Dogs and Others
by Biljana Jovanović
Translated from Serbian by John K. Cox
by Biljana Jovanović
Translated from Serbian by John K. Cox
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Past Not Forgotten
Resistance is a different reading experience—a quasi-fiction, and largely autobiographical. Narrator is searching, creating, eluding, hunting the pasts of his family, and trying to understand or give a meaning to his relationship with the adoptive brother. Narrator has managed to create duplicity and duality of reality. Sebastián, the storyteller, has used fragments of images from the household talking and his own experience of growing up, to create a past, which sometimes seems ambiguous, imbued with conflict of the versions of truth, memory that can and cannot be trusted.
Dictatorships can come
back, I know,
and I also know that the arbitrariness, the
oppressions,
the suffering, exist in all kinds of ways, in all
kinds of
regimes, even when hordes of citizens march
biennially to
the ballot box
The
pure literary expressions and impressions have connected the characters, often
trying to portray their inner beings, posed in front of universal themes of
love and relation. There is not a sequence of events to follow in the story. Memories
draw the past, and again the past projects memories. The story is about a
family—victim of political exile—who moves from Argentina to Brazil with an
adopted son, and later has have two other children in Brazil. The story is told
by the youngest of the children, who digs into the family history and secrets,
and problems of adoption. He visits the land from where his parents had fled,
and feels that he's inherited the sense of exile.
I know that I
am writing my failure. I don’t really know
what I’m
writing. I waver between an incomprehensible
attachment to
reality – or to the paltry spoils of the world
we usually
call reality – and an inexorable pull towards
telling
tales, an alternative gimmick, a desire to forge
the meanings
life refuses to give us.
The
sentences are packed with meanings and it asks readers to stay with the text—often
short and lyrical, and meant to be absorbed and felt than understood. Story
tends to capture the forgotten time, and shifts between the strata of exile and
family tension. Discovering and accepting the new identities is also a theme of
the novel—Identities, which couldn't become sharp, and wavering in family
affairs. The author has said in an interview that history is always filled with
stories of resistance, and his interest in the modes of resistance is clearly
an echo heard here all over. Narrator tries to understand the past, identifying
himself in the being of his brother and parents, and discovers his own hidden
characters. The episodes reconstructed from the memories of the past outlines
narrator's struggle to get attached and loved by his brother. He's also
troubled by his own instinct, on why is he so interested in the past,
especially about his parent's political involvement and their retreat. It may
also seem he is juggling with the memory, sometimes projecting it pitch-perfect
and at other times rendering it like a suspension of clouds—the spaces we
create around ourselves, may or may not be the outcome of our choices.
Hard to
appreciate the full weight an insignificant
thing can
assume when various interpretations are
projected
onto it, when so many meanings crystallise
within it. To
move from the most banal circumstances to
a feeling of
tragedy, sometimes all it takes is a subtle slip,
a minor
error.
It
is hard for narrator's brother to accept his weight, his being and his
identity. His reclusiveness has sparked the narrator to visit buried memories,
and see himself in those mirrors of the time. Themes of silence, terror of the
past and struggle with selves are fixated in the story. This is not a plot
driven story. It feels like essayistic narration, psychological drama and
definition of impressions as well. At times, the self-declaration of the
narrator, defining the character of the story he is telling, removes us from
all the confusion we may get trying to make the meaning of the text.
Metafictional use of narration has served the purpose well: "Quite without
subtlety, I find myself afraid: maybe this book is the error, created for a
non-existent addressee." Resistance is a pure literary charm.
Author: Julián Fuks
Translator: Daniel Hahn
Publisher: Charco Press
Page Count: 150
Price: $14.46
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Coming Soon...
The Last Timawa
by Servando de los Angeles
Translated from the Filipino by Soledad S. Reyes
by Servando de los Angeles
Translated from the Filipino by Soledad S. Reyes
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Monday, December 17, 2018
Coming Soon...
Sleet: Selected Stories
by Stig Dagerman
Preface by Alice Mcdermott
Translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman
by Stig Dagerman
Preface by Alice Mcdermott
Translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Thursday, December 13, 2018
We Drew Heaven
Kampol Changsamran (Bright), a five-year-old boy has been left at the mercy of his neighbors. His parents have separated, and now living with his members of tenement complex, hopping from one to the next, he discovers the adult world around him, tries to understand and absorb it, and also ventures on all the childhood adventures. Kampol's world is set around Mrs. Tongjan’s Community. It is world of mostly working class tenants, who have ups and downs in their family, but still have adapted to the way of the world. In the midst of his friends and adults Kampol has found a way to live by. He's brave at heart but also tender by nature, and while longing for his parents he's grown emotional intelligence of an adult.
“You can’t… You’re better off here—there are compas
sionate people who’ll help you. You’ll find a place to eat and
sleep. It’s just two more days. Do you understand?”
In this urban tale, we observe elements of child psychology, problems of working class, joys of childhood, and all are imbued with humor. Each chapter is like a full-fledged story on its own, and is backed by social realism. Sometimes we read it as a social drama, and at other times it crosses the boundary and we appreciate it for pure story telling. Kampol's adventurous fate often ends with a saddening unfold, but new chapters brings forth lively story and keep things going. Characters are unique, but we quickly feel attached to them because Kampol's new world cannot do without them. He does small chores and runs for them, but manages time for his friends Jua and Oan.
He combed the whole area again: neither of his parents were
anywhere to be found.
The street was empty. Everybody else had gone home.
