Literature and Film from East Europes Forgotten "Second World": Essays of Invitation

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Czechoslovakia, Yugoslaviano longer on the map. East Europe of the socialist period may seem like a historical oddity, apparently so different from everything before and after. Yet the masterpieces of literature and cinema from this largely forgotten Second World, as well as by the authors formed in it and working in its aftermath, surprise and delight with their contemporary resonance. This book introduces and illuminates a number of these works. It explores how their aesthetic ingenuity discovers ways of engaging existential and universal predicaments, such as how one may survive in the world of victimizations, or imagine a good city, or broach the human boundaries to live as a plant. Like true classics of world art, these novels, stories, and filmsto rephrase Bohumil Hrabalkeep telling us things about ourselves we dont know. In lively and jargon-free prose, Gordana P. Crnkovic builds on her rich teaching experience to create paths to these works and reveal how they changed lives.

Reviews

Gordana Crnkovic writes with such gentle delight, such a captivating capacity to explore and explain, such a vigorous understanding of the way film unfolds in front of the viewer and inside their head that you want to grab the camera and start filming then and there. * Milcho Manchevski, Academy Award-nominated writer, director, and photographer *
Literature and Film from East Europes Forgotten Second World delivers much more than its title promises. In addition to providing luminous and mostly jargon-free readings of major prose and cinematic texts, Crnkovics book tells us how and why to tackle big and sometimes difficult works of art, demonstrating that, even in our sound-bite-addicted age, engaging with such works can change our lives. * Andrew Wachtel, Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, USA *
Gordana Crnkovic has written an absolutely delightful and inspiring book on an oddly neglected topic: the literature and film of the so-called Second WorldEastern Europe, during its post-World War II years behind the Iron Curtain. The astonishing truth about the fiction and film of this periodwhether that of Crnkovics native Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, or Romaniais that far from being a dark and despairing response to the various forms of repression then current, this is a literature of pleasure, warmth, energy, humor, and the overcoming of obstacles, political and otherwise. Crnkovic has chosen key novels and films to show us what we have been missing, and by the time she has finished, we have a whole new reading list and filmography to look forward to. Crnkovics enthusiasm and keen analytic powers endow the fiction and film in question with the special aura of a mini-Renaissanceone unmatched in the First World of the Cold War. * Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, Emerita, Stanford University, USA, and author of THE EDGE OF IRONY: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire. *
Gordana Crnkovics passion for literature and film shines through all these essays. In each of the 15 shorter ones she has penned a charming love letter to the film or book in question, and in each of the five longer ones she provides the deeper sort of scholarly (but still highly readable) analysis for which she is well known. Overall, she has done a great service to these outstanding artists of what used to be Eastern Europe in bringing them to our attention. * Ronelle Alexander, Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley, USA *
[Gordana P. Crnkovic] offers an enlightening path, filled with new possibilities, experiences, and discoveries. ... These essays of invitation open the portal to an invigorating world of lesser-known, or lesser-appreciated * EuropeNow Journal *

Author Bio

Gordana P. Crnkovic is Professor of Slavic and of Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Her writings include Imagined Dialogues: Eastern European Literature in Conversation with American and English Literature (2000), Post-Yugoslav Literature and Film: Fires, Foundations, Flourishes (2012), over 30 articles, as well as texts of the experimental video Zagreb Everywhere.