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Past EventsMEET THE AUTHORJOAN BRETON CONNELLYat a BOOK EVENTThursday , 5TH
July 2007, 7:00 p.m., 11 Andreas Demetriou Street, Nicosia
1066
Joan Breton Connelly Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN-10: 0691127468, pp.456, h/b, d/j, CY£28.30 In this sumptuously illustrated book, Joan Breton Connelly gives us the first comprehensive cultural history of priestesses in the ancient Greek world. Connelly presents the fullest and most vivid picture yet of how priestesses lived and worked, from the most famous and sacred of them--the Delphic Oracle and the priestess of Athena Polias--to basket bearers and handmaidens. Along the way, she challenges long-held beliefs to show that priestesses played far more significant public roles in ancient Greece than previously acknowledged. Connelly builds this history through a pioneering examination of archaeological evidence in the broader context of literary sources, inscriptions, sculpture, and vase painting. Ranging from southern Italy to Asia Minor, and from the late Bronze Age to the fifth century A.D., she brings the priestesses to life--their social origins, how they progressed through many sacred roles on the path to priesthood, and even how they dressed. She sheds light on the rituals they performed, the political power they wielded, their systems of patronage and compensation, and how they were honored, including in death. Connelly shows that understanding the complexity of priestesses' lives requires us to look past the simple lines we draw today between public and private, sacred and secular. The remarkable picture that emerges reveals that women in religious office were not as secluded and marginalized as we have thought--that religious office was one arena in ancient Greece where women enjoyed privileges and authority comparable to that of men. Connelly concludes by examining women's roles in early Christianity, taking on the larger issue of the exclusion of women from the Christian priesthood.
Further information from MOUFFLON BOOKSHOP, NICOSIA 22 665 155, 1,3 Sofouli Street, Nicosia The author will be interviewed by Rosie Charalambou at 7:00 4th July RIK English programme
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Moufflon Bookshop is
promoting Austrian literature and especially the works of
More on Ingeborg Bachmann on http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ibach.htm Selected works: Die kritische Aufnahme der Existenzialphilosophie Martin Heideggers, 1950 (doctoral dissertation) Ein Geschäft mit Träumen, 1952 (radioplay) Die gestundete Zeit, 1953/1957 Die Zikaden, 1955 (radioplay) Anrufung des Großen Bären, 1956 Der gute Gott von Manhattan, 1958 (radioplay, The Good God of Manhattan) Der Prinz von Homburg, 1960 (libretto for Hans Werner Henze's opera The Prince of Homburg) Das dreißigste Jahr, 1961 - The Thirtieth Year - Kolmaskymmenes vuosi Jugend in einer Österreichischen Stadt, 1961 Gedichte, Hörspiele, Essays, 1964 Ein Ort für Zufälle, 1965 Der junge Lord, 1965 (libretto for Hans Werner Henze's opera The Young Lord) Malina, 1971 - trans. - suom. Simultan, 1972 - suom. Simultaani Gier, 1973 Der Fall Franz, 1979 - The Book of Franza (trans. by Peter Filkins) Werke, 1978 (4 vols.) In the Storm of Roses: Selected Poems, 1986 Paths to the Lake, 1989 Wir müssen wahre Sätze finden, 1991 (ed. by Christine Koschel und Inge von Weidenbaum) Songs in Flight, 1994 Ingeborg Bachmann und Paul Celan: Poetische Korrespondenzen, 1997 (ed. by Bernhard Böschenstein und Sigrid Weigel) Selected Prose and Drama, 1998 Letzte, unveröffentlichte Gedichte Entwürfe und Fassungen, 1998 (ed. by Hans Höller) The Book of Franza & Requiem for Fanny Goldmann, 1999 Letters to Felician, 2002 (trans. by Damion Searls) |
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Meet the authors, book signing & refreshments
Robert Holland and Diana Markides
Oxford University Press, March 2006, 300 pages; 12pp
plates; ISBN13: 978-0-19-924996-1 ISBN10: 0-19-924996-2, The Greek revolt against Turkish rule in the 1820s, and the ensuing establishment of an independent Hellenic Kingdom, was the principal precursor of an age of nationalism in the eastern Mediterranean world. Amongst the Great Powers, Great Britain thereafter played the most critical role in struggles to expand the frontiers of Greece beyond their initially confined extent. Through a focus on events leading to the cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece in 1864, the often bloody process of Cretan unification climaxing in 1913, the adhesion of the Dodecanese to Greece in 1948, and the travails of British colonial rule in Cyprus through to independence in 1960, the book develops a comparative overview of the United Kingdom's engagements with the modern Hellenic experience. At the heart of the