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Canzone di Guerra

E-BookEPUB0 - No protectionE-Book
180 Seiten
Englisch
Istros Bookserschienen am12.04.2022
In typical Drndi? style, the reader is offered a view of the past and the present through a collage of different genres - from (pseudo) autobiography to documentary material and culinary recipes as the narrative explores different perspectives on the issue of emigration, the unresolved history of the Second World War, while emphasising the absurdity of politics of differences between neighbouring nations. Tea Radan, the narrator of the novel Canzone di Guerra, reflects on her own past and in doing so, composes a forgotten mosaic of historical events that she wants to first tear apart and then reassemble with all the missing fragments. In front of the readers eyes, a collage of different genres takes place - from (pseudo) autobiography to documentary material and culinary recipes. With them, the author Da?a Drndi? skillfully explores different perspectives on the issue of emigration and the unresolved history of the Second World War, while emphasizing the absurdity of politics of differences between neighboring nations. The narrator subtly weaves the torturous story of searching for her own identity with a relaxed, sometimes disguised ironic style, which takes the reader surprisingly easily into the world of persecution and the sense of alienation between herself and others.

Da?a Drndi? is a distinguished Croatian novelist, playwright and literary critic, author of radio plays and documentaries. She is the author of thirteen novels including Leica Format, Trieste and Belladonna - all published in the UK by Macelhose Press. For the latter two, she was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013 and the EBRD Literature Prize 2018.mehr
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Produkt

KlappentextIn typical Drndi? style, the reader is offered a view of the past and the present through a collage of different genres - from (pseudo) autobiography to documentary material and culinary recipes as the narrative explores different perspectives on the issue of emigration, the unresolved history of the Second World War, while emphasising the absurdity of politics of differences between neighbouring nations. Tea Radan, the narrator of the novel Canzone di Guerra, reflects on her own past and in doing so, composes a forgotten mosaic of historical events that she wants to first tear apart and then reassemble with all the missing fragments. In front of the readers eyes, a collage of different genres takes place - from (pseudo) autobiography to documentary material and culinary recipes. With them, the author Da?a Drndi? skillfully explores different perspectives on the issue of emigration and the unresolved history of the Second World War, while emphasizing the absurdity of politics of differences between neighboring nations. The narrator subtly weaves the torturous story of searching for her own identity with a relaxed, sometimes disguised ironic style, which takes the reader surprisingly easily into the world of persecution and the sense of alienation between herself and others.

Da?a Drndi? is a distinguished Croatian novelist, playwright and literary critic, author of radio plays and documentaries. She is the author of thirteen novels including Leica Format, Trieste and Belladonna - all published in the UK by Macelhose Press. For the latter two, she was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013 and the EBRD Literature Prize 2018.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781912545988
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format Hinweis0 - No protection
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2022
Erscheinungsdatum12.04.2022
Seiten180 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse813 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.13437717
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe




LITTLE PIONEERS

Jadranka said: Don´t go.

Father said: You´re right to go.

Nenad said: If only I could go.

Jasna said to Sara: Your mum´s capable, you´ll be fine. Three years earlier (when we moved from Belgrade to Rijeka in Croatia), Jasna had said to Sara: Your mum´s hopeless, she´s never achieved anything.

Laura asked: Will you write to me about how bad things are? (When I wrote that things were all right, Laura stopped talking to me.)

My brother said: I´m going to America, that´s where I was born. (He didn´t go anywhere.)

Only my sister Lena sighed: I´ll miss you. But she lived in Slovenia.

I had applied for a small managerial post. I didn´t get it. The newspapers wished me a safe journey.

I read Dovlatov.

I read KrlezÌa.

I read Brodsky.

Dovlatov was big and strong. He downed two litres of vodka a day. He spent seventeen years in Petrograd writing, but no one published any of it. He went to America, became well-known and after twelve years, in 1990, he died. He was forty-nine. Before that his daughter had asked him: Are you happy now? He replied: No.

After living in Rijeka for three years, Sara finally summoned the courage to ask for frankfurters using the Croatian and not the Serbian word.

Vesna told me that someone in a Croatian bank had said that she couldn´t understand Serbian at all.

There´s little Lulu from Somalia. Her father speaks French, English and German, as does her mother. Her mother is not from Somalia but of half-Polish, half-Hungarian origin and she was born in America. She asks Lulu from Somalia: Qu´est-ce qu´il y a dans ta soupe? Lulu says: Il y a des carrotes, des pommes-de-terre, chicken and noodles and je veux un ice-cream maintenant. She asks the waiter: A glass of voda, please. Lulu´s not yet five. Everyone understands her.

It´s a sunny winter´s day. The sky is electric blue as it can only be in Paris or on the Adriatic when there´s a north wind. Sara is saying goodbye to her girlfriends in the pizzeria under the building where we live. I walk and sing (to myself).

Rijeka is divided by a railway line. In Rijeka trains pass slowly through the city. Trains completely block out the view of the sea. This makes the city seem smaller.

There are several benches along the Quay. They´re used by prostitutes and old people. The old people rest from standing, because the benches are opposite various administrative offices in which the old people spend a long time waiting in queues. The old people wear old clothes and worn-out shoes. Old people find it hard to get used to new clothes. The old men don´t shave every day. The old man beside me takes a bun out of his shopping bag and sucks it. The way my granny Ana used to suck old toast because her teeth were no use anymore. There´s a carrot poking out of his bag.

The sky is electric blue, says the old man.

The prostitute is no more than nineteen. She´s got a small pale yellow towel poking out of her bag. The prostitute is eating salami. It´s midday.

