Slavic Books

The Bridge on the Drina (Phoenix Fiction Series)

Ivo Andric

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 72 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Bridge on the Drina is a vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late 16th century to the beginning of World War I. As we seek to make sense of the current nightmare in this region, this remarkable, timely book serves as a reliable guide to its people and history.

"No better introduction to the study of Balkan and Ottoman history exists, nor do I know of any work of fiction that more persuasively introduces the reader to a civilization other than our own. It is an intellectual and emotional adventure to encounter the Ottoman world through Andric's pages in its grandiose beginning and at its tottering finale. It is, in short, a marvelous work, a masterpiece, and very much sui generis. . . . Andric's sensitive portrait of social change in distant Bosnia has revelatory force."—William H. McNeill, from the introduction

"The dreadful events occurring in Sarajevo over the past several months turn my mind to a remarkable historical novel from the land we used to call Yugoslavia, Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina."—John M. Mohan, Des Moines Sunday Register

Born in Bosnia, Ivo Andric (1892-1975) was a distinguished diplomat and novelist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. His books include The Damned Yard: And Other Stories, and The Days of the Consuls.

The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Classics)

Jaroslav Hasek

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

the good soldier svejk 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is an hilarious novel that was a forerunner to catch 22. We have the Good Soldier Svejk for WWI, Catch 22 for WWII, and to a lesser extent Forrest Gump for Viatnam.

Recommend to those wanting a good chuckle

Editorial Review:

In The Good Soldier Svejk, celebrated Czech writer and anarchist Jaroslav Hasek combined dazzling wordplay and piercing satire in a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.

Good-natured and garrulous, Svejk becomes the Austrian army’s most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I—although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle. Cecil Parrott’s vibrant translation conveys the brilliant irreverence of this classic about a hapless Everyman caught in a vast bureaucratic machine.
“Brilliant . . . Perhaps the funniest novel ever written.”
—George Monbiot

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Penguin Classics)

Tadeusz Borowski

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A remembrance of things past 5 out of 5 stars.
113 of 116 people found this review helpful.

Imre Kertesz, a concentration camp survivor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature often asks in his work: is there life after Auschwitz? Can one live with the ineffable guilt that accompanies survival against all odds? For Borowski the answer appears to be no. On July 1, 1951, at age 29, Tadeusz Borowski opened a gas valve, put his head in an oven and took his life. There is no small amount of irony in the fact that after escaping the gas of Auschwitz and Dachau Borowski would end his life in this manner.

Borowski was born in Soviet occupied Ukraine to Polish parents. His father was sent to a Soviet work camp, building the White Sea Canal, but was released in an exchange of prisoners with Poland. Upon his father's release, the family settled in Warsaw. Although not Jewish, Borowski was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for subversive activities when he was caught surreptitiously printing his own poetry. He spent the rest of the war in Auschwitz and Dachau. The first piece of luck or fate that saved his life was the decision by the Nazis to stop exterminating non-Jewish prisoners two weeks before Borowski's arrival.

The series of stories contained in This Way for the Gas are all written in the voice of one prisoner, Tadeusz. Not unexpectedly the stories appear to be loosely autobiographical. Borowski's writing is not overloaded with emotion. It is descriptive and matter of fact. The day-to-day tone of the writing, writing that describes death and deprivation as normal events adds an emotional impact to the stories.

For example, in one scene the prisoner Tadeusz describes a football (soccer) match played by the prisoners. He served as goalkeeper and described his walk to retrieve a ball that was kicked way over the net. As he walks to the ball he sees through the barbed wire fence truckloads of prisoners being herded through the gas chambers. Later in the match he has to retrieve another ball. As he returns to the goal he matter-of-factly estimates that 5,000 prisoners have been gassed between his retrieving the two balls. It is powerful storytelling.