various themes covered by this volume is the interaction between internal and external forces shaping the futures of divided island societies. In exploring the resulting patterns the authors provide an original insight into the political and social morphology of the eastern Mediterranean. Although the principal context is provided by Anglo-Hellenic relations, the nature of the struggles necessitate a close attention to Ottoman decline and post-Ottoman succession, Great Power rivalries, ethnic and communal disintegration, the early history of international peace-keeping, and decolonization after 1945. In tracing these preoccupations, the often neglected significance of the eastern Mediterranean is more accurately situated in relation to British authority overseas and its limits. Although the policy process is carefully charted, the essential concern is with struggles of mastery within islands where Britons and Greeks, amongst others, found themselves frequently at odds. In evoking the engagement between British power and Hellenic nationalism, a fresh perspective is given to the modern history of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Balkan and Near Eastern worlds to which they were intimately connected. Table of Contents 1. The British and the Hellenes 2. Gladstone and the Greeks: The Extraordinary Mission to the Ionian Islands 1858-1859 3. The Abandonment of the Ionian Protectorate 1859-1864 4. The End of Ottoman Power in Crete 1894-1898 5. An Unfortunate Regime: The Experiment of Cretan Autonomy 1898-1906 6. Britain, the Balkans, and the Climax of Cretan Union 1906-1913 7. The Peculiarity of Cyprus 1878-1931 8. The Dodecanese Experience 1939-1948 9. Mastery and Despair: Cyprus 1931-1960 10. Love, Deception, and Anglo-Hellenic Politics; Bibliography; Index |
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A lecture by Robert Holland at Hilton Hotel, Nicosia, at 8 p.m. on Tuesday 28 March:
Writing a Relationship: Some
Reflections in Anglo-Cypriot and Anglo-Hellenic perspective
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Book presentation and slide show by an art historian / critic MAYDA SARIS
who will present her work Armenian Painting: From the Beginning to the Present Utudjian Cultural Hall at Armenian Archbishopric of
Cyprus, Nicosia, 8 p.m. |
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The Association for Cypriot, Greek and Turkish Affairs And The Friends of Cyprus Committee Have pleasure in announcing a joint event and invite you to attend on Tuesday 28 March 2006 at 6.30 Michael Jansen will present her recent book WAR AND CULTURAL HERITAGE: Cyprus after the 1974 Turkish Invasion Andy Love, MP in the chair The meeting with be held at: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS Committee Room 18 Access from St Stephen’s Entrance (Nearest underground: Westminster) The speaker: Michael Jansen is a journalist and author with a long and wide knowledge of Cyprus and the Middle East. She lived for a number of years in the Lebanon and since 1976 she has resided in Cyprus. She has worked as regional correspondent for the Irish Times (Dublin), Middle East International (London) and the Deccan Herald (Banglagore). She also contributes columns to other journals and is the author of three non-fiction books and a novel. *** 25 February 2006:
Moufflon Bookshop, Kinyras Street 30, Paphos
Jansen’s book, according to the publisher, “is an engaging contribution to the
literature on the destruction of cultural heritages by acts of war. As it has
been repeatedly pointed out, cultural looting is the second oldest profession.
Following the 1974 Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus, an incredible amount of
irreplaceable treasures from museums and churches experienced this fate of
looting and found their way to the international black market.” |
We would like to introduce our author of the year
Svetislav
Basara
Serbian novelist,
short story writer and essayist
& current Ambassador of Serbia-Montenegro to Cyprus
Chinese
Letter
Translation by Ana Lucic
Eastern European Literature Series
Dalkey Archive Press, 2004, 180 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, paperback,1-56478-374-X
Ordered by two mysterious men to “write a statement of about 100 pages,” the narrator of Chinese Letter—who’s not sure of his name, but calls himself Fritz—faithfully records the bizarre occurrences of his daily life: his absurd conversations with his mother who is abducted by slave traders, his visits to his friend who works in the hospital’s autopsy room, and his sister’s tumultuous marriage to the butcher’s son, to name a few. Widely respected in Serbia, the term “Basarian” has been coined to refer to his unique writing style, reminiscent of the best of Samuel Beckett for its directness, existential pondering, and odd sense of humor.
