A 1960s novel from a Cuban-Italian novelist whose work is having a modest unburying from Pushkin Press, filmed in 1968 by spaghetti western director FA 1960s novel from a Cuban-Italian novelist whose work is having a modest unburying from Pushkin Press, filmed in 1968 by spaghetti western director Franco Giraldi to lukewarm reviews. Guilio Broggini is a womanizing lawyer whose lust is directed toward buxom and deeply cynical teenager Ivana. He spends the bulk of the novel trying to smarm her into the sack before tossing her aside like his other lovers. Her savvy family, however, make it impossible for him to sate his lust with their daughter until they are properly married and the approval of a mythical uncle is awarded. A witty and entertaining exploration of class relations in 1960s Italy—where the poverty gap between the Ferrari-driving class and the struggling Mussolini-nostalgic working class was stark—as well as a frequently hilarious comedy of errors, this novel (translated by the legendary Isabel Quigly) is a stylish and thoroughly engaging work from a writer deserving of a proper unburying. This edition was first published in 1968 by Michael Joseph....more
This short primer on the funkiest fictioneers in North Macedonia (for the geographically rusty, Macedonia is a region in the Balkans, not a country), This short primer on the funkiest fictioneers in North Macedonia (for the geographically rusty, Macedonia is a region in the Balkans, not a country), includes sixteen stories from the hippest contemporary writers. Among my favourites, the satire on post-communist bureaucracy ‘A Slip of Paper’ by Dragi Mihajlovski, where an academic encounters the waning powers of fascistic bank clerks; ‘Strained’ by Tomislav Osmanli, a where a party leader arrives at A&E having enveloped an entire computer and a range of acolytes from party headquarters; ‘The Nonhuman Adversary’ by Kalina Maleska, where a translator is tormented by the undwindling page count remaining in his word document; and Žarko Kujundžiski’s ‘Story Addict’, where a deranged fiction-junkie howls for his latest fix of literary smack. The collection showcases a range of styles, from interior melodrama, realist snapshots, to quiet nightmares. Translator Paul Filev has Englished these stories wonderfully, bringing these North Macedonian marvels to the page with truckles of flair. An essential read for any purveyor of post-communist European fiction. ...more
As in the cinematic weirdscapes of Quentin Dupieux, where murderous rubber tyres stalk the land and style-obsessed men fawn over deerskin coats, PortuAs in the cinematic weirdscapes of Quentin Dupieux, where murderous rubber tyres stalk the land and style-obsessed men fawn over deerskin coats, Portuguese author João Reis creates hermetically sealed worlds of singular weirdness that inhabit their own surreal illogic and invite the reader to either step inside or scurry for cover under saner fictions. In his second Englished novel (self-translated from the original A Avó e a Neve Russa), Reis opens with two detectives discussing the murder of a 29-year-old woman (reported as in her 30s in the paper) with a plush donkey (a robo-toy created by the father of Alexei, whom the toy refers to as ‘Dad’). Opening with the retelling of a breakfast where Alexei’s father is keen to assert his right to call pancakes waffles, the plush donkey continues to digressively relate his memories of the morning.
The narrative floats away from the plush donkey to an unnamed narrator, into the run-on thoughts of Detectives Anderson & Mercier. The second part of the novel is a sustained interrogation of suspect Didier H., a section that brings to mind Dupieux’s Au Poste!, a film centred around an increasingly absurd interrogation. Here, Detective Anderson’s fixation on the works of Wittgenstein and works on Wittgenstein leads him to conduct a hilarious interrogation based on an overly literal rendering of Wittgensteinian logic, all the while blissfully unaware his co-detective has long been bedding his missus.
Reis’s last book in English, The Translator’s Bride (Open Letter), centred around a translator who smelled sulphur, and showed the author’s skill at the crazed internal monologue form as perfected by Thomas Bernhard—an uproarious work of sustained coddiwompling in short, hiccupping clauses ensnuggled in commas. This novel is more liberal in its formal merriment, moving often randomly into long unpunctuated streams-of-consciousness, sequences of barmy interrogatory dialogue, and the repetitive rhythms of the extremely loveable plush donkey. A merry manglement of the sleuth procedural, the identity of the murderer is not as important (Reis tortures the reader with the murder’s reveal) as the rollicking ride to nowhere in which the novel revels. A splendidly unhinged slice of surrealist noir....more
Parodies of the picaresque are not the rarest of literary species, whether we’re talking old-timers The Pickwick Papers or The Good Soldier Švejk, or Parodies of the picaresque are not the rarest of literary species, whether we’re talking old-timers The Pickwick Papers or The Good Soldier Švejk, or newishbies The Sot-Weed Factor, Falstaff, or Forbidden Line. Catalan writer Max Besora respects this rich tradition of the rollicking picaresque-on-speed, keeping the form chuckling along with his first novel in translation.
Being the tale of one Joan Orpí founder of New Catalonia (the title tells no lies), the narrative is related to us by your classic untrustworthy narrator, chronicling our hero’s years bumming around the Catalan liminals, accosted at sabrepoint by highwaymen and women while struggling to please his perpetually unimpressed father, through his years sweltering in the jungles of Venezuela trying to form a less genocidal Catalan republic free from the butchery of noblemen. Most of the shenanigans are familiar to any readers of Cervantes (whose Quixote is deferentially rimmed throughout, making a brief appearance to share with Orpí his MS), and the star of the novel is the ebulliently inconsistent linguistic whirlwind on show—a punny and playfully parodic assault on Middle English, with frequent forays into Ebonics by a dwarf rapper and Chicano smack from Orpí’s loose-tongued sidekick.
As the original novel parodied the Catalan dialect of the period, translator Mara Faye Lethem has had to invent her own comical lexicon, and as a translation feat this places her on a par with Suzanne Jill Levine’s translations of Guillermo Cabrera Infante, or Michael Henry Heim’s translations of Sasha Sokolov and Karel Čapek. The range of comedic flair on show here make this novel a remarkably accomplished collaborative effort between Lethem and Besora. Beneath the work’s unflagging vim are sharply satirical assaults on the atrocities committed by Spanish colonisers of the New World, lending the novel an edge beneath the onslaught of frequently hilarious (and often tiresome) humour. ...more
A methodical schoolteach spots similar in a straight-to-video video, then plunges into a mental conundrum throbbier than most mental conundra. As otheA methodical schoolteach spots similar in a straight-to-video video, then plunges into a mental conundrum throbbier than most mental conundra. As others noted, the Dostoevskii parallels are obvious, though Saramago’s rambling self-aware sentences and Shandyean epigraph speaks of a comic mischief that keeps the novel in the romping, care-free, septuagenarian riff mode. Inessential funtime. ...more
A Catalan classic, this novel from the 1950s is a triumph of arch elegance, set in the Victorian era and written with a modernist bent. The live-in prA Catalan classic, this novel from the 1950s is a triumph of arch elegance, set in the Victorian era and written with a modernist bent. The live-in priest of a fading aristocratic couple relates episodes from their tumultuous lives, a compendium of amusing anecdote, erudition, and travelogue. The writer’s skill for charming dialogue, entertaining digressions, and rendering scenes in laconic chapters, make the novel a winner....more
