The textbook definition of “sprawling”, Croatian novelist Daša Drndić’s swansong is a monumental novel mixing travelogue, impassioned testaments toThe textbook definition of “sprawling”, Croatian novelist Daša Drndić’s swansong is a monumental novel mixing travelogue, impassioned testaments to the war dead, genealogical evacuation (filtered through a male narrator, for an unknown reason), charming snark, and metatextual cribbing and hat-tipping. Over 400 pages, Drndić rambles across Europe, unable to escape the ghosts of the Croatian massacred, and the lack of reparation for the victims, moments woven around digressions on mental illness, suicidal chess players, modernist authors, and the autobiographical snippets of friends and family, including her (his?) formidable Grandma Ana. Channelling the lyricism of Sebald, the sardonic humour of Ugrešić, and the rage of Bernhard, Drndić is a compelling and inflammatory novelist, translated with panache by the redoubtable Celia Hawkesworth....more
A frenetic, benzedrinical helter-skelter masterwork of neological loopiness and warp-nine schizomania, served in a tureen of insane, prophetic, andA frenetic, benzedrinical helter-skelter masterwork of neological loopiness and warp-nine schizomania, served in a tureen of insane, prophetic, and batshit prose that maintains a neck-snapping pace of breathless imaginative dizziness across 129 faultless pages. ...more
And swaggering in at a lithe 630 pages, middleweight champion of Eastern Europe, known as the Polish Decameron, blast them vuvuzelas for TheAnd swaggering in at a lithe 630 pages, middleweight champion of Eastern Europe, known as the Polish Decameron, blast them vuvuzelas for The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, a Spanish picaresque novel written in French by a polymathic aristocrat and suicide. Across sixty-six nights, Walloon officer Alphonse resists the erotic lure of Islamic conversion in the form of two Islamic temptresses, and listens to a series of yarns-within-yarns-within-yarns, from such eccentrics as the geometer Velásquez, with his algebraic equations on love and religion, the Gypsy Chief, with his long misadventures involving a meddlesome squire Busqueros (an inverse Sancho Panza), and the Wandering Jew, a rather boring man prone to retelling old biblical tales. The novel is an epic monster, a monument to classic and timeless storytelling that happily shares a plinth with The Arabian Nights for sheer logorrheic magnificence. ...more
In this multifaceted, sprawling and uncategorisable work, Dubravka takes the reader on a vulpine exploration of émigré and literary travails, in aIn this multifaceted, sprawling and uncategorisable work, Dubravka takes the reader on a vulpine exploration of émigré and literary travails, in a world increasingly heedless to either. A stellar performance with her usual super-erudition and cutting wit. ...more
The late MES brought me here, RIP The Fall. The opening track on underrated mid-nineties LP Cerebral Caustic opens with a song titled after (andThe late MES brought me here, RIP The Fall. The opening track on underrated mid-nineties LP Cerebral Caustic opens with a song titled after (and explicitly referencing) this novel. An entertaining Czech production brimming with sardonic humour and well-explored Big Themes and Dramatic Crescendos (excuse the caps), at times rather tedious when the succession of same-sounding first-person narrators ramble on, and the concluding chapters at the Moravian folk ceremony are rather patience-testing. On the whole: a pleasantly adequate experience, rather like that 1995 Fall LP. Long live the Slang King!...more
A captivating non-linear historical novel concerned with the Bulgarian poet Geo Milov, writer of seminal anti-fascist epic ‘September’ (appended hereA captivating non-linear historical novel concerned with the Bulgarian poet Geo Milov, writer of seminal anti-fascist epic ‘September’ (appended here as appendix), the anarchist Georgi Sheytanov, and their wives and workings. The novel is structured in chronological fragments, the dates of composition forming the “chapter” headings, while the events depicted take place over decades, swooping back to the period 1923-25, when fascist Tsankov seized power and enacted a spate of mass killings. The formation of the magazine Plamuk, and the protagonists’ reckless swagger (Milov was a poet of immense self-confidence, Sheytanov a fearless anarchist) in assembling the six issues, drives the exciting episodic plot, in a novel that is fast-paced, humorous, and keeps the horrors at remove, sparing us from staring too long into the abyss. A little more insight into the wives’ lives, esp. Mila (an email exchange between the author and an academic shows this woman a remarkable survivor), might have moved the novel from the machismic to the orgasmic, otherwise, a tremendous offering....more
