Passing Time: An Essay on Waiting

Literary Nonfiction. Translated from the German by Michael Eskin. "The way we live now is by making war on human and humane time. Historians will record that we were complicit in the dictatorship of speed and the repudiation of patience. But not all of us; and certainly not Andrea Kohler, who has wr [...]
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Literary Nonfiction. Translated from the German by Michael Eskin. "The way we live now is by making war on human and humane time. Historians will record that we were complicit in the dictatorship of speed and the repudiation of patience. But not all of us; and certainly not Andrea Kohler, who has written a book dripping with wisdom. Kohler has an exquisite feeling for the tempo and the temporality that is required for a decent and beautiful life. There are deep and true observations on every page. Passing Time is a gift to the resistance." Leon Wieseltier

"Apart from being clear-eyed and utterly original, PASSING TIME is also irresistible. It manages to make you think that you're as smart as it is. I read it twice just to treat myself." Richard Ford

"This is one of the most thoughtful, insightful, and enchanting books I have read in a long while. Kohler draws on personal experience as well as the testaments of literature and philosophy to show how waiting, in its various modalities, lies at the heart of the human condition. A book to be reread many times." Robert Pogue Harrison

"All the excitements and longueurs of anticipation are fully satisfied in this gem of a book. Andrea Kohler's beautiful and profound reflections on life's interstitial spaces the queue, the waiting room, the place held for two when only one has arrived at once poetic and philosophical, intimate and analytical, form the perfect antidote to the headlong rush of our culture. I picked this slim volume up in a bookstore and didn't leave until I had almost finished it. It is one of those rare books that, like Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," makes you feel that you must change your life, or perhaps more urgently, the way you think about your life. Truant time is rescued and restored here, and nothing could waste it less than to read this lovely book." Jonathan Wilson

" there might be more living done in our in between moments than in those we have big names for. Waiting in line, hoping you'll get a ticket; waiting for someone to call; waiting to find the courage to make the call; waiting to hear results. We live in abeyance. What a beautiful book." Andre Aciman

"Graced with lyricism, PASSING TIME is an engaging meditation on the ways in which human beings are forced and choose to mark time, from earliest childhood to the final moments of life. This is an unsparing, yet often poetic, essay on the ordeals and pleasures inherent in the universal experience of waiting." Jamie Venise

" a book of great intelligence and rare beauty " Neue Zuricher Zeitung"