King Stakh’s Wild hunt by Uladzimir Karatkevich

King Stakh’s Wild hunt by Uladzimir Karatkevich

Belarusian fiction

Original title – Дзікае паляванне караля Стаха

Translator – Mary Mintz

Source – review copy

I move further east and to another new country for the blog a second, this month with the first book from Belarus Uladzimir Karatkevich was one of the leading figures in Belarusian literature. He learned to read at an early age and was always interested in Belarusian history and folklore. He went on to study literature but always had the history in his homelands past. He started this book whilst at university but then spent a number of years working at it. This was considered his greatest novel. It was also made into a film although it seems the film only used part of the plot.

“What family is this?” I asked imprudently.”Where am I ?”

The old woman’s eyes blazed with anger.

“You are in the castle of March firs. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself no to know the owners. They are the Yanovskys. You understand the Yanovskys! You must have heard of them!”

I answered that I had, of course, heard of them. This statment of mine must have reassured the old woman.

With a gestiure worthy of a queen, she pointed to the armchair, approximately as queens do in thetheatre when they point to the executioner’s block ready for their unlucky lover. “There’s your place, you ill fated ine”. Then left me alone.

The creepy nature of the place is clear when Andrey ask where he is on arrival at the Marsh Firs.

This uses a classic myth of the Wild Hunt which is a myth about a group of riders on a Black horse and black dogs that hunt. The story starts when a young man that is a folklorist ends up at the castle of Marsh firs. Andrey Belaretsky is stuck there in a storm. He meets a young woman there Hope Yanovsky she is from an old aristocratic. He father has died due to the hunt and she has struggled after this and is sleepwalking. So stays in the castle. The young man falls for this young woman and tries to find out what has happened to her and her family. Why have they fallen foul of the wild hunt? A relative Gregory isn’t all he seems he has more to do with her father’s death than Andrey first knows. Another claimant on the title employed the midget to scare Hope. Then there is the midget an oddly shaped man like a character from a Herzog film that has strange features. He is there to maybe aid the mistress of the house descends into Madness Can Andrey help her find out what is really happening and work out why the hunt has targeted this castle.

“I saw him theree times and each time from afar. Once it was just before the death of my father. The other two, not long ago. I’ve also heard hom perhaps a hundred times. Nor was I ever frightened, except perhaps the last time ..just a litle, a very little.I went up to him, but he disappeared. It is really a very little man, he reaches up to my chest, skinny, and reminds one of a starved child. his eyes are sad, his hands are very long, and his head is unnaturally long. He dresssed as people used to dress 200 years ago, only in a westen manner. His clothes are green

The Midget brought in by another heir to scare Hope decribed by Hope.

 

This is a classic piece of folklore it has echoes of many myths from Dracula with a woman going mad and a man getting stuck in a castle. The wild hunt is a myth that is common in Belarus and Germany. The piece to first mention of this myth was written by the Grimm’s in the folk tales. I see why the film version of this book which I watched briefly on youtube as it had no subtitles but had a real feel of Hammer horro about this and I kept picturing those eerie castles in the hammer films and strangers end up in them like Andrey does. There is a romance as the young man tries to help Hope a cursed woman as she sees it but he starts to unravel it. He was called the master of historical detective novels and this is in a way a detective novel he tries to find out what the truth is behind what has happened to the Yanovsky family. I was also reminded of the moor scenes in Hound of the Baskervilles sometimes the places in this book at to the scary feeling of Hope the marshes near the castle reminded me of the Grimpen mire of Hound of the Baskervilles. I love that Glagoslav can publish writers like Karatkevich to us in English.His wiki page in Belarusia a long one says when roughly translated said he had a twenty-five vol collection of his works published he was a major writer.

