Villon meets Marx and dances on Stalin's grave in "GraveLarks" by Jan Křesadlo

In the borderlands of Ruritania and western Europe lies a fertile land particularly rich in "natural" and "intellectual" resources. Bohemia also occupies a special place in literary fiction and opera that arguably began before "La Boheme" however, it is with that opera that a wider notion of "Bohemian" became a global trope around the same time as the more universal "Ruritanian".

Jan Křesadlo's first novel, published by Jantar in 2015, offers a new memorable Bohemian character, Zderad. A magnificent satirical conceit,  transposing the life of the fifteenth-century bohemian troubador French poet, François Villon, into the singer, poet and Bohemian-with-a-capital B, Zderad. Fifteenth-century Villon is re-imagined here as a talented social misfit, exploring the rather Ruritanian notion of escape from oppression, through emigration within. 

Zderad, a noble misfit, investigates a powerful party figure in 1950s Czechoslovakia. His struggle against blackmail, starvation and betrayal leaves him determined to succeed where others have failed and died.

I must also point out the scale of the challenge to render this novel into English. The original – with its Czech language antics, often playfully idiosyncratic changes of ‘register’, interspersed with the Roma language and its pidgin Slovak and Hungarian cameos, Sudeten German, French and Russian, as well as segments in Latin and, most saliently, in classical Greek – is just not an easy novel to translate. Full congratulations are deserved for Václav Pinkava even to attempt it, yet here, he simply bosses the English narrative.

Josef Škvorecký would often identify Křesadlo, and not the better known Milan Kundera, as 68 Publishers’ greatest writer, even calling him “entirely unique”. However, Škvorecký is not Křesadlo’s only high profile admirer.

Peter Pišťanek (1965-2015), the award-winning Slovak author of the Rivers of Babylon trilogy, often spoke of his admiration. In his lifetime, he published a number of articles about Křesadlo, collected here in the Afterword. In his allegorical piece, Pišťanek boldly places Křesadlo on a pedestal as “the greatest post-war Czech writer”.

      Pišťanek also alludes to Křesadlo’s favourite armchair crusade: Milan Kundera. Křesadlo despised the former Stalinist author and later professional dissident, regarding him as a morally challenged pseud. He would use pejorative allusions to Kundera for the names of his anti-heroes in his later novels.

A triumphant intellectual thriller navigating the fragile ambiguity between sado-masochism, black humour, political satire and hope.

---

Enver Hoxha is just soooo Ruritanian Gothic

It's an image that defines so much that it is almost a shame to restrict a discussion to Ruritanian Gothic: black and white, grainy, right fist salute, could be the the 1940s, could be last week in south eastern Europe, the Ruritanian province of Albania.

Enver Hoxha was born in 1908, in Gjirokastër, a city in southern Albania then under the Ottoman Empire. At age 16, Hoxha helped found and became secretary of the Students Society of Gjirokastër, which protested against the monarchist government of Zog I. After the government closed the Society, he moved to Korçë, continuing his studies in a French secondary school. There he learned French history, literature and philosophy, and read the Communist Manifesto for the first time.<sup>[6]

He was chairman of the Democratic Front of Albania and commander-in-chief of the armed forces from 1944 until his death. He served as Prime Minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and at various times served as foreign minister and defence minister as well. The 40-year period of Hoxha's rule was characterized by the elimination of the opposition, prolific use of the death penalty[1][2] or long prison terms for his political opponents and evictions of their families from their homes to remote villages that were strictly controlled by police and the secret police (Sigurimi).

How does that not sound like a sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda? The Black Prince Michael could have been Hoxha's role model. A new biography has been translated into English and I for one, will be reading it!</sup>

 

Ruritainian Gothic tales on sale in SE London bookshop

Halcyon Books, 266 Lee High Road, London SE

Comics from far far away available in English

One of the more creative outlets for the youth of Ruritania lie in the amazing variety and quality of the comic books...even older people read them. The Ruritanian is a particular fan of Jaromír 99 who doesn't actually appear in the list on this blog. However, we're still very happy to see others out there, too!

https://literarytranslators.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/10-eastern-european-comic-books-in-translation-you-need-to-read-now/

Jantar favourite, Daniela Hodrová, nominated for this year's Magnesia Litera award

Jantar favourite, Daniela Hodrová, has been nominated for this year's Magnesia Litera award. Her latest and tenth novel, Točité věty[   ].  In all, there are six nominations in the prose category including the new novels by Iva Pekárková and Anna Bolavá thus creating a shortlist that is made up of half female writers and half male writers.

Congratulations to the organisers...

A Kingdom of Souls - Book Review

  A Kingdom of Souls - Book Review

A Kingdom of Souls by Daniela Hodrová, translated by Véronique Firkusny and Elena Sokol. Jantar Publishing, 2015, 200 pages.