My mum sent me this, says the prostitute.

I´m sitting in the middle, between the old man and the prostitute, and I´m not eating anything.

The shape of your face isn´t at all Serbian, my colleague R. V. in Belgrade had said. You´ll have to leave, she also said.

In Rijeka everyone told me: Tone down that Serbian accent.

Dovlatov wrote about Spivakov.

As a Jew in the Soviet Union, Spivakov experienced a lot of unpleasantness. Even though he was called Spivakov and not Spivberg or Spivman. After all kinds of tribulations, the authorities permitted him to give a recital in the USA. When he arrived at the Carnegie Hall, he found a crowd from the American League for the Defence of Jews. They were holding up placards reading: KGB agents - out! They were shouting: Fighting for the rights of Soviet Jews!

When the concert began, Spivakov was bombarded with tins filled with red paint. Spivakov was completely red.

That was a long time ago. It´s nothing like that now. Spivakov is internationally famous now. Among the most famous.

My little pocket mirror doesn´t encompass all the lines on my face. It can only take in a small part of my chin. I´m grateful to my little pocket mirror.

The old man and the prostitute lean towards me, that is, towards my little mirror.

The old man says: Just for a moment, my eye hurts.

The prostitute says: Let me just look at this tooth. It´s loose. She says that with a very wide-open mouth.

You´ve got hairs poking out of your nose, Sara told me at the bus station, where there were a lot of people. I pretended not to hear.

You´ve got dandruff, she added. And that coat looks dreadful on you and you´re fat. The bus came so she stopped. In the bus, I told her: I´m not buying you any more Kinder eggs.

In the library they hadn´t let me take the translation of Catcher in the Rye for Sara to read, because it was printed in the Cyrillic script. The librarian had whiskers and a lot of hair in her armpits.

The old man was chomping noisily on his dry bread.

The prostitute was chewing her dry sausage.

I took out some cherry sweets and offered them to the others. The three of us munched.

I said: I´ll take you for cakes.

The old man said: I´ve booked a place in the graveyard.

The prostitute said: There are a lot of suicides in Vojvodina.

That didn´t interest me as I was intending to go on living,
in Canada. I didn´t have anyone in the graveyard in Rijeka in any
case.

At the cake-shop the waitress told us: We don´t sell baklava anymore.

The old man said: I like jam doughnuts best.

The prostitute said: I need a dentist.

In the cake-shop we heard a direct broadcast of two acrimonious debates taking place in the Parliament. One about Istrian cattle, the other about Lipizzaner horses.

In the cake-shop, the old man said: I´ll come to see you off.

I knew he wouldn´t as he´d be asleep. Old people go to bed early, and we´d be leaving Rijeka at three in the morning.

The prostitute said: I´ll come too.

That was also impractical as prostitutes generally work at night, when old people are sleeping. So, no one would be seeing us off.

Afterwards, when we arrived, I wrote to everyone. For the Christmas and New Year holidays. I sent 47 cards, nine to Belgrade, three to Israel, two to America, two to South Africa, one to Paris, one to Slovenia, one to Amsterdam, the rest to Croatia. Five people replied from Croatia, three from Belgrade and from the other countries - everyone, because they were nostalgic. That didn´t surprise me. I´d lost ten kilograms for Canada. I looked quite good. Later, in Canada, I put them all back on. I took two evening outfits with me which I never wore. I took a white Toledo tablecloth for twelve people, which I never used. I took a large silver platter, which I later cleaned with Vim.

Fatima had left Croatia two days earlier. She had wanted to go to Australia, but she ended up in Novi Sad. She gave me a little badge, with Fatima written on it. Otherwise, in Croatia she told everyone to call her Seka (Sis). I attached the little badge to my coat. At the airport everyone thought I was called Fatima. In Croatia at that time, it wasn´t a good idea to be called Fatima. It was better to be called Grozda, say. If that wasn´t possible, then at least Vesna, Ivana, Maja or Ankica. Or perhaps Ada.

On the building of the Tuberculosis Clinic, someone had written Turks go back to Bosnia! That was where we had our lungs examined, because the Canadian authorities stipulated that only healthy, clean lungs should enter their country. My lungs are healthy, as are Sara´s, needless to say. On the image of my lungs today you can´t see that there was once a bit of a problem. The doctor said: Give me your family history.

I confessed everything:

Mother: open cavities, 1942. Later, cancer of the uterus, with metastases on the lungs. Died 1978. Sister, brother and I: distended hilum, early stage of process.

The doctor wrote everything in my notes and handed them to me. Then I took them to the office that sends them to Canada.

The following day, I went back to the office that sends the results of medical examinations to Canada. I need those results for a competition in Croatia. I´ll bring them back tomorrow.

The assistant was very helpful. She was obviously a fighter against the drain of brains from the Homeland.

I threw away the notes the doctor had written. I went back to the Tuberculosis Clinic, with the words Turks go back to Bosnia written on it. This time with Sara, so that I wasn´t recognised. I said: I´ve lost the results of the examination.

The assistant said: You have to see the same doctor.

Sara was horrified because I´d told her the whole story.

The doctor asked: Has anyone in your family suffered from tuberculosis?

I exclaimed: Heaven forbid!

The...


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Autor

DaSa Drndic is a distinguished Croatian novelist, playwright and literary critic, author of radio plays and documentaries. She is the author of thirteen novels including Leica Format, Trieste and Belladonna - all published in the UK by Macelhose Press. For the latter two, she was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013 and the EBRD Literature Prize 2018.