Customer Reviews

The Banquet in Blitva (Literature in Translation)

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Krleza's brilliant "Banquet in Blitva" (one of the greatest political novels of the 20th century) comes, alas, too late for English speaking reading public- hopefully. This precarious genre, modern political novel-epitomized by masterworks of Conrad, Koestler, Malraux, Silone or Vargas Llosa-seems, at least superficially, a species doomed to extinction in affluent
Western societies subtly dominated by media-imposed uniformity of values and general ethical standards: uniformity which successfully reduces the intensity of potential conflicts and has gradually de-ideologized liberal democracies- so far.
As it is now: Krleza's vision of social and ideological (or, in more general terms, "human") chaos out of which all forms of totalitarianism "naturally" emerge (magnificently rendered in puppet-theatre scene), expressed in his unique baroque style is more pertinent to the protoplasmatic anarchy of Eastern Europe, much of Asia and, especially, Latin America. But- who knows ? Maybe post-9/11 sense of vulnerability of democratic institutions (and life itself) will give new and wider relevance to this novel, full of convincing characters (especially Barutanski and Nielsen) and saturated with dense atmosphere of chaotic disorder and agonising conflicts between forces of oppression (which initially "meant well", but were ineluctably warped-caught in the web of life's contraries) and freedom.

"Things fall apart
Center cannot hold"

Krleza's brilliant "Banquet in Blitva" (one of the greatest political novels of the 20th century) comes, alas, too late for English speaking reading public- hopefully. This precarious genre, modern political novel-epitomized by masterworks of Conrad, Koestler, Malraux, Silone or Vargas Llosa-seems, at least superficially, a species doomed to extinction in affluent
Western societies subtly dominated by media-imposed uniformity of values and general ethical standards: uniformity which successfully reduces the intensity of potential conflicts and has gradually de-ideologized liberal democracies- so far.
As it is now: Krleza's vision of social and ideological (or, in more general terms, "human") chaos out of which all forms of totalitarianism "naturally" emerge (magnificently rendered in puppet-theatre scene), expressed in his unique baroque style is more pertinent to the protoplasmatic anarchy of Eastern Europe, much of Asia and, especially, Latin America. But- who knows ? Maybe post-9/11 sense of vulnerability of democratic institutions (and life itself) will give new and wider relevance to this novel, full of convincing characters (especially Barutanski and Nielsen) and saturated with dense atmosphere of chaotic disorder and agonising conflicts between forces of oppression (which initially "meant well", but were ineluctably warped-caught in the web of life's contraries) and freedom.

"Things fall apart
Center cannot hold"