Tag: balkan fiction

She who remians by Rene Karabash

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She who remains by Rene Karabash

Bulgarian fiction

Original title – Остайница

Translator – Izidora Angel

Source – personal copy

When the longlist was announced for the Booker International Prize, I was very lucky that I had a number of subscriptions for various publishers, but the first subscription I ever got was for Peirene, the publisher of this mbook a press I have reviewed a lot of books from and one that has brought some extraordinary novellas to the English-speaking world. I had intended to readthis as it isn’t the first book I have read about Sworn virgins I read Sworn Virgins by Elvira Dones twelve years ago she also made a film follow twelve sworn virgins that had left the Balkans this is not just a Albanian traditioon it is followed in other Balkan countries a traditon that has a lot to do with old traditions around inheirtence, family line, blood feuds and like in this book the Kanun a sort of law of the region about this happening and how Women come to live as men.

Matija, Bekija according to my passport, thirty-three years old, yes, one brother, Sále, father, Murash, murdered, mother dead shortly after, there’s only Nura the cow and my father’s pigeons, favourite colour blue, afraid only of snow, the big snow, loneliness is another thing altogether, no, here love is forbidden, love is death, I don’t go to the doctor, I plug up my wounds with tobacco, if anything happens I smoke, television doesn’t exist, I don’t need it, the radio is enough, Albanian songs and occasionally an American one, I can’t sing, no, and I don’t want to, this one here is of me, my father, my brother Sále and my mother, it was taken before, yes, that’s enough for today, Nura is hungry and the pigeons need to be shut in for the night

the violence that surrounds her past

The book follows the life of Bekija, a woman who had an arranged marriage, and the only way she can escape it is via the law of Kanun, which says that because she turned down the marriage, she has to live as a sworn virgin, as a male, so Bekija becomes Matija the firsgt part of the book is the aftermath of `all this in the remote villages they live this has a knock on effect for the whole family with the blood feud it causes. So when later in the book we see letters from the brother and a journalist turns up at the village and wants to interview Matija about why theyn are a sworn virgin and what she has lost of r this at first Matija does’t see this but as the two talk her life unfurls and the past comes to haunt the present and tshe heads off to find the brother that had escaped to Sofia.

Hello, Bekija,

I very much hope this letter reaches you. I know the houses in our village don’t exactly have numbers on them, and I’m aware how impossible corresponding through letters and telegrams can be. I’ve been meaning to write to you for a long time. Every day since 1 ran away… You must understand why I had to do what I did. Why I ran. That I did it because of the enormous, irreparable mistake you made. You do understand it’s completely within the bounds of one’s survival instincts to want to save oneself, right? My leaving was the smartest thing a sane and sober-minded man could do, someone unafflicted with the delirium of the laws of the Kanun. I can’t apologize for it, it is who I am.

The start of the first letter from her brother Sale

 

As i say, I had experience of this not just from the book Sworn virgin I did work alongside a Kosovian Albanian in a factory in Germany many years ago and learnt a little back then of Albanian culture from this chap and his wife she was studying Albanian literature before thy had to escape due to the Balakans conflict so I have always had an interest in the Blakans and rememebr the conversations about the way in the countryside there were still these tradtions that and his love of english football especially Glenn Hoddle.  Anyway, that is enough of my journey down memory lane. It turned out the writer spent two years researching the sworn virgin culture and the Kanun, using Ismail Kadare’s book Broken April, which I have yet to read. But what she wanted to do was capture a female living as a male in a patriarchal society like this one, with its violence,  ancient laws, and blood feuds.  Using Bekija’s Journey as the catalyst for describing this culture.  The book is told in a stream-of-consciousness style, with an episodic narrative, and also includes interviews and letters. It is, as ever, a book that feels much bigger than its parts, which is what Peirene are known for.  Have you read this or any books about the Kanun laws that govern that part of the Balkans? It was a hit for me because it had a number of things that I love in fiction: a village setting, books from the Balkans and books that look at human nature

 

Every time we say Goodbye by Ivana Sajko

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Everytime we say goodbye by Uvan Sajko

Croatian fiction

Original title – Male smrti

Translator – Mima Simic

source – Review copy

I was kindly sent this to review. It is the second novel to be published in English translation by the Croatian Novelist and Playwright Ivana Sajko. She is much better known for her plays that highlight female voices and social issues, and use inventive narrative styles. Her previous novel won a German translation prize. This book has a male character as its lead, but, like her other works, has a breadth to the subject it covers, which, inj many ways, is one man’s experience of various events and situations within the second half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century.One man’s view of the Balkan war and what came after.

I start writing on the train, on my journey from point A to point B, from that small coastal town to Berlin, I stare out the window at the remnants of the city, the unfinished houses in the suburbs, the warehouses in the industrial zone and the stunted trees along the river, torn plastic bags hanging from their branches like bats, it’s hard for me to be in this compartment, hard to be in this skin, in the role of a traveller, I have forgotten how to travel, how to surrender myself to the mercy of the road, how to say good-bye, I have forgotten how long you actually stand there looking back at point A as it rapidly disappears, and then how long you just keep standing there, just standing and standing, staring into nothingness, about to cry, so I open my notebook but I have no answer, I write ‘On the journey from point A to point B, from that small coastal town to Berlin, I stare out the window at the remnants of the city, the unfinished houses in the suburbs, the warehouses in the industrial zone and the stunted trees along the river…

As he starts off on the train journey

 

The book follows a man who has left an unnamed Balkan seaside town to head on a train journey to Berlin, as he says to lose himself in the crowds of Berlin to just become a stranger in the crowd as the train heads from the Balkans into Berlin, we see him sat reflecting not only on his own past but also on his brother who fell in with the wrong crowd and end uop dead, to his drunken father and mother that put up with all this. He sees the Balkan war when he is younger, he is a journalist and activist, this leads him to conflicts over borders, shipwrecks as he tries to shine a light on those suffering but there is a sense of this man is broken as we get these memories following as the train move closer nad he has rthe chance to just walk lout of the station into the crowd and be a face in a crowd.