Literary fiction from the Ruritanian lands has many literate and generous reviewers. Among the most famous, literate and widely read online is Michael Orthofer who recently published his own thoughts on Daniela's first novel, A Kingdom of Souls. His review is so compelling that it is very difficult to improve upon his opening paragraphs. I use purple on purpose:

A Kingdom of Souls is the first in a Prague-trilogy, the novel itself dated: "December 1977-October1978, June 1984" but only published after the fall of the Communist regime. Its prime locale and vista is the Olšany cemetery -- or at least a building opposite it, specifically a fifth floor apartment -- but even as much of the action is focused here it is a sweeping novel of Prague, and the modern Czech experience, since the Nazi occupation. It begins with one character dead(-but-not-entirely-departed), a presence in the pantry of that fifth floor apartment -- and he is soon joined by others, the small chamber eventually getting quite crowded. In a A Kingdom of Souls death isn't a complete release, and the dead figure just as much as the living.
       There are several prominent characters in this novel of criss-crossing stories, but the central one is young Alice Davidović, longing and waiting for her beloved, Pavel Santner. But as the novel opens Pavel Santner had left with a transport two weeks earlier, and the possibility of their reunion seems slight; Alice never entirely gives up hope -- and yet also does so almost immediately, in shocking fashion. It is the time of the Second World War; Alice's family is Jewish; they too "were to join a transport" .....
       Hodrová's novel is one of history, and characters whose stories are not fixed and definitive, not absolute (so also in the dead continuing to be very real presences, even if on an entirely different plane). As she writes at one point in the narrative:

That's how it happened, but perhaps it happened somewhat differently.

Alice is a character of Greek epic proportions both tragic and comic. She "leaves" in the opening paragraph but remains observing and participating, not only in this novel and the remaining two in the trilogy, but Daniela's entire literary output of ten novels to date. Her voice is given particular resonance when read aloud by one of her translators, Véronique Firkusny as she did on Radio Prague last year. In fact, the whole interview is fabulously interesting and possibly even more compelling that Orthofer's languid prose.

The novel was also reviewed very positively by the Times Literary Supplement and its gradual but positive beautiful impact on the English literary perception of Prague is noted with great happiness by the author and publisher. I began quoting Michael Orthofer and will now end with his his summary:

A Kingdom of Souls is a dark and elusive novel, but it is also seductive. Hodrová's precise expression (in this fine translation) and unexpected perspectives make for an impressively disturbing, compelling text.

Samko Tále's Cemetery Book Review

Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book by Daniela Kapitáňová, translated by Julia Sherwood. 
Garnett Press, 2011, 130 pages.

On the border of Ruritania and not far from France and very definitely north of the Mediterranean lies the land of present day Slovakia. It is a land with borders of its own: linguistic, geographical, rational and not very rational. All is explained by the Everyman
Samko Tále, with his first attempt at a hit list of those he wishes to see under gravestones in his local cemetery. The list isn't very long, so Samko Tále begins his second attempt at his Cemetery Book because his handcart is being repaired and it is raining. Also, we learn that a drunken mystic named Gusto Rúhe has advised Samko that he is destined to write. Thus, to fill in time, Samko decides to become a writer. Samko describes small-town life in modern Slovakia which is merely another province within Ruritania. His philosophy develops through a series of anecdotes that introduce the reader to his family and other misfits left behind by history in the Slovak border town of Komárno. The cemetery metaphor is explored with gusto in 130 pages of fun as Samko’s mask is revealed ever funnier and more terrifying.

We read of Samko’s proud achievement in the Young Pioneers and his respect for Gunár, the town’s former top communist official, but as he continues, Samko seems to pay more attention to the opaque predictions of the town’s drunk and mystic, Gusto Rúhe. Further comedy occurs with the shifting politics of Samko’s parents as history’s inevitability collapses into another universe. His uncle’s mission to heal the world with mushrooms provides one of the book’s finest themes, though unfortunately, we never find out if or how this was achieved. Such ambiguity, though, is not present when Samko lists his complaints against Czechs, Gypsies, Hungarians and his shock at inter-racial marriage.

Samko’s sour voice allows scant ‘wiggle room’ for any translator. However, Julia Sherwood’s translation provides a master class in how to render tone; for instance Alf Névéry’s cause of death is first introduced as “of failure” and then later, with the introduction of the indefinite article, “of a failure”. Quite what failed inside Alf is left for the reader to infer, but the episode remains hugely funny.

Many reviews describe Samko as some kind of post-1989 Forrest Gump and in doing so, miss the point. Samko is not a Slovak Forrest Gump but a subverted Pinocchio. Instead of wanting to be a boy, Samko is revealed as a gimp, a fascinating and thought-provoking insight into ourselves. He is local and universal, Slovak and Ruritanian, a complex collection of hopes, conceit and petty feuds.