"Svetislav Basara has written a fragmentary book in which, despite lots of digressions, the central theme can be clearly seen—an uninterrupted dispute between, not quasi-philosophical, but quite existential terms of I and Nothing. Coming face to face with the wild emptiness in the world with no firm grounding is the characteristic of a whole trend in modern art—speaking ‘about nothing’ in a most convincing way, he writes about the status of individuality in this century."—Mihajlo Pantic´
"Svetislav Basara—enfant terrible of Serbian contemporary prose—has written a heartfelt narrative about the age we live in."—Tihomir Brajovic
"One of the best authors of the current generation. The most intriguing Serbian writer since Danilo Kis."—Natasa Milosavljevic
Καταραμένη
γη
(Doomed Land - Greek translation)
Μετάφραση από τα σερβικά: Γκάγκα Ρόσιτς
Κέδρος, (Βαλκανική Λογοτεχνία), 2005, ISBN: 9600426007, Σελ. 240
...Βασίλειο του εφιάλτη και δημοκρατία των ψευδαισθήσεων. Η «μαύρη τρύπα» της γεωπολιτικής. Ένα κράτος στα όρια του υπαρκτού, όπου ο χώρος, ο χρόνος, η λογική και, ιδιαίτερα οι άνθρωποι, εξαφανίζονται.
Πρωτεύουσα:
Ντούνουμ.
Πληθυσμός: Παράνομα συλληφθέντες, παράνομα γεννημένοι, παράνομα πεθαμένοι.
Πολίτευμα: Συνταγματική αναρχία.
Γλώσσα: Ετραστσιανά. Ένα συγκεχυμένο μείγμα βαβελικής εμπνεύσεως των πιο
πρόστυχων λέξεων από τις γλώσσες των λαών που έχουν εγκατασταθεί στη χώρα.
Εισάγονται: Πρώτες ύλες αρρωστημένης φαντασίας.
Εξάγονται: Παραισθήσεις...
Ο Ρόμπερτ Σίνσεντ, γνήσιος τζέντλεμαν και ορκισμένος εργένης, είναι ο νέος επιτετραμμένος της Βρετανικής Πρεσβείας στο μυστηριώδες κράτος Ετράστσια. Λίγες μόλις μέρες μετά την ανάληψη των καθηκόντων του, αποφασίζει να εμπιστευτεί τη χλωμή Σελήνη του ωροσκοπίου του και να παντρευτεί τη δεκαεννιάχρονη Κλειώ. Μετά το τέλος όμως της γαμήλιας τελετής, η νύφη πέφτει νεκρή από σφαίρα ελεύθερου σκοπευτή και ο αποσβολωμένος γαμπρός αποφασίζει να κινήσει γη και ουρανό για ν’ απονεμηθεί δικαιοσύνη. Σε μια χώρα που ο βίαιος θάνατος θεωρείται κάτι φυσικό, ο Άγγλος διπλωμάτης θα πάρει μια μικρή μόνο γεύση των συμφορών που τον περιμένουν: πέφτει θύμα ληστείας στο κέντρο της πόλης, «γνωρίζει» το νυχτερινό ποινικό δίκαιο της χώρας όταν βιάζεται από πράκτορες της Υπηρεσίας Ασφαλείας, ξαναπαντρεύεται και μένει χήρος σε σύντομο χρονικό διάστημα και όλα αυτά υπό το άγρυπνο βλέμμα του προέδρου της Δημοκρατίας, ο οποίος στοιχηματίζει για το πόσο θα αντέξει ακόμη ο ενοχλητικός Δυτικός προτού παραδώσει τα διαπιστευτήριά του και τα τρία πανάκριβα μπουκάλια ουίσκι μάρκας Chivas Regal που προβλέπει το πρωτόκολλο. Ο Ρόμπερτ καταλαβαίνει ότι θα χρειαστεί κάτι περισσότερο από την αγγλική διπλωματία για να επιζήσει σ’ αυτή την καταραμένη γη.
