Olga ZilberbourgLike Water and Other Stories

Abstract

reader, which may have been intended by the author. The writing and construction of the text is reflected in the professions of the two protagonists: she is an architect and he, a writer and critic of nonfiction. Both endeavors, like their relationship, represent attempts to create and transcend in a context where possibilities to do so are illusory. She struggles to establish herself in a maledominated field, while he faces the changes that technology has wrought upon popular culture and the publishing industry. The novel references a broad range of themes, including sexual abuse and changing gender roles, the growing power of social media and the decline of literary culture, the terrorist threat and the precariousness of modern existence, the recent economic crisis and the reaction in Spain to increased immigration. Environmental pollution and the impact of climate change on Madrid are also mentioned. In addition , there is criticism of some aspects of Spanish culture, which may spring from Pron’s experiences living in the country as an immigrant. Finally, the issue of generational differences is presented in this text, which portrays the younger generation as bewildered by the economic and social challenges it faces. This is a novel of ideas, and Pron is adept at working them into his examination of contemporary society and relationships between couples. Through his anonymous protagonists and secondary characters, Pron’s work presents a kaleidoscopic view of some of the alienating and dehumanizing aspects of modern culture and their impact on us. Edward Waters Hood North Arizona State Olga Zilberbourg Like Water and Other Stories Santa Rosa, California. WTAW Press. 2019. 184 pages. THE FIFTY-TWO short stories in Like Water by Russian author Olga Zilberbourg illustrate protagonists trying to stay afloat. In her English An apt description of the human condition to which everyone can relate. The ghazal itself consists of a number of couplets, at least four but usually six or eight, each a kind of minipoem unto itself. It does not necessarily have to relate in theme or topic to other couplets in the poem, though they may. However, the best ghazals possess an overall mood or coloring, which adds to their sense of unity. Often seeming scattered to the uninitiated, the ghazal is held together as well by the poem’s metric pattern and by not one but two required rhymes. The second line of all couplets must end with the same word or words; this is the radif. The radif is preceded by the qafiya, which forms a separate, internal rhyme set. Rahman has been able to reproduce both sets of rhymes in a generous number of these translations. Here is an example from a longer ghazal by Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775–1862). The “assembly” in the first couplet refers to someone’s (the beloved’s?) salon or social event. The radif is in bolditalics ; the qafiya in boldface: It was never so very hard to speak, but now Your assembly was never so bleak, but now Who robbed you of your patience, my poor heart? Never so restless and ever so meek, but now What magic in her glance, I never knew! I would so much crave for and seek, but now So hard this time to bear the pangs of love My goal was never so oblique, but now . . . This collection contains 130 poems, two each by sixty-five Indian and Pakistani poets (five of them women), each introduced with a brief biographical note. The poems are drawn from six different literary periods from the seventeenth to the twentyfirst centuries. The volume’s concise and informative introduction to the ghazal, its history, and its place in the worldview of Urdu readers includes an illuminating discussion of ghazals written in English by contemporary poets: Americans Adrienne Rich and Robert Bly, Canadians Jim Harrison and Phyllis Webb, and Australian Judith Wright. Some readers might question the appropriateness of Rahman’s repeated, deliberate use of the loaded, fraught word “Oriental” in various contexts. In the translator’s note at the end of the book, Rahman discusses his theory of translation in general and of the ghazal in particular. Translating ghazals is not easy, but he has done so with skill...