What do you do when you sink into an image you saw on the news, in the papers, an image you thought you knew well, only to be suddenly confronted with someone’s wound or burn, the kind that can’t heal or be eased by compassion, and one day this might be me, for another’s death holds the possibility of my own just as another’s death is the undeniable proof of my life, which, as I viscerally marvel at these fundamental contrasts, now separates me from death, but I’m not the one who’s dying at this mo-ment, by incident or design, as a calculated collateral casu-alty, not yet; I am lying in bed pulling up reports by Aris Messinis from Mosul, then Shah Marai from Kabul, then Abdulmonam Eassa from Ghouta; as Russian planes launch an airstrike on the eastern part of the city on behalf of the Assad regime, Eassa hops into an ambulance heading to the site of a strike, where a father and son lie in flames by an overturned motorcycle in the middle of the street, and Eassa helps the Civil Defence put out the fire consuming their bodies, ‘It’s very, very hard, he says,

‘I take pictures, but it hurts, some photos are blacked out

The strain and stress of photographing and reporting on the violence in the world

This is one of those books I call a small epic; it is 120-something pages long, but it feels epic as we see glimpses into the unnamed man’s life through his family dynamics and the effect they have on him. But also the Balkan conflict and the person who made him the Journalist he became after the war, a champion of those without a voice, but there is a toll to pay for this, and this is why he is on this train heading to oblivion. For me, you can tell Ivana Sajko is known for her narrative style in her plays. This felt at times as if the book drifts the way your mind does on a train, that sort of remembrance of the past, maybe the wanting to escape is making him replay these events, but it also shows the effect of the last decades on one man. I was reminded of the poems of Faruk Šehić, the Bosnian poet, who also has people from the Balkan conflict wash up in Berlin. A city to get lost in to be a face in a crowd to see out your ghosts. Have you read this book ?

You can buy the two books mentioned in the Uk via my bookshop.org link for

Everytime we say good bye by Ivana Sajko 

My Rivers by Faruk Šehić

 

 

 

 

Migrations Miloš Crnjanski

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Migrations by Miloš Crnjanski ( although it is spelt on my cover Tsernianski)

Serbian fiction

Original title – Seobe

Translator – Michael Henry-Heim

Source – Personal copy

One of my goals for this year was to read more classics and Modern classics from around the world, what with the Booker International it has drifted off, but I will try to feature more books like this that are out of print but are essential in their countries’ Canon, like this book by the Serbian Modernist writer. Miloš Crnjanski was considered one of the leading exponents of Expressionism in his writing. His early books, like this, Dealt with Serbia and its Historic past. This book follows two brothers through the years and struggles as one of them fights for a brigade in the Austro-Hungarian army. However, as they do, they start to dream.

A crowd had gathered near the stables and the sty to await his arrival, but even more to await the coach and horses and servants of his brother, Arandjel Isakovic, a merchant known throughout the Danube and Tisza basin for his wealth.

According to their agreement, his brother was to spend the night in the village with the children and rise early to be with him when he took leave of his wife, whose violent ways both men feared. And indeed, just as he reached the top of the hill, his brother’s large brightly painted coach came into view and was immediately surrounded by servants.

By this time the rain had ceased, the sky had cleared.

Entering the hut, the man bumped his head on the thatched roof. He found his wife freshly washed, dressed in silk, beautiful. Tired from the strenuous ride, he looked at her in a new light. He went to her and started kissing her through

As Vuk heads out to the war

This book is set in the 1740s, but in a way has a feel for the time, a decade or so after World War I, when it was written it sees the birth of the Austro Hungarian Empire and the first parts of the Ottoman falling a[art as we see tw brother Vuk he is the brother in the Army as an Officers his brother Arandjel who has followed his brother well more his wife and his daughters this brother is a successful merchant and provides a lot for his brother and his wife Dafina. The brothers both have a connection to her, one as husband, the other as his mistress, bewitched by her beauty. The book is set during the war, but it isn’t so much about the great battles as it is about being in the camps, being bored as a wife, and following her husband from battle to battle. It also explores the idea of a greater Serbia among the troops as they fight in France. As the three of them face who they are, where they are from, and what lies ahead for them all after these twisted connections between them, Alos, it is about love and loss and about honour and family.

This was the house in which Vuk Isakovic had chosen to lodge his wife and two girls, who arrived in a coach loaded down with clothes, furs, carpets, pearl brooches, silver buttons, and the like, and accompanied by a crowd of loudly lamenting women and aging servants.

Though younger than his brother, Arandjel Isakovic treated Vuk as if he were the younger. Whenever he stood next to him, he gave him pitying looks; whenever he sat next to him, he made sure Vuk had the more comfortable seat, though he himself was thin as a rail and his brother round as a barrel; and whenever his brother spoke to him, he smiled, avoided his glance, and paused before responding.

His brother provides for them but also has his wife as his mistress !

As I said, the themes of this book revolve around the culture and identity of the various states in the Balkans. In this particular case, it is Serbia, and in the book, it drifts between the two great empires of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian, which is just starting a few years after this book is set, as the vacuum between those two led to the dream of a great Serbia. However, the book also has echoes of the post-World War I era, which is the time in which the book was written, in the late twenties, and even extends to the recent Balkan war in the 1990s. Add to that the other thread of the relationship between the brothers and the wife, and how that triangle acts out. The book also explores the feeling of never being in the right place, as well as the question of Migration, which remains a highly newsworthy topic today. Still, it isn’t a Serbian; it is someone from sub-Saharan Africa or the war-torn Middle East, on the lookout for a new place and a dream of a different world. I liked this book; it is one of those books whose themes have a timeless quality, focusing on family, love, and passion. Of  Nationhood and place, of migration and belonging, all these questions are still there, nearly a hundred years after this book was written! Have you read this book?

In late Summer by Magdalena Blažević

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In late Summer by Magdalena Blažević

Bosnian fiction

Original title – U kasno ljeto

Translator – Andelka Raguž

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to be sent two new releases from the new publisher, the Linden editions. If you have followed this blog for any time, you will know I am a huge champion of new publishers. For me, they are the lifeline as a reader of books in translations, as they can translate books that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day. This book, in particular, really grabbed me as it is from the Balkans, a region I feel should be better known for its writing and variety. I have long championed this region on the blog. However, this book is set in a village during the Balkan War. It was always going to be a book I wanted to read. Magdalean is from Bosnia, and this book won the Best Croatian book award. This is her debut novel and captures the horrors of war through an innocent girl’s eyes.