Χρόνια μετά, ένας άντρας κάνει τις διακοπές του στο απομονωμένο παραθαλάσσιο ψαροχώρι Κρστρμρκ, όταν στο μοναδικό βιβλιοπωλείο της περιοχής ανακαλύπτει ένα βιβλίο που κινεί την προσοχή του: η Καταραμένη γη του άγνωστου συγγραφέα Ρόμπερτ Τ. Σίνσεντ...
Ένα σουρεαλιστικό μυθιστόρημα με μαύρο χιούμορ. Μια ξέφρενη σάτιρα πολιτικών ηθών και ηθικής ένδειας. Μια καυστική ματιά στα σύγχρονα πρότυπα δημοκρατίας, στην εξουσία και στην κατάχρησή της.
Book review by Danny Yee
© 2004
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Chinese_Letter.html
Our narrator is probably called Salajdin Bejs, but he likes to change his name, with Fritz the most common choice. He has been instructed by two men to write "about a hundred pages" on "whatever he wants" -- or so he says, anyway (at one point he also thinks his mother has been kidnapped by white slave traders).
It's not clear whether Fritz is an adult who's not all there or whether he's an angstful teenager with an active imagination, literary pretensions and a typewriter, but it hardly matters. The glimpses we get of his life -- brief exchanges with his mother and sister, fantasies about a girl who lives in one of the other flats, visits to a friend who works as a pathologist in a morgue -- are fragments in a surreal narrative, mixed up with comic existential monologues.
"Today my name is Fritz again. I have one problem: I exist. My biggest success in life is that I'm not dead yet. My biggest failure in life is exactly the same thing: I'm not dead yet. I was born and as a result I suffer all the consequences. If I exist, that's because I wanted to. I don't see any other possibility. I honestly envy those who don't exist. Those with no names and shape. Those who have no clue that they don't exist. But sooner or later they'll be drawn into the game too. Everybody succumbs in the end. If it weren't so, people would stop having children."
Chinese Letter is a lively, inventive comedy which would make fine theatre of the absurd. It's easy reading, entertaining and hard to put down.
15 December 2004
London Review of Books, Volume 27, No. 9, dated 5
May 2005
© Daniel Soar - LRB
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n09/soar01_.html
The Art-House Crowd
Daniel Soar
Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara trans. Ana Lucic, Dalkey Archive
Is anybody listening? This isn’t a question that detains most eminent Western writers of fiction, whose able conjurings of hot-air balloon disasters relived in appalled slow motion, or of multiple family unravellings that refigure the world, are the engines of supercharged literature. But the great novelists have a problem. They’re expected to perform, and in order to perform they have to submit to their own fiction, which – in the manner of any great performance – has to be oratorical and technically faultless. Think RSC extravaganza. They have to trick themselves into believing that what they’re about to deliver is the only thing worth listening to. They have to believe in stories.
Svetislav Basara is Serbian. You probably wouldn’t have heard
of him even if you came from what used to be Yugoslavia and were living in
Ljubljana or Zagreb or Sarajevo, since none of his twenty or so books has sold
more than a couple of thousand copies, and they have all appeared from a variety
of small presses in Belgrade, Uzice and Banja Luka – in Serbia and the Serb part
of Bosnia – from establishments whose main business is running a bookshop, but
who also publish books because if they don’t no one else will. This is the way
publishing works in the Balkans and much of Eastern Europe: fuelled by
enthusiasm, as if a late-night debate over the kitchen table had led to a
hare-brained scheme to publish for an audience of neighbours and
co-conspirators. The logic of such production is that – with no need for a big
story that sells to the masses – everyone involved is in on the game, and this
might go some way to explaining the extreme postmodernism characteristic of much
Balkan fiction of the 1980s and 1990s. Anglo-American realism doesn’t make for
electric conversation; the frame of reference is South American and European.
For the back-room writer it’s not that nobody is listening, it’s that the people
listening are so close he can almost touch them: they are the art-house crowd in
black turtlenecks and trenchcoats, and they have a certain sophistication...
