w > w D H < w H D O 1111111111111111 lovers, some ofwhom Leclerc will findpolitical pretexts forexecuting; and to thephysical sufferingof her husband. The novel's focus is not on Pau line's apolitical sexual liberation, perhaps from the marriage imposed by her imperious brother,but rather on Leclerc, who is, afterall, theone contemplating eternity.This is seen inhis prolonged interaction with the ghost of Toussaint, a bout with his conscience, whereby he's trying to understand thesplithe's undergone, thedetachment of theonce Republi can idealist who quoted Danton to thegeneral of 1802. The reality, Toussaint's ghost reminds Leclerc early in the novel, is that the latter's role is not one of pacification. Saint-Domingue was relatively peaceful when he arrived and more so after he tricked Tous saint intogoing toEurope. His new role can be attributed to the fact that he has orders fromBonaparte to reinstate slavery as Rochambeau had done inGuadeloupe andMarti nique. The same Bonaparte ordered the seizure and imprisonment of Toussaint, perhaps for his egalitar 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 ian epistolary address: "Du Premier des Noirs au Premier des Blancs." Thus, the Haitian novelist's large-scale concern is not so much the actions of his protagonists but the confluence of the large-scale his torical,political, psychological, and even commercial mechanisms that brought about those actions. Per haps, for his global and complex vision of theCaribbean, it's time the novels of Jean-Claude Fignole were translated intoEnglish. Robert H. McCormick Jr. FranklinCollege, Switzerland Marija Knezevic. Fabula Rasa. Bel grade. Privately published. 2008. 225 pages. 15. Marija Knezevic (b. 1963) is a pro lific Serbian writer, renowned for being equally talented in poetry, fiction,and nonfiction. She has had herwork translated intoPolish, Ger man, and English, while she herself translates mostly American poetry. Despite her international rea dership, she was unsuccessful in findinga publisher inSerbia forher latest (thirteenth) book of short stori es, Fabula Rasa,which shewrote with the support of a reputable Austrian scholarship (KulturKontakt). More than twentySerbian publishers refu sed to print thebook, admitting all thewhile that the book is "a very good one." This paradox reveals a plethora of issues: misogyny, for one, or perhaps that, in her book, Knezevic criticizes theMinistry of Culture, literary societies, awards, and writers?some of whom are themselves publishers. Fortunately forthosewho appreciate good litera ture, thisbook has in the end been published?by theauthor herself, as a samizdat. My own appreciation forFabu la Rasa lies in its craftynarration, lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll tense dialogues, sapid humor, and theauthor's care fordetails. The title of thework alludes to the phrase "tabula rasa"?an empty slate?but here it serves to underline the con trast with the actual work, which is full of fabula and featuring a vast number of characters, different nar rative techniques, and thoughtful essayistic approaches. On the other hand, "rasa" could be an allusion to the (nava) rasa?an Indian con cept of a dominant emotion?since, in describing the process of transi tion in Serbia, that is the focus of each story. Knezevic thus portrays a discovery of oneself as a won der, one's obsession with physical beauty, craving for love and com passion, religious devotion, social impoverishment, and thepathology of everyday life inwhich ethics give way tohorror and disgust ("Paviljon doktora Su?kica"/ The pavilion of Doctor Suskic). The author's Orwellian criti cism of thepolitical system iswrit ten in the language ofGogolian sat ire. The discourse of "individuals" versus "co-workers," first developed in the story "AZZ," continues to evolve in another story, "Pad na pamet" (Occur), depicting a tourna ment of theworld's literaryclassics in the very capital of Serbia, where Rabelais is quick to figure out the most important verbs ("make do, pass through, and arrange"), con eluding that "the only real tense is conditional." Together with Gogol, Harms, and Kafka, these literary individuals and theirliterary worlds furtherdepict the absurdity of Ser bian life. This brilliant storycould be read as an homage toLjubica Arsic, one of the best Serbian contempo rary female fiction writers, who? as a witty raisonneur?explains to Gogol literary rules particular to Serbia (where one is considered to IIIIIIIMIIIIIIlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllL^H 64 i World Literature Today , be awriter only ifhe/she writes his 1 toricalnovels). All inall, Fabula Rasa , is a charming, kaleidoscopic, and 1 comprehensive view of transition in i Serbia today. [ Svetlana Tomic i Bethesda, Maryland i Angelina Muniz-Huberman. La burla , dora de Toledo. Mexico City. Planeta. 