Equally compelling are stories that describe the numerous decisions Tadeusz and his fellow prisoners made every day in order to survive. Taking clothes from the luggage of prisoners destined for the gas in order to trade the clothes for bread. People fight for survival and despite a certain ethical code amongst prisoners (there are some things even the dying won't do) they all know that the steps they take to survive often means that someone else will perish. Borowski does not flinch from subjecting his alter ego and his fellow prisoners to a critical self-examination of these choices. Both Borowski and his narrator survived Auschwitz. But as you can see from these flawlessly executed stories the question of how much of one's humanity remains is a difficult question. The emaciated bodies of the survivors could often be repaired. But the sense of a moral inner flame extinguished by the acts required for survival is not so easily relit. The reader cannot help but wonder whether the lingering impact of those choices in Auschwitz somehow invariably led to the choice he made in July 1951.

Tadeusz Borowski's "This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen" is a wonderful example of how fiction can portray the horrors of genocide with an emotional clarity that non-fiction sometimes lacks. This book ranks with Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales (the Gulag) as a monumental piece of remembrance presented in the form of short stories, vignettes of life in a place with little mercy and less humanity. They each stand as stark testimony, even though they are works of literature and not history, to the "evil that men do."

Upon finishing "This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentleman" I found myself wanting to repeat the words "never again" as a refrain. Yet upon reflection one looks at subsequent world events: Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya, Sudan, and Rwanda (among others) and asks whether humanity makes the phrase "never again" a futile gesture. It has been said that those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Anyone who reads Borowski's testament will long remember the prose that, hopefully, will keep us from forgetting.
L. Fleisig

I Served the King of England (New Directions Paperbook)

Bohumil Hrabal

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In a comic masterpiece following the misadventures of a simple but hugely ambitious waiter in pre-World War II Prague, who rises to wealth only to lose everything with the onset of Communism, Bohumil Hrabal takes us on a tremendously funny and satirical trip through 20th-century Czechoslovakia.

First published in 1971 in a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I Served the King of England is "an extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel" (The New York Times), telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before World War II. Ditie is called upon to serve not the King of England, but Haile Selassie. It is one of the great moments in his life. Eventually, he falls in love with a Nazi woman athlete as the Germans are invading Czechoslovakia. After the war, through the sale of valuable stamps confiscated from the Jews, he reaches the heights of his ambition, building a hotel. He becomes a millionaire, but with the institution of communism, he loses everything and is sent to inspect mountain roads. Living in dreary circumstances, Ditie comes to terms with the inevitability of his death, and with his place in history.

The Palace of Dreams

Ismail Kadare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A dangerous ghost state 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

In Kadare's hallucinatory novel, the most important ministry in the country is the one where the dreams of all its citizens are interpreted. A monstrous bureaucratic organization collects those dreams and a monstrous herd of employees classifies and analyzes them. The interpretation of the apparently most important dream is presented every week to the sultan, because it could contain crucial information about the destiny of the country and the ruling families.
The whole country has really turned into a ghost state, where people perform ghost work: Absurdistan.

Of course, this macabre ministry is only a veil for the bitter power struggle between the powerful. A bad dream interpretation could create an opportunity to lash out at the other throne contenders with deadly consequences for the innocent common citizens. The for the common man seemingly blind fatality is in fact the result of a deadly fight for control and power between the mighty.

Kadare's novel, inspired by Enver Hoxha's Albania, is a masterful portrait of the totalitarian state, where real life is replaced by hallucinations. The government's most important role is to try to control even the dreams of its citizens. A dark nightmarish regime.

This highly political work is composed and reads like a thriller. A real masterpiece.

Editorial Review:

A sinister totalitarian ministry called the Palace of Dreams recruits Mark-Alem to sort, classify, and interpret the dreams of the people in the empire, seeking the ""master-dreams"" that give clues to the empire's destiny. 10,000 first printing.

The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years

Chingiz Aitmatov

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Decent Central Asian Novel -- But of Limited Interest 3 out of 5 stars.
13 of 15 people found this review helpful.

