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piotrjawor's review against another edition
4.0
Wybitna, olśniewająca proza w pierwszej części ale dosyć pokrętna i średnia poezja w drugiej. W sumie - tak sporo świetnej lektury - 4/5 książki. Porywająca, niezwykle pomysłowa narracja, pełnokrwiste postaci. Wystarczy.
april_does_feral_sometimes's review
5.0
'Mesopotamia' by Serhiy Zhadan is an unpleasant book to read for me at the same time it is seemingly a brilliant insider's exposé by the author. Through nine short stories, slightly interconnected by brief walk-ons of a character from the previous chapter, the author gives a domestic tour of a Ukrainian city called Kharkiv and its people. The author uses his stories of Kharkiv residents like an anthropologist studying the ancient cultural artifacts of Mesopotamia.
The book has been translated into English and it's excellently done by the translators Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler. The prose is descriptively wonderful and the pacing of the action is perfect. It is an excellent collection of domestic short stories. But I dislike these characters.
The main characters, all male, grew up and lived through the Soviet totalitarian period over Ukraine before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but that era and the collapse are not in these stories except in an occasional mention. The stories appear to be about the social aftermath of the fall of totalitarian control over urban cities. The characters' ability to move past that time seems to be impaired by a general lack of ambition and imagination. They work apathetically at their jobs and relationships, concentrating mostly on incel-like personal life dramas and self-centered sex. And getting drunk a lot. These are stories about men who never seem to be able to rise above their figurative penises in all of its representative forms, frankly, whether it's about their need for sex from women whom they only seem to view as walking vaginas (completely unaware of their shallow understanding of women) or if it's about social scenes with family or people who are apparently, maybe, frenemies, instead of true friends. Or maybe it's simply yet another representation of what appears to be a worldwide affliction of the stifled Male Psyche.
The main characters are like some of the fortyish-year-old men who were stuck in the 1950's era of their youth whom I met when I was in my twenties in the 1970's. They wore loud perfume, sad too-young clothes, out-of-date 1950's 'teen' hairstyles (similar to Wolverine) and patriarchal attitudes which had caused them a minimum of two divorces. So far at that time. I noticed male assholes still carrying on in these male social jerk-off circles at least into the 1990's in Las Vegas! Omg, and how they suffer, not understanding why their relationships fail and why their lives feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled!
I'm a lot more harsh than the author, gentle reader. The stories, while not showing any love that I noticed towards these men, do show how the social stagnation created by a totalitarian government lives on in the minds of urban men who have been released from the strangulation leash of the Soviet Union. I am wondering about what to expect from China now that that country is returning to totalitarianism. Social control leads often to Big Brother control. But the lesson here is these totalitarian governments do not need to involve the use of visible control mechanisms anymore after they fall. If totalitarian communist governments can do this, I suspect religious theologies are much worse, as they impose internal strangulation dog leashes as well as external. Half of Afghanistan's population fully support the Taliban again twenty years later after that government fell previously...I guess theology-addicted mentalities will always love their leashes -and lashings - restraints on some mental level we citizens of democracies cannot understand.
The book has been translated into English and it's excellently done by the translators Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler. The prose is descriptively wonderful and the pacing of the action is perfect. It is an excellent collection of domestic short stories. But I dislike these characters.
The main characters, all male, grew up and lived through the Soviet totalitarian period over Ukraine before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but that era and the collapse are not in these stories except in an occasional mention. The stories appear to be about the social aftermath of the fall of totalitarian control over urban cities. The characters' ability to move past that time seems to be impaired by a general lack of ambition and imagination. They work apathetically at their jobs and relationships, concentrating mostly on incel-like personal life dramas and self-centered sex. And getting drunk a lot. These are stories about men who never seem to be able to rise above their figurative penises in all of its representative forms, frankly, whether it's about their need for sex from women whom they only seem to view as walking vaginas (completely unaware of their shallow understanding of women) or if it's about social scenes with family or people who are apparently, maybe, frenemies, instead of true friends. Or maybe it's simply yet another representation of what appears to be a worldwide affliction of the stifled Male Psyche.
The main characters are like some of the fortyish-year-old men who were stuck in the 1950's era of their youth whom I met when I was in my twenties in the 1970's. They wore loud perfume, sad too-young clothes, out-of-date 1950's 'teen' hairstyles (similar to Wolverine) and patriarchal attitudes which had caused them a minimum of two divorces. So far at that time. I noticed male assholes still carrying on in these male social jerk-off circles at least into the 1990's in Las Vegas! Omg, and how they suffer, not understanding why their relationships fail and why their lives feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled!