Rather light-hearted mild-mannered fare from the Czech master, featuring a woebegone detective whose two favourite activities are showing a profoundRather light-hearted mild-mannered fare from the Czech master, featuring a woebegone detective whose two favourite activities are showing a profound sadness upon solving each murder and lusting after a female detective with an unflattering chignon. Detective fiction is now so prominent in our culture that these Sherlockian pastiches (written in the 1960s) provide little more than diverting entertainment, rather than a refreshing blast of oxygen to a rubbed-raw genre, and must be approached as products of their time and place. Lt. Boruvka is not a particularly interesting character, with the author relying too much on a lugubrious caricature, and the murder puzzles tend to the pedestrian, making some of the stories a little boring. Humour and charm is here in abundance, fortunately, so shut up, all right? Give me a minute’s peace, you tyrant. ...more
“I am being rejected. I am being rejected from literature,” Konwicki writes at the beginning of this ragbag of reflections on life as a dissident in“I am being rejected. I am being rejected from literature,” Konwicki writes at the beginning of this ragbag of reflections on life as a dissident in 1980s Poland, when the Solidarity movement led to martial law and Russian manoeuvring. In angsty, witty, sizzling prose, Konwicki froths with aplomb on his failures in filmmaking, his contemporaries, his Lithuanian childhood, his wartime antics, and even includes an 80-page edited version of an unpublished first novel, The New Days. Those with an interest in the politics of creativity under censorship will find a compelling and entertaining bedfellow in Konwicki....more
A new Tsepeneag novel is an event in our household, and Dalkey are unleashing another two following this mercurial offering. The beautifulA new Tsepeneag novel is an event in our household, and Dalkey are unleashing another two following this mercurial offering. The beautiful protagonist, Ana/Hannah, whose voluptuous breasts are limned on more than five occasions, falls into the category of personnel the author is more enchanted by than the reader, and earns the attentions of Russian barfly Yegor and German intellectual Johannes, both of whom bed the heroine and learn contradictory and confusing accounts of her Romanian history. An entertaining slab of neo-noir with a light frosting of Tsepeneag’s trademark sardonic self-aware narrative slyness....more
The second novel in Basara’s ‘Cyclist Conspiracy’ series, preceded by that titular title, is another array of scholarly found documents, presented inThe second novel in Basara’s ‘Cyclist Conspiracy’ series, preceded by that titular title, is another array of scholarly found documents, presented in a seemingly erratic manner, each exceedingly erudite and historically playful. The straight-faced nature of the pastiche leads to the materials becoming too dry and scholarly to consistently amuse....more
Romania’s premier innovator is never the same from novel to novel. His longest so far in translation is a rambling epic that cleverly minglesRomania’s premier innovator is never the same from novel to novel. His longest so far in translation is a rambling epic that cleverly mingles fictional recollections from the author’s formative years with autobiographical ditto, and a (fictional?) account of the novel’s composition replete with wifely quarrels and talking tomcats. Chronicling the euro-hopping adventures of displaced dissident Ion as he mingles among lowlives, hustlers, prostitutes, and other rambling people stumbling from the wreck of Ceausescu’s Romania, the novel is a sequence of engaging and humorous set-pieces that for me involved a heap of self-administered stamina to complete caused by the fragmentation and fluidity—however, Tsepeneag is hilarious, skilled in writing excellent dialogue, and always interesting at the level of form. The novel’s wandering anti-structure will resonate with anyone suffering exile or displacement. His shorter novels like Vain Art of the Fugue or Bulgarian Truck are better starting points....more
I first bought this in 2009, in an edition where Vintage had removed the full stops from the text in error, or to lure me into some Kakfaesque trap.I first bought this in 2009, in an edition where Vintage had removed the full stops from the text in error, or to lure me into some Kakfaesque trap. Thanks, Vintage! I complained and received a freebie of Bulgakov’s The Heart of a Dog instead. I parked the stories for a long time, until this moment in time, when I revisited the most terrifying story in the universe, ‘The Metamorphosis’, the most horrific and significant story in the universe ‘Inside the Penal Colony’, the breathtaking debut ‘Description of a Struggle’, the claustrophobic mindbender ‘The Burrow’, the excruciatingly tedious ‘Investigations of a Dog’, and the bountiful sequence of short fables, sketches, and oddities, separated here into stories published and unpublished in his lifetime by Gabriel Josipovici, with full stops reinstated. This edition uses the Edwin & Willa Muir translations for the most part with several other couple-combo contributions, and serves as the perfect definitive edition of Franz’s stories for your lifetime’s bookshelf. ...more