Fleeting Snow by Pavel Vilikovsky

Fleeting Snow by Pavel Vilikovsky

Slovakian fiction

Original title – Letmý sneh

Translators – Julie and Peter Sherwood

Source – review copy

I now move over from France to Slovakia and the second book from there I have reviewed. Also, the first to be published by Istros press from there as they move a little further afield. They have chosen a writer considered the greatest living Slovak writer. He only wrote two books whilst communism was in control of the country. but since the regime change, he has written over a dozen books. This was his latest Novel to come out in Slovakian. He is also a leading translator of books from English into Slovak including great writers like Faulkner, Conrad, and Woolf. It is great to see more Slovakian fiction coming out.

1.B If, as the saying goes, every person is unique, their name ought to be unique too. Except that it doesn’t work like that. What is unique about say, Stefan Kovac, whose name is about as common as Stephen Smith is in english? In this country, no first name can ever be truly unique – the church and the clerks at the register office have seen to that – and if your surname happened to be Kovac the to boot, you’ve had it: you’ll end up being known as Kovac up the valley, or Kovac the shepherd. Slovak is a garrulous language, we don’t mind throwngin an extra word here and there, but even with additional piece of information, does a name convey anythingunique about a person?

the second part of the first story about how come the name is but also how they use extra wrds to identify a stefan Kovac who is ours ?

This is a book that has five interweaving stories at its heart. This is a fragmented book almost like a snowflake with the five points coming out. The first story is the tale of a man at the end of a long marriage that seems to be losing his mind early on we hear he is called Stefan Kovac but has now taken the name Cimborazka and is a self-declared Cimborazka. The second story tells us about a pair of step twins and talks about the soul. The third starts with an avalanche and the fourth story strand a scholar called Stefan, that has recently had a book about North American Indian languages in the US. This fourth links to the first story and where we have a talk about certain US place names that may have Native American origins. The fifth strand finds someone looking through old photos. The strands of the stories cross and the link they are about life, language particular Slovakian and old age. The loss of memory in old age. The snow is the metaphor in a way for so much in this book memories fade like snow old age leads to dementia which is like an avalanche that clears that top layer of one’s memories leaving what was under.  There is a sense of the fleeting nature of life art tines and what makes us as people who is Stefan Kovac a name we are told early on is as common in Slovakia as Stephen Smith is here.

1.J My real name is Cimborazka but I haven’t told ayone. What would be the point ? It would be the same changing your phone number: your friends will remember your new number but the will still use it to ring the same person as before, the same idea of a person. But I don’t want to receive letters addressed toDear Mr Cimborazka, which would be like addresssing a different person each time. Cimborazka is a clean blank sheeet; a reminder that I am a person – not an entity, just a being, albeit a human one. And that every human possibility is therefore still open to me each and everytime. It is a silent, secret challenge to honour my name

What is a name like the first quote another on identity as Kovacs becomes Cimborazka or does he .

This is a meandering book about the nature of life in a way questioned in many ways. Language and how it is used the short passages that make this book up reminded me of the little snippets in books like The book of Disquiet or Zibaldone thou this has more narrative and a central figure that of Stefan Kovac is he the same person, or a step twin or just another character. As in the end all the strands end in one final passage as a couple talk about how many words are in Slovakian and then as they wander on to find a disk on the ground showing distance to place and maybe placing them back in their world with a thrown word over the fact that Vienna is only 57 kilometers away. This is a writer in his old age trying to write a series of themes that must have been important to him in his life like Slovakian for a translator which is a language he mentions for how many more words there are in it. What we are what he has written about what lies after the writer’s life is gone or like the snow what remains when it has melted just the memory of it.

The Kites by Romain Gary

The Kites by Romain Gary

French fiction

Original title – Les Cerfs-volants

Translator – Miranda Richmond Mouillot

Source – Review copy

I looked back and it has taken a good while to get from book 90 to 99 from France. I have slowed down blogging wise this last year.I remember thinking after the eighth year anniversary it would be that year I would hit a 100 books from France and I hadn’t so I looked at the last two spots and this is the first my 99th book and the first from Romain Gary on the blog. I think I so=hould have featured him earlier I have had a couple of his books other than this one sat around for a couple of years. His life reads like a novel he was a Diplomat, resistance fighter, filmmaker and also the only writer to have won the Prix Goncourt twice when his non de plume won as well. This was his last work before he committed suicide.

