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Dogs and Others
by Biljana Jovanović
Translated from Serbian by John K. Cox

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

Coming Soon...

The Last Timawa
by Servando de los Angeles
Translated from the Filipino by Soledad S. Reyes

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Coming Soon...

Sleet: Selected Stories
by Stig Dagerman
Preface by Alice Mcdermott
Translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman

Coming Soon...

The Blind Owl
by Sadegh Hedayat
Translated from the Persian/Farsi by D.P. Costello

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.

Author: Duanwad Pimwana
Translator: Mui Poopoksakul
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Page Count: 184
Price: $16.34 (Paperback)