Houses

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Building can be seen as a master metaphor for modernity, which some great irresistible force, be it fascism or communism or capitalism, is always busy building anew, and Houses is a book about a man, Arseniev Negoyan, who has devoted his life and his dreams to building. Bon vivant, Francophile, visionary, Negoyan spent the first half of his life building houses he loved and even gave names too - Juliana, Christina, Agatha-making his hometown of Belgrade into a modern city to be proud of. The second half of his life, after the Second World War and the Nazi occupation, he has spent in one of those houses, being looked after by his wife and a nurse, in hiding. Now, on the last day of his life, Negoyan has decided to go out at last to see what he has wrought. Negoyan is one of the great characters in modern fiction, a charming monster of selfishness and self-delusion. And for all his failings, his life poses a question for the rest of us: Where in the modern world is there a home except in illusion

Reviews

Peki writes with a wry grace that lets all the seriousness and thought fold inside a stubborn yet subtle farce. Accomplished and piquant. Kirkus Reviews

The Houses of Belgrade deserves the most honest praise a reviewer can give: it was so good I cant wait to read [Pekis] first book for my own pleasure...Peki has drawn his portrait with exquisitely subtle lines, choosing words with such care that Arseniev says worlds about himself while he is talking about someone else. Peter Grier, The Christian Science Monitor

In its best moments, [The Houses of Belgrade] rates with the intricate writings of Russian and French masters...It is a naked eye that can take us into a building of cold-water flats...into the den of a wretched manand then make us step back from this tremendous detail into the unimaginable widths of human suffering. Peki has mirrored the world, its fire, its blood, in the clouded eye of a madman, in a bog, reducing its vastness to a few cubic feet of muddy waterand the reflection is ugly. Katherine Knorr, Chicago Tribune

Written in 1978, Mr. Peki's novel is a delicate farce that exemplifies the best of Yugoslavian literature chronicles the life of Negovan, itself a mirror for the conflicts of the 20th century. Houses offers a fascinating window into literature of the other Europe. Karl Wolff, New York Journal of Books

Author Bio

Borislav Pekic (1930-1992) was a political activist and writer. In 1948 he was accused of organizing a student conspiracy against the state of Yugoslavia and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. He was pardoned in 1954. Ten years later, he won a major Yugoslav literary prize, the NIN Award, for his first novel The Time of Miracles. In 1971, Pekic immigrated to London, where he continued to write novels, although Yugoslav authorities prevented them from being published in his home country for several years. He also wrote more than twenty original screenplays, adapting some of his novels to the screen including The Time of Miracles. Among his many works are the novel How to Quiet a Vampire, the play The Generals, and his memoir of post-war life under Communist rule Godine koje su pojeli skakavci ("The Year the Locusts Have Devoured"). Bernard Johnson (1933-2003) was affiliated with the Language Centre at the London School of Economics for many years. In 1970 he edited and translated the first anthology of modern Yugoslav literature, and throughout his career he distinguished himself as one of the most active translators of Serbo-Croatian poetry and prose working in English. He also translated the NYRB Classic, The Use of Man (9781590177266; GBP8.99), by Aleksandar Tisma.