Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... City, Sister, Silver (origineel 1994; editie 2001)door Jachym Topol
Informatie over het werkCity, Sister, Silver door Jáchym Topol (1994)
1,001 BYMRBYD Concensus (690) Books set in Prague (31) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Says Jáchym Topol: “the tongue I use is one of Czechs, of Slavs, of slaves, of onetime slaves to Germans and Russians, and it’s a dog’s tongue. . . . It’s a tongue that often had to be spoken only in whispers.â€? Fortunately, that constraint no longer applies. This first novel, a fantasia of the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution, is anything but quiet. It blusters and wails, and its keening is often songlike. Its characters, who cobble together an informal syndicate in an attempt to make sense of their new freedom, are reminiscent of the revolutionaries in Vollmann’s You Bright and Risen Angels, and its dreamy unreality recalls Bulgakov, but the presiding deity here is Anthony Burgess. As in A Clockwork Orange, Topol’s “accelerated city-speakâ€? employs countless neologisms and portmanteaux to dazzle readers and depict a uniquely unfamiliar environment. While occasional infelicities arise, as when the bedeviled translator must somehow render rural Bohemian dialect and Laotian-accented Czech into English, the overall effect is a healthy disorientation that mimics the sensation of living through flux. The rapidity of these changes in Prague produces the feeling in Potok, the twentysomething narrator, of living outside of history and time; one minor by-product is that he sees the children around him as part of a completely different generation, subject to sometimes pernicious new influences. Shops that once held teddy bears now stock plastic, western-style “Nuclear Asexual Homonucleoidsâ€? that, in Topol’s private symbolism, are referred to as “toyfilsâ€? (homonymous for devil in German, Teufel). Given the American media’s current fascination with kid culture, Potok’s unease may ring particularly true for Gen-Xers who feel they’ve been supplanted by their younger siblings, but Topol’s dynamic voice will exhilarate anyone who can still be swept away by a torrent of words. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Winner of the Egon Hostovský Prize as the best Czech book of the year, this epic novel powerfully captures the sense of dislocation that followed the Czechs' newfound freedom in 1989. More than just the story of its young protagonist--who is part businessman, part gang member, part drifter--it is a novel that includes terrifying dream scenes, Czech and American Indian legends, a nightmarish Eastern European flea market, comic scenes about the literary world, and an oddly tender story of the love between the protagonist and his spiritual sister. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)891.8636Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages West and South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Slovene, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian) Czech Czech fiction 1989–LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
The language in the book is not always obvious in meaning, but it's not difficult once you fall into the story. I think I could read it a dozen more times and get more and more meaning out of it. As I was reading (and I found the book to be compulsively readable, even in the midst of dream sequences that were hard to comprehend), it was easy to let the words wash over me without having to work at the story. The use of ellipses is rampant throughout the book, but I got used to the rhythm of the story quickly. Read this book when you have time and space for it. It's not quick or easy, but it was worth reading. Bone up on the Velvet Revolution a bit, too- helps things make more sense. ( )