The windows in the cellar are low, fixed to the road, and you can’t see the sky or the forest through them, just the road and the feet of passers-by. I recognise Mother’s. She walks slowly, the hem of her flowery dress swinging to and fro. You can push a finger into the scars on her leg. A bucket of overripe tomatoes sways in her hand. Clods of damp earth fall off her rubber galoshes. They disappear behind our house. I put my hands on the cold pane.

My name is Ivana. I lived for fourteen summers, and this is the story of my last.

The haunting last line of the first chapter draws you in as a reader !

The book is an ode to the countryside and the country life that was there before the war, and about a family and what happens when their 14-year-old daughter is caught up in a massacre in Bosnia. It is told by Ivana, the fourteen-year-old, and the title is mentioned by her early on as she says This is my story. I have lived fourteen summers, and this is my last summer. The summer is told from her point of view from time spent with her grandmother in =what at that point seems a rural idyllic place, a pace of life I think we would all like, a bygone world of simple living and a trouble-free world. But the war is always there in the background. Till the day the soldiers appear, they aren’t named as being from one side or the other. The family flee to a nearby village that has already been abandoned. Still, they are caught, and this is where the narrative switches from a sort of pastoral scene of countryside and village life to the aftermath of losing loved ones in the mindless violence that had seemed so far away. Is now so real and has hit the family.

She’s standing beside Grandfather in the photo studio; they’re to be married in a couple of days. Ducats borrowed from the village jingle around her neck; a white blouse rustles under her fingertips. Grandfather’s shirt is cut low on the chest and singed, with sharp blades of grass poking out. He’s a lot taller than her. It seems to her that the top of his head is a canopy, and that it’s breaking through the ceiling. Grandmother doesn’t lift her gaze. Green eyes prey on her from beneath steep awnings; a wide jaw and shiny, sharp teeth threaten.

The grandmother is the heart of this family

I have read several great novels about the Balkan conflict. But this is the first to have a child as its main narrator and to tell the whole story from her point of view, as the war is initially so far away, and the world they are living in with the family, especially the grandparents, seems perfect and a rural existence that has maybe now gone after the conflict the family seem part of the land they live in. One of the beauties of this book is it doesn’t label who is who, which side is which; it is just about the act of war and its effect on everybody. Till it is shattered, the book is a book of two halves. Her last summer and the aftermath of it were her final summer. The main character’s voice reminded me of the Voice in the American novel, The Lovely Bones. She has captured how it hit people like Ivana and her family in those small villages, and her narration has the same detached nature; the things that happen are just told, if that makes sense. It shows the brutality of war on one village, on one family, on one daughter and granddaughter. This is one of my favourite books of recent years. It will be near the top of the books of the year for sure. Do you have a book you think captures the Balkan conflict well?

 

Celebration by Damir Karakaš

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Celebration by Damir Karakaš

Croatian fiction

Orignal title -Proslava

Translator – Ellen Elias-Bursać

Source – Personal copy

I covered the epic Solenoid yesterday. I stay in Eastern Europe and now move to the Balkans, and what may be the shortest book I will read this year. But also one of those small epics of a book that will long sit in my mind. I have long been a fan of Croat literature I haver reviewed 15 novels from Croatia over the years. Now this is a book written by a writer that was when he was youinger a war reporter. He also spent many a year in the region of Croat where the book is set. He also made a living for many yeart in France playing his accordian this bok was Laud by the critics in Croatia when it came out a few years ago. It ids a book that looks into the past but maybe is alo a warning from Croatias own past about events in the present. The book is four stories that cover a peroid from the late 20s to the end of world war two andf are four episodes in the life of Mijo a soldier in the Ustasa force(the right wing Nazi Miltia that comitted genocide in Croat during the second world war).

He lay on the blanket that had over the last days soaked up the smell of rotten leaves and damp earth: under his thick brows he spent most of his time watching the village, then the mixed canopy above his head, noticing all the while how the colors were fading. Sometimes out of the corner of his eye he’d peek at the gleaming orb of the sun, gauging the time of day; never had time passed more slowly: he kept lying there in that one spot, sensing in his nose the sharp odor of melting resin, and all that was moving around him began to bother him: the sun, the wind, the birds that often flew low with their winged sounds over the forest.

Mijo laid hiding , I love the flow of this translation

The book opens as Mijo is on the run at the end of the war. He is near home can see his family and kids but aas they are now round up the member of his ,miltia he has to hide. Set in Lika regfion of Croatia an mounatin area and liike many of these remotre areas this is a rural isolated communoity in itself. This is the thing he does brillantly in this book the place it self is almosat another character. The second story follows the kiling of Dogs in the valley. TRhius is a brutsl story . But is maybe also a nod to the brutal nature iof the woirld and how easy it is to go from killing dogs to people maybe. Then we see his early years meeting his wife just as all the madenss of the war he has got drawn into as the couple not yet married head into antother village with a brother as a chaperon they fall behind and thew mountains and there loive almost become one. I will leave the last tale for you to discover.

Drenka looked over at Mijo and, as she walked, said, “You’ve got a patch of fungus on your neck.” He touched his neck.

“Where?” and then, confused, he shrugged. At a slightly slower pace she said, “When we get back, I have some salve made from rabbit lard I can put on it.” Then they picked up their pace to catch up with Rude and the distance shrank, but if they exchanged glances, it grew; by now they had come out onto a sunlit meadow full of blossoms. Mijo leaned over while walking and stealthily snapped off the crown of a flower in full bloom. First he thought to give it to her, but at the last minute he tucked it into his own hair. When the flower fell out both of them chuckled over it.

The couple head out before they are married again the Lika Countryside is a character in the narrative

This for me is one of those novellas when you read iotI think how did Peiren mis this one , they did small epics like this so wel. I was remind of aStonbes in a landslide another book set in a remote mountainous region. But I was also remind of the chat I had with Dasa Drndic around the growing face of Facism in Europe. I think in hindsight I think she could see the coming storm of Fcism on the horizon. This is a tale of how ordinary people like Mijo get caught up in the madness and violence of the war. This is one of those books that is  soarse in its prose style there isn’t a word to many in the writing . but even so the rivchness of the Lika mountains and even things like Mijo running his hand over the back of a dog jump of the page. and will long live in Memore and the dog kiling scene is another thagty i wouldn’t want to live again but also had that right mix of emmotions in it. This is the first oof the shortlist of booiks for this years EBRD literature prize I am reding. Have you a favourite work from a Balkan writer ?