I'm a lot more harsh than the author, gentle reader. The stories, while not showing any love that I noticed towards these men, do show how the social stagnation created by a totalitarian government lives on in the minds of urban men who have been released from the strangulation leash of the Soviet Union. I am wondering about what to expect from China now that that country is returning to totalitarianism. Social control leads often to Big Brother control. But the lesson here is these totalitarian governments do not need to involve the use of visible control mechanisms anymore after they fall. If totalitarian communist governments can do this, I suspect religious theologies are much worse, as they impose internal strangulation dog leashes as well as external. Half of Afghanistan's population fully support the Taliban again twenty years later after that government fell previously...I guess theology-addicted mentalities will always love their leashes -and lashings - restraints on some mental level we citizens of democracies cannot understand.
labeet's review against another edition
4.0
En helt igennem besynderlig bog med det mest utrolige persongalleri. Bogen, der er skrevet i 2014, foregår i storbyen Kharkiv, som de fleste af os indtil for nylig ingen idé havde om, hvor ligger. Mesopotamien betyder "mellem to floder", oplyses vi hjælpsomt om i omslagsnoterne. Og sådan ligger Kharkiv altså placeret. Tilbage til karaktererne, som hver har sit eget kapitel: De er allesammen mere eller mindre fortabte og bevæger sig rundt, tilsyneladende uden mål eller med. De drikker en masse, de slås en hel del, og nogle gange har de en masse sex, andre gange oplever de en fortvivlende mangel på samme. Kharkiv fremstilles som en by, hvor den sovjetiske fortid altid er synlig, en by præget af forfald, som ramme for mennesker, der ikke kan finde deres plads i verden.
Zhadan skriver på den måde, som jeg opfatter som typisk "slavisk". Dvs. med en kynisk grundtone. Samtidig er hans sprog meget poetisk, og det forekommer mig, at oversætteren Helle Dalgaard har gjort et fremragende stykke arbejde. I hvert fald flyder sætningerne ubesværet afsted med mange smukke ordspil og landskabsbeskrivelser midt i forfaldet.
Bogens sidste kapitel er en digtsamling. Jeg er ikke nogen stor digtlæser, men jeg har plukket lidt rundt i dem. I et af dem lyder det:
Hvis jeg var postbud
i hendes kvarter,
hvis jeg vidste hvem,
der sender hende anbefalede
breve,
ville jeg muligvis bedre
kunne forstå livet,
jeg ville vide, hvordan det sættes i bevægelse,
hvem der fylder det med sang,
hvem der fylder det med tårer.
I bogens efterord fortæller oversætteren om Zhadan, at han er opvokset i en russisktalende familie, men meget bevidst skriver på ukrainsk. Hans bøger har haft stor succes, både i hjemlandet og i Rusland. Han var aktiv i begge de Ukrainske revolutioner, i 2004 og i 2013. Ifølge Wikipedia bor han stadig i Kharkiv, hvor han er engageret i hjælpearbejdet.
Zhadan skriver på den måde, som jeg opfatter som typisk "slavisk". Dvs. med en kynisk grundtone. Samtidig er hans sprog meget poetisk, og det forekommer mig, at oversætteren Helle Dalgaard har gjort et fremragende stykke arbejde. I hvert fald flyder sætningerne ubesværet afsted med mange smukke ordspil og landskabsbeskrivelser midt i forfaldet.
Bogens sidste kapitel er en digtsamling. Jeg er ikke nogen stor digtlæser, men jeg har plukket lidt rundt i dem. I et af dem lyder det:
Hvis jeg var postbud
i hendes kvarter,
hvis jeg vidste hvem,
der sender hende anbefalede
breve,
ville jeg muligvis bedre
kunne forstå livet,
jeg ville vide, hvordan det sættes i bevægelse,
hvem der fylder det med sang,
hvem der fylder det med tårer.
I bogens efterord fortæller oversætteren om Zhadan, at han er opvokset i en russisktalende familie, men meget bevidst skriver på ukrainsk. Hans bøger har haft stor succes, både i hjemlandet og i Rusland. Han var aktiv i begge de Ukrainske revolutioner, i 2004 og i 2013. Ifølge Wikipedia bor han stadig i Kharkiv, hvor han er engageret i hjælpearbejdet.
verbava's review against another edition
4.0
Любов нищить
усі наші уявлення про рівновагу.
усе воно, зрештою, пов'язане – і в маленькому місті то ще разючіше видко, ніж у великому світі. усе воно переплетене, скручене докупи – біс його зна, зовсім випадковим випадком чи якимсь великим майстром. жадан принаймні так і не виносить остаточного вердикту щодо цього.
На Великдень ніхто не помирає. Нормальні люди в цей час, навпаки, встають із могил.
і так, може, я просто погано знаю жадана, але не чекала того відчуття бога, яке є в "месопотамії". дуже несподіваного й дуже проникливого.
ну ось, знову
смертю смерть поборов.
усі наші уявлення про рівновагу.
усе воно, зрештою, пов'язане – і в маленькому місті то ще разючіше видко, ніж у великому світі. усе воно переплетене, скручене докупи – біс його зна, зовсім випадковим випадком чи якимсь великим майстром. жадан принаймні так і не виносить остаточного вердикту щодо цього.
На Великдень ніхто не помирає. Нормальні люди в цей час, навпаки, встають із могил.
і так, може, я просто погано знаю жадана, але не чекала того відчуття бога, яке є в "месопотамії". дуже несподіваного й дуже проникливого.
ну ось, знову
смертю смерть поборов.
brezi's review
This is what I imagine a repressed teenager who only ever read Bukowski would write like. Violent but unimaginative and shallow characters with underdeveloped stories.
moonlight_4_3's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
3.0