The language of birds : a novel

Resource Information

The work The language of birds : a novel represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Bates College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The language of birds : a novel

Title remainder

a novel

Statement of responsibility

Norbert Scheuer ; translated by Stephen Brown ; illustrations by Erasmus Scheuer

Creator

• Scheuer, Norbert, 1951-

Contributor

• Brown, Stephen, 1973-
• Scheuer, Erasmus,

Author

• Scheuer, Norbert, 1951-

Illustrator

• Scheuer, Erasmus,

Translator

• Brown, Stephen, 1973-

Subject

• Afghan War, 2001-2021 -- Fiction
• Afghanistan
• Armed Forces -- Medical personnel
• Bird watchers
• Bird watchers -- Afghanistan -- Fiction
• Diary fiction
• Germans
• Germans -- Afghanistan -- Fiction
• Germany
• War fiction
• Germany -- Armed Forces | Medical personnel -- Fiction
• Afghan War (2001-)

Genre

• Fiction
• Diary fiction
• War fiction

Language

• eng
• ger
• eng

Summary

"It is 2003, and Paul Arimond is serving as a paramedic in Afghanistan. The twenty-four-year-old has no illusions of becoming a hero. Rather, he has chosen the army to escape the tragedies of his past and his own feelings of guilt. As a result, he finds himself in the same land, now war-torn, where an ancestor of his, Ambrosius Arimond, a late eighteenth-century traveler and ornithologist, once explored and developed the theory of a universal language of birds. As visceral horrors and everyday banalities of the war threaten to engulf Paul, he, like his great-great-grandfather, finds his very own refuge in Afghanistan's natural world. In a diary filled with exquisite drawings of birds and ruminations on the life he left behind, Paul describes his experiences living with two comrades and his befriending of an Afghan man, Nassim, as well as his dreams of escaping the restrictive base camp and visiting the shores of a lake visible from the lookout tower. But when he finally reaches the lake one night, he finds himself in the midst of a chain of events that, with his increasingly fragile state of mind, has dramatic and ultimately heartbreaking consequences. A meditative novel that shows a new side to the conflict in Afghanistan, The Language of Birds takes a moving look at the all-too-human costs of war and questions what it truly means to fight for freedom."--Provided by publisher

Member of

• Sprache der Vögel

Cataloging source

YDX

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

no index present

Language note

Translated from the German

Literary form

fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Target audience

adult