 

Lets go home ,son by Ivica Prtenjača

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Let’s go home, Son by Ivica Prtenjača

Croatian fiction

Original title -Sine, idemo kući

Translator – David Williams

Source review copy

I move on to a prize-winning novel from Croatia and one of the first novels I have read dealing with COVID-19 and living through the lockdown. I think this will be a literature theme for years to come, whether it is about the pandemic or uses it is a starting point for a novel. Ivica Prtenjača is a well-known figure in Croatian literature both as a writer himself, where he has one of the biggest book prizes in Croatia twice, first for his novel The Hill and then for this novel. He has also tirelessly promoted Croatian literature and is a radio host in Croatia (I love that a well-known novelist is a radio host, not some Z-list celeb like here ). He is also a prize-winning Poet.

I remember Dad trying to plaster the ceiling of our bungalow. He mixed some runny concrete and tossed it in the air with a trowel, hoping it would stick. He stood on an upturned tin drum, while I filled the concrete bucket down below.I was twelve years old, and I remember that winter morning because before we settled into our work, I’d watched Kubrick’s A Space Odyssey for the first time, wonder-struck, and in near ecstasy at what I’d seen and barely understood.Dad couldn’t get the hang of the hand movement, the secret angle you needed to toss the runny mix in the air, spread it out, and have it stick to the ceiling. He tossed it up vertically.And vertically it fell back down on his head, getting in his eyes. Not wanting to hide, I remained at my father’s side, sharing his torment, so it fell on me too. He tossed two full buckets up, and when it all fell down, I’d faithfully pick it up, add a bit of water, and dump the lot back in the bucket. He eventually got down, lit a cigarette, and parked himself up on a concrete block, staring at his watch.

He watch his father make the home and there is some humlour along the way like here

What happens when your father is seriously ill and you know the only hospital that can treat him is in Zagreb, where there is a slim chance he can get better. But this means you, his son and your mother all making the trip to be with your father away from your Dalmatian home by the coast. A baker has suffered after years of breathing flour has left him ill. But whilst this is happening to you and your family, the world is seeing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, you end up living in Zagreb under the lockdown, unable to return to the coastal home. This is all made worse when the treatment for your father starts to falter. As your father is recounting with you all the past the meeting, how they meet a recounting of love and marriage and having a son as he does this, he is all the more driven to want to be at his home by the coast. What to do? This is a bond between father and son. What would you do for your father? How far will a son go to help his dying parent|?

On a small plastic table, the photographer set out a bunch of retouched photos, children, old folk, children, even a few group photos where he’d used a ballpoint pen to draw outlines around everyone’s eyes and coated their faces in sepia, to increase the contrast. The pictures looked like they’d been taken in a circus. Posing for God knows who, these poor people had become dead clowns, playthings in the hands of a provincial hawker, who reckoned that he’d breathed new life into them. When my grandad saw the people in the pictures, he almost shuddered.

His fathers memories are brought back by the pictures of their lives together

This is a personal novel, almost auto-fiction. It seems the heart of the novel came from Ivica’s own experience of losing his father, a baker, and this also happened around the pandemic. It is a pandemic, but more so a novel of death and life and the bond between father and son. The sorrow and love in this book drips off the page. What happens when death is near and all you want is to be in the home you built with those you have loved and lived with? Bugger, the pandemic he needed to get home the call of the home and the sea that special place is at the heart of the book. We all have those places so intertwined in our lives that they live as spirits in us a house a view, a smell and this is at the heart of this. His home is that to his father a place he built but also a place that is so close to him he is almost part of the home. Subtle work of a man dying a son greaving and trying to help his father. This is one of those quiet books that linger in your mind and for anyone who has lost some close but also has a place close to the family’s heart like this is! Do you have a favourite book about a father-and-son relationship?

Body Kintsugi by Senka Marić

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Body Kintsugi by Senka Marić

Bosnian fiction

Original title – Kintsugi Tijela,

Translator – Celia Hawksworth

Source – subscription editon

I have yet to review one of this year’s Peirene its not like me I am usually on them as over the time they have been around they are one of my favourite publishers and have just had a change at the helm they will still be bringing out great novels from around the world and this is a perfect example of what I love around the books from peirene over the years there has been a strong female voice in there choices and that is the case with Senka Marić an editor she had trained as a hairdresser in the Uk during the civil war in Bosnia ( I worked along side a Bosnian in Germany at the Jugendwerkstatt I had worked at so I am always connected to stories from Bosnia). She is also a cancer survivor and this book is based on her experience it follows are narrator as she copes with her cancer.

You get up again and probe. Your breath fills the room. It bounces off the walls. It makes the summer night day. The round lump moves away from pressure (its touch is forever etched into your fingers’ memory). Panic is mud. It pours into your mouth. The night is swallowing you.

You resolve to shatter this image. Like a mirror with a stone thrown into it. Then all that remains is a dull sensation.

You’re not yet aware of how much has been taken away from you.

The discovery of a lump early on in the book.

The narrator of the book is in the middle of one of hardest events in most people’s life the break up off a marriage when she has some physical issues that lead to the discovery of a lump under her arm event she had always thought could happen, due to her mother own Breast cancer. What follows is her journey that sees her travel to get treatment and tests along the way. But we also have a little piece about the meds she starts to get treated with as she tries to survive cancer. But as she is getting treated she views her own life journey from her sexual awakening and the awkwardness of that to her own family’s struggle with health there is a part where she lists the body part of her mother and father and her own. as she tries to piece her self back together the title is a nod to the Japanese art of kintsugi to make something new beautiful out of the piece of broken porcelain and gold something new out of the part and that is what our narrator’s journey is in this book.

A week after the operation you’re sitting in the car, on your way home. Early that morning you went back to the clinic and the surgeon bandaged your breasts. You tried to see them, but you were lying down and he was bending over you. You could only see a bit of bruised skin. The pain was still great, and you almost didn’t care any more. After that, you had to go down a lot of steps, get into the car and find a position in which you’d be able to bear the drive to Mostar while your mother, leaning forward, clutches the steering wheel.