Complete article on:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n09/soar01_.html
Book review by Tim Davis
© Tim Davis - NewPages.com
http://www.newpages.com/bookreviews/archive/reviews/chineseletter.htm
The protagonist of Chinese Letter, Fritz, if that really is his name as he claims, has been confronted by two mysterious men who may or may not exist. They say abruptly, “Write!” Fritz, or is his name Salajdin Dejs as he instead later claims, asks, “What?” The two men say, “Whatever you want.” Fritz asks, “How many pages?” “About a hundred!” they say.
So Fritz writes “about a hundred” pages, and readers peer over his shoulder as he writes about (or perhaps only thinks about) his obsessions and compulsions, pleasures and pains, daydreams and nightmares. Fritz writes about visiting a friend (whom Fritz may not have even known prior to when Fritz visits him in the hospital), about being followed by the government’s secret police (who may not be really watching Fritz), about listening to “Fascination” playing on the radio, about reading Agatha Christie novels (which Fritz perhaps only pretends to read), about being familiar with Stephen King, Franz Kafka, Finnegan’s Wake, Don Quixote (but reading Quixote backwards), about receiving an enigmatic letter written in Chinese, and about knowing something of Raymond Queneau (who apparently has actually died). Fritz also in the course of “about a hundred” pages writes at length about his sister Anna (who may or may not be married), his mother (whose last name might also be Dejs), Moira (a love interest or perhaps merely a neighbor who plays Mozart and “Fascination” on the piano), and Maya (the woman Fritz may or may not love, the woman who may or may not engage in sexual debauchery, the woman who might not actually be Maya but is instead a Chinese woman named Chiang Ching because, as Fritz realizes, each woman has a mole on her lip and that must be more than mere coincidence). Yet near the end, after admitting that writing “about a hundred” pages is a perhaps too much like suffering through schizophrenia, psychosis, and neurosis, Fritz finally admits, “Writing isn’t an easy job.”
Serbian writer Svetislav Basara’s novel Chinese Letter, in
this translation by Ana Lučić, is a phantasmagoric excursion into the margins of
epistemology, phenomenology, and existentialism. Basara manipulates and revises
traditional elements of fiction, and—for readers adventurous enough to try
something a bit different—Chinese Letter becomes a challenging, provocative, and
entertaining diversion.
Some of Basara's books published by "Narodna Knjiga",
Belgrade, Serbia
Book review by Ethan Nosowsky
© Ethan Nosowsky - BOOKFORUM
http://www.bookforum.com/archive/dec_04/nosowsky.html
You wake up one morning: You don't know your name, where you live, or whether
you're alive or dead. All things considered, this should be viewed as a sign of
psychic distress. If you're the protagonist of a certain kind of novel, however,
you might recognize this as the embarkation point for a postmodern quest
narrative. In the opening lines of the Serbian writer Svetislav Basara's debut
novel, Chinese Letter, originally published in the former Yugoslavia in 1984,
the narrator flatly declares: "My name is Fritz. Yesterday I had a different
name. Today my name is Fritz. I have nothing to say." Nevertheless, Fritz gives
it his best shot. He doesn't seem to have a choice: Only days before, two
mysterious men were at his door, demanding that he write one hundred
pages—"whatever you want!"—which they threatened to collect in due course.
Fritz takes up the task with a mixture of resignation and anxiety: resignation because he feels helpless before an anonymous assertion of authority; anxiety because he is unsure what is expected of him and doesn't seem to know who he is. He starts by recording his daily activities: trips to the hospital, where he visits nameless friends with nameless diseases; circular conversations with his worried mother (how come Fritz never asks her for his name and address?); updates on his state of mind ("I felt just the average awfulness"); possibly murderous encounters with a neighbor; and possibly romantic encounters with the same neighbor's daughter. Periodically, Fritz hears from his tormentors, who sense that he is shirking his duties. "We know everything about you," they write in a letter. "We aren't interested in you. We just want your hundred or so double-spaced pages." And so it goes, until Fritz finishes his statement.
