The Arch-Traitor's Lament

[jbor]

Sounds promising.

>From the review:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0008/11/books/A61576-2000Aug10.html

> Garry Satherley's bold, freewheeling and wonderfully idiosyncratic first
> novel marks a significant literary debut,
snip

> The Arch-Traitor's Lament is set, says the author's note, in "a very small
> republic between Hungary and Romania, two countries with which it has
> unfortunate historical parallels". The turbulent fortunes of those
> countries, especially of Hungary, form the core of Satherley's manic
narrative.
>
> The arch-traitor of the title is Kukac Janos. Those familiar with Hungarian
> will notice that his surname (which comes first in accordance with the
> peculiarities of Hungarian nomenclature) means worm or maggot and is merely
> one of a raft of outrageous punning names.
>
> Kukac's story is the story of a generation. He was born in the good old
> days and spent his early life in another good time: the time of the Nazis,
>
snip
> Kukac, the
> arch-traitor-to-be, reached adulthood in a world apparently dedicated to
> justice and equality, the most noble of aspirations, yet tormented by
> totalitarian brutality.
>
> It was a world, too, where people could reinvent themselves.
snip
>
> Satherley takes extraordinary risks, with enough characters and plot
> strands to fill two or three more cautious novels. Inevitably, confusions
> and contradictions arise. The structure is intricate and devious, swinging
> wildly between that tiny, hellish republic and the glitz and sleaze of Sydney.
> The way some characters slip out of sight only to resurface as powerful
> presences or tormented victims of a brutal regime brings John le CarrŽ's
> over-determined plots to mind. Several gruesome episodes of interrogation
> and imprisonment could have found a place among the more lurid pages of The
> Gulag Archipelago.
>
> When Sankey's calvary begins under the neon sign of the Hotel Karl Marx,
> from which letters disappear with predictable regularity, we seem to be
> pitched into one of Kafka's labyrinths of dead ends. The violence of at
> least one incident in the Stone Pit is stomach-churning.
>
> For all that, The Arch-Traitor's Lament is admirably assured and, at least
> in the context of Australian writing, highly original. My main quibble
> might indeed strike some, especially publishers, as bizarre: I think
> Satherley should have allowed himself another 100 pages or so to tie up
> loose ends and to give full scope to some of his nightmarish episodes.
> Otherwise, his risk-taking pays high dividends, thanks in large measure to
> his skill and imagination.
>
> The most memorable parts of The Arch-Traitor's Lament lie at the edges of
> its gnarled narrative. Satherley is particularly gifted with deft sketches
> of secondary characters: sadistic functionaries and sybaritic grandees of
> the nomenklatura; pathetic or possessed men and women attempting to retain
> a few vestiges of dignity or else desperately bolstering their self-esteem;
> the tics and mannerisms of nameless, faceless victims of all kinds of
ideologies.
snip
>
> Above all, though, The Arch-Traitor's Lament is distinguished by a
> remarkable and perhaps surprising understanding of the intricacy of a world
> remote from the experience of most Australian writers.
snip
>
> Even more striking, however, is his ability to recreate events that
> occurred even earlier: the city's slow awakening in 1945, when amid the
> rubble and stench of death a few, fragile and, as it turned out,
> short-lived hopes began to sprout. I can just remember those days, and I
> found myself enthralled by the power of the imagination to discover the
> truth of an unknown, unexperienced time.

best