And worries about your being comfortable. And whether the wind is too strong. And whether you’ll have to make a detour. And drive through the Lika district, which now, as your journey devours unforeseen hours, carries your thoughts away from your body. And that grey landscape, battered by the wind, seems to you the only place there’s any sense in being at that moment. Removed from reality, from the pain and disintegration of your body.

The mind drifts and she drifts back as she start to rebuild herself after the treatment and operations.

This is a raw visceral journey you can see how her own life seeps into this book the fragile line people walk when getting treatment for cancer. the knock-on effect of already going through a divorce. But also the knowledge of family history around cancer. leads to a forbidding in our narrator’s mind as she drifts back on her life. Cancer is something that touches everyone My own mother survived it and sadly recently lost a colleague to cancer it is something that takes its toll on everyone. The passage where she list the loss of body parts she and her family have given t cancer and illness over time. The other part I like was the stark medical side. She gave the test and meds the side effects etc around the tablets and treatment she is having which in a lot of cases are very difficult to deal With as a patient is often so poorly from the treatment but this leads to reliving the past at times. So it looks like Peirene is in safe hands with its new owners and this is also another great slice of Balkan literature but also a strong narrative around cancer and also surviving the worst life has to give you. Have you a book about cancer or illness.

Winston’s score – A – One woman’s cancer journey and how she rebuilt herself.

 

3 Minutes and 53 Seconds by Branko Prlja

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3 Minutes and 53 Seconds by Branko Prlja

Macedonian fiction

Original title – 3 минути и 53 секунди

Translated by Paul Filev

Source – personal copy

Branko Prlja grew up in Sarajevo graduated from the Josep Tito high school in Skopje which he moved to in his teens as the Balkan conflict start and Yugoslavia fell apart he made his home in Macedonia. He is a writer and graphic designer he set up the first prize for Electronic literature in Macedonia as well as the KAPKA (Creative activism through parody, criticism, and allegory) organization. This book came out under his pseudonym Bert Stein which he has published two books under that title of this book is a nod to the average length of a single but is about the time it takes to read each of the chapters that follow the 20 years from 1984 as we follow an Unnamed character growing up in similar circumstances to that of the writer. One boy growing up as the place he remembers fell apart and he start a new life in Skopje.

That winter the temperature dropped below -20`C, but it didn’t prevent my dad from taking me skiing on Mount jahorina.

The song ” Where the streets have no name”, whioch was playing on the old cassette player of pur green 1982 Lada Riva, sounded as it it was coming from afar. The rhythmic sound of the guitar mixed with the hum of the car going up the mountain road as snow -covered evergreeb trees sped past. My dad delibertely jerked the steering wheel left and right, causing the car to skid and spin toward the shoulders of the road covered with huge deposits of snow, while we nearly split our sides laughing. I was happy

I remebr U2 in a VW Golf as we crossed germany years ago.

This is a slice of Bildungsroman that follows our narrator as he grows up from being seven when he first here Michael Jackson thriller remember the video which was a nod to the 80s horror genre of films what follows is a memoir of sorts that ties the music of each year to the growing up of our narrator from the USA to Africa song the following year the end year of Tito reign is seen through the young boy’s eyes. the last few years after the Winter Olympics as the cracks slowly appeared as the country of Yugoslavia becomes a collection of what is now six republics. He was listening to songs by U2 and Simple Mind’s accompanied his memories of the time. Those little memories like a thing alike the design of a cigarette packet was maybe a nod to the future graphic designer. The turn of the nineties saw him in Skopje as he had hoped to return to his home town but as events unfold he has to stay and start his life in Macedonia. What follows is his teen years I loved the music he picks most of which I remember and loved some I didn’t but it showed the power of music as a trigger to memories as he start to publish his first books.

The Guitar on U”‘s “Numb”, catching the world unprepared. Music became a thumping heartbeat, a machine propeller, a car engine … I listened to ant thought about my Einstürzende Neubauten, who’d been making music like that for years … it seemed that opop rock music was evolving and catching up with rap, which was always experimenting. Insane ion the Brain by the timeless Cypress hill and Bacdafucup by the short lived Onyx breathed new life into the scene, whil Body coubt blended metal with rap was a challenging concept. my heavy metal friends teased me for doing it, but hey , that’s a completely different story.

I remember all these I missed seeing EN when they keft a U2 tour early back in the day.

I enjoyed this book I like a bildungsroman as a genre of fiction. So whatever the time and place the is always some connection to our own years of growing up and Brankop choice of music is such a great way to connect to our past what I re3member as ai read is not just Bramko characters memories which is a thinly veiled of the writers own life. Songs Like U2 remind me of my time in Germany, Nirvana I remember drunkenly watching the shambolic first tv appearance on The Word then lastly Chop Suey which My best friend loved and his young daughter danced to all those years ago. This is a short read as Peirene call a movie book a book to read instead of a movie and here it will bring you memories if you are my age of the songs and the times I worked with a number of refugees at the time the Balkans fell apart so could connect to Brankos memories I work with a lad that had grown up in Sarajevo and was in German in the early nites a story similar to the story of the character and many at the time. Do you remember these years and does music connect you to memories? Another hidden gem from Dalkey.

Winstons score A – A Bildungsroman that is a thinly veiled story of the writers own history

Catherine The Great and The Small by Olja Knežević.

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Catherine The Great and The Small by Olja Knežević.

Croatian fiction

Original title – Katarina, Velika i Mala

Translators – Paula Gordon and Elien Elias-Bursac

Source = review copy

It has been a while since I have reviewed a book from Istros books well here I have one of a new series they have been publishing called On the margins. this is the second I will be doing a review of the first book soon. Olja Knežević studied creative writing at Birkbeck college was where she got an MA this book grew out of her dissertation for her MA.  She has lived in London, , California, Belgrade, and London. This was a bestseller when it came out.

