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The True Deceiver [Paperback]

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  • Category: Books (Fiction)
  • Author:  Jansson, Tove
  • Author:  Jansson, Tove
  • ISBN-10:  1590173295
  • ISBN-10:  1590173295
  • ISBN-13:  9781590173299
  • ISBN-13:  9781590173299
  • Publisher:  NYRB Classics
  • Publisher:  NYRB Classics
  • Pages:  208
  • Pages:  208
  • Binding:  Paperback
  • Binding:  Paperback
  • Pub Date:  01-May-2009
  • Pub Date:  01-May-2009
  • SKU:  1590173295-11-MING
  • SKU:  1590173295-11-MING
  • Item ID: 100135205
  • List Price: $16.95
  • Seller: ShopSpell
  • Ships in: 2 business days
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  • Delivery by: Oct 28 to Oct 30
  • Notes: Brand New Book. Order Now.

A New York Review Books Original

Winner of the Best Translated Book Award

Deception—the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Here Jansson takes a darker look at the subjects that animate the best of her work, from her sensitive tale of island life,The Summer Book, to her famous Moomin stories: solitude and community, art and life, love and hate.

Snow has been falling on the village all winter long. It covers windows and piles up in front of doors. The sun rises late and sets early, and even during the day there is little to do but trade tales. This year everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. She has no use for the white lies that smooth social intercourse, and she can see straight to the core of any problem. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, appears to be Katri’s opposite: a respected member of the village, if an aloof one. Anna lives in a large empty house, venturing out in the spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. But Anna has something Katri wants, and to get it Katri will take control of Anna’s life and livelihood. By the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict of ideals that threatens to strip them of their most cherished illusions.

“A perfectly constructed book about truth and deceit, and deceiving through truth, it’s obvious why this book won the Best Translated Book Award in 2011. And it’s the perfect accompaniment to reading all of Jansson’s Moomin books.” —Publishers Weekly


Her description is unhurried, accurate and vivid, an artist's vision... The sentences are beautiful in structure, movement and cadence. They have inevitable rightness. And this is a tralƒ1

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