Set mostly in a small railroad crossing in Kazakhstan's Sarozak desert sometime in the latter part of the 20th-century, this novel tells the story of Burrunyi Yedigei's effort to bury his coworker and friend in the ancient cemetery used by the few people of the area. In doing so, Aitmatov mounts a subversive critique of the Soviet system that crushes traditions and unfairly persecutes people. The story is told through Yedigei, a long-suffering worker who recounts episodes from his life along with a old tales drawn from Central Asian folklore. A running subplot involves a nearby cosmodrome (presumably Baikonur), and a joint Soviet-American space station which makes contact with a utopian alien race. This seems to be an attempt to link the lives of insignificant workers with earth-shattering events, or is perhaps an allegory about the Iron Curtain vis a vis the West. Or more likely, Aitmatov is attempting to tell a story in the past (folktales), present (the burial plot), and future (space). Whatever the intent, the space material feels very awkward and anyone coming to the book for science-fiction will be disappointed.

The real core and strength of the story is the insight into the hard lives of the Kazakh rail workers and the way in which Aitmatov uses the genre trappings of Soviet Realist literature to mount a rather subversive critique of life in the USSR. We learn of the post-WWII hardship that took Yedigei and his wife Ukubala to the rail crossing, and of their daily struggle to survive there. There are plenty of other threads, most importantly the arrival of a politically suspect family looking for a place to start over, their friendship with Yedigei, the desire the wife arouses in him (echoing one of the folktales), and finally the Orwellian tragedy that takes them away. Here, Aitmatov is directly criticizing the Stalinist purges in which his own father was executed in the 1930s (the book first appeared in 1980, so he does so from a position of relative safety). There is also a running thread about Yedigei's fierce camel, a barely domesticated proud and fierce beast which is a metaphor for the Central Asian people subjugated under Soviet rule.

The death of Yedigei's friend Kazangap is the inciting event that allows for everything else to be told, as Yedigei organizes the community for the wake and burial, to be done in the traditional way. However, tradition is not what it used to be, and Kazangap's son and relations are less than enthusiastic about the whole matter, long having fled for the modern world of the city. Moreover, the traditional funeral train of camels is augmented by a truck and tractor to assist in the grave-digging. Indeed, the clash of the modern Soviet world with the traditional Kazakh extends even to burial grounds, as the procession is denied access to the old Ana-Beiit cemetery. This relates directly to what is perhaps the novel's primary theme: cultural memory. One of the folk tales recounts how Mongol conquerors tied bands around the heads of captured enemies and allowed them to shrink, turning the wearer into a mindless slave without a memory. This crops up in the space subplot, when two cosmonauts who glimpse the utopian future are doomed to have their minds wiped. All of which relates to the Soviet attempt to eliminate cultural memory in Central Asia (embodied here in the denial of access to the traditional cemetery). This is without a doubt a book of great importance to those interested in Soviet or Central Asian literature, but others will probably not find it that compelling.

Editorial Review:

Yedigei looks back on his life as he brings the body of a close friend across the steppes of Central Asia to be buried in an ancient cemetary.

Alamut

Vladimir Bartol

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Alamut takes place in 11th Century Persia, in the fortress of Alamut, where self-proclaimed prophet Hasan ibn Sabbah is setting up his mad but brilliant plan to rule the region with a handful elite fighters who are to become his "living daggers." By creating a virtual paradise at Alamut, filled with beautiful women, lush gardens, wine and hashish, Sabbah is able to convince his young fighters that they can reach paradise if they follow his commands. With parallels to Osama bin Laden, Alamut tells the story of how Sabbah was able to instill fear into the ruling class by creating a small army of devotees who were willing to kill, and be killed, in order to achieve paradise. Believing in the supreme Ismaili motto “Nothing is true, everything in permitted,” Sabbah wanted to “experiment” with how far he could manipulate religious devotion for his own political gain through appealing to what he called the stupidity and gullibility of people and their passion for pleasure and selfish desires.

The novel focuses on Sabbah as he unveils his plan to his inner circle, and on two of his young followers — the beautiful slave girl Halima, who has come to Alamut to join Sabbah's paradise on earth, and young ibn Tahir, Sabbah's most gifted fighter. As both Halima and ibn Tahir become disillusioned with Sabbah's vision, their lives take unexpected turns.