I am Catherine the great, hiding away in small room

We have proclaimed this small room an office. English people calla room of this size a broom closet. the english people are spoiled, or so my husband and I say, even when they’re poor. Thats our attitude all year long right up to Christmas, when the bitter cold sets in. Then we marvel at them running around town in the howling wind, going about their buisness as usual, bald me without hoats, women wearing ballet flats without sock, everyone sleeveless, and againwe remember where we’ve come from a small mediterranean country where as soon as the north wind blows, no one goes outside, where everyone leaves work early – noon at latest – with the excuse of attending funerals and paying respects

The opening and the madness of us living her in the UK viewed by Katarina

We follow Katarina the main character in this book from the late seventies when she is a teen selling ice cream and trying to get by in the small country of Montenegro as it is now but then still part of Yugoslavia her home town was called Titograd after the great leader of Yugoslavia. What we see is her family life this is back up with the cracks that are appearing in the country. As she loses her mother her family is all in the same house as her grandmother is there as well. As she starts to blossom she starts a relationship starts Siniša with whom she loses her virginity. Her other friend Milica is wanting to break free of Titograd Katarina knows her mother as well she calls an Aunt. So When Milica goes there and studies Drama she also discovers Drugs in the Big city. So Katarina is found a job as a child Minder and studied to go Belgrade where she is sent to help and keep eye on her friend. She also dabbles this all happens as the homeland falls apart but this strong girl manages to get out and the latter part of the book catches her in London.

The year was 1988. July in Belgrade was intolerably hot; smell of dead dogs and cats, strays killed by the hear, and dried up insects, black and brown cockroaches. But the pressure was on for my finals. I had to be like a youing stoic and, with books as my only defence, resist desire – summer’s naked, sweaty, sexual desire- and grapple with my demons.

The summer in the big city as she starts to live away from her family

This is a great insight into the break up of Yugoslavia from a young female perspective the pressure of growing up as the world around you starts to tear its self apart it also is a personal view of those times one feels that a lot of this is the writers own life and loves from the western music they listen to to the places they live Titograd now in modern Montenegro called Podgorica the capital of that small country was where Olja was born she has also lived in Belgrade and Zagreb which gives her perspective on all sides of the war and she also lived in London. This is a great coming of age rale the ups and downs of being a female growing up and also of being a woman Katarina i n’t perfect and that is what drew me in / she is a flawed character. This is a perfect choice for women in Translation month. Have you read this or the other on the margins series book

The end and Again by Dino Bauk

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The end and Again by Dino Bauk

Slovenian fiction

Original title -Konec. Znova

Translator – Timothy Pogacar

Source – review copy

I move to another small press and one of my favourite over recent years Istros has been brought us all wonderful titles from the Balkans and here we have a Debut novel from a former lawyer and civil servant Dino Bauk.  He was a columnist and began writing short stories. Before this came out it was his debut novel it won the Best debut novel at the Slovene book fair in 2015. It was also longlisted for another book prize in his homeland. This book is set in the years of the break up in the former Yugoslavia and focus on the members of a band.

“So you must be sister something!”

“I’m Mary ”

“Of course, the virgin Mary, who else?”

He felt that his child like didn’t anger, but amused her. She rewarded him with a changed teasing smile, which fuelled his courage. He rose from his seat to take an equal place amoung the small group and push closer to her as she stood behinf her two brothers and sister. One of the two slich=k assholes tried to guide the conversation, but Denis was communicating with her onl, turning the other three Mormons into uslessappendages, which they themselves understood afters severak stops, and gradually retreated into their own cnersation

Denis meeting Mary with her fellow Mormon when he was younger.

The book has a fragmented nature is made of vignettes of memories and a stream of consciousness style. The story is around the break up of Yugoslavia and the effect on the four members of a band Peter, Goran, Denis, and Mary. The band is rather like the famous Serbian band EKV which at this time huge. Denis is the main character in a way he was one of those that lost his identity in the middle of this story he has no place to live being expelled from his homeland due to a problem with his paperwork. whilst his bandmates remain Slovenian and they get caught up in post band activities and make money and corruption as one becomes a manager and the other works in local government whilst their bandmate is near via the books he read whilst on the front reading books in a roofless library and finding out what is going on in the world via his books. Mary is the one that connects them all a Mormon and friend of them then they were sixteen and in the band. Then in the future she tries to find out what happened to Denis and she had seen the world. It is a story of growing and forming one’s identity and what had been lost to some in that and overs that disappeared at the time.

Recording 4

Denis, peter and Goran laugh out loud, at first genuinely, then as theu og on, it’s more and more forced, like teenagers who wanted to show as many passers by as possible what a good time they;’re having, Peter and Goran walk ahead, handing off a bittle of wine, which they alsooffer Denis. She doesn’t drink at all, and Denis declines a swig as well, probably because of her. They had emptied one in the park, before the evening fell and peter and Goran will clearly finish the second on the to the condcert hall.

They drink but Denis is influneced a bit by Mary into not drinking .

This is a layered book as we see all the four-character go from the starting point of a band at 16 and the way post-war in Slovene. The path of each character reflects on things that happened. From the quick wealth post-war that was available and corruption in the two men that remain Peter and Goran. Denis’s tale is a fragmented one as he has disappeared from the people’s lives but also his lies pf place and identity than being in a library of books and discovering a wider world as he read through from one ward. Then Mary is an outsider looking in one the three boys and their lives it is about what haunts them in that boast the loss of a friend but also they in some cases have lost themselves to the future. It is a small window into the war years and aftermath one four people in Slovenia without giving us a solution to there actions or an end or as the tile say the end and again!  Remember to support or small presses through this madness!

Under pressure by Faruk Šehić

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Under pressure by Faruk Šehić

Bosnian fiction

Original title – Pod Pritiskom

Translator – Mirza Puric

Source – Kickstarter copy

I don’t do many kickstarters but when Istros did one for this book the second book by Faruk Šehić they wanted to publish they choose to do a kickstarter. I choose the one that gave me a copy of the book and a tote bag. Faruk Šehić was studying to be a vet when the Bosnian war broke out and he joined the army eventually he led a unit of 130 men. He chooses to study literature after the war and when he published his first book and was part of the mangled generation of writers that were born in the ’70s and lived through the war. This book won the European Union Prize for literature.

I got drunk and fell asleep on the wooden stall where Jagoda displayed her groceries, in front of the Austro Hungarian residential building in which I lived

I was wearing light shorts and a T-shirt.

Mother saw me from toilet window.

They brought me in holding me by the arms

washed my faceover the tub.

I felt like a foreign object within a foreign object.

