Viewing posts from: stubovi kulture

20.12.2011.

FORCING THE ABSURD

David Albahari: The Checkpoint (Stubovi kulture, Belgrade, 2011)

By:  Ivan Telebar

In his latest novel, The Checkpoint, David Albahari decided on a war topic set in an unusual and at the same time, purposeless story of the pointlessness of dying on the battlefield. In his attempt to shock, the author managed to achieve exactly the opposite. The one thing that will astonish the reader is the blurriness of the storytelling discourse with gaps that dominate the obvious plot and the hypothetical point of the text. The war is set as an unconditional situation, but the absurd that the author wanted to create poisoned his writing and left us with a bitter aftertaste.

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20.12.2011.

THE GLOOMINESS OF AN OLD MAN

Srđan Srdić: Espirando (Stubovi kulture, Beograd, 2011.)

By: Leda Sutlović

A relatively unknown writer to the wider Croatian reading public, Srđan Srdić, is the author of the appraised novel The Dead Field and the director of the Festival of Short Stories ‘’The Kikinda Short’’, and the novel Espirando, subtitled ‘’The Songs on Death’’, is his first book of stories. The title of the book, easily translated as breathing or exiling, gives an idea of the main topic, the moment of death. The title is also a term from classical music that describes a special way of interpretation, and the music itself, especially the one on the Mexican border, which helps us understand this mess, is one of the basics and sources of inspiration for the stories.

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