Items related to Country Where No One Ever Dies (Eastern European Literature...
Synopsis
The spare, unsentimental first novel by an extraordinary new voice in world literature.
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About the Authors
Ornela Vorpsi was born in Tirana, Albania and now lives in Paris. The Country Where No One Ever Dies was her first novel and won several prizes in Italy, including the Grinzane Cavour and Viareggio Prizes. It has since been published in fourteen languages.
Der Historiker Michael Schmidt-Neke wurde 1956 in Baden-Baden geboren. Er hat vor 40 Jahren als einer der ersten Westdeutschen erstmals Albanien besucht und sich schon wahrend seines Studiums auf Geschichte und Kultur der Albaner spezialisiert. Er ist Autor und Herausgeber mehrerer Bucher und zahlreicher Artikel und Aufsatze uber dieses Land. Er ist Vorstandsmitglied der Deutsch-Albanischen Freundschaftsgesellschaft und veroffentlicht in deren Zeitschrift "Albanische Hefte" regelmassig Analysen zu Vergangenheit und Gegenwart Albaniens sowie Besprechungen von Buchern uber das Balkanland.
Janice Mathie-Heck is a poet, translator, editor, and literary critic. Most recently, her essay on the poetry of Visar Zhiti appeared in Mehr Licht!.
Reviews
This slender sendup of life in rural Albania under the Communist regime offers a hilarious look into a simple, uneducated people's mores and passionate natures. Narrated by a girl who lives with her beautiful, unhappy mother while her father is imprisoned for absurd political reasons, the punchy vignettes treat aspects of village life that center on a sunny lassitude and a preoccupation with ensuring a girl preserves her immaculate flower; the local school, where the narrator is punished by her zealous Communist teacher; the sad fates of neighbors; and the narrator's uneasy relationship with her absent father, whom she recalls as brutal and a slobbering kisser (Why did I bother giving you life if I can't even give you a kiss?). Books offer her the prospect of escape, and our intrepid protagonist procures them by offering a venal elementary school teacher her mother's jewelry in exchange for access to the great stockpile of dreams. Vorpsi cleverly melds old wives' tales, a child's naïveté and sharp-edged irony for a not-so-gentle skewering of her homeland. (Nov.)
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