I looked like a weary robot

the first of the Haiku from the Haiku diary

 

This book is made up of a number of stories in different styles of writing they are fragmented that capture what is the story of the fifth army as they fight and also in those downtimes in the war in the Krajina area where 200000 people were forced from there homes. We have an intro that uses the river Una The smell of the river and the birds on the river. Then straight into a man heading to the foggy frontline as he talks about his hierarchy of life which is

  1. war
  2. Alcohol
  3. poetry
  4. love
  5. war again

So even thou he has love and poetry war is still there his favorite book is Plexus by Henry Miller and his favorite weapon is Hungarian Kalashnikov. Elsewhere he has Haiku diaries then we have more frontline action people returning to the frontline after the last time burying comrades then we have those that fell apart on the psych ward a soldier lets loose about what happened in the war. The tales bring forth the horrors and also the comradeship of wars. later on, there is a touching list of fighters

NOw I weigh 70,000 g. I was 180 cm tall last time I was measured whin I served in the Yugoslav people’s Army. My eyes have turned darker, probablyfrom alcohol. Juicy, kosa, Ani and I are standing in front of the Cafe Ferrar.Hari Palic toook the picture,Its a colour photo…..

The image is cold and objective an embalmed section of wartime, I assume we’ll live forever in that piece of plastic coated paper. But, before we ride into immortality wearing the invulnerable faces of dead men, we ride into Cafe Ferrari for an aclohol rhapsody.

The opening and close of a passage calle the The photograph that captures how war has craved these men into lean mean fighters but also I love that it is a monent and those four may not get through it to the end but live in the picture!!

I had read Quiet flows the Una his debut book but never got to review it.I will get to that one at som,e point but now I will give my thoughts on this book. It is a book that isn’t for the faint-hearted it has warts and all view of the war but it also has those other reflections on how they grasp at the literature when they can or grab at love or just a woman to keep them warm. The language is rough in an interview he said he had liked the way the translator Mirza Puric had tried to recreate the dialogue as they would have said it with there local accents so it is in place it is like being in a working man’s club but for me, that is the feel of the frontline those men. This is a brutal world that has been brought to life in these stories it is a fragment in nature rather like the war for those that fought it. A powerful collection.

Singer in the night by Olja Savičević

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Singer in the night by Olja Savičević

Croatian fiction

Original title – Pjevač u noći.

Translator – Celia Hawksworth

Source – review copy

I’m back from my short holiday and back with a book from one of my favorite publishers Istros books and also a book that does something that in the time I have been blogging we are seeing and that is a second book from a writer coming out in English. Sometimes we see a great novel from a writer then never see any of there other works translated so this is the first of two returning writers that Istros have brought out this year the other I will be bringing you shortly here. I reviewed Olja first book farewell cowboy a novel that followed a sibling hunting for a lost brother with touches of lost time from her generation often called the lost generation. She grew up when Yugoslavia was still just together and saw the birth of a new country. This book like her earlier book, this is set in Split and also has a similar theme of a female looking for a lost male her it is Clementine’s story of searching for her ex-husband.

Dear citizens, householders, close friends, fellow townsfolk, mild and attentive civil servants and waiter, courageous and patient nurses, magicians, secretaries, dresser of abundant hair, eternal children in short trousers, seasonal ice-cream sellers, dealers in intoxicating substances, drivers who brake on bends, gondoliers of urban orbits, captains of foreign ships, foreign girl on captains, neighbours – agreeable disco gladiators, neighbouring proto astronauts and everyone else in Dinko Simunovic street, not to list you all

The book opens when a poetic letter is posted by someone calling themselves the nightingale. This letter an ode to the street in a district of Split and his wonderful neighbors from the daily rising to there lovemaking. This letter leads into a sort of hunt for the writer of it from someone that was his wife  Clementine now a successful soap opera writer sets of to find the Gale but also driving her car around the places they visited we see her take a drive into her past and what happened to bring them to the present from the street of the letter writer we see a trip to the seaside and the to the Capital of Zagreb where her job is launched and her street poet other half and her drift war and life drifted them and this fragment work shows a women grasping at the past love and trying to reconstruct her life and like most her fellow country people make sense of the war still there in the background and she has to face what is her reality what is her truth this in her world is maybe now rewritten like a soap episode and shows what happens when we make those choices.

All right, I’ll tell you, so ,my name is Clementine. On outside, I’m a blonde orange. I have a Brazilian hairstyle, I drive a two seater Mazda MX-5 covertible, gold, but inside I’m a black orange. Full of black juice.

The day bfore my meeting with nightingale’s mother, the meeting with which I began this story, I travelled from Ljubljana to Split. I decided to make the journey after I had spent tje whole of the proceding week vainly calling Gale every day,. When I tried to pay money for the boat’s berth  I discovered that his account had been closed months before, at the marina they told me he had paid all his bills, but, they’d noticed for some time no one had been coming to the boat. His mobile was dead and at first that annoyed me , then it worried me( we had not been in touch often, in fact very rarely in recent years, and then mainly in connection with our shared boat, but nevertheless).

Clem explains why she want to find the gale.

This book brilliantly is a mix of a road trip novel as clementine revisits her past in doing so sees where her life start from her home town and the mirror of her friends from then with her kids a life that she could have had there is a sense of a soap opera at times the way the tale opens piece by piece wanting us the reader to get to the next episode as one would say a lot of cliffhangers. This is also a detective work in a way we follow Clem and her hunt for the Gale and like a good detective novel those little clues of there lives and past are scatters as the picture builds this is a single night read that lingers with the reader. It has a heady mix of lost love, poetic writing, post-war Croatia  and pre-war Croatia without ever wallowing in the war just showing the outfall from letter by the likes of the old warrior.

Transit Comet Eclipse by Muharem Bazdulj

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Transit Comet Eclipse mc

Transit Comet Eclipse by Muharem Bazdulj

Bosnian fiction

Original title  – Tranzit, kometa, pomračenje, kucajte

Translator –  Natasa Milas

Source – Personal copy

I enjoy seeing writers whose books I have enjoyed having more books out in English. I read Byron and the Beauty when it came out a couple of years ago. I have met him briefly when I was in London a couple of years ago when we had a mint tea in Red Lion square with Istros books Susie. He has now moved to Belgrade to live after a number of years living in Sarajevo. He has written over nine novels and been translated into twenty languages this is his third book to be translated into English.