Considering that Basara published Chinese Letter a few years after the death of Yugoslavia's strongman Communist president Marshall Tito, Fritz's "angular" response to his predicament seems to be his quiet rebellion: He is furtively thumbing his nose at the spiritual depredations of Tito's authoritarian state. Going by a new name every day might be just the kind of madness that helps a person survive. Deftly and comically, Basara dissects the fear and paranoia that define such a society—as when Fritz describes how hard it is to resist walking up to a policeman and declaring, "I surrender! My name is Fritz! It's impossible that I'm not guilty. Take me with you!" He also understands, though, how content one can be in a cage: "You see, I'm persecuted: they force me to write," Fritz explains. "But I have nothing against this state of affairs . . . If they didn't persecute me, I'd be in a vacuum, left with nothingness and—what's worst—left with myself."
The logic of utopian social engineering is anathema to Basara, and he mocks it witheringly. To the extent that he has a discernible ideology, it is antivisionary. As Fritz nears the completion of his assignment, he lays out his "plan for the salvation of humankind. The plan is simple: retreat into yourself." Simple but monstrous—it involves poking out everyone's eyes with hot needles, and cutting out their tongues. Notes Fritz: "True, this would hurt, but a little pain and discomfort (which we know is necessary for the realization of all big ideas) will bring magnificent rewards."
Passages like this are an acerbic delight. But there's a lot of dime-store existentialism strewn about in the novel, and too many of Fritz's assertions wither under close inspection: "If you think really carefully about something, it immediately becomes clear to you that it is nothing." Does it? Such stoned philosophizing grows tiresome quickly, as does the "Is this happening or is it made up?" dithering that intrudes on the narrative here and there. You end up feeling that you've read it all before, and in a sense, you have: It is said that good artists borrow while great artists steal; if so, then Basara—who once conceded, "My influences are visible in my books . . . I am not so stupid as to consider myself original"—is a very good artist indeed. One wishes there were a bit more larceny in his soul, actually. Take, for instance, one of the several absurd conversations between Fritz and his mother, in which Basara doffs his cap to one literary father after another:
"Mom, where is the pink letter?"
"What pink letter?"
"The one that you brought me this morning."
"I didn't bring any letter this morning."
"Mom?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever read Kafka?"
This is cute rather than comic, and reflects Basara's insecurity about his influences. So do his whimsical typographic pliés: oversized black dots meant to signify drops of blood on the page; a few lines of open-field poetry; calligrams about rain that seem lifted from Apollinaire (perhaps Basara really is a thief after all?).
After I finished reading the book, I asked a writer-friend fluent in Serbian what she knew of Basara, expressing my misgivings about the book's secondhand feel. "Well, there's a lot of cut-rate Kafka in the Balkans," she replied. But it isn't just the Balkans—whose tortured history certainly provides fertile ground for absurdists—and it isn't just Kafka. The governing rules of novels that are everywhere labeled Kafkaesque, or Borgesian, or Beckettian have become, after all these decades, as predictable as the nineteenth-century strategies that led John Barth to plant his flag in the "literature of exhaustion." Nowadays, it is harder than ever to make experimental writing seem experimental. And yet, Chinese Letter is often hilarious and always readable, even as Basara insists on asking big questions about life and death, art and representation, the conflict between world and spirit. In light of the fact that Basara has written more than twenty books, one wonders how his work has developed over the past two decades, and why Dalkey felt the need to start at the beginning. Even Fritz, for all his maundering, knows better.
Interview with Svetislav Basara
by Ana Lucic
http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no16/Basara.html
ANA LUCIC: What are the origins of Chinese Letter?
SVETISLAV BASARA: Chinese Letter is my first novel, and it originated from the need to write a novel. Until that time I was writing stories and I felt that I had more to say than what usually goes into five or six typed pages. But it wasn’t an easy thing to do. When I started writing this novel I didn’t have enough life or literary experience. That’s why I opted for a method of writing a “report” to somebody about something, which resulted in a book that was extremely well received in the literary circles of that time, though I still think--I don’t know if it’s wrong to think so--that all the attention is somehow insincere. In terms of my motives for writing this book it should be known that I started working on Chinese Letter at the end of the seventies. Some remember that time as a pretty good one, but this was actually a time of terrible spiritual and psychological dullness, which was the result of the degeneration and petrifaction of a doctrine which was crazy from the very start--communism. So, I was writing this book in order to be somewhere else. To add some excitement to my life. That’s why I gave the novel the title Chinese Letter. China is pretty far from Serbia.
