The Sunday Salon: Another meaning of being almost insider

Hello fellow Saloners,

I'm just thinking about what kind of books I've told you recently. And I realized, there are mostly books by Central-European authors. Slovakian, Slovenian, Czech, Polish, etc novels.

I know, these countries use to call as Eastern-European ones, because they were part of the former Soviet-bloc. But I know the real (!) Eastern-Europe is quite different to these countries.

OK, I know, it's too difficult and maybe my English knowledge is not enough good to talk about defining this special part (I think, it's quite special) of Europe. The main point is, that I've realized, this blog becomes slowly a place where people can find reviews (and short impressions) about Central-European books.

So, there is an another meaning for the title of this blog: almost insider.

Almost insider? Yes. Although there are many common things in the history, culture and in the literature of these countries, there are a lot of differences too. So, I as a Hungarian can many things understand what for example the Czech authors write about the 20. century, but of course not perfectly. There are little differences, which makes me only just an almost insider.

So, of course I've read some exciting books recently. For example a short novel by a Polish author Piotr Szewc. The title of the book is something like Sunsets and mornings. It's written in a quite similar style like Marcel Proust's great novel In Search of Lost Time, but of course, is much much shorter. The Szewc's book is about the everyday life in a little town in Galicia in Eastern Poland before the ww2. It was exciting to read the beautiful sentences, the impressions about sometimes just only one moment. It was a very excellent book.

I was searching on the net, is there any English translation from the book, but unfortunatelly, I've found again one, which hasn't any.

Another exciting book was a short novel by Dubravka Ugresic. (the original title of the book: Stefica Cvek u raljama zivota) . It was like a parody of Bridges Jones and co, before they even have been published, in 1981. Dubravka Ugresic is a Croatian writer, living in Netherland, and as I know, some of her books are translated into English. It looks, she knows the postmodern games and fun with the different texts quite good, I think, I would find other books by her exciting.

And at last, I've written a review in the last week about the novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago.