Jan-March 2012 Theme Read: Europe IV, Turkey + the Balkans

Welcome to a Beautiful Part of Europe: Turkey + the Balkans


Old Town of Dubrovnik, Croatia


Celsus Library in Ephesus


The Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria

I spent some time reading up on authors from each of the countries in the region. These suggestions all have at least one novel translated into English, and they are relatively modern (with the exception of the Ancient Greeks). This is by no means a complete list, and suggestions are definitely welcome!

Turkey
- Halide Edib Adivar – novels and memoirs available to read online via Wikipedia article
- Yaşar Kemal
- Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
- Orhan Pamuk
- Latife Tekin
- Elif Şafak

Greece
- Homer
- Sophocles
- Emmanuel Rhoides
- Nikos Kazantzakis
- Amanda Michalopoulou

Bulgaria
- Ivan Vazov
- Elias Canetti

Serbia
- Borislav Pekić
- Milorad Pavić
- David Albahari
- Zoran Živković

Albania
- Ismail Kadare
- Ornela Vorpsi

Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Aleksandar Hemon
- Saša Stanišic

Croatia
- Miroslav Krleža
- Dubravka Ugrešić
- Slavenka Drakulić

Yugoslavia (these authors wrote during the existence of Yugoslavia, and are often claimed by multiple countries. As such, their nationalities are rather difficult to pin down)
- Ivo Andric
- Meša Selimović
- Danilo Kiš

Note: If you have problems searching for these authors on Amazon, LT, etc., try eliminating the various accents. Sometimes the websites don't recognize the unique characters.

I couldn't find suggestions for the other countries in the region. Please let us know if you find any gems from the above countries, or Cyprus, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

My Plan

These are the authors/books I would like to read over the course of the quarter:

Orhan Pamuk - either My Name is Red or Snow
Amanda Michalopoulou – I’d Like
Ismail Kadare - The Palace of Dreams
Aleksandar Hemon - Nowhere Man
Slavenka Drakulić - The Taste of a Man or Frida's Bed
Ivo Andric - The Bridge on the Drina

I would love if you would join me in reading these books! Anyone interested please let me know, and we can figure out how we want to work these shared reads.

Opinions on my selected novels would be great, particularly when it comes to choosing the Pamuk and Drakulic novels. Thanks!

Cait, I'll join you for one or both of the novels by Pamuk, and probably the Hemon and the Andric ones, as well. I read Frida's Bed several years ago, and I highly recommend it.

I'll probably also read A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, a 1949 novel described by Orhan Pamuk as "The greatest novel ever written about Istanbul." It was reissued by Archipelago Books several years ago; more information here.

Lovely photos.
I would like to read How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone and Zorba the Greek, and will tentatively say yes to the Andric shared read.

I am so excited for this theme read! I plan to read three books, one for each month.

The Use of Man by Aleksandar Tišma (a Serbian author)
The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare (an Albanian author)
Zwarte merel in een veld met pioenen by Borislav Cicovacki (a Yugoslavian author who now lives in the Netherlands, his books only appear in Dutch as far as I know)

Cait, this is a terrific start and great photos. In addition to the books/authors you mention, I can add several that are on my TBR at the moment.

Cyclops by Ranko Marinkovic Croatia
The Galley Slave by Drago Jancar Slovenia (part of the former Yugoslavia)
Thrown into Nature by Milen Ruskov Bulgaria (just received from Open Letter)

I also have books by Ugresic and Drakulic, but I'm not sure whether I'll read books I already have or branch out into some other countries as well.

I can't recommend The Bridge on the Drina or Andric's Bosnian Chronicle highly enough -- and they'd also count for the year-long "classics in their own country" theme too!

I'm very much looking forward to participate. Coincidentally, I'll soon arrive in the Balkan-area on my geographical tour through Europe, so I'll try to fit in as many books as possible.

Guess I might join - being from the region :)

Cait, I have both Snow and Bridge on the Drina on Mt. TBR. I'll definitely join you in reading those.

I started My Name is Red and it's grabbed me. I have previously enjoyed both Snow and The Black Book. Pamuk's style is very straightforward, which is nice, since his plots are so complex and layered. I'll post a review when I'm done (this one will take me several weeks).

I might join in too, Cait. I possess absolutely no knowledge of Balkan reads (*shame*) and your list looks like a fine starting point to change that :).

I've had Snow on my shelf forever and I think I'd be more likely to read it with others. So - I'm adding it to my list of planned reads for the first quarter.

This thread certainly has some early momentum, considering it's still only mid-December. I suppose others are equally excited by the coming year's theme reads, so no matter. Cait - great photos and early suggestions by the way!

I thought Slavenka Drakulic's How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed was one of the best non-fictions I read in 2010, so I'm keen to try some of her fiction now. Not yet sure which one I should go for... S.: A Novel About The Balkans has good reviews and looks powerful if not rather harrowing. Have others here read it?

My circumstances will probably dictate for the foreseeable future that I not buy any new books (unless they're super bargains, ex-libris, etc.), so my options for a group read are restricted and to the TBR shelves I turn. Miroslav Krleza is not too well known in the UK, but I read that he is considered possibly the major 20th century author of Croatia. So The Return of Philip Latinowicz, which is apparently his most widely acclaimed, looks like it will fit the bill for me.

Cait86> I am a longtime Pamuk fan and would strongly reccomend starting with My Name is Red.

I received The Bridge on the Drina as a Christmas gift from my best friends. So, this is my reading plan for this challenge (taken from books I already own):

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, A Mind at Peace
Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina
Yashar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk
Orhan Pamuk, Snow

I am going to join in on this challenge and start the new year out with My Name is Red. It has been on my wishlist for a while!

I think I will join in this challenge, after watching this group all year. I hope to read

Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ
Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina
Slavenka Drakulic, S.: A Novel About the Balkans or Frida's Bed
Ismail Kadare, Broken April

I'm glad everyone is so excited about this theme! I think I am going to start with My Name is Red - thanks, Hemlokgang, for the advice. :)

I'll participate - I have several books by some of the previously-mentioned authors as well as some others -

Lodgers by Nenad Velickovic - Bosnia
Conversation with Spinoza by Goce Smilevski - Macedonia
Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara - Serbia

I'll be starting with Under the Yoke by Ivan Vazov from Bulgaria. Ifound it on BookMooch, so I will have to wait a bit for it. It is being sent from Greece to the USA.

In the meantime, I can recommend:

Nobody's Home by Dubravka Ugresic
Anything by Orhan Pamuk

>21 hemlokgang:

You might want to lookup a bit of Bulgarian history (mainly the Ottoman empire rule) before reading Under the Yoke - I really like the novel but it requires some understanding of the history around it and where the Bulgarians are in terms of religion and country at that point.

Thanks for the tip!

Is Hungary a Balkan country? If so, Imre Kertesz could be an interesting choice. I picked up Kaddish for a Child Not Born a few months ago and it was really challenging. I wasn't in the mood for a challenge just then so I skipped it, but I might try it again after the holidays.

>24 technodiabla:

Nope. It is not on the Balkans :)

I will probably finish the anthology of Turkish women writers that I began earlier this fall. It was bought for the last time we did Turkey as a theme (2010, I think). Obviously, I didn't get around to it then:-)

We should probably have a group read just for all the books gathered for previous group reads that ended up in Mt. TBR !

I finished My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (just squeezed it into my 2011 book count.) Here's my review:
______
This book is a masterpiece, and Pamuk's best. It's a 16th century murder mystery set in Istanbul. But there are several layers of other stories too: the influences of West on East, relationship of religion to art, and the effect of art on psychology and culture. To top it off, the story is told by a series of first person narrators, including inanimate objects. This first person perspective is a major source of contention in the book so the structure adds a lot. The first person narrations of death are very good as well.

There were a few tedious bits-- overly long descriptions of artwork (pages) and such. For a reader not familiar with art history or not interested in art, there would be more tedium. Otherwise this would be one of my few 5 star novels. I'm giving it 4.75.
______

I really liked this glimpse into the time and place (Istanbul 1500s). The novel did a good job of describing the unique position of Turkey, balancing on the East/West line. Perhaps the book is as much about Turkey today as it is about Turkey in 1590?

>28 technodiabla: - Great comments, technodiabla - I'm going to start My Name is Red today or tomorrow, and I look forward to talking about it with you!

my review of Snow:

SNOW by Orhan Pamuk
I enjoyed this novel. It offers fresh insights into contemporary Turkey with the great tension between the secular state and religious interests/Islam.

The main character, Ka, an exiled poet, returns to the Anatolian city of Kars, to report on a rash of suicides amongst adolescent girls protesting a government rule banning veils in public schools. His reporting brings him into contact with a long lost love, Islamic fanatics, a manic actor who becomes a political activist and the secret police and army who bring order to this tense city isolated by a major snow storm.

The writing style is excellent and Pamuk sets an atmosphere that envelops the town, its characters and the reader.
Well worth reading.

Those are beautiful images, Cait86. So far, I've read one book that qualifies: Dancing With Colonels: A Young Woman's Adventures in Wartime Turkey by Marjorie Havreberg. I enjoyed it very much. It is a colledtion of the author's letters home to her small town in South Dakota while she workee for a senator in Washington, D.C. in 1935, and for the War Dept. in Turkey, 1944 - 1946. I loved reading her letters, but wished that she'd had more contact with the Turkish people and culture. It was interesting to learn a little about Turkey's unique position in the war, and her letters were so bright and vibrant.

30> Thanks for that review! Snow has been on my shelves for years and I'm hoping to get to it this quarter for this group -- your review nudges me in that direction. :-)

Anyone else planning to read Auto da Fe by Elias Canetti? If so, what month?

#33 - It's on my wishlist, but I have no copy yet!

I read Fording the Stream of Consciousness by Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic. Given the title of this book, I thought it would be an experimental/metafictional novel. However, the plot is fairly linear. It takes place over several days at a writers’ conference in Zagreb and follows the lives of some of the participants. The novel was well-written and I found most of the characters understandable if not necessarily sympathetic. It was also pretty funny.

The conference opens inauspiciously when a Spanish poet dies in a swimming accident. From there, the author describes the thoughts, problems and lives of the conference attendees – Pipo, an insecure Croatian writer, Jan, a gloomy Czech who has brought his masterpiece to hand off, the irritated Minister in charge of the conference who would really rather be with his mistress, self-absorbed Prsa, a self-important Frenchman and two alienated Soviet writers. There’s not much time spent at the talks; instead the author focuses on conversations between the characters as well as some bizarre events that take place during off-hours. There’s theft, murder, sabotage and critic-torture, some of which is orchestrated by the “Dr. No of literature”.

Despite the occasionally over-the-top events, the string-pulling evil genius, and characters that can be a bit one-dimensional (the snobby Frenchman, the angry feminist), I thought it was a good book. The sections with the Minister and his randy mistress Vanda were silly fun and there were enjoyably random comic bits, like a scene where the conference participants try to name exotic deaths of famous writers or an outing to a sausage factory where the others sarcastically suggest a sausage named after Prsa. Descriptions of the authors’ thoughts and feelings were well done. Pipo’s fear that he’s being left behind as all his friends marry and have kids and his worries over the paucity of his output were deftly depicted even though the character could be a bit whiny. Jan’s lacerating guilt and the Russian Troshin’s desire to defect were also effectively portrayed.

I liked Ugresic’s style except for one annoying habit - lots of penis euphemisms. After a while, I just rolled my eyes when someone’s “wand”, “pendant” or “stingray” was mentioned. Most of these occurred in the Vanda/Minister chapters, which makes sense in the context, but it was overdone.

The crazy parts were often the result of one of the character’s evil master plan to control the production of all literature and turn it into a pile of homogenized, conformist crap. His plan makes one think of all the “official” literature coming out of various repressive regimes but also some current trends in publishing. When he mentions “third-rate speed writers” inflating the value of literature, I could only think of the “James Pattersons” writing books by “James Patterson”. The idea of “cloned stories, cloned novels” could not only be authors jumping on the latest hot trend, but also the computer programs that cobble together information from the internet to make a poorly put together book that’s then sold online. With computers controlling both the content and criticism of literature – digital books were brought to mind (don’t really exist and can be changed infinite times) as well as programs for analysis.

You might like Nobody's Home by Dubravka Ugresic. i read it ast year amd thought it was wonderful, if sad.

#30 - I've pointed this out elsewhere, but something a Turkish friend of mine says is important to understanding Snow but missing from the English translation is the fact that the Turkish word for "snow" is "kar."

Thus the progression:
Kars - the city where the novel is set
Kar - snow
Ka - the narrator, and
K - a reference to Kafka's The Castle

It is said that Orhan Pamuk has never been to Kars (at least not when he wrote the novel); he just picked the city for its name.

Thank you, steven03tx, that's very helpful. I'm reading it soon, too.

>37 StevenTX:-thank you for these added interesting facts about SNOW. I love the Kafka reference- the town in this novel is a bit Kafkaesque- that it is cut off from the rest of the country due to a bad snow blizzard and that the streets seem to turn in on each other, one can easily get lost in the maze of the setting and the absurdity of some of its actors.

>33 technodiabla:- Auto de Fe, a book i read decades ago that still haunts me. I look forward to your reading comments and you may spur me to re-read it in the near future.

How strongly can Canetti be tied to Bulgaria? He may have barely spent a few early childhood years there. I don't think he ever wrote anything pertaining to the country.

>41 LolaWalser:

He is not. He is not really considered a Bulgarian author in Bulgaria either - yes, we know about him but his books won't be on the Bulgarian prose shelf (although lately some publishers try to make him be one).

That's what I thought. Although Spanish Jews in general fared better in the Balkans than elsewhere (after the expulsion), it was still a marked existence.

Unfortunately I can't think of substitutes to offer. I have two interesting-looking translations from Bulgarian, one science fiction (The lady with the X-ray eyes), the other a historical fiction set in Spain with a whiff of Gothic/decadence, (Foi et morphine). I see the latter goes to the English touchstone--Damned souls. But no idea how easy they might be to find.

The only other Bulgarian that comes to my mind is Tzvetan Todorov, a literary theorist rather than belleletrist, but The fear of barbarians : beyond the clash of civilizations looks interesting nevertheless. I have his memoir, L'homme dépaysé, about displacement, exile, being foreign...

Oh, yes: and Georgi Gospodinov, of whom good things were posted in this group previously. A modernist author (and still living, I think).

The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation has a translation initiative for contemporary Bulgarian writers: http://www.contemporarybulgarianwriters.com/
http://www.ekf.bg/en/
I don't know if this is what you're after but a lot of stories have been translated into English and available on the website. Kostova talked about this a couple of years ago when she visited New Zealand promoting her books.

>43 LolaWalser:

Damned Souls is one of my favorite Bulgarian books. :) The lady with the X-ray eyes is still considered a classic.

As for Canetti - it has nothing to do with him being a Spanish Jew - he simply is not part of the national tradition.

Georgi Gospodinov is still living (and writing). So is Alek Popov. So is Boriana Balin - not sure if her novel got translated - it is one of the better newish novels.
http://www.contemporarybulgarianwriters.com/ is a good source for current authors - click on authors for authors and texts contain quite a lot of texts (not all links work anymore though).
If someone wants a mix of new and old authors: http://www.slovo.bg/showlang.php3?ID=2 (in English) and http://www.slovo.bg/international.php3 to pick another language.

Most of the other sites with translations are down (except for some author sites)....

Looks like it might be difficult to get a copy of Damned Souls or The lady with the X-ray eyes - neither is available on Amazon or Abebooks. My university library has Damned Souls but to get The Lady with the X-ray Eyes, I would have have to place an interlibrary loan that would take 12 days.

I might check out Damned Souls next time I'm at the library - can you tell me a little more about it (LolaWalser or AnnieMod)?

Conversation with Spinoza by Goce Smilevski

This novel is about Baruch Spinoza, the 17th c Dutch Jewish philosopher. The story of his life is structured as a series of conversations between you, the reader, and Spinoza. This sounds like it would be a hard slog, but the book is actually quite engaging. There are some sections which describe Spinoza’s ideas about substance and attributes, which I found rather abstract, but the author tended to relate it to the situation at hand which helped. There were also some long blocks of text in stream-of-consciousness mode, but this is pretty normal to me. I liked the author’s prose and he created a number of striking images as well as a good portrait of a man struggling to focus on the infinite rather than the transient.

The novel is divided into several sections, but really splits into two parts – a shorter, earlier section where Spinoza gives an overview of his whole life and a longer section after, where he describes several important scenes in depth. Both parts are quite good. The first half moves along quickly, giving the outlines of Spinoza’s life – parents forced to flee Portugal, his mother dies, he’s forced to abandon his training as a rabbi and work in the family store, meets one mentor Van den Enden and his daughter Clara Maria, is excommunicated from the Jewish community, publishes one treatise, works on his masterpiece until his death. This narrative is very engaging and at times funny – Clara Maria has a dog named Jesus and there’s a ridiculous cameo by Louis XIV.

The second section focuses mostly on three events – the death of his mother and two encounters, one with Clara Maria and the other with a student of his, Johannes Casearius. In all three, Spinoza is threatened with emotions. His mother’s death he immediately puts out of mind, but it comes back later on. His painful rejections of Clara Maria and Johannes demonstrate the difficulty of the focus only on philosophy. In general, the portrait of Spinoza here contrasts with the generic image of him as an ascetic – he’s constantly lonely, wracked with doubt, masturbates and thinks about sex, and, despite his ideas reconciling the body/soul divide, always seems to be engaged in a war between his desires and ideas.

The book has a somewhat obsessive, repetitive tone. It ends and begins in the same manner – intentionally – and with the replay of scenes and repetition of Spinoza’s philosophy, there’s something of a closed feel. This works well as, of course, Spinoza is dead and in general there’s often a tendency to look back on the past and obsess over it and relive it. It also fits with the subtitle of A Cobweb Novel; a cobweb is compared to a labyrinth and the tree of life as a way of looking at things and it’s noted that a web has infinite exits and entrances and every point can be a center. There’s a nice afterward where the author discusses why he chose Spinoza and some of the bits that were wholly fictitious.

>36 hemlokgang: - hemlokgang - I'd definitely like to read more by Ugresic. Someone else has recommended that one as well, so I'll keep an eye out for it.

>47 DieFledermaus:

In short? The love story of a English lady and a Jesuit Priest during the Spanish Civil war. It has nothing to do with Bulgaria -- the setting is not there, there are no Bulgarians in the novel. And still, it is one of the most powerful narratives written in Bulgarian.

And - no, the short explanation does not really give a good idea of the book. It's not a romance novel by any stretch of imagination. Nor it is a Romeo-and-Juliet type of story. It's just people's story.

And because I already started above, a few more names:
Emil Andreev, Deyan Enev, Zdravka Evtimova, Theodora Dimova - another few of the modern day authors.
Khristo Poshtakov is popular although something does not work for me in his prose.

From the older ones:
The short story masters: Chudomir, Elin Pelin, Yordan Yovkov
The novelists: Pavel Vezhinov (mainly SF), Dimitar Talev
The ones that more or less wrote everything: Vazov, Aleko, Anton Donev, Botev
The poets: Vapcarov, Smirnenski, Yavorov, Vazov, Petya Dubarova.

Emiliyan Stanev who amongst all good works has also The Peach Thief which was filmed to create one of the best Bulgarian movies. (and just as with Damned Souls, it is a love story...)

Ran Bosilek, Assen Bossev, Angel Karaliychev, Kalina Malina - that anyone in my generation grew up with (and of course our very own Yan Bibiyan :) ).

Smirnenski also wrote a story that for a while was given to anyone that was elected in the Parliament: http://www.slovo.bg/showwork.php3?AuID=386&WorkID=13571&Level=1

The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis GREECE, 19th century

At the beginning of this intense novella, Hadoula, a 60-ish woman living on a small Greek island in what appears to be the late 19th century, is watching her ailing infant granddaughter while her daughter sleeps. As she watches, she mentally reviews her life, and that of her parents and family, a life of hardship, especially for girls and women. Life has improved in some respects, in that the brigands and the Turks are gone and peace reigns on the island, but the men and women still have to scratch out a living from the rocky earth and the ever-present sea. Many of the young men have left for America, and parents are left to somehow find husbands and dowries for their daughters. Sons disappear, some go to jail, and daughters are a burden. And, as she muses and dozes, Hadoula unconsciously makes a fateful decision that sets into motion the rest of the book.

What stands out for me in this story is the vivid depiction of a time and a place in which the residents know every inch of ground, every risky path across the rocks, and every hidden cave on their remote island, and in which the past is still present in ruined castles and chapels, family is central, and nature is always at hand. As the translator notes in his introduction to the edition I read, at the time Papadiamantis was writing, in the 1890s, the Greek islands were 50 times further behind Athens than Athens was behind Paris and London. Despite some qualms about dialect the translator sometimes uses the somewhat melodramatic nature of the story, I couldn't put this book down, especially as it builds to its not unexpected conclusion.

> 41/42 So is Canetti not considered a reasonable choice for this quarter? He is listed in the top post under Bulgaria.

>52 technodiabla:

I am Bulgarian. I do not consider him Bulgarian. :)

Anyone may interpret him any way they want (and I know that Wiki lists him as Bulgarian. Does not change my statement above).

#52 So what is Canetti considered? He seems to have lived all over, spoken a lot of languages, and written in German. I have never read him, so I am writing from total ignorance here, but just am curious.

A wandering Jew!

That's what I almost wrote!

With a British passport, IIRC.

>54 rebeccanyc:

A prime example for a designation of "None of the above/All of the above"? :)

>50 AnnieMod: - AnnieMod - thanks for the list - very helpful!

I read Lodgers by Nenad Velickovic. It takes place during the Balkans wars during the early 1990’s, in a Sarajevo under siege, but despite that is pretty funny and entertaining. The first person narrator is Maja, a teenage girl who can’t decide if she’s keeping a diary or writing a novel. More than anything, this book reminded me of I Capture the Castle in terms of voice. Maja is observant and sarcastic and, as in I Capture the Castle, she describes the lives of her quirky family residing in an odd place. Pretty funny but also serious – the narrator never veers into sentiment but the comedy isn’t over the top.

Maja’s family home has been destroyed so they’ve moved in with her father, the Director of the museum, who’s been staying there to guard the collections. Besides the narrator, her parents, her grandma and her half-brother and his pregnant wife, the museum is home to the dedicated but uncommunicative porter Brkic and his friend, self-interested and verbose Julio. Maja spends her time writing, describing the day-to-day activities of all the lodgers. She details the foibles of everyone and depicts mundane events like the actions of her brother Davor’s dog Sniffy or her mother’s macrobiotic meals. However, though the family is somewhat removed from immediate combat, they are still subject to the dangers and discomforts of a city at war. Maja actively tries to avoid politics but it keeps seeping in. There are a number of plots running through Maja’s sometimes scattershot journal – Davor’s attempt to avoid conscription, her father’s attempt to prevent the Partizans from setting up headquarters in the museum and the progress of Sanja’s pregnancy and her conflicts with Davor.

Some people might complain that the book is too quirky (sometimes that seems to be the complaints with Castle) – Maja’s hippie mother or her grandmother’s secret case that Julio’s been trying to steal or the attempts to make a balloon – but I think it works well. However, her initial refusals to discuss who’s on what side can make the narrative a bit confusing and sometimes I was puzzled as to what was going on (like where all the oil was going – people kept stealing it? Then it came back?). However, it was a very engaging read – loved the first person voice. The ending was neither an out-of-character tragedy or falsely uplifting. Recommended.

I read The File on H by Ismail Kadare. I’ve enjoyed all the Kadares that I’ve read so far. Sometimes the story isn’t what I expected from reading the synopsis, but it’s still interesting. In Broken April, I thought the book would be mainly about Gjorg, a man who had finally fulfilled tradition by murdering his brother’s killer and had a month before the family of his victim was allowed to seek his death. Instead, Kadare describes the thoughts of others who are affected by the killing. In The File on H, I though the focus would be on the attempt to prove that the two scholars are spies, but much of the book was devoted to describing the research of the two men. However, the sections analyzing the epics and their changes were very involving.

Bill and Max are two Irish-American scholars who travel to Albania to record the epic poems of wandering rhapsodes in the 1930’s. The authorities believe they could possibly be spies and task the governor of N_ to watch them. While the pair becomes deeply involved in their research, they are unaware of the stir that they have caused. The governor communicates with his diligent spy and his wife fantasizes about having an affair with the men. Some of the men are disturbed by the newfangled tape recorder that the foreigners have brought with them. The stories of all of these characters are told through their own accounts and diaries as well as third person limited. Kadare based the story on a historical event, but the atmosphere of paranoia, spying and violence would be applicable to Albania under Enver Hoxha.

The parts describing the epics that Bill and Max record are fascinating though their research goals are overreaching. At first, Kadare subjects them to the same satirical lens that is aimed at the provincial townspeople. Their idea initially comes from listening to a program on the radio and they rather blithely think they’ll go and quickly learn the origin of Homer’s epics. However, once there they escape the curiosity of the inhabitants of N_ and get sucked into their work recording and analyzing the epics of rhapsodes – the same story from different people and the same rhapsode’s epic over time. Kadare’s prose is generally clean and efficient but he will occasionally go off on lyrical flights and often these flights describe hypotheses about the epics. Bill (it is mainly Bill who narrates or speculates in his diary) wonders about all the changes to epic poems over time; the additions and deletions; how a poem comes to resemble a fluid living thing; how this relates to Homer’s role as the codifier of the stories in the Iliad and the Odyssey (or who he really was – a group etc); and why the epics are currently dying. This is interesting but the disappearance of the scholars into their work represents an ignorance that soon turns dangerous.

The people of N_ are satirized for their provincial views - they regard the scholars, who want nothing more than to get away from them, as the biggest event in a long time and expect entertainment. The governor of N_ is shown to be in constant awe of his spy’s prose and thinks everything the scholars do is proof of their treachery. His wife is very shallow, the sort of woman depicted in the 19th century as corrupted by books. But Kadare also raises some interesting issues – the Serbian-Albanian conflict over whose epics are the originals, the whole subculture of spies, the culture of the rhapsodes.

There’s a lot of head-jumping, the governor’s wife is seriously annoying and some of the symbolism (Bill’s encroaching blindness and his end) are rather obvious, but I liked this book and would recommend it.

The Return of Philip Latinowicz by Miroslav Krleža, published 1932, translated 1959

Forty-year-old Philip Latinowicz, a painter and art critic, finding himself dispirited and void of inspiration, returns to the home he hasn't seen in 23 years. His memories of his past there are troubled. His mother, always cold and distant, refused to tell Philip who his father was. Yet when he returned home after a night of carousing, she condemned his immorality and refused to open the door to him, sending him out into the world alone while still a teenager.

The village of Kostanjevec to which he returns is in eastern Croatia. It is in a state of decay following the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. Philip is at times dismayed by the squalor and ignorance of the common people, as well as by the haughty irrelevance of aristocrats living on memories of lost grandeur. At other times he is invigorated by the simple pleasures of rural life and the beauties of nature.

Ultimately Philip's solitary reverie is replaced by a tempestuous daily relationship with a circle of troubled people like himself, at the center of which is Xenia, a femme fatale who seems to keep around her the shattered remnants of the men she has ruined like the drained carcasses of flies in a spider's web. Much of the novel consists of dialog in which one of these men challenges Philip's romantic view of the world and the very nature and purpose of his art.

As a novel of ideas coming out of a society in decay and disillusionment, this is not a cheerful or optimistic book. The questions it raises, however, about art, morality, and civilization in general are still relevant.

---

One of the things which comes across very clearly in this novel is the layering of cultures in the Balkans. In Slavic Croatia the upper classes take pride in their Hungarian blood but pretentiously speak the German of their former Austrian masters. The author also frequently brings in the region's past as a prosperous Roman province. Interestingly, even though Croatia was at the time part of the newly established kingdom of Yugoslavia, that name is never mentioned in the book, apparently out of resentment of being ruled from a Serbian capital.

>62 StevenTX: - Interesting that the author never mentions Yugoslavia. My grandfather and great-grandfather, both of whom immigrated to Canada from Croatia, used to fight an awful lot over what to call the country. My grandfather, who was very socialist, insisted on calling it Yugoslavia. My great-grandfather would get so mad at this, and pound his fist on the dining room table, shouting "There is no such thing as Yugoslavia!" I was really young at the time, so this must have been the late 80s or early 90s, right around the time Croatia declared independence. Things were quite tense in my family at that time!

>62 StevenTX:,63
I also wondered about that when I read it a year or so ago. My thought was that the new Yugoslavia was simply irrelevant to what Krleža was trying to convey in the book: the small town and countryside looking back to a decadent past, while the city just has a kind of nightmarish, dislocated anarchy. I don't know much about the politics of the time, but Krleža was rather an establishment figure later on under Tito, wasn't he? He can't have been all that anti-Serb.

He can't have been all that anti-Serb.

He wasn't. (Krleza's intellectual, ideological and political history would take several feet of typing to even summarise properly, but one thing is easily said--he was never a Croatian nationalist, although some have tried to tar and feather him as such.)

Moreover, it's utterly wrongheaded to expect every (or even ANY) piece of literature from the "exotic" country X to address whatever superficial political agenda is ascribed to that country or people in current news (assuming it even appears in current news), or exhibit whatever stereotypes soundbite wisdom assigns to it.

Political background is usually important in Krleza (the big exception being his poetry), but it's not always the main topic. The Yugoslavia in Latinovicz is the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a repressive autocratic monarchy young Krleza agitated against from a Communist platform--i.e. because of its ideological nature and order, not because the ruling house was Serb. In Latinovicz, the thing that matters in its regard is that intangible, generalised sullen oppressive mood which seems to resonate with and emphasise the hero's personal failure and decline. There is definitely an interweaving of the motifs of social and individual decadence, but politics as such aren't the main thing here.

This is just one work out of a small hill of Krleza's output. For a commentary on the Croatian-Serbian tensions (but relevant much more broadly, in regard to such tensions everywhere in Europe, from the Iberian peninsula to Scandinavia), see, for example, The Banquet in Blitva.

Just catching up with this thread and noting that people are struggling to find Bulgarian writers translated into English. I just wanted to add my recommendation for Natural Novel by Gospodinov, and also to mention that I have collection of short stories by Yordan Yovkov, published by 'The Foreign Language Press' in Sofia in 1965. I haven't it them yet, but the spine has a large number 5 printed on, suggesting that there are at least 4 others in the series. I did a quick google search, and there are a couple of novels, all long out of print, but probably available to order if anyone is interested. Its not much Bulgaria-wise, but its something.

What is not much Bulgaria-wise?
Yovkov? :) You cannot get more Bulgaria-wise than that :)

Or do you mean as total number of published books? Unfortunately you are right on that - for various reasons, it just looks like that.

-->67 AnnieMod:
Yes, sorry. I meant that there wasn't much in total in English translation, not that Yovkov wasn't somehow good enough.

After hating Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kis, I was a bit hesitant to pick up anything else from an central or eastern European author. A lot of the storylines of possible books seemed very dark and bleak to me. Still, I decided to give it a try for this theme. And I must say that despite the difficult subject matter of The Use of Man by Aleksandar Tisma, I am very glad I picked it up. The writing was superb and I can honestly say I enjoyed reading the book despite the subject. My full review of the book can be found here.

Alexsandar Tisma, born in 1924 in Novi Sad – a Serbian town with a Hungarian, and before the war also a Jewish and German part of the population – is said to be one of the big, present-day writers from the heart of Europe, together with Konrad, Kundera and Danilo Kis. Personally I had never heard of him, but I think they are right. He’s a truly great writer. The only thing I don’t understand is that he is sometimes called a Yugoslavian author, while I would definitely class him as a Serbian one.

Just received my copy of The Bridge on the Drina and will start reading this as selection two for the theme read. Anyone who has it on their list want to join me?

>70 JMC400m: I'm hoping to read it sometime this month and would be happy to join you.

Great AnneDC!

I just realized that I have two new copies of Memed, My Hawk by Yashar Kemal. If anyone wants my extra copy, please send me a PM, and it's yours.

I just finished The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare. A famous author Kadare was born in Albania in 1936, studied in Tirana and Moskow, and since 1990 he devides his time between France and Albania. The Three-Arched Bridge is a historical novel with a deeper meaning, a parabel to the present-day situation in Albania (especially the present-day when he wrote it in 1981). Despite the theme, it was a fairly light book to read, not gloomy at all. My full review is here.

I just finished A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš, a book I've had since the 1980s, when I bough a series edited by Philip Roth called Writers from the Other Europe. The author, at the time he wrote the book, was a Yugoslav; now I suppose he would be considered a Serbian. On the surface, the book, billed as a short novel but really a series of stories connected by theme and occasionally by characters, is not about Yugoslavia, as all but one of the stories take place in revolutionary Russia and in its aftermath of the 1930s Stalinist show trials, but it obliquely sheds light on the kind of darkness that has fallen on all too many people and places, not only in the 20th century but also, as the chapter/story "Dogs and Books" makes clear, in medieval and other times.

The chapters/stories are essentially condensed biographies of fictional characters portrayed so vividly they could be real historical characters. Each is involved in some way in the revolution, and each ultimately falls victim of the 1930s purges. The fascination of the book lies in Kiš's writing,both classically descriptive and modern, his ability to characterize these people, portray the insanity of the Stalinist system, and occasionally make the reader laugh. (The medieval story deals with the inquisition and pogroms against Jews.) In the introduction to my edition, Joseph Brodsky writes, "Only the names here are fictitious. The story, unfortunately, is absolutely true; one would wish it were the other way around."

While this book didn't explicitly deal with the Balkans, but the Russian revolution and the Stalinist era were certainly overarching recent historical events that affected life in Yugoslavia, still ruled by Communists in 1976 when Kiš first published it.

For those interested, in Dalkey Archives latest catalog is:

Farewell by Ayse Kulin (400 pages, June pub date)
A sweeping story of the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire over the course of the First World War, Farewell is a novel of great warmth, suffused with tragedy.
Focusing on the experiences of one particular family living in one particular house during these historic events, Ayşe Kulin mixes fact and fiction, soap opera and Tolstoy, to bring to light the effects of such political upheaval on a nominally comfortable and affluent household: the monied and intellectual class who find that their stake in Turkish life and culture is far more precarious than they could have guessed.

#76 - Farewell sounds interesting. Outside LT I belong to a reading group whose leader is from Turkey. I have a feeling we'll be reading this one soon.

I've just finished and reviewed Thrown Into Nature by Milen Ruskov. My review is here, and I'll post it in the Europe IV thread. I'll just mention here in the context of the theme read that this is a Bulgarian novel that has nothing to do with Bulgaria. Set in 16th century Spain (and England), it follows (actual historical personage) Nicolas Monardes, who believed that tobacco was a cure-all.

I've been thinking of reading Thrown into Nature for this theme read since I got it from my Open Letter subscription, but after reading your review I think I'll pass, for now anyway!

>78 noveltea:

There is another novel about tobacco in the Bulgarian literary canon -- one of the greatest Bulgarian novels. So in some ways, when Ruskov chose to write about tobacco, he was playing off that tune. And in a way, it is the main character of the book. To top it all, Spain is a known scene for Bulgarian novels :)

I do not remember anything pointing to the older book, it's different era, it's a different message... however I kept thinking of it while reading. Consciously or not, he was playing on the tradition. And in both novels, the tobacco was ending up being a major character. Maybe that's one of the reasons the lack of plot never bothered me - nothing interesting happens in the life of the guy so we are just following him around...

