Child Wonder Giveaway and Read EAST 2011 Update

First off, there's officially just two months to complete the 2011 Eastern European Reading Challenge!  How have you done so far?  The original link is here: http://www.theblacksheepdances.com/p/scandinavian-challenge-participants.html. 

To recap, the goal was to read from 4-12 books from Eastern Europe in any genre.  I haven't totally out all the reviews so far, but just in the last month Krista, a Russian historian (Leia1912), has kicked in six reviews, and I know Lisa and Daisy have at least that many submitted.

To date, we have 72 participants in 22 countries playing along.  That ALMOST tops last year's 78 for the Scandinavian Challenge....

For 2012, BEA's main country of focus is Russia, so that should generate even more interest in Eastern European titles.  However, in 2012, The Black Sheep Dances will be pushing literature from a different region:  any suggestions?  Stick with Eastern Europe?  Focus solely on Russia?  Move to Spain?  Perhaps a South American reading challenge so we have an excuse to linger over Pablo Neruda?  Suggestions, please, in the comment box for a geographical region to pursue.  I wouldn't mind staying where we are....just add your two cents!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Next:  Child Wonder is a new novel by Roy Jacobsen.  Graywolf Press (graywolfpress.org) has generously given me an extra copy, so it's time for a new giveaway!  I've read it already (I read the MacLehose UK version) but I haven't put the review up yet.  It's a Norwegian translation that focuses on the relationship of a mother and son when significant changes enter their household. 

This giveaway is for US only (sorry!) and ends Nov 15, 2011.  A random winner will get the new paperback copy, but if you can't wait, it can be purchased at graywolfpress.org or any online retailer.  To enter, be a blog follower and leave your name in a comment below with contact info. 

Between Nine and Nine by Leo Perutz

Translated by Thomas B. Ahrens and Edward T. Larkin

"He belongs to a lower form of the human species.  An occasional game of poker is the only intellectual activity I have observed in him, and even then he loses most of the time.  You don't know him, but I always had the notion-even before I had met him and long before I knew who he was: 'This mandrill actually walks more or less like a human'.  It wasn't out of spitefulness...but I was really surprised that he was so good at walking upright....Well, this mandrill is about to snatch Sonja from me."

Poor Stanislaus.  To hear him describe Georg Weiner, you'd think that Georg was the creepiest guy in the world.  Why on earth would Sonja fall in love with such a cad?  Actually, the problem is the socially-inept Stanislaus.  Arrogant yet completely ill at ease.  His cagey behavior makes some assume he's a thief, yet he pays his way.  Some think he's an incredibly smart intellectual, but his actions are childish.  All of this combine to create a narrative that is both cynical and sweet.

One thing is sure:  Stanislaus loves Sonja, to the best he can, given that 'love' is undefined for him.  Sonja for her part is scared to death of this suitor, who turns charm on and off, and leaves everyone a bit off kilter.

"I often told her, a woman shouldn't go to a cafe.  To see a woman, you should have to climb four flights of stairs and ring the doorball, your heart pounding.  And then you don't find her at home - you've come in vain.  It's not until you're going down the stairs, disappointed, that you feel that you love her.  But a woman whom you can find at a cafe whenever you feel like seeing her...declines in value and becomes commonplace."

Against Sonja's opposition and against his own awkwardness, Stanislaus has to find the money to take Sonja on a trip to compete with the wealthier Georg.  His attempts are whole-hearted, as he sees no problem with stealing or evading the police.  In fact, it's only in those frantic moments, jumping over roofs, that Stanislaus comes even close to his image of himself.

This complicated novel features other intriguing characters (Steffi and Sonja being two) that never play to type.  I did get confused a few times as to what was happening in the narrative: was it actual or imaginary?  Yet I'd quickly find my place in the context after a few sentences.  Written in 1918 in German, the story is timeless as a good underdog story never ages.  An excellent title for the Eastern European Reading Challenge!!!  It's part of the 'Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought Translation Series' from Ariadne Press. 

Special thanks to Jorun with Ariadne Press for the Review Copy.

Pushkin's Prose Stories

Russia:  2011 READ EAST selection

Pushkin is pretty much synonymous with Russian prose, and in the past I can only remember reading a short story or two.  This collection contains most of his famous short stories as well as a few unfinished tales.  While they were written in the early 1800's, the stories are timeless and reflect quite a knowledge of human nature.  "The Blizzard" and "The Postmaster" were both favorites of mine..."The Undertaker" was also amusing.  The subject matter seems to revolve around the either very wealthy or very poor in Russia, with detailed descriptions of high society in the times.  Russia hadn't yet seen many of the tragedies that would later occur, so the stories are not heavily involved in military accounts or political issues.  Instead, very simple stories about ordinary people fill the volume.

This would be a great introduction to Russian literature, especially in that the short stories are not as much of a committment as War and Peace or Anna Karenina.  He's very concise as well, and the short stories pack a punch.

Equally interesting is reading a brief biography of Pushkin...he was quite the ladies man!  That is, until he decided he wanted to seek and marry the most beautiful woman in Russia.  He found her, and pursued her, and after many years, ended up dying in a duel over her honor in 1837. 

