Å kola za delikatne ljubavnike by Svetlana Slapšak (review)

Abstract

(a still unknown) context. One protagonist of “Three Figures” is a medieval Italian painter. Another is a contemporary art historian who tries to restore old paintings whose figures and colors are barely visible beneath the tracks of time. In this story, Ransom transposes anaphora to the whole text, structurally and thematically. The postcedent of the first protagonist’s story, which involves inspiration’s fickleness and a strange dog, becomes the antecedent of the art historian’s work. The story’s characters form a temporal trinity, two moments spanning the ages and the reader’s encounter with them. The triangle’s center nurtures the potential Ransom grounds as skillfully as he liberates, intriguing and delighting his fortunate readers. Ransom’s stories set free at least as many wonders as they define. Ryan Long University of Maryland Svetlana Slapšak Škola za delikatne ljubavnike Belgrade. Laguna. 2018. 389 pages. Svetlana Slapšak, an award-winning essayist and candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, has followed up her acclaimed debut novel, Ravnoteža (Equilibrium, 2016), with Škola za delikatne ljubavnike (The school for delicate lovers). The author took the title and the idea from the nineteenth-century French writer Rétif de la Bretonne, intensifying it with elements of Plato’s Phaedrus and her own experiences as a Yugoslav student in Greece during the 1970s. The story connects public and private dramas when a young girl from Yugoslavia, Nataša, stops a famous Soviet actor, Aleksej, from committing suicide close to the end of the Regime of the Colonels in 1974. Their frequent meetings transform into love, and their travels across Greece allow them to see the remains of different eras in history as well as reevaluate the politics of both small and large countries. The novel is shaped as a diary that at the same time is a novel about love, historical -political fiction, travelogue, and philosophical dialogue. The arbitrary nature of a diary allows the interpolation of essayistic fragments and translated poems from Greek, French, and Russian, which, skillfully connected, become perfect additions to the main text. The author constructs the story around several key questions: What is love? What is the relationship between love, politics, and society? What is the value of political participation by individual citizens alone? Why is freedom of learning important? Athens as “the magic mountain” and Greece, one of the main civilization centers, allow this renowned anthropologist to see time from multiple perspectives and to ask new questions about the freedom of different societies (Greece, SFR Yugoslavia, SSSR, the US, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, among Alicia Kopf Brother in Ice Trans. Mara Faye Lethem And Other Stories Catalan author Alicia Kopf writes a sort of hybrid novel—“part research notes, part fictionalized diary, part travelogue”—so deft that it received the 2017 English PEN Award. A compelling metaphorical journey that compares the struggles and strains of family to polar expeditions, this cleverly written and illustrated novel doesn’t flinch from its exploration of coming of age in the modern world. Kripi Malviya ale(theia) Hawakal This thin volume by Indian psychologist and poet Kripi Malviya is a case study in the minute made eloquent. Simple words simply put bring out the themes of psychic discovery, awareness , and transcendence that make up the work of this unique writer both on and off the page. Her expertise in multiple fields shows in the diction of technicality mixed with that of the sublime, which together portray a mind turned inside out. Nota Bene WORLDLIT.ORG 79 others); about the relationship between culture , myth, and history; and about language and democracy. In these questions, Slapšak uses collage and free association, presenting interesting examples from theater, music, and film. Readers who pick up this book for its travelogue qualities will enjoy the places depicted and appealing details that can rarely be found in travel guides. Those looking for a romance novel should respond to the progressive intimacy, characterized by both humor and sophisticated eroticism. The most demanding readers will love the exciting narrative, Slapšak’s haikulike concision in her descriptions of nature, the sharp-minded and rhythmically organized dialogues, all while continuosly discovering the importance of Plato’s...