The land through the looking glass, tis is how I always thought about Moldova. I always have optical instruments on my mind, I think about mirror a great deal, maybe that is why this very thung crossed my mind. On the other hand. I didn’t think in this manner about Bulgaria. It’s simply as if something mysticalwere floating over Moldova. Tnje people were different, it wasn’t just the language. If I say that bulgaria is underdevolped or primitive, it is clearly like this within the world that I find familar. Iytis similar enough to other countries that Icould compare it to them, even to Bulgaria’s detriment. Moldova is difficult to compare ith anything,that’s how different it is

Moldova another linking factor in the three stories described here in the first novella in the collection Transit

 

The book is made up of three novellas linked by motifs of Elippise, transits or comets. The book opens as we Ruder Boskovic a Jesuit scientist who is traveling in the company of an English ambassador James porter from Istanbul to Petro grad. The journey for Ruder is to catch the once in a century transit of Venus. We capture his description of the hinterlands of Eastern Europe as he feels Moldova is darker than anywhere else at night. But breaks in the journey means he never gets to see the transit. But later in his life, he sees a poem dedicated to an eclipse. The next story follows a young Moldovan student Marie Alexander she is encouraged by her father to make more of her self. She was born the year Halley’s comet made its 75-year visit to Earth. She meets a Bosnian called Bosko  who opens her eye to what the West is like. You see what is coming but she follows him and ends up in Dubrovnik in bad company. The last story is a story of a writer. It is hard not to picture this as a shadow version of the writer himself. He is in America as the famous total Eclipse that happened in 1999 is due to take place as he is studying journalism and looking back at the place of his birth Dubrovnik that is also the place of birth of Ruder Boskovic. But is the place where he interviews a young Moldovan girl Marie Alexander that had ended up working in a club there. As the writer has his eyes opened by Paul Auster’s New York trilogy.

Marie Alexander woke up early. Bosko was still asleep. Occasional snoring came from his bed, probably what had woken her. The sound wasn’t pleasent, but it moved her. That’s love, shoe thought, when you like the ugly things about the person you love. It was then that a strange thought passed through her head. Will I like his snoring in twenty years? she wondered. I will, she thought quicklu and quietly dressed.She tiptoed over to Bosko bed and stared at his leeping face. He was frowning.She discerneddark bristles on his cheeks and his chin , which had seemed smooth last night. The sleepy body started to toss around as if he felt her gaze.She didn’t want to wake him.She left the room in silence and closed the door

Marie imagines a future that is shortlived as she is with a man tthat isnt’t what he seems!!

This tackles a number of things mainly wanting to go to the west from the east. But it is also a nod towards Paul Auster a writer the Muharem has translated into Bosnian. We have a series of interlink novels where the first two are separate tales, similar locations. But different ages see one man trying to capture a once in a lifetime event in the west and a young girl following her father’s dream of a better life in Paris. are all tied up in the last story a writer that looks back at both of the two previous tales sharing his place of birth with Ruder and then having interviewed the young Marie at a sex club in that same city as we see her dream broken. These are like the events mention short lives and a glimpse into life like a comet Marie want to burn up the sky but are only visible for a brief moment like her dream of going to the west or Ruder dream of seeing the transit of Venus or a journalist missing the eclipse as he sits learning about journalism much further west. Muharem has captured what is the dream of many in the east but also the nightmare that is the reality of it with Marie’s story.

 

Fear and his servant by Mirjana Novakovic

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Fear and his servant by Mirjana Novakovic

Serbian fiction

original title -Strah I njegov sluga

Translator – Terence McEneny

Source – review copy

I reach the last of this stop on Peter Owen World series Serbian collection. The last book of the series has my favourite cover of the year and like the other books were on the Shortlist for the Nin prize. Mirjana first published a collection of short stories in 1996 since then she has written three novels this was her first novel the other two have been on the Nin shortlist. She has had her books translated into a number of languages this book came out from a Serbian publisher a number of years ago.

It had been years since my last visit to Belgrade. And I missing it. I was curious to see what twenty years of Austrian rule had dome for the place. The last time I’d seen it, it was an Oriental bazaar, the skyline bristling withcountless minatrets, the air filled with the stench of tallow and the wailing of Muezzins. In Pest I’d heard how the city was nearly destroyed in the siege or 1717 but that the fortifications had since been tripled, making it even more impregnable during its time under the Turks.

Otto arrives to see how the Austrians have changed the place .

Well, the setting is 18th century Serbia and the atmosphere of this novel is similar to that of Dracula or Kaspar Hauser a story told from Princess Marie Ausua is in town looking for love and the same time as she arrives Otto Van Hausberg arrives with his Serbian servant Novak a crafty man, I was reminded of the many servants we have seen that are devious in the past . They are seen by some as the devil and his man on earth. They are there checking out reports of Vampires and an Attack on an Austrian tax collector.Marie and otto who has taken to his role as being the devil set off to the hinterlands of Serbia to find if the vampire attacks are real.Marie looks forward to seeing more of the country her eyes are naive and childlike at a time. The chapters switch from character to character and there is a sense of the past reflecting the present at times as well.The famous Serbian Vampire Sava Savanovic a real-life character and the best know Vampire Myth in Serbia lurks in the background.

Mary, Maria. Maria Augusta. She lay there in all helplessness. How does tat Serb put in that poem They’re always quoting? she sleeps, perhaps / Her eyes outside all evil. But the vampire wouldn’t let her. And, outside evil was standing watch. The red count sat beside me, quite unconcerned. He was twirling one of the many curls of his red wig

Mary is innocent and Naive in a way and as it says helpless at times.

This is one of those stories that we read middle European books for where else do we see the devil turn up or Evil From Stantango A man arriving in a town unknown cause many troubles. Like others, Otto is a voice questioning the world the devil on earth what is evil does the past have evil does the present have evil. This is one of those reads that will take many a rereading to discover the many twists in the tales also the links from the 18th century Serbia setting through the modern day Serbia and politics of the recent past. The power struggle between the East and west is also shown her Between The Austrian side and the older Ottoman side of the country. This is a clever retelling of old tales from modern eyes.