“I don’t have any parents. I live with my uncle”

“What does he do?”

I sensed vaguely that “rural postman” wasn’t quite the right thing

“He’s a kite master.”

She seemed favourably impressed.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s like a great captain, but in the sky.”

She thought for a little while longer then got up.”Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow”, she said. “I don’t know. I’m very unpredictable.How old are you?”

“I’m almost ten.”

“Oh, you’re far to young for me. I’m almosrt eleven and a half. But i like wild strawberries, Wait for me here tomorrow at the same time,. I’ll be back if there’s nothing better to do.

The first meeting in the field of the young couple that starts a love that last for years

 

 

The story starts in the early 1930’s when a young boy Ludo, he is the nephew of a man famous for his unusual and daring Kites Ambrose Fleury. The story starts when this young boy meets by chance one day a Polish aristocrat in a field. Lila a woman that grabs the young boys attention for the rest of his life. This sets forth his life from this point in a whole new direction as he falls in love with this slightly older girl. But also as he loses her in the war and sees what happened. His uncle has already got in trouble flying a kit based around Jewish star of David the Jews had to wear. This sees the war through a young man’s eyes as his village and those he grew up with try to resist the Germans. The activity in the village centers around the Cafe Clos Joli as they cycle around the Germans passing messages and he tries to find out what has happened to Lila. Locals like a Jewish prostitute who changes her self from that to an exiled Lady within the village, A wonderful insight into the way everyday French people tried to resist the Germans. As we see Ludo move from a boy to a man and His love for Lila change.

THE CLOS JOLI CONTINUED TO PROSPER< BUT MARCELLIEN DUPART’S reputation in the area began to suffer; he was accused of serving the ocupier to well; as for comrades, they hated him cordially. I knew him better than that and defended him when my friends called him a bootlicker or a collaborator.Truth be told as soon as the ocupation began with German superior officers and the entire Parisian elite already flocking to his “galleries” and his “rotunda”. Duprat made his choice.

The Clos Joli serves great food so has many imortant customers that come through it.

This is one of those books that cuts across genres. War story in part, the story of a village in the war. A heartsong to the France of those years one Gary would remember as he served in the resistance. The similar feeling I remember hearing from some of the old people I looked after thirty years ago that were involved in the war about the spirit that brought people together in those time seen. A romance where the love is maybe one-sided as Lila is very much above the young boy that has fallen for her. A coming of age novel. Yes, this has it all in also I often felt the relationship between Ludo and Lila was similar to that of pip and Estelle in great expectations the aloof nature of Lila is similar to that of Lila. The Clos Juli remind me of the cafe at the center of Allo Allo which like the one in the Kites was the center of village life like most cafes of that time and was also the main center of the resistance whilst still operating as a cafe. The last book of his lifetime and here nearly forty years later in English for the first time. The 99th book for this blog from France not long til I get 100 up.

Happy 9th blogiversary

 

 

 

 

 

I like the App tells you now when the anniversary of the blog. Well, mine was last night nine years have flown with 832 books under review on the blog averaging nearly a hundred books a year over the course of nine years also a total of 1568 post over that time as well a post every other day over the course of the nine years. I have enjoyed many things through this blog and have met many people over the course of the last nine years. I move on to the decade of this blog next year I want to try and add a few more countries and maybe get nearer the 1000 books under review. Many thanks to all that comment and like the post over the last nine years.