PS: and it is more than likely that I read way too much into the novel because I knew about "Tobacco". But then he is a Bulgarian author, he grew up with this book and the controversies around it in the same way I did.

>80 AnnieMod:

That's really interesting! Thanks for the information. I'd wondered if I would've appreciated the book more if I knew more about Spain's history, but for some reason it hadn't occurred to me that it could also have helped to know something about Bulgaria's literature. So that's more motivation to continue my reading from this region after the theme read ends!

>81 noveltea:

As I said - I might be reading too much into it - because of the foreknowledge and all that. It could have been just a coincidence. But at the same time no author grows up in vacuum. The other great novel from the same author (Damned Souls is set during the Spanish Civil War and features an English woman. :) Between the setting and the topic, I was thinking about Dimitar Dimov a lot while reading Ruskov's book. The style does not match, the story is really different and still... something was nagging at the back of my head.

Hi all, I might just sneak into this quarters theme read, am about to start reading My Name is Red which I am really looking forward to. Thanks for all of the reading suggestions, a lot of great choices here.

Btw There is newly tranlsated Bulgarian novel available for English speakers: East of the West by Miroslav Penkov. Looks interesting.

I just read The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić, a writer from Croatia and the former Yugoslavia. In this thought-provoking novel, she explores what it means not only to be an exile and not only to be an exile from a country that no longer exists, but also to be an exile from a country that has been shattered, by war and what we learned to call "ethnic cleansing," into multiple smaller nations. The protagonist, a native of Zagreb now living in Amsterdam, has been hired to teach a two-semester course in the literature of the former Yugoslavia at the University; her students come from all over the former Yugoslavia and have enrolled in the university largely because of the advantage of having a student visa. The title of the book comes from the nickname the students give the factory at which many of them work, a factory that makes S&M clothing and paraphernalia and which in turn is named after an S&M club. However, the "ministry of pain" is really a metaphor for the various kinds of pain the protagonist and the students experience, from "Yugonostalgia" to much deeper traumas.

The best parts of the book come early, as the protagonist engages with the students and delves into the meaning of exile, her feelings about "home," and the complexity of language. As she notes about Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian, which apparently differ mostly in a few words, the students "knew that "our" languages were backed by actual troops, that "our" languages were used to curse, humiliate, kill, rape, and expel. They were languages that had gone to war in the belief that they were incompatible, precisely because they were inseparable." In the second part, she goes home for a visit to her mother and her former parents-in-law, and that visit too is interesting. After she returns to Amsterdam, she begins to spiral downwards, changes the way she teaches the students, visits the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, loses her job, and moves into a new apartment. For me the book then became less compelling. I admire what Ugrešić is trying to do, but in an intellectual way, rather than being truly absorbed in the story. I do think this book makes brilliant use of language, and paints a stunning portrait of dislocation.

Looking at this through the lens of this Turkey & the Balkans read, I feel this novel gave me insight into how the break-up of Yugoslavia affected people who had grown up while it was a country, as well as some of the stresses that emerged after the death of Tito, leading up to war.

Until yesterday, my approach to the theme read has been to read (and plan to read) books that have little or nothing to do with Balkan history. (I did read Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina years ago.) I was choosing books I thought I was most likely to enjoy. But with the end of the quarter approaching I decided I'd try to fit in a number of short books before month's end. So last night I read Ismail Kadare's Elegy for Kosovo. And this little book about centuries of bloody Balkan history is by far my favorite of the books I've read so far for the theme read.

I've written up the book here in the Europe IV thread. I highly recommend it, and I should point out for anyone looking to squeeze in another book for the theme read that this is a VERY quick read--121 pages, and there aren't many words on those pages.

Kadare has a very nice style - and manages to pack a lot of seemingly irrelevant local history in his works. Broken April is pretty good as well.

I don't think the history of the Balkans is any bloodier than that of any other comparable piece of land, in fact, overall it's a damn sight more peaceful than most; west, east or south of it. The problem with this wretched stereotype, apart from scandal-sheet shallowness and romantic myth-making which propagates it, is that most Balkan "bloodiness" occurred relatively recently, in Technicolour and Stereovision.

>88 LolaWalser:

Or too long ago - the Ottoman empire provided a shadow for a few centuries (while Europe was in the middle of Revolutions, Renaissance and moving to the modern history, the Balkans were trying to regain independence for the most part and were decades and centuries behind on almost any progress). Before that, it had been not that quiet really - a lot of those being what you would call today "Civil" wars.

Once that was over... it got bloody. WWI was the first war for a while for way too many nations but it was the third in as many years on the Balkans (not to mention the few smaller ones as the Serbo-Bulgarian one in 1885 (Serbia playing the good ally from the name of Austro-Hungary) and the one that did not happen (Turkish-Bulgarian in 1908 which could as well had started the whole sequence but Turkey had enough internal problems and by the time they were ready to strike, the first Balkan Wars was under way anyway) . And when the war ended, it was time for the local catastrophes and attempts to survive. Follow WWII and then the recent Yugoslavian wars.

So it is not just a stereotype. Besides - we are talking for way too many countries crammed in a small place with a big empire always on the horizon - and most of them were too busy fighting between themselves for the most part.

Thanks, I'm aware of the history of the region. The stereotype is that it was bloodier--bloodier than, presumably, all these Edens around it. By what measure? Number of the dead? Even for the past few centuries (where we have a better idea of the statistics), the carnage elsewhere in Europe, Asia and Africa surpasses the Balkans by orders of magnitude. By the number of conflicts? Seems silly to me, but go ahead, let someone total up the wars and skirmishes in Central Europe, say, vs. the Balkans. Five centuries of Turkish dominion was good for at least one thing: relative peace.

Little countries they may be, but at least none of them sowed colonial grief over the entire planet, or built extermination camps.

It's truly offensive, when you think of it.

Yeah - I know you do. :)

No more offensive than half the world being unable to find most of the countries on a map or believing that none of them is older than say half a millennium :) Or sending Bulgaria somewhere in Siberia when it is not searched somewhere around Iraq (don't ask... these were the last two people I told my country of origin).

