Traag gelezen ( )

El narrador, un viejo guardián de una urbanización de chalets junto a un lago, recibe un día la visita de un desconocido que desea comprar alubias. Mientras las desgrana cuenta en una inteligente conversación los acontecimientos y encuentros que marcaron su vida.

Another winner from Archipelago Press.

Wieslaw Mysliwski, whose best-known work is "Stone Upon Stone", here uses a monologue to tell the life story of a Polish caretaker for a group of cottages strung around a human-made lake. The narrator, born along the waterway before it was flooded to make the lake, spends an evening talking to a visitor about the important events and observations in his life. He tells of his idyllic life as a child, when shelling beans was a communal evening affair and a time for storytelling by the elders. When life is interrupted by war, the narrator endures the murder of his family, life on the run with partisans, and then a stint at a brutish state-run school where he is introduced to both the saxophone and the trade of the electrician. Life after the war is pretty desolate as the country is rebuilt, and the narrator spends much of his story describing this time in his life.

The narrator's story draws the reader in in spite of themselves. He's lived a long life and seen a lot, and he's quite a character by now. The mystery of the visitor's identify adds a bit of suspense throughout the story, but in the end the reader has a pretty good idea of who has dropped by for the evening. ( )

Un long monologue... un étrange personnage très distancié, un discours sur la "polonité" ou sur la vieillesse? ( )

Doorleefd relaas van een electricien, tevens saxofonist, die is geëindigd als beheerder van vakantiehuisjes. Doorspekt met filosofische gedachten en knap geschreven in de vorm van een monoloog. ( )