Ivan Olbracht (1882–1952)

I first read Olbracht’s work a number of years ago when the Central European Press began publishing a series of Central/Eastern European authors whose work Timothy Garton Ash (a major scholar of that part of the world in the 1990s) considered essential. As I recall, the first piece I read was The Sorrowful Eyes of Hannah Karajich. I was very impressed. Olbracht, born in Bohemia in 1882, specialized in writing about the lives of people in Ruthenia, especially Jews (he was not Jewish). Ruthenia lies by the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Western Ukraine but has historically been Slovak, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish—a mishmash of many things. It’s a gorgeous place (yes, I’ve been), still largely untouched by the 21st (or even the 20th) century. Nikola the Outlaw is supposedly his masterwork, a tale of a Robin Hood-like character though much of what is attractive about the book is Olbracht’s depiction of rural life in this region. He is especially acute on relations between the peasantry and the Jews, and his ability to draw believable characters is wonderful. All that said, I was ultimately disappointed in this work. It dragged too often, more than a few characters seemed unexpectedly stereotyped, and Nikola himself was less than entirely sympathetic. The book just didn’t engage me. Still, I would recommend Olbracht should you be interested in this time and place. Just start elsewhere.… (meer)