Fear of Barbarians - Libroj.org

Lingvo: English

Eldonita je 15-a de decembro 2021 de Parthian Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-913640-19-4

(1 recenzo)

Gavdos: a remote island south of Crete, the southernmost point of Europe, surrounded by an endless expanse of sea. To Oksana, who has come from Ukraine with her friends to recover from illness in the aftermath of Chernobyl, it seems like a dream to live in a blue-and-white house with a lemon tree. To Penelope, a Greek woman who was married off to an unsuitable man by nuns from the convent where she spent her teenage years, it is a kind of prison. Their two narratives, interwoven with other stories - of the other women of the sparse community, of their own past lives and loves - are skilfully combined with themes of otherness and the notions of 'foreign' and 'barbaric' in this poetic and timely short novel by acclaimed Macedonian writer Petar Andonovski, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature.

1 eldono

Stephanie Jane recenzis Fear of Barbarians de Petar Andonovski

A short novella

3 steloj

Fear Of Barbarians is a short novella exploring local people's attitudes to a trio of Ukrainian newcomers on the isolated Greek island of Gavdos. The island only supports a tiny inward-looking population so Oksana, Igor and Evgenii cannot go unnoticed and frequently meet with antagonism even though, as we discover through the story, several of those unwelcoming locals aren't actually Gavdos-born themselves and even true natives such as twins Kiki and Aliki are similarly treated with suspicion.

Andonovski tells his tale through two narrators, Oksana and Penelope. Both women were brought to Gavdos by men from whom they now find themselves distanced. They are both lonely and live more in their memories of the past than in their presents, yet are kept apart by fear of the consequences of making a connection with someone who is Other. This theme is described by the title and threads throughout the novella even …

Fear Of Barbarians is a short novella exploring local people's attitudes to a trio of Ukrainian newcomers on the isolated Greek island of Gavdos. The island only supports a tiny inward-looking population so Oksana, Igor and Evgenii cannot go unnoticed and frequently meet with antagonism even though, as we discover through the story, several of those unwelcoming locals aren't actually Gavdos-born themselves and even true natives such as twins Kiki and Aliki are similarly treated with suspicion.

Andonovski tells his tale through two narrators, Oksana and Penelope. Both women were brought to Gavdos by men from whom they now find themselves distanced. They are both lonely and live more in their memories of the past than in their presents, yet are kept apart by fear of the consequences of making a connection with someone who is Other. This theme is described by the title and threads throughout the novella even as the characters' individual stories are kept separate.

I found Fear Of Barbarians a difficult book to read, not so much in its prose, but because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be taking from each storyline. I felt as though I'd missed an explanatory opening chapter or a conclusion that would bring everything together (I hadn't!). Andonovski deftly captures the island's atmosphere and the menace of men who fear the unfamiliar and I loved his evocation of Gavdos' wild spaces, but I'm not sure I understood exactly what he wanted to say.

Temoj

Slavic philology