Special thanks to Lisa Hayden for the gift of the book!  I wasn't able to find the exact copy online, so the photo is from a very similar collection.

Bosnia-In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip, Tony Fabijancic

If you are going to make a journey, you know it’s not going to be dull if your companion has a reputation for getting into fights. It could even be dangerous if you are travelling to a location still rife with racial and cultural tensions. Thus, it’s with great wisdom that Tony Fabijancic’s wife suggested his father go along as guide and possible referee on his journey to Bosnia. Why Bosnia?

First, Fabijancic’s father emigrated from Croatia, and the region has held his son’s fascination for a lifetime. But more intriguing is Tony Fabijancic’s obsession with understanding Gavrilo Princip, an obsession that leads him to research the cultural, political, and geographical influences of the former Yugoslavia-then and now. The result of that trip is Bosnia:  In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip.


I never knew Gavrilo Princip by name, only his identity as the man who started WWI with his assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. I didn’t even see how the event was that big of a deal; as noted in the book, assassinations in the area weren’t exactly unusual. Why was the impact so big? And why did Princip do it in the first place? It’s a subject I’d wondered about but never pursued.

Similarly, in the 1990s, when the Bosnian conflict headlined the news, I had no way to differentiate between a Croatian, a Bosnian Serb, or a Muslim Slav, or if Kosovo was a person or place. I hate to admit that before this book, I probably couldn’t have found B-H on a map; my knowledge being especially vague about Yugoslavia and the USSR. And while history at times can be boring, learning it from the personal perspective usually enlivens it. Thus, this book is far more powerful than its size would suggest. From the perspective of a road trip, with anecdotes and photographs that make the journey more personal, a reader learns the history of the region from Austria-Hungary’s occupation through the Baltic Wars, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, as well as the religious differences (Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox) and the racial divide that still fuels pride and conflict.

The author addresses part of the image that Westerners may have of the area: “Because of Bosnia’s reputation as an inherently violent place, filled with ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’, it finds itself squarely situated within the ambit of the Balkans, which have acquired derogatory qualities in the West’s wider social imagination.”

He meets a Croatian shepherd that still lives off the land with his flock for weeks at a time, a lifestyle that’s millenniums old. They drive through cities nearly abandoned, houses still showing the scars of bombings, villages with just a few old residents remaining, and long neglected cemeteries. The ethnic divides are still steep, and various regions still feel volatile to a nervous traveler. Some subjects are simply not safe to talk about, as Fabijancic learns. Even the character of Princip is conflicted: some view him as hero, others as a scar on their reputation. As the travelers retrace his journey to Sarajevo, where he ultimately succeeds in killing Ferdinand, they are able to see places where he had lived, socialized, and plotted. In uncovering the history of the Serbian lands, they simultaneously uncover the biography of Princip, the events of the assassination, and the trial that ensued.

At one point, they visit the bridge over the river Drina, a location famous in literature by Nobel winner Ivo Andric and also in history: in 1992 “hundreds of Muslims were herded onto the bridge and along the riverbanks, murdered and dumped in the Drina, turning its green waters red. Others were forced into buildings and incinerated alive.” This type of ethnic cleansing occurred on all three sides of the conflict, but the realization that this happened within my children’s lifespan is a bit staggering. The violence in the conflicts seems especially heinous.

This is not a dry read…it’s sobering but still amusing at times-it reads like a novel. It reminded me a bit of Andrzej Stasuik’s Fado although exploring a different region. This is the way history should be read-through lively narration and not dry data and charts. I am terribly enthusiastic about this book because it feels valuable-it doesn’t solve the problems there but by neutral observation it helps an outsider understand them, as well as the bigger picture of the brutality of mankind’s yearning for domination.  The photography should be noted:  the black and white images are stark and bring out the humanity in the faces shown.

Special thanks to Cathie Crooks of Canada's University of Alberta Press for the Review Copy.

Proust's Overcoat, Lorenza Foschini

The True Story of One Man's Passion for All Things Proust

You'll find this book in the biography section of the bookstore, but at first it's difficult to decide who the biography is about....One the surface, it would seem to be a book about Proust, author of the iconic Remembrance of Things Past (which is incredibly difficult to get through), and/or his overcoat.  Actually, the biographical elements are about several intriguing people in the orbit around Proust's life, and all of them would make worthy topics of their own biography.  Combined, they make this study fascinating.

Foremost, the biography is of Jacques Guerin, an avid (rabid?) collector of all things Proust. His obsession leads him to search for anything related to the author, from old letters to furniture to ultimately, a personal garment of the man. At times his devotion is creepy, yet he seems to be completely harmless. His own life story is interesting, and his biography is well-researched. Foschini shows her skill as a biographer because she skillfully reveals personal characteristics about Guerin, but she also knows Proust's work, so when she makes a statement about Guerin she's able to actually use a Proust quote to elaborate on his fetish. As she tells about Guerin, she is also relating the biography of Proust, from his birth to his death. It's an interesting way of switching back and forth from the collector to the collected. So is it a biography of these two men? Where does the overcoat come in?