I want to mumble a phoneme or two here: the focus in this anthology is no longer on the exploratory, off-kilter fiction that is Dalkey’s MO. There areI want to mumble a phoneme or two here: the focus in this anthology is no longer on the exploratory, off-kilter fiction that is Dalkey’s MO. There are examples of that in here, however, the problem seems to be that arts councils in the featured countries commission translations of some of their bestselling or famous names, leading to some fairly meh-tastic moments in an anthology increasingly at the mercy of many hiveminds. There are stories in here that are so banal (crime fiction! middlebrow bestsmellers!) I had to check the publisher logo on the spine. The problem is that Dalkey’s authors are not even known to the bulk of Americans or Brits, and translating big shots from Sweden or Holland is merely spreading that country’s warm diarrhoea to the English speaking world, when the ambitious artists with something original to contribute should be featured. This suggests that these voices aren’t even finding their ways into print in these European nations. When hackwork pops up in a Dalkey production, that’s one of the signs of the end. Mumble over....more
An oddball curio from Polish filmmaker and novelist containing an Inspector Dog and a rather formal and pompous teenage narrator. Read Nate’sAn oddball curio from Polish filmmaker and novelist containing an Inspector Dog and a rather formal and pompous teenage narrator. Read Nate’s excellent review for more. ...more
A fantastic philosophical dialogue between an unnamed character and a Superintendent, in conversation about the best method of programming Dr. Good’sA fantastic philosophical dialogue between an unnamed character and a Superintendent, in conversation about the best method of programming Dr. Good’s Ultra-Intelligent Machine, helpfully summarised in the margins of each page as the action proceeds. Such questions are posed: Who can afford to be a Marxist? What is the smallest greatest number in hedonic calculus? Where do poets find their concepts? Can one find neutrons and protons in Homer? Is it more difficult to change our method of thinking than our method of breathing? Does intellectual honesty belong to ethics? What is the boiling point of Panaltruism? Is Descartes existence more self-evident than yours? Genius....more
One of those perfect novels, read on a lazy summer’s afternoon in a state of enchantment, that almost redeem the whole sordid human race and put aOne of those perfect novels, read on a lazy summer’s afternoon in a state of enchantment, that almost redeem the whole sordid human race and put a permanent rictus on your miserable face. Themerson’s novel is up there with the works of Raymond Queneau (the two are surely twins), in serving up philosophical conundrums and logical puzzles in a delightful manner, in books bursting with wit and warmth and wonder. Absolutely marvellous. ...more
A captivating novel in a permanent skirt on the edge of the ridiculous, featuring a blocked writer who ventures forth in search of the meaning of anA captivating novel in a permanent skirt on the edge of the ridiculous, featuring a blocked writer who ventures forth in search of the meaning of an obscure motif. Each character encountered likes to speak in super-articulate monologues, pulling the protagonist further into an unsolvable web of intrigue that ends up being solved (pardon the spoiler). If the reader can tolerate the strangeness, then this long novel will provide a lasting mystery long after the riddle has been solved: a call to explore the dark fringes of the urban and to find connections and meaning in everything. ...more
The Bulgarian Truck by Dumitru Tepeneag is the first book ever to be classified as a “building site beneath the open sky” and not a novel. ThisThe Bulgarian Truck by Dumitru Tepeneag is the first book ever to be classified as a “building site beneath the open sky” and not a novel. This mixture of unpunctuated Duras-inspired narrative about a murderous Bulgarian truck driver and the author-narrator’s ailing long distance email and phone relationship with a more successful writer (and other women with similar names), is a self-conscious marvel. An anti-novel (as the translator writes) also about the art of translation, and the frustration of being a Romanian ex-pat writing in French, the book takes potshots at translators and the author’s frustration at relying on them to reach a wider English audience. Derived in part from the “oneiric” movement, the text’s unpunctuated sections (which comprise the “oneiric” content) are the least coherent, however, provide a dreamy depth to what otherwise might be seen as an extended old man’s lament at becoming extinct in the digital age....more
A whirling epic from a master-in-pieces: a piece of wartime life manufacturing messerschmitts; a piece of life in Canadian exile as a professorA whirling epic from a master-in-pieces: a piece of wartime life manufacturing messerschmitts; a piece of life in Canadian exile as a professor teaching a cast of oddballs about Poe, Conrad, Lovecraft, and co; a piece of life hobnobbing with the spooked and strange émigré community; a piece of life in love with village girls and Scandinavian students; a piece of epistles of other lives in pieces; a piece of mind and no peace in mind. Ladies: let this man’s splendid arms wrap themselves around your literary brains. ...more
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