AL: I’ve read Chinese Letter a few times now, but I still find it incredibly funny. Is this a typical reaction that you get from your readers?
SB: Yes, everybody laughs. I, however, wasn’t laughing while writing the book. Even nowadays I don’t laugh when I write. Writing--art in general--has a lot to do with sadness. But I have to admit, the best quality of my books is that they provoke laughter. It’s very, very strange how close laughter is to despair and vice versa.
AL: Which authors do you consider to be your literary influences?
SB: My influences are visible in my books and I have never tried to hide that. I am not so stupid as to consider myself original. So, Kafka, Beckett, Borges. I would also add two writers whose influence is not that obvious in my writing--Proust and Augusto Roa Bastos. Proust has his place in the Canon, but Roa Bastos, it seems to me, is insufficiently recognized. Of course, there is also García Márquez and his One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ivan Alexeevich Bunin and Boris Pilnyak and a whole series of excellent writers whose names I won’t mention simply because this interview could go on forever.
AL: You dropped out of the Serbian Writers’ Association during the nineties--a period of turbulence and war in the Balkans. What were your reasons for doing this?
SB: At that time, the Serbian Writers’ Association turned into a parapolitical organization, a hot bed for a number of retrograde ideas headed by absolutely insignificant writers and I simply didn’t see the point to being part of such an organization.
AL: Do you still find time to write now that you’re the Ambassador of Serbia and Montenegro to Cyprus?
SB: Yes. Strangely, I now have more time for writing. I recently finished a long novel entitled Heart of the Earth about the fictitious stay of Friedrich Nietzsche on Cyprus. It will come out in the near future, and the English translation will be published by Mouphlon Press in Nikosia.
AL: You said in an interview that from now on you’re only going to write love stories. Is this true?
SB: I said this to one newspaper that I don’t have a very high opinion of. Most of the newspapers in Serbia are frivolous publications, and that’s why I don’t take them seriously. Since these newspapers are shamelessly misinforming the public, I took the liberty to misinform them.
AL: You also said in an interview that you are always on the side of spineless characters. What is it that attracts you to write about such characters?
SB: I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but the majority of people living in this age, including myself, could be described as spineless. This isn’t so bad. It’s partly due to the speed of life nowadays. It’s the same with people as with money: the more of something there is, the less valuable it is. Hyperinflation of humanity. Fatigue. The crisis of meaning. It seems that nothing exists except for selling and buying. But I repeat--this isn’t so bad. It might sound strange, but certain experts say that it’s easy to find salvation in this age. The catch is that you then have to endure it.
AL: Do you feel like you’re part of some national or international literary movement?
SB: No. I feel averagely awful. And I do care about that very much. I have no proof, but I am convinced that people who feel great are, in some way, lost.
Selected Works
Selected Works by Svetislav Basara in Translation:
Chinese Letter. Trans. Ana Lucic. Dalkey Archive Press
Selected Untranslated Works:
Bumerang [Boomerang]
Drvo istorije [History Tree]
Dzon B. Malkovic [John B. Malkovich]
Fama o biciklistima [The Fuss about Cyclists]
Fenomeni [Phenomena]
Ideologija heliocentrizma [The Ideology of Heliocentrism]
Kratkodnevica [Winter Solstice]
Looney tunes
Masine iluzija [Illusions Machines]
Mongolski bedeker [Mongolian Guidebook]
Na gralovom tragu [On the Grail’s Trail]
Na ivici [On the Edge]
Najlepse price Svetislava Basar [Best Short Stories of Svetislav Basara]
Napuklo ogledalo [Cracked Mirror]
Peking by Night
Price u nestajanju [Disappearing Tales]
Sabrane drame [Collected Plays]
Srce zemlje [Heart of the Earth]
Sveta mast [Holy Lard]
Tamna strana Meseca [Dark Side of the Moon]
Ukleta zemlja [Doomed Land]
Virtualna kabala [Virtual Kabala]
Vuciji brlog [The Wolf’s Lair].