I know what you are saying - and agree to some extent. But then - we are the last Barbarians in Europe (for most of the Western world anyway - it is another story who was on the continent first). :)

Back when I was in school, the Balkans were called the crossroad of cultures. Which histotrically led to way too many different tribes crossing through and way too many geo-political interests - and to a distorted idea of what the region is. I still like this definition.

To paraphrase Cavafy, "what shall we do if the barbarians don't come? They, at least, were some sort of solution."

People believe what they need to believe.

It's funny, I've never read of a single place that wasn't an important "crossroads" (I suppose Australia and New Zealand at least escape this cliché). It's like an obligatory intro to anyone's geography.

I've just finished Broken April by Ismail Kadare, a novel that focuses on the Albanian highland's traditional code of laws, the Kanun, which sanctions, and in fact demands, prolonged blood feuds. It is a haunting and disturbing novel that comments as much on human nature as it does on the culture of a particular region.

I think one really ought to mention the time frame of the novel when making such comments. It's amazing what some might otherwise take from them.

Some comments for context: the Kanun was never applied throughout the country; it was a system which aimed to regulate bloodshed in a situation where armed-to-the-teeth clans existed in the state of chronic alert and/or war against an array of invaders; taking life as such was never the point--one could buy it off--the point was to show strength by defending honour. The principle of retribution is no worse than the Biblical "an eye for an eye"--and that one, as we all know, isn't limited to any "particular region". But there's another thing, the most important of all--the Kanun was Albanian, not Ottoman, therefore the touchstone for Albanian national identity, and the single strongest reason for its longevity is that it ensured the existence of Albanians as Albanians, the idea of Albania. And that, as they say, is priceless.

Finally, the Kanun dealt with every aspect of life from birth to death; it's not "about" vendettas. And if that part of it is antiquated beyond application in the modern world (to the minds of most Albanians), much of it has been incorporated in the legal system. Which, by the way, not only doesn't sanction blood feuds, it abolished the death penalty.

Whereas, looking for comments on human nature and all that, how many are on death row in the US today?

> 94 uh, you're getting a bit defensive. steven03tx was just writing about a work of fiction. Novels clearly all have have settings and I don't think he should feel obligated to couch his comments in a bed of caveats. Those who are interested can go look up details. And the U.S. "human nature" comments... totally unnecessary.

Who asked for a "bed of caveats"? I mentioned that dating the story would've been useful, because I'm very well aware how easy it is to fall into rampant stereotyping when we read works from places we know nothing about. I've since read Steven's excellent review and wish he'd been less terse here.

Those who are interested can go look up details.

Or, they can turn to the friendly neighbouring poster providing some of those details. :) If you aren't interested, skip it.

>55 LolaWalser: and >56 rebeccanyc:
regarding Canetti being a wandering jew I highly recommend The Wandering Jews by Joseph Roth- i just finished it and found its descriptions and depth to be exhilerating. I wrote a review you can find on my LT page.

Just received two qualifiers for this group read. I hope to fit one in by the end of the month.....better late than never, right? Any reccs as to which I should read first?

Thrown Into Nature by Milen Ruskov or
Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic

I read Zwarte merel in een veld met pioenen by Borislav Cicovacki, which is about the civil war in Kosovo. A full review can be found here. Cicovacki is a Yugoslavian author who was born in 1966. He studied in Novi Sad, a town that was heavily hit by the NATO bombings during the war. Cicovacki fled the country in 1991 and now lives in the Netherlands. This book reflects his experiences, I think, but also shows the different (types of) victims this war made. Unfortunately, there are no English translations for his books that I’ve found.

My Theme Read Summary

I just finished my last book – yes, a little late, I know – and I have to say I enjoyed my sojourn into the Balkans far more than I thought I would. After hating "Garden, Ashes" by Danilo Kis, I was a bit hesitant to pick up anything else from a central or eastern European author. A lot of the storylines of possible books seemed very dark and bleak to me. Still, I decided to give it a try for this theme.


The Balkans

The first book I picked up was The Use of Man by Aleksandar Tisma and I am very glad I picked it up. The writing was superb and I can honestly say I enjoyed reading the book despite the difficult subject. Alexsandar Tisma, born in 1924 in Novi Sad – a Serbian town with a Hungarian, and before the war also a Jewish and German part of the population – is said to be one of the big, present-day writers from the heart of Europe, together with Konrad, Kundera and Danilo Kis. Personally I had never heard of him, but I think they are right. He’s a truly great writer. The only thing I don’t understand is that he is sometimes called a Yugoslavian author, while I would definitely class him as a Serbian one.

The next book I picked up was The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare. I might not know much about Balkan authors, but even I had heard of Ismail Kadare, although I’d never read anything by him before. He was born in Albania in 1936, studied in Tirana and Moscow, and since 1990 he divides his time between France and Albania. The Three-Arched Bridge is a historical novel with a deeper meaning, a parable to the present-day situation in Albania (especially the present-day when he wrote it in 1981). Despite the theme, it was a fairly light book to read, not gloomy at all. A pleasant change of pace from the mostly dark themes I encountered when looking into books from Balkan authors.


Author Ismail Kadare

The last book I read was Zwarte merel in een veld met pioenen by Borislav Cicovacki, which is about the civil war in Kosovo. Cicovacki is a Yugoslavian author who was born in 1966. He studied in Novi Sad, a town that was heavily hit by the NATO bombings during the war. Cicovacki fled the country in 1991 due to the civil war and now lives in the Netherlands. This book reflects his experiences, I think, but also shows the different (types of) victims this war made. Unfortunately, there are no English translations for his books that I’ve found.

During this theme read I found that there are a lot of great books to be found written by Balkan authors. Unfortunately, experiences do shape the subject matter that an author chooses to write about, and due to all the wars and infighting in the Balkan countries, most authors write about war and despair. This makes for rather heavy books. No less good, but not something you easily read away. All in all, Balkan authors are certainly worth reading and I am happy to have gotten that little push I needed to find that out for myself.

My reviews for the books I mentioned:

The Use of Man by Aleksandar Tisma – review here.
The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare – review here.
Zwarte merel in een veld met pioenen by Borislav Cicovacki – review here.