The Radiance of the king by Camara Laye

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye

Guinea Fiction

Original title – Le Regard du roi

Translator – James Kirkup

Source – personal copy

I said with the post the other day I had felt the variety of place I had blogged from had narrowed in recent years from the early years when I would have a number more African title in the mix. So I have had this on my shelf for a few years I like to keep a few titles from places I haven’t read from in reserve for the day I really struggle to find somewhere new. Camara Laye was born into a family caste that was traditionally Blacksmiths and Goldsmiths. He studied Mechanics and became an engineer via his studies. He like many Guinean males of the time was circumcised this form the story of his debut novel the African child. This was his second novel and unlike the debut is an allegorical novel.

“What right?” asked the beggar, as if the word had startled him.

“Wasn’t that mor or less what you told me? Wasn’t that  what you were hinting at, at least ?

Clarence was now speaking with great bitterness

“I spoke only of “Favour” “said the beggar “You are quite wrong to think I said anything about “rights” of any kind. As far as I’m concerned, I have nevered claimed any kind of “rights” I have always resticted myself to soliciting favours.I’ll say no more than that I expect these favours tobe granted.

They have just meet and the Beggar is a strange man .

This novel tell the strange tales of Clarence he is a penniless white man who has got stuck in an unnamed African country with no money and no one apart from the locals to help him.We see over the three parts of the book as Clarence tries to get to see the King get him to help to get home. A job with the king would help him get home. He has lost everything to a game shortly after he arrives. He has been helped initially by a beggar. This beggar is a strange character as he says he has a way for Clarence to get to the King. They do at one point see the King but then learn he has headed south for a while. Then we meet another strange pair a couple of Naoga and Noaga whom with the beggar set of to a village in the south. They get drunk on the arrival in the Village and the beggar has a strange look at Clarence then leaves the village on a donkey !! THen Clarence ends up in a cycle of drinking and getting stuck into village life feeling a lazy way of life coming over him and the king coming seeming more distant as he tries to get the answer to when the king is coming! while he escapes returning home? Will he meet the King?

They were made aware if its proximity by an odur which ought to be described, not merely because Clarence was especially sensitive to smells, and very curiously affected by them, but also, and above all, because this odur was particularly representative of the whole character of the south

The odour was a subtle combination of flower perfumes and the exhalations of vegetable moulds, It was certainly a strange and even suspect fragrance, not disagreeable, or not overwhelmingly so, but strange, and suspect, a little like the turbid odour of a hot-house full of decay blooms

The fragrence as they head south has a almost mad=gic realist description about it !

This is an unusual novel as it has a white man turning African and not an African becoming western. Clarence gets drawn into village life. He is also a man that has to face challenges this is like the temptations of the flesh and mind. From the off were he loses his money, then the temptations of the women of becoming lazy all challenge him in meeting the King as he sees others around him trying like the blacksmith does in the village to make the perfect axe for the King. Clarence also is like a Kafka character, the book starts with the Kafka quote and there is a sense to a similar dream world in Clarences being stuck in the village in the middle part of the book. This is another early work of Franco African literature coming out in 1954 for the first time. I hope to try African child at some point by Laye. My copy was a Fontana modern from the early seventies with as you see a rather old-fashioned cover

Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

Senegalese fiction

Original title – L’Aventure ambiguë

Translator – Katherine Woods

Source – personal copy

I enjoyed the early years of the blog when I didn’t get sent as many books as I do know as it meant I had search books from the library or what I found in these early post on the blog one of the areas I  covered more than I do now is  African literature. I have long been a fan of the African writer series and still have a number on the shelf unread. So as I am trying to cheer myself up I looked back on what this blog means and discovered I have been missing those chance finds and books that set me apart in the past. So this by one of the most widely regarded early postcolonial African writers this book won the Grand Prix d’ literature d’ Afrique Noire a prize for the best French-language work from Syb Saharan Africa this was the second ever winner in 1962.

“The peace of God be upon this house. the poor disciple is in quest of his daily pittance.”

The sentences, plaintively spoken in a quavering voice by Samba Diallo, were repeated by his three companions. The four youths, shivering in their thin rags of clothing under the blast of the fresh morning wind, stood at the door of the Diallobe chief’s spacious dwelling.