The overcoat itself, seemingly trivial, becomes part of the mystery of Proust, as many pictures (included in the book) show him in it.  Foschini quotes various authors of the era, all who referred to the overcoat as one of the elements of Proust's persona.  Foschini even incorporates her own search for the overcoat within the book.

She also intertwines the story of a collector who helps Guerin in his search, and who is a fascinating character with his own complicated connection to Proust. Adrien Proust, Marcel's brother, and his wife, Marthe, are also discussed in detail. The revelations are never dry, but often amusing. For example, Marthe gets a glimpse of what she is marrying into when her mother-in-law arrives at the wedding in an ambulance, and her brother-in-law tells others the wedding nearly killed him and he had to retire to bed for weeks to recover. Nice!

Marthe is an intriguing person at the center of the biography as she had much of Proust's works destroyed as soon as her husband died and she could get away with it. Foschini reveals why Marthe harbored so much anger at Marcel Proust, and how intently she tried to escape the family connection. The combination of all these interesting people makes this a too-brief biography that reads much easier than Proust (I believe it was Jon Stewart who said that anyone who reads Proust at the beach can be clinically defined as an insufferable ass).

This book releases Tuesday, August 3, 2010.

Special thanks to Ecco-An Imprint of HarperCollins, for the Advanced Review Copy. www.eccobooks.com

Fado by Andrzej Stasiuk

Translated by Bill Johnston.

Winner of the Vilenica International Literary Prize

My final impression, closing this book, was that Andrzej Stasiuk loves people. His essay collection, Fado, demonstrates this as he examines the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and the other regions that form Central Europe. In all, he writes with obvious affection for the human condition surviving in a complicated place and time. He quietly observes people and their activities: from children playing games, the routines of the working man, the women washing their steps, and the teenagers pining for escape to the West. This is not a travel journal, told by a curious visitor. Stasiuk resides there and his impressions are that much more knowledgeable and profound.


It begins with a road trip: a car driving at night in the rain, and a suggestion of mystery.  He reflects on the dark houses he passes, and how no matter what ethnic heritage a person has, they are all the same when asleep in their beds. A map is essential to reading this, as he goes to a variety of cities and recounts what he sees as well as historical details and anecdotal stories from each individual place.

Much of his writing discusses the changes from Communism to newer political states, some still in their infancy (Slovakia). The past is complicated in Central Europe, and progress is equally difficult. Of Montenegro, he writes:

“Everything that was, becomes rejected in the name of a modernity that assumes the nature of a fiction, an illusion, a devilish apparition. To a greater or lesser extent this applies to all postcommunist countries. But it’s only in Montenegro that it can all be observed within the space of ten miles.”

This battle between old traditions and new identities is a continual subject, but it remains fascinating because each town he visits handles the conflict differently. He talks about the emptiness that is felt in places, where modernization has left many without a purpose. Yet he uses almost poetic words to describe these impressions:

Of Pogradec, “Pool has taken over the town. That noble game, combining geometrical abstraction with kinetics, allows a person to forget the everyday. The men circled the tables like they were hypnotized. They moved back, moved forward, judged distances, stepped on tiptoe and held their breath as if afraid that the moving spheres would change direction and the cosmic harmony of the game would be disturbed.” It’s not difficult to see the underlying correlation with the region in finding their place in history after the divisions of Russia and Yugoslavia.

In Levoka, he observes the local police, who group together in anticipation of a rebellion by Gypsy residents. The violence never occurs, but the image of the bored policemen, playing with their police dog and throwing snowballs, reveals a truism of the place: “Brute force, tedium, and play were combined in perfect proportions, but instinct told you that any one of these three elements could take over at any moment, and for no particular reason.”

In another essay he writes about the changing of the face of paper currency throughout Russia and the Slavic states. In earlier years, the images featured working men and women in simple settings. The implied meaning being hard work garnered money. Then as years passed, the illustrations became more abstract and conceptual, until they evolved into paper faces of famous heroes. There was a political meaning behind each image, and Stasiuk shows how the meaning of money changed too.  Change occurred yet again, during difficult economic times, to another theme: “the patrons of this inflationary series were of course artists and writers. In my part of the world, when times are uncertain we usually turn to culture, since it’s a domain whose failures are not so glaring…”

Stasiuk’s ability to combine history with contemporary issues is amazing because it’s so readable, never dry or boring. He doesn’t get off track trying to make a political statement or place blame, and at times it’s difficult to even guess his position in the controversial matters he discusses. He never judges the people or even presumes to suggest a solution.  An especially fascinating scene was played out at the end of the day in Rasinari, when the cows, oxen, and goats returned from grazing loose into the village, all on their own.

“This daily parade was like a holiday. The whole village came out of its homes onto the road and watched the passage of the livestock. Children, old women in headscarves, men in small groups smoking cigarettes-everyone watched as the animals unerringly found their way to their own farms and stood by the gate waiting to be let in. This ritual had been repeated for centuries and everything in it was self-evident, complete, and in its own way perfect.”

Special thanks to Martin Riker of Dalkey Archive Press for this Review Copy.