Latest title by Svetislav Basara - "HEARTH OF THE LAND" - a novel about fictitious stay of Friedrich Nietzsche in Cyprus (Serbian only). English edition of this title will be published by Moufflon Publications.
THE
HEART OF THE LAND
Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the great symbols / myths of modern and post-modern European / world literature. In Basara's world of novels this controversial German genius is also one of the constant heroes - always in different roles (predominantly with his stunning ideology about a superman). The newest brilliant novel of Svetislav Basara is a product of a fascinating Borges - Basara mystification...
The heart of the land, i.e. a study of Friedrich Nietzsche's stay in Cyprus is an exciting genre game on an ideology - philosophy - art relation: it is certainly an excellent work of the greatest genius of the Serbian post-modernism.
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Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia John Vickers,
editor-in-chief of Time Out magazine & Odyssey
magazine in 10 JUNE 2005, at 8:00 pm Lion's Home, 23 Lefkonos Street, Nicosia-within-the-walls For further information call the Moufflon Bookshop, 22665155 |
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"Die Geschichte der Insel Zypern,
Band 1, (1878 - 1949)" by Professor Dr. Heinz A. Richter Historical Institute, Mannheim University
The book will be presented in English by Dr. Kypros
Chrysostomides, Government Spokesman of the Republic of Cyprus. Friday 26 February 2005, 16.30 hrs The Moufflon Bookshop is a sole distributor of all titles from the Peleus Series - Studies in the Archaeology and History of Greece and Cyprus published by Bibliopolis Publications, University of Mannheim, Germany. Complete list can be viewed at our page BIBLIOPOLIS. For your inquiries and/or orders please contact the shop at 22-665-155 or distribution@moufflon.com.cy. |
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Dancing Fear and
Desire
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Brazilian Book MonthOctober 4-31, 2004
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In-Print and Out-of-Print Titles On Travel Literature, Photography and Guidebooks11-12 September 2004
Moufflon Bookshop will have a book stall at ASTENE CONFERENCE at Famagusta Gate Cultural Centre, on 11-12 September 2004. The Association ASTENE was formed to encourage the study of travel in the
Eastern Mediterranean from Egypt to the Ottoman Balkans. The Association holds a
conference every two years in Britain and occasional conferences overseas. On
11-12 September 2004 there will be a conference in Nicosia, at Famagusta Gate
Cultural Centre. Papers will be given by members of the Association from U.K.,
Germany, Austria, Malta, Tunisia, Canada and Cyprus and will include: Entrance Free. Full program of the Astene Conference can be viewed on the page of "Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies" New, out-of-print and
second-hand travel books and maps on Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean |
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Book event by Moufflon Publications
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Παρουσίαση
Βιβλίου από
τις εκδόσεις Moufflon
«Από
το Σημείο στην
Πράξη» του Horst
Weierstall
Συζήτηση
και Προβολή
Βίντεο
Τρίτη,
11 Μαΐου, 8μμ.
Στο
Υφαντουργείο,
Λεύκονος 67-71,
Φανερωμένη,
Παλιά
Λευκωσία, τηλ.
22-762275
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M o u f f l o n B o o k s h o p 
Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient
Greece 
XENAKIS
Octana
Cafe
Ingeborg
Bachmann (1926-1973), Austrian poet, dramatist, and novelist, a leading voice in
post-war German literature. 
The British and the Hellenes: Struggles
for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850-1960 
"Dancing
Fear and Desire offers an extraordinary account not only of how 'Middle Eastern
dance' has functioned in the colonial, masculinist imagination, how it has been
appropriated far divisive nationalist purposes, and how it continues to locate a
site for social control but also of how dance itself enables political
resistances to speak from within the site of imperial seductions. This book
enables a much-needed, and curiously belated, conversation between postcolonial
and queer studies. And it rediscovers the occulted tradition that associates
critical body with critical mind. Stavros Stavrou Karayanni brings genuine
understanding, and enormous commitment, to cross-cultural scholarship, and to
the exhilarating tradition of dance itself. This exuberant book gives a whole
new meaning to the discipline of navel -gazing." — Stephen Slemon teaches
postcolonial literatures and theory at the University of Alberta. He is a widely
published essayist and an editor of Interventions: International Journal of
Postcolonial Studies 
Sweet
Land of Cyprus