“Men of god, reflect upon your approaching death. Awake, oh awake! Azreal, andel of death, is already breaking the earth for you. Itis about to rise up at your feet. Men of god, death is not that sly creature it is believed to be, which comes when it is not expected, and conceals itself so well that when it has come there is no longer anyone there.”

The boy enters his fathers hut a mixture of Islam and tribal words early on in the book.

I said yesterday I loved books that feature culture clashes and this is one such book. It is set in those early post-colonial years when places like Senegal were finding their feet but still some of the locals looked to France as the center of their world. This is the story of one Boys journey to manhood in those years. Sambo Diallo the boy and the main character of this take is the next in line to be Chief of his people the Diallobes. We see him as he is being taught by his teacher in a hut by the fire the Koran off by heart. This teaches him what the text means to him and also in the wider sense of the tribe. His father did the same as a child and is all for this being his only education. But his Aunt The grand royal his father sisters think the boy will be better for spending time in France. In the end, the boy is sent to Paris and studies Philosophy among other things. He loses his homeland and his strict Islamic identity but also is never treat as French and is always viewed as that African when in the company of others. He struggles to find his place in his two worlds together.

Like Paul Lacroi, he did not express this thought aloud. He said, instead:

“I believe that you understand very well what I want to say to you. I do not contest the auality of the truth which science discloses. But it is a partial truth; and insofar as there will be a future, all truth will be partial. Truth takes its place at the end of history. But \I see that we are setting out on the deceptive road of metaphysics”

Samba much changed in tone after some time in France when he speaks but also a sense of no trust in the world he is in here.

This is a classic tale of a boy journey to manhood it has classic eye-opening scenes like when he sees the bigger world when he arrives in France. But he also struggles to fit in the struggle of who he is now he has seen the wider world leaves him questioning the world he grew up in.  This is one of the reasons I started the blog to discover about the past and present around the world those grinding of our western world . up with the traditional world tribal lives that were still evident in the 60’s. I was pleased to see the other month that the ebook catalog of the African writer series had been brought for academic use it seems I tried to find the piece but haven’t. It is nice see people get the chance to look back at some of these works ok times have changed but these books are as important as English and American novels people regard highly from the same time. This is a great insight into traditional Islamic culture in Senegal and that clashing with arriving in sixties Paris.

Spanish and Portuguese summer reading months 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope Richard doesn’t mind me going tonight with this but as the two countries face each other in the world cup tonight it seemed a good time to announce our fifth Spanish lit month well we do it for two months now and have expanded to include Portuguese literature as well for a second year. This years is an image of Lisbon I have change with the Prisma programme. I am looking forward to seeing the wide variety of books we get Richard usually rounds up through the month I will happily tweet any reviews on twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a list of the spanish speaking countries from the first Spanish lit month.

 

 

Here is another of the Portuguese speaking world.I will be featuring more Portuguese novels this year. As the last year, I have been buying a lot of books from Portugal to try and build up this area on the blog.

 

 

 

 

We have chosen one read along well I have I think Richard may want to choose a Portuguese novel as I choose this. Dona Barbara is considered one of the greatest Latin American novels. It is in the list of the 100 best novels from PBS  . This for me also has themes in the book are ones I love the clashing of traditional and modern ideas within a society, the clash of city and country. It has been made into a couple of films and is considered one of the best portraits of Venezuelan society at the time the book is set.  We are thinking of posts in the last week of August and discussing the book around them. We can also talk on twitter about the book.

Sorry update we running this over July and August .

Smoking Kills by Antoine Laurain

 

Smoking Kills by Antoine Laurain

French fiction

Original title –  Fume et Tue

Translator – Louise Rogers-Lalaurie

Source – review copy

I mentioned the other day that the Wodehouse prize for the funniest book in English had been stopped this year due to a lack of funny books. Here is another example of a great comic work in translation. Antoine Laurain is a writer I have reviewed four times before, his books are witty and usually have a turning point in them. This is a book he wrote a few years ago I imagine this was like the time in the UK when the smoking bans came in Place. This also moves the total of French novels under review on this blog to 98 nearly at the 100 mark.