1 2008. 310 pages. $24.95 isbn978-970 ! 37-0728-7 i Those who are already familiar with the work of Angelina Muniz-Huber i man will find thisa novel ofprovoc , ative and suggestive content. As in 1 her earlier novels, Muniz-Huberman i sets out to transgress the boundar 1 ies imposed by society on the indi i vidual. The marked emphasis on the [ abuses of the Holy Office as itasserts i its"purity ofblood," resulting in the , massive exodus of Jews, becomes a 1 metaphor for intolerance and repres i sion through the centuries, includ 1 ing the present one. i La burladoradeToledo takesplace ' in Spain in the late sixteenth centu i ry, when individual freedoms were , threatened by the brutality of the i Holy Office, but time flowswithout , transition from the Renaissance to 1 the present and to the future, to i indicate the uninterrupted preva 1 lence of intolerance through the cen i turies. The story, based on a trial ! documented in the annals of the i Inquisition, tells of a woman named , Amba, born in 1545, the daughter 1 of an African slave and a converted , Jew. When hermistress dies, Amba 1 gains her freedom, takes the name 1 of her mistress, Elena de Cespedes, ' and embarks on an adventurous life. 1 Living indangerous times, thepro , tagonist, who is a hermaphrodite, 1 survives on her wits. As a woman, , she gets married and bears a son, 1 whom she abandons soon after birth. Officially recognized as a man, Eleno shows off a virile appearance, displaying a beard and wearing a soldier's uniform to camouflage his double sexual identity.At theWar of Alpujarras, he gains a reputa tion as a surgeon, taking care of the wounded. Eleno's bisexualism disconcerts thedoctors and judges who, unable todetermine his physiological char acter, accuse him of sexual duplicity, sodomy, and witchcraft. Like Don Juan Tenorio, Eleno acquires fame as a "burlador," who seduced women with falsepromises ofmarriage. Yet when this libertinesucceeds inbeing officially recognized as a man, he marries a woman, Maria del Cano. His victory, however, is short-lived since he is sentenced to ten years of working at a hospital-prison. While Cespedes's trialishistori cally documented, the companions of her adventures include such fic tional characters as Don Quijote. Muniz-Huberman creates an atmo sphere ofmagic realism toward the end of thenovel,when Yusuf Magus frees Elena/o to carry him/her in hismagic carpet tosafety inAmster dam, away from the clutches of the Inquisition. The ambiguity that character izes the protagonist's sexual orien tation (as bigamous, homosexual, transexual, travesti, androgynous, bigendered, chameleon-like) and her reliance on alchemy and supernatu ral events reflect the author's inten tion to transgress other boundaries, like those of linguistic and philo sophical nature to demonstrate that opposites can findharmony within a single entity (good/evil, angel/ devil, man/woman). La burlador a's erudition domi nates itsprose; thebook is saturated with encyclopedic referencesrelated to mysticism, Kabbalah, the Golem, i.\ in t;i \i)oi{\ TO I E DO \!!^? |i!Ki MtliVl/i IhImTIIKIII erotic discourse, and apocalyptic events. Its prevailing technique con sists of presenting the reader with multiple alternatives, set against obstacles. Like the protagonist, the style of the novel itself is trans gressive and escapes all traditional classification; more than a novel or a pseudo-novel, its abundant ver bal games, digressions, confessions, and autobiographic entriesmake La burladora de Toledo an unparalleled hermaphroditic novel. Nora Glickman Queens College and the Graduate Center,CUNY Kallia Papadaki. O ichos tou akalyp- E tou: Exi koinochristes istories. Ath- E ens. Polis. 2009. 277 pages. 15. isbn | 978-960-435-222-7 1 An interest in spatiality, especial- E ly as regards the contrast between E artificial and natural space (city E versus the country, cyberspace ver- E sus reality), has been increasing in E tandem with our growing realiza- E tion that the two realms are far less E distinct than traditionally thought. E H^H September-October 2009 i65 I ...