Houses

“Pekić writes with a wry grace that lets all the seriousness and thought fold inside a stubborn yet subtle farce. Accomplished and piquant.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The Houses of Belgrade deserves the most honest praise a reviewer can give: it was so good I can’t wait to read [Pekić’s] first book for my own pleasure…Pekić has drawn his portrait with exquisitely subtle lines, choosing words with such care that Arseniev says worlds about himself while he is talking about someone else.” —Peter Grier, The Christian Science Monitor

“In its best moments, [The Houses of Belgrade] rates with the intricate writings of Russian and French masters…It is a naked eye that can take us into a building of cold-water flats…into the den of a wretched man—and then make us step back from this tremendous detail into the unimaginable widths of human suffering. Pekić has mirrored the world, its fire, its blood, in the clouded eye of a madman, in a bog, reducing its vastness to a few cubic feet of muddy water—and the reflection is ugly.” —Katherine Knorr, Chicago Tribune

“Written in 1978, Mr. Pekiç’s novel is a delicate farce that exemplifies the best of Yugoslavian literature… chronicles the life of Negovan, itself a mirror for the conflicts of the 20th century. Houses offers a fascinating window into literature of the other Europe.” —Karl Wolff, New York Journal of Books

Borislav Pekic (1930-1992) was a political activist and writer. In 1948 he was accused of organizing a student conspiracy against the state of Yugoslavia and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. He was pardoned in 1954. Ten years later, he won a major Yugoslav literary prize, the NIN Award, for his first novel The Time of Miracles. In 1971, Pekic immigrated to London, where he continued to write novels, although Yugoslav authorities prevented them from being published in his home country for several years. He also wrote more than twenty original screenplays, adapting some of his novels to the screen including The Time of Miracles. Among his many works are the novel How to Quiet a Vampire, the play The Generals, and his memoir of post-war life under Communist rule Godine koje su pojeli skakavci (“The Year the Locusts Have Devoured”).

Bernard Johnson (1933-2003) was affiliated with the Language Centre at the London School of Economics for many years. In 1970 he edited and translated the first anthology of modern Yugoslav literature, and throughout his career he distinguished himself as one of the most active translators of Serbo-Croatian poetry and prose working in English. He also translated the NYRB Classic, The Use of Man, by Aleksandar Tisma.

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