Огнен Спахич - все книги по циклам и сериям | Книги по порядку

“Zidove moje lobanje ispunjavala je praznina tako da sam istog časa, nakon kratke misli o praznini, čvrsto sklopio oči i pokušao razmišljati upravo o tom stanju kao nečemu što bi trebalo da proizvede emocije prijatnosti, umirenja ili, na koncu, ravnodušnost. Odsustvo slike, tona, mirisa, ukusa, odsustvo svjetla, tame ili bilo kakvih čulnih asocijacija koje bi mogle dozvati realne slike ili predviđanja zarobljena lavirintom davno konzumiranih misli: sve to je bila prekrasna, istog časa abortirana ideja-mrtvorođenče, nakon koje sam naglo otvorio oči i tiho opsovao nekoliko puta, misleći na doktora, na njegovu sobu, na pedeset eura koje ću ostaviti usrdno se rukujući sa džukelom, misleći na preostalih dvadeset sa kojima ću morati da naručujem smrdljivo točeno pivo umjesto viskija.”

Appalling and tragic, Ognjen Spahic's exceptional short novel animates the misery of Ceasescu's Romania and its inglorious fall with a metaphor fully up to the task: leprosy. Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen was a Norwegian scientist who isolated the Mycobacterium leprae in 1873 and his 'children' are the tragic sufferers of this ghastly disease. In Spahic's novel, it's 1989 and a dozen of them are confined to the last leper house in Europe, an underequipped facility located in a miserable corner of South Eastern Romania overlooking a toxic fertilizer factory. Here our nameless narrator shares a room with fellowsufferer Robert W. Duncan, an American intelligence officer whose career was ruined after he was captured by Communists in Berlin. But Duncan still has a few contacts in the shadowlands, notably 'Mr Smooth' who has it in his power to liberate the two men by supplying passports and helping them out of the country. Blending Romania's turbulent 1989 revolution with a lyrical fiction that both shocks and enthrals, Montenegrin author Ognjen Spahic offers an allegorical page to Southeastern Europe's intriguing scrapbook. In 'Hansen's Children', the downfall of Nicolae Ceausescu's repressive control is witnessed from behind the walls of Europe's sole lepercolony. Powerless against forces beyond the leprosarium, the rebellious political change seen across the country influences and erodes the camp's brittle harmony.