Book Review: Cyclops by Ranko Marinković

Most legendary creatures are archetypical manifestations of certain aspects of human nature, good or evil, and the myths surrounding them represent a general idea of the world, i.e. of how it came into being and of how it works. Classical education made many of them household names and so, they found their way quite naturally into literature as allegorical figures or less easily explainable symbols. With World War II threatening to spread to Yugoslavia, the protagonist of Cyclops by Ranko Marinković sees himself doomed to end as helpless prey of the man-eating one-eyed giant Polyphemus from Greek mythology. Like other young men he must expect being called up any time, but although patriotic, the intellectual hopes to avoid national service systematically reducing his body to bones and skin. He wanders through Zagreb daydreaming and yearning for the woman he loves without hope or drinks heavily with friends.

Book Review: The Walnut Mansion by Miljenko Jergović

Every end comprises everything that was before. This is especially true for us human beings because not just own experiences make us the people who we are but through socialisation we also carry on our shoulders the material and psychological burden of our ancestors, i.e. of entire history. Time heals the wounds or makes them fester beneath the surface. In The Walnut Mansion by Miljenko Jergović the turbulent history of the Balkan countries that once formed Yugoslavia materialises in 97-year-old Regina Delavale who has seen it all and who finds her accidental end knocked out by tranquilisers in a hospital in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in 2002 after senile dementia has irrevocably turned her into a violent, abusive and wicked monster. Going backwards in time her daughter Dijana evokes the forming, if not traumatising events of her own and her mother’s life until her birth in 1905 and even a little beyond.