PositiveWorld Literature TodayPowerfully probes the pain of those scarred by the Croat/Bosnian Serb War and its aftermath ... These meticulously constructed characters live beyond the text; their ambiguous fates invade our consciousness ... Toxic masculinity permeates these pages.
Daša Drndic, Trans. by S.D. Curtis and Celia Hawkesworth
PositiveWorld Literature TodayComprising Artur and Isabella and Pupi, this slim volume distills Daša Drndić’s trademark themes into a bleak but haunting requiem for the soul’s death in the wake of postmodernity. In these subtly linked stories, memory bleeds past into present as three clear-eyed protagonists, distanced from their truest selves, approach the void ... strategically braided narrative strategies—stream of consciousness, dialogue, and a seemingly omniscient voice—produce a Kafkaesque humor that highlights the sterility of this brave new world.
Dubravka Ugrešić, Trans. by Ellen Elias-Bursać
PositiveWorld Literature TodayLike Borges’s forking paths, the narrator’s tale meanders, its six parts marked by digression, disruption, and footnotes. Conflating the real and the imagined to problematize both, drawing epigraphs from Brodsky, Bulgakov, Nabokov, a fictional author, a Hollywood movie, and a Bulgarian folk song, Ugrešić’s globe-trotting novel investigates many of her trademark issues: the migrant’s plight, cultural commodification, the curse of nationalism, and the whitewashing of history ... In her story about how stories come to be written, Ugrešić, another fox, has shaped a \'truthfulness\' that embodies the power of art.
Paolo Cognetti, Trans. by Simon Carnell
PositiveWorld Literature TodayBeyond its mountain setting and understated portraits of a dysfunctional family and a complicated friendship, The Eight Mountains constitutes a moving meditation on man in time and nature. In its epigraph, Coleridge’s 'Ancient Mariner' exhorts the Wedding Guest to love all creatures, but this novel more closely echoes early Wordsworth. The sotto voce of Paolo Cognetti’s first-person narrator, Pietro Guasti, a rootless documentary filmmaker, imbues his tripartite history with nostalgia—the bittersweet pain of homesickness that can bring insight.
