HOUSE IN ISTRIA CL

Never before translated into English, the wonderfully comic novel A House in Istria concerns marriage, a man's desperate desire to acquire the house next door, and what can happen when West meets East. In formerly communist Eastern Europe, there are many empty houses. Inhabited in turn by very different familiesJews, fascists, communiststhe houses now stand empty, decaying, the objects of countless lawsuits. Richard Swartz's quirky and marvelous first novel revolves around one such house and the Western European man obsessed with it. Narrated by his wife, the action takes place over just seven blazing hot days in Istria, formerly Yugoslavia. His obsession drags his poor wife, a native of Istria, into long burlesque conversations with lawyers and owners; her out-of-control husband (who doesn't speak the language) involves them in surreal scenes with nearly insane characters. Since everything the husband knows (and everything the reader knows) must be channeled through the wife, we enter a world in which nothing is directly intelligibleand everything is skewed. The unusual, antic, hilarious style calls Capek, Gogol, and Kafka all to mind.

A Western European man living in Croatia becomes obsessed with an abandoned house in A House in Istria, Swedish novelist Richard Swartz's surreal, comic romp through Eastern Bloc history. Narrated by the unnamed man's long-suffering wife, the book follows the couple as they try to figure out who owns the house so that they can buy it. With his wife patiently translating, the man harasses everyone from their neighbor Dmitrij, who cultivates mushrooms, to local lawyer Franjo, to an Italian family in nearby Trieste. As the story unwinds, we learn that the house was occupied by Jews, then fascists, then communists, all of whom are now busy suing for the house.
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