the melancholy of resistance by lászló krasznahorkai

While The Melancholy of Resistance was the first of his novels to be translated into English, it is in fact Krasznahorkai's second novel with which Anglophone readers commended their journey through his oeuvre. When Satantango was finally published in 2012 by New Directions, in a brilliant translation by poet George Szirtes, Anglophone readers finally held in their hands the very first novel by the mysterious Krasznahorkai.

Consider this, then, less a review proper then an account of a personal reading journey through the bleak and labyrinthine prose of one of the greatest writers in world literature today. The gist is that one can begin with Krasznahorkai anywhere, and, while I do agree with this, I also believe that my own journey through the work of the great 'Hungarian master of apocalypse'-to use Susan Sontag's remarks on his work, and The Melancholy of Resistance in particular-has proven a wise move. On the heels of László Krasznahorkai's victory this year for winning the Best Translated Book Award (BTBA) two years in a row, ever astute critic Scott Esposito has assembled a crash course in all things Krasznahorkai. Compact, powerful and intense,The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, 'is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type.' And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words ofThe Guardian, 'lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds.' … ( more) Eszter,plotting her takeover of the town her weakling husband and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found.

The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find music, cosmology, fascism. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumors. A powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town.The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town.

The melancholy of resistance by lászló krasznahorkai