Words Are Something Else (Writings From An Unbound Europe) - Softcover

Albahari, David

4.54

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9780810113060: Words Are Something Else (Writings From An Unbound Europe)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810113066 ISBN 13: 9780810113060

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1996

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David Albahari is one of the most prominent prose writers to come out of the former Yugoslavia in the last twenty years. His short stories, which developed largely outside the canon of Serbian literature, have influenced a generation of Balkan writers. This collection gathers Albahari's best and most important stories, moving from an early preoccupation with the family and Central European culture to metafictional searches for the roots of his identity.

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Review:

Set in the author's native Serbia, this collection of short stories reveals a vision transcending the narrow world of Serbian nationalism. David Albahari is concerned with the separation of people, but in a more universal sense than the tribal. He has the modern writer's obsession with our inability to express in words what is really meant; he even plays with self-reference, pointing to the inability of a reader to grasp the hidden context of literature. In the early stories, a claustrophobically close Jewish family struggles comically to communicate. In the later ones, it is a husband and wife who strive for an elusive connection.

From the Back Cover:

David Albahari is one of the most prominent prose writers to come out of the former Yugoslavia in the last twenty years. His short stories, which developed almost entirely outside the "national" canon of Serbian literature, have exerted a great influence on the younger generation of writers from that part of the world. This collection gathers Albahari's best and most important stories. As opposed to many of his fellow Serbians, for whom literature is primarily a political statement, David Albahari is a writer whose carefully chiseled stories explore the full range of human experience. The pieces in this collection have been chosen to represent the trends in Albahari's development, moving from an early preoccupation with the family and the Central European cultural milieu to later metafictional searches for the roots of his identity Framed by a foreword by poet Charles Simic and an afterword by Tomislav Longinovic, Word Are Something Else provides an invaluable introduction to this foremost Serbian postmodernist writer.

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