Yakimov (Ashes of Wars, 2011, etc.) tells the story of several interconnected people in Bulgaria in this novel.
In a series of interlocking episodes that move across time and locality, the author introduces the reader to life in Sofia under communism. Nedah is under pressure from her parents to marry the brother of a co-worker in order to extend her valued citizenship to him, though she thinks the much-sought-after prize isn’t nearly as important as it’s cracked up to be. “I must be worth more than a Sofia citizenship,” she muses. Her friend Vera is anxious to get married, but the man she wishes to wed drags his feet. She seeks out a fortuneteller for advice, but what she hears is not to her liking; upon returning home, she swallows a hundred chloroquine pills in a suicide attempt. The narrative shifts to tell the stories of some of Sofia’s exiles: there is Svetozar Stoimenov, a recent university graduate locked into a three-year contract at a job he despises, who manages to escape Bulgaria for a new life abroad. Then there is Stephan Filipov, a man who successfully eludes capture following the execution of politician Nikola Petkov but has left his family back in Sofia to an unknown fate. Connecting the tales is a narrator, now far removed from Sofia and the time period, who uses memory and digression in an attempt to understand the past. Yakimov writes in a deliberative prose that seeks to replicate the ennui of her characters while also slipping in the occasional moment of wryness: “They had to find ways to overcome the consequences of the misfortunate fact of having been brought into this world in a place not entirely to their tastes, a condition usually discovered on reaching maturity.” A short novel at only 116 pages, it follows an unorthodox path, its story meandering much like its protagonists through the haunted, otherworldly streets of Sofia. While not exactly a page-turner, the spell of Yakimov’s prose should ferry patient readers to the end, and they will likely be grateful for the experience.
A compact, but wide-ranging tale of dislocation in Sofia.
Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5236-2991-6
Page Count: 130
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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