Moods

"Spectacular." -- The New Yorker "Hoffmann is not just a good writer but a great one, with the ability to find, in the moment-to-moment dislocation of daily existence, epiphanies of revelatory force. What Hoffmann has achieved is a kind of magic." -- David Ulin - Chicago Tribune "Hoffmann's subject is the miracle of this most ordinary thing, and his prose is its revelation and praise." -- Jenny Hendrix - Forward "Hoffmann's meandering is intensely personal, yet his hope that the cataloguing of thoughts and feelings will lead to some kind of larger understanding beyond the self is entirely universal." -- Publishers Weekly "Hoffmann writes in a language of miracles." -- American Book Review "Hoffmann's is an exile literature in exile from itself: self-consciously historicized, yet with none of its homage presented obviously. It's a miracle of Peter Cole's sinuous, sensitive English translation of Moods that Hoffmann seems even more 'himself': a magus, a sphinx, the Kohen of the koan, the Grand Rabbi of Kyoto-a genius." -- Joshua Cohen "Reading Moods is not unlike the experience of reading the fictions of Jorge Luis Borges, as it compels an immediate reassessment upon conclusion, and rewards an immediate rereading." -- Full Stop