Neighbors have developed compassion for little Kampol who tries to lift the burden of being left alone by his parents. There is lot of introspection taken care of, and details are never off the track. Lives of Kampol's neighbor also look like they are interconnected. We find things extremely funny, but they also have subtle undertone of sadness, which we feel for Kampol who wishes things to go back and become normal. Very early in his life he has understood the meaning of Hunger. We are surprised by how adult world is taken by the children. It is a coming-of-age novel that has a unique way of telling stories.
I got really fed up and found myself a toy I could play with alone.”
“What was your toy? What did you play?”
“My toy…my toy was books. Books can be fun and you
don’t need anybody to play.”
We follow Kampol and his friends around, because they keep moving, for they always have something in their mind. Lives of children and adults have profusely mixed together, and we see their world in turns. They devise ways to be happy, and also have learned to adapt to their fate. Childhood excursion and fantasies, the innocence of ordinary lives and societal ways of dealings with everyday problems of contemporary life holds the story together. The story is about KAMPOL, and KAMPOL is living it.
Translator: Mui Poopoksakul
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Page Count: 184
Price: $16.34 (Paperback)
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Devil Surrounds the Glory
Written with two folds of narrative, or in fact three, this short gripping novel has many things to offer, especially a witty view on literature, vanity and glory surrounding it all imbued in gothic and thriller like story.
In a village of Dichtersruhe, where Goethe had supposedly made a sojourn, rabid foxes lurk wild until a publisher, devil in the form of blood-and-flesh comes to hunt the aspirant writer and those who deem literary glory. Father Cornelius, though an unwelcome vicar at first, has now a motive to free the village of writers from this devil. He is also hunted by his past, but cannot surrender the spirits of his parishioners to a man who has come to rescue the letters, but is not.
“Literature is the greatest of the arts,” the priest
continued, “but it is also a dangerous endeavor.”
Rich in imagination, A Devil Comes to Town, is a story of struggle, of haunting superstition and a meditation on the literature and art itself. Short form, provocative fable and a literary parable at its best!
Author: Paolo Maurensig
Translator: Anne Milano Appel
Publisher: World Editions
Page Count: 120
Price: $14.99
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Weather Among Men
Tomás González's novel The Storm
set off at early 4:00 am when the twin sons Mario and Javier and their father
('the old bastard', as called by his sons) start making preparation for their
journey far off into the sea for catching fish for their tourists. From the
very beginning we feel the resentment the sons, especially Mario holds for his
father. They have a 'nut case' mother Nora, probably a schizophrenic, who talks
to her imaginary followers, and mostly stays all day indoors, driven to
conclusions, sensing a scheme of her murder or else making incoherent comments
about her sons or her husband, whom she has grown to resent.
Novel progresses, treating each
passing hour like a chapter, and unfurls the psychological relation between the
father and sons, meanwhile making them lively with intense descriptions largely
about their inner world. While at the sea, we could feel how each of them consider
themselves superior to the other, and the narrative voices—which are experimental, shifting, inclusive—perfectly
tailored to characterize them doesn't let the tension wane. We sense the storm
gathering strength and momentum at the far sky and the tension dramatized in
the boat, or developing in their fishing line will at some time all conflate to
extreme limits and story engrosses us completely what happens in this account.
Where a captain rules, a sailor has no sway, she thought.
Hopefully the
twin would stab the
sailor’s captain. And hopefully not. He could
also drown him – they
say it’s a sweet death. A sweet death
in saltwater, what do
you say to that.
The author has spared no
character to go away without saying something, and which serves as portrayals
done by others of the father, the twins and their delusional mother. Kids
speak, adult tourists speak, neighbors speak, even Nora's 'throng' speak, and
we gather all these elements to create the atmosphere surrounding the life of
the family. The father considers his sons losers, and himself a king. And,
Mario wants him dead for good, or to get rid of his taunting remarks forever
any way. The translation is almost poetic, and mostly thoughts of the
characters have spoken for themselves. What we find is a finely braided
storytelling, where not a sentence can be overlooked—nothing overly done, hanging resentment
keeping things apart and together at a time.
Despite Nora’s madness and his
complicated relationship with his sons, the
father thinks, when looked at the right way,
and especially given the prosperity the
hotel has brought them, things have turned out
pretty well.
Everybody’s got problems.
He knows that no individual, not even him, understands
everything
about the world, and
so he recognizes that human beings
will be forever doomed to humility
Despite the growing loathing and
want to inflict pain, something holds the family together, and whatever we see
happening, there is a glow that everything will in fact come back to normal, or
it has always been like this, even before the story started. Their personal
moods and vanity, their delusion and bare truths, their reclusive sense of life
has given each of the characters their height in the story.
So that we're not confused with
the voices, characters introduce themselves, and the accounts are funny, sad in
the part of Nora, and all shed light to the Bungalow holder family, and also
the coastal life. We're reminded of The Old Man and the Sea, and Moby Dick, but
here the force that drives the story is human flaws and complex. And like a
magician, González has turned an ordinary family chemistry to something
extraordinary. We are driven to understand the sons and the father, weigh their
values, realize their personal truth and observation, judge their little
actions, and hear their thoughts. The Storm approaching them soon adds up and
down emotional graph to their fishing expedition, and to their lives, and we
are astonished how everything concludes.
Author: Tomás González
Translator: Andrea Rosenberg
Publisher: Archipelago
Page Count: 120
Price: $11 (Paperback)