Alamut was originally written in 1938 as an allegory to Mussolini's fascist state. In the 1960's it became a cult favorite throughout Tito's Yugoslavia, and in the 1990s, during the Balkan's War, it was read as an allegory of the region's strife and became a bestseller in Germany, France and Spain. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the book once again took on a new life, selling more than 20,000 copies in a new Slovenian edition, and being translated around the world in more than 19 languages. This edition, translated by Michael Biggins, in the first-ever English translation.

Bend Sinister

Vladimir Nabokov

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Little Unfocused, But Still Great 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This, as you would expect from Nabokov, is a brillantly written book full of wit and beauty.

It is, however, a bit unfocused. Nabokov can often blend sad, humorous, scary and satirical parts together perfectly, but here the blending is a little rough. But I still give it 5 stars. I rarely laugh out loud when reading fiction, but Nabokov got me severl times (especially when Krug visits the Toad the first time).

What can you say? It's Nabokov: It's brillant.
I wouldn't start here (maybe Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading or Pale Fire) but pick this up after those...

Editorial Review:

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic.  While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. It is first and foremost a compelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state.  Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.  In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.

Pan Tadeusz/English and Polish Text

Adam Mickiewicz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Fantastic English translation 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 21 people found this review helpful.

This Polish masterpiece reads in English rendition as it was written in English in the first place ! I thoroughly enjoyed over again the story, even more so than in original Polish. Kenneth McKenzie has done a superb job to keep the rhytm, rime and the emotions so close to the original. This timeless piece is a must to everyone who enjoys a great reading adventure, where the highest human values are treasured. Our contemporary writers and poets can only dream to approach the greatness of Adam Mickiewicz. To bad that this book is so little known in the world.

Brilliant and immortal ! 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 21 people found this review helpful.

It is a masterpiece , national poem of Poland.It portrays polish society in early XIX century , its turbulant existence and longing for freedom .His other works include " Konrad Wallenrod" and "Oda do mlodosci" but You can also check other polish writers , like Henryk Sienkiewicz , author of the famous "Quo Vadis " , Czeslaw Milosz or Wladyslaw Reymont , all three, Nobel prize laureates .You will never look at Poland the same way .Enjoy reading.............r.c.

Editorial Review:

Translated by Kenneth R MacKenzie, Pan Tadeusz is an epic tale of country life among the Polish and Lithuanian gentry in the years 1811 and 1812. It is a poem of the love of country, to which all people belong.

The Ministry of Pain: A Novel

Dubravka Ugresic

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Would have to agree with previous reviewers... 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

...in that the latter part of this hugely potential-filled book really affected my overall 'star rating.' Although I don't think it's deserving of merely 3-stars...as some have suggested.

Regrettably, authors like Ugresic are highly underrated and misunderstood, for the most part, in the West. That's a pity. The real mastery in such a work comes across in later contemplations of the story, when you've long put a book like this one back down on your coffee table, and you're walking alone in the street when the marvel of it suddenly clobbers you like an anvil.

I wouldn't call MINISTRY a best-seller by any stretch. It's the sort of work which probes deeply into the issues of rended souls obliterated by war, tenuously holding onto a thread of life. The Ministry of Pain deals large with issues of national identity and the complications surrounding virulent nationalism -- such as the one smouldering in the Former Yugoslavia over the past decade and more. Ugresic masterfully details what it's like to be alive and functioning as part of a 'something' which exists merely in the *memories* of people.

For those of us who hail from nations with long-established historical track records, thumbing through the tragic accounts of these fictional former Yuga emigres is a lesson about never taking anything from granted. At least that was my initial reaction from my first pass of the book.

Bear in mind that I've only begun to contemplate Ugresic's words. I'm astute enough to realize that the brilliance of some of the things which have graced my eyes here will only begin to affect me much later down the line, when I've had a chance to compare hers to the other Yugoslavian titles in my stack.

Most positively, I've long wanted to be able to write like this.

FYI --> Absolutely nothing's in lost in the Croatian-to-English translation. The essence of what author Ugresic attempted to convey in the original, MINISTARSTVO BOLI, bolts off the page like scimitar blows.

Prepare to be astounded...

Editorial Review:

Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls her dangerously close to another—which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.