Somewhere James Joyce is smiling. Krasznahorkai is a writer who, though difficult, demands greater recognition by readers...
Two short but maddeningly complex fictions by the Hungarian master (Seiobo There Below, 2013, etc.) of the postmodern.
Open Krasznahorkai’s latest in English, and you’re likely to feel a little lightheaded: giddy if you’re a fan of Lem as filtered through Danielewski, merely headachy if not. The Last Wolf concerns a Hungarian writer who, sitting in a bar among multilingual topers and a bored barkeep, recounts the unlikely twists of fate that led to a gig recording the true events surrounding the killing of the last wolf in the Spanish province of Extremadura. Why him and not a local? Who pulled the trigger? Did the wolf really die? It’s a shaggy dog of a yarn, told in an unrushing style without the benefit of a single period until the very end: “he even boasted of seeing the wolf—yes, I saw it, the wolf, he repeated—the only trouble being that they wanted to see the actual place because Felix was away, Felix? yes Felix, the gamekeeper next door, and he was about to embark on further details of the hunt when a rusty old car screamed to a halt in front of them, as he told the barman at the Sparschwein….” Fans of Oulipo-style experimentation will marvel at the pyrotechnics. Herman, which the publisher labels "a novella in two parts," concerns a game warden, “surrounded by stuffed birds, dilapidated furniture, and antlers mounted on the wall,” who, alarmed at an apparent increase in predatory activity out in the dark woods beyond town, goes to war with nature. Though fueled, Krasznahorkai writes, by “elemental compassion,” it would seem that his war spills over into civilization, for the second section—mercifully with periods—concerns the hunt the townspeople mount for the hunter himself. Suffice it to say that the story doesn’t end happily—and that, for all the narrative tricks, Krasznahorkai makes plain who the real predators in the world are.
Somewhere James Joyce is smiling. Krasznahorkai is a writer who, though difficult, demands greater recognition by readers outside Hungary.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2608-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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