I couldn’t believe it. Now that it was full stem ahead with the smoking ban, the rats were leaving the sinking ship. Vancourt had joined the enemy. He was as bad as the barman – another smoker – at the hotel d’Aubusson, who, ever since his hotel had implemented the ban had been vaunting the merits of his smok-free workplace.” I work better and can breathe ” he told me , earnestly. This man who from time to time used to share a smoke with me at the bar. And wasn’t the first smoker I had seen rally to the opinon of the majority. Strange how people are apt to turn their coats at once large scale .

I would call this effect the Simon Cowell effect when somesays something and every one around agrees with them

Fabrice Valentine is a fifty-year-old married Headhunter who is a compulsive smoker. When the rules at work change and he has to stop smoking there. This to him feels like his whole world is changing. After much discussion with his wife about this, it leads him to a hypnotherapist. But it also leads him back to the earliest years and how he ended up a two packet a day smoker. As his wife, Sidone has said he be best stopping. He does succeed the hypnotherapy has done its trick and this lifelong smoker has kicked his habit.That is until to one night he is coming home from work and is attacked and he fights off the man that attacks him.  In the end, throws him to the rails of an oncoming train he then runs home has a cigarette but the buzz doesn’t last like it when he was smoking. SO when a new colleague really e=getrs under his skin Fabrice has a clever plan !!

I would go walking with him my early teen. My father would puff on his cigar, while I was allowed a handful of Malabars brought at a backery along the way. Often, he would remember that he had brought my bubblegum while he was buying his box of Punch cigars from the tobacco counter in the cafe. “Your turn now ” he would say, and we would look around for the nearest bakery.For months, our walks invariably ended at Place du Colonel Fabien. Oscar Niemeyer had drawn up the plans for the headquarters of the French communist party , theb under construction.I can see my father  now, chewing on his cigarm standing motionless lostin admiration of the great structure.

I was reminded of my own dad who used smoke cigars on our walks when we were younger a smell that still evokes memoires to this day.

I said there was a turning point there is a few in this the first the decision to stop smoking for Fabrice leads the narrative to the nostalgia that for me is always a part in Laurain’s books. I remember packets brands I liked to smoke when I smoked. I was a fan of French brands like he has Benson and Hedges. I would often have Gaulouise Blondes a brand which seemed hip back in the day. It’s been years since I stopped, unlike Fabrice. I didn’t use hypnotherapy no I just managed with cold turkey and well a dislocated elbow that made rolling my own impossible just at the time I had stopped. The second turning point that leads to the latter part of the book is the attack at the station and the death of the attacker which sends the story in an unexpected direction which is another theme that runs through Laurain’s books. The nearest I could connect to this book was a section in the film Cats eyes a collection of Stephen King stories about a man that goes to a strange stop smoking agency that isn’t all it seems like this it has an unexpected turn when the main character starts smoking again.

Blood of the dawn by Claudia Salazar Jimenez

Blood of the dawn by Claudia Salazar Jimenez

Peruvian fiction

Original title –  La sangre de la Aurora

Translator – Elizabeth Bryer

Source – Personal copy

I am always trying to add new voices to the countries I have read books from. I have read four books from Per but they are all bt Male writers so when I saw this one from Deep Vellum by one of the leading female writers from Peru I decided I would give it a try. Claudia Salazar Jimenez studied Literature in Lima and then In new york. She has since living in New York set up a Peruvian film festival and a creative writing workshop. In an interview, she states that her books problematize the limits between history and literature, the point of enunciation of official historiography and the inherent relationship that both disciplines have with the language in this sense, both novels are inserted into the genre of historical fiction , works that controvert the mechanisms by which operates historiographical discourse. Talking about her two novels including this one. 

