in its Italian original won the 1990 Premio Bagutta and the 1990 Premio Speciale Rapallo. In Tim Parks’ consummate translation (with its “spare, haunting quality of a prose poem”), “Sweet Days of Discipline” was selected as one of the London Times Literary Supplement’s Notable Books of 1992: “In a period when novels are generally over-blown and scarcely portable, it is good to be able to recommend [one that is] miraculously short and beautifully written”.
About the author: Fleur Jaeggy
Fleur Jaeggy is a Swiss author, who writes in Italian. As of 2019, she has five novels translated into English. The Times Literary Supplement named Proleterka as a Best Book of the Year upon its US publication. and her Sweet Days of Discipline won the Premio Bagutta and the Premio Speciale Rapallo.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
