The Color of Smoke

Abstract

epic Beowulf the monstrous emblem of strength ungoverned by wisdom. While John Gardner reimagines this monster as a modern antihero, Kingsnorth’s Buccmaster is in the end more like the medieval ghoul, a primitive, malignant sociopath. A remarkable feature of this novel is that it is written in what Kingsnorth calls a “shadow language” vaguely reminiscent of Old English, a Germanic dialect akin to modern Dutch. This contrivance creates the feel of authenticity by using a spelling system that approximates the look of Old English (e.g., baec for back, treows for trees) and using a few Old English words that did not survive into modern English. Kingsnorth provides a glossary for such words (e.g., werod, “war band”) and for respelled words that are not easily recognizable (e.g., havoc, “hawk”). I wish he had glossed erce, which appears several times; its source and precise meaning elude me. Also a bit distressing is his treatment of grammatical forms. It is true that illiterate people often mangle the language they speak, but Old English was dependent on inflections in a way that modern English is not. An authentic Buccmaster would not have used thou for thee. Daniel J. Ransom University of Oklahoma Menyhért Lakatos. The Color of Smoke. Ann Major, tr. Williamstown, Massachusetts. New Europe Books. 2015. 480 pages. Menyhért Lakatos is acclaimed as Hungary ’s foremost Romani author, and his novel Füstos képek, translated by Ann Major as The Color of Smoke, is considered to be his magnum opus. It is semi-autobiographical, based loosely on his own experiences as a young man coming of age in Hungary ln the 1930s and early 1940s. Lakatos (1927– 2007) is also the award-winning author of two novels, a novella, five collections of stories, and one volume of poetry. The Color of Smoke first appeared in its original Hungarian-language edition in 1975. It is a picaresque and somewhat salacious odyssey of a nameless protagonist, written in the first person, who grows up as a member of a marginalized minority group, living in a shantytown ironically called “Gypsy Paris.” As a child, Lakatos’s protagonist is drawn to his grandmother; her stories are his link to a former and better nomadic existence in the now-defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. She is the conduit from the vanished past of the Roma and their everworsening present as Hungary is drawn more and more into totalitarianism. His life suddenly changes when a near-tragic but fortuitous event enables him to attend high school until he is expelled, along with the Jewish students, after Hungary joins the fascist camp. Lakatos skillfully weaves Romani customs , language, and even herbal remedies into the story as the novel’s characters interact with one another and with the greater non-Romani world. He also describes the constant hunger during the long, cold winters when the bigger dogs have to be killed to prevent them from eating the small children and the horses are butchered for food because there are no barns or fodder. In one instance, the Roma are even forced to eat pigs from the carrion pit after they died of swine flu in order to survive. Lice and vermin are rampant, and there are constant outbreaks of scabies, which the women treat with tobacco. But despite their suffering, Lakatos shows how the Roma manage to survive, a tribute to their ingenuity and fortitude. When he is sixteen, the protagonist has a brief marriage in another settlement to a fourteen-year-old bride, whom he is then forced to abandon as he continues his odyssey with his friend, Bada, which include more brief romantic episodes with Corsino Fortes Selected Poems Daniel Hahn & Sean O’Brien, tr. Archipelago As a native of the colonial Cape Verde Islands, Corsino Fortes elaborates on the landscapes of his home and often mingles the beach and ocean with the body, personifying the islands. English readers can discover his perspective and lyricism with the benefit of the poems in the original Cape Verdean creole and Portuguese included side by side with the English in this edition. Dario Fo The Pope’s Daughter Antony Shugaar, tr. Europa Editions In imagining hilarious and...