How many  were there it hardly matters twenty came thirty say those who got away counting is uselesscrack machete blade a divided chest crack no more milk another one falls machete knife dagger stone sling crack my daughter crack my brother crack my husband crack my mother crack exposed flesh broken neck machete eyeball crack femur tibula crack faceless earless noseless swallow it crack right now eat it up pick the ear up off the floor

Just a breif pice of the passage of the masacre gives a sense of the horror i was remind of the lines Brando spoke the horror the horror of war in Apocalyase now

Blood of the dawn follows three women through the early years of the conflict that happened in Peru between 1980 and 2000 between the government and the shining path. This is also a theme in the two of the other books I have read from Peru The blue hour and Red April but both were from a male perspective. This has a woman Marcela a teacher drawn to the dream of helping the poor of the country she becomes a terrorist. Melanie a young photographer who has been left here by a lover who left her to escape to France. and then we have Modesta a poor woman the exact person they were fighting for but she loves her family. All three of the voices intertwine. But the book opens into the violent side of the conflict when in the early pages we have a vivid and bloody retelling of an actual event that of the massacre of Lucanamarca where 69 people lost their lives this village is Modesta home and the aftermath of this event and the effect on three women is told in the book.

I got a call from a reporter who has just got back from the central conflict zone. Usually he has a calming unwavering air, but today he is annoyed, iffitable. His voice is almost enough to make the receiver tremble. I sense he’s being careful not to shout but can’t help raising his voice . They’ve never edited a story of mine in such an outrageous way. Not ever, Mel. It looks like orders from higher up.. They smudge the blood on the paper so it won’t spatter the city of drizzle. It has already splattered, even if they don’t want to see it. National security, they argue.

The violence is tamed down to the wider public after time.cenors so often blur war in the public eyes.

This is a gem of a book given a clear and vivid voice to three women who were touched by the horrors of the violent years that happened in Peru. The opening pages of the massacre capture a real sense of being caught up in the horror of this event and the rest of the book shows the outfall of this violence at the personal level of three women drawn together in the violence and each damaged and changed by it. This is what great historical fiction should do capture the true horror of what was horrific times but here told from a point of view we never really hear from the female involved and caught up in the violence just by living in the wrong place. Another strong female writer from Latin America I have covered so many in the last few years.

Daša Drndić, At true great of European fiction has passed.

The pic is of Dasa when I meet her the day at the IFFp in 2013 when her first book to be translated into English. Trieste had been shortlisted for the prize. I had a good half hour chat that evening with her. She told me about how the Italian edition of the book Trieste had a tear-out section of the list of names of Jewish people killed in Italy and the idea was that people could take out a name they knew and over time as the pages went like the losses of the people the book became unstable like the loss of all those voices on society. This is a perfect example of the power of her as a writer. I have reviewed the three books she has been translated into English they are Trieste, Leica Format and Belladonna. She also paid me the highest compliment in say she had read my blog, although I could do with an editor she said. She also commented a few times on the blog which for me was touching. Her books dealt with big subjects and showed the brutal heart of Europe a writer that needs to be read. I’m sorry to hear of her passing today and remember a warm summers day I meet her a number of years ago. Her words when her last book was up for the Croat book of the year sum her views up well.

We live in a very sick time, in a time that destroys spirit, thought, freedom, individuality, joy, beauty, knowledge, and love, and at the same time destroys ourselves. Just like a carcinogenic pancreas, whenever it eats the bodies surrounding it, it disappears alone. To those who write this topic to pretek. Within this globally collapsing, decaying world (the world), floats countless stories of small and large, known, unknown, for literature more than enough. After all, those who read (and increasingly reads a leafy, quick and easy digestive book with enough additives to absorb the original flavor of ‘material’) are at least at times privy to their voyeur passion, a foolish fool, in English called the ‘pacifier’. So the everyday life remains cloudy, and the imaginative readers are unaware of their existential limbo.(a google translation but gets the spirit of her words)