University of Wisconsin Press, 2012 Paper: 978-0-299-28794-8 | eISBN: 978-0-299-28793-1 Library of Congress Classification PG1196.29.T37A313 2012 Dewey Decimal Classification 891.8193
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In My Father’s Books, the first volume in Luan Starova’s multivolume Balkan Saga, he explores themes of history, displacement, and identity under three turbulent regimes—Ottoman, Fascist, and Stalinist—in the twentieth century. Weaving a story from the threads of his parents’ lives from 1926 to 1976, he offers a child’s-eye view of personal relationships in shifting political landscapes and an elegiac reminder of the enduring power of books to sustain a literate culture.
Through lyrical waves of memory, Starova reveals his family’s overlapping religious, linguistic, national, and cultural histories. His father left Constantinople as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the young family fled from Albania to Yugoslav Macedonia when Luan was a boy. His parents, cosmopolitan and well-traveled in their youth, and steeped in the cultures of both Orient and Occident, find themselves raising their children in yet another stagnant and repressive state. Against this backdrop, Starova remembers the protected spaces of his childhood—his mother’s walled garden, his father’s library, the cupboard holding the rarest and most precious of his father’s books. Preserving a lost heritage, these books also open up a world that seems wide, deep, and boundless.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Luan Starova is a novelist, poet, scholar, diplomat, and literary translator. An Albanian from the Republic of Macedonia who writes in both the Albanian and Macedonian languages, he has served as the Republic of Macedonia’s ambassador to France, Spain, and Portugal, and was formerly professor of French at the University of Skopje. His books have been translated into many languages. Christina E. Kramer is professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto. She is the author of the language textbook Macedonian and co-translator of the novel Bai Ganyo: Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
REVIEWS
“My Father’s Books, with its hypnotic repetitions and its varied meditations on one and the same theme, is like an extended prose poem, an elegy in the form of a novel. Beautifully translated, it is a book to be savored.”—Madeline G. Levine, translator of Milosz’s ABC’s
“Powerful, articulate, subtle, and moving, My Father’s Books goes beyond the genre of memoir—it is at once a meditation on life and a history of the Balkans in the twentieth century told from a unique point of view with universal values. Kramer’s translation renders Starova’s language with accuracy and grace.”—Victor A. Friedman, University of Chicago
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Translator's Note
Part One
1 My Father, Our Family, the Books
Love
The Fate of the Books
Differences
The Garden
The Fountain
The Balcony
The Cabinet
Identity
The Life of the Books
The Death of the Manuscript
A Secret
Learning about the Deities
My Father's Fatherlands
My Father's Languages
My Father's Dictionaries
The Radio
Old Age
2 The Books and My Father's Friends
Eastern Dream and Western Dream
Friends
Autodidacts
Libraries
A Boarder in Babel
Language Quarrels
Balkan Babel
A Choice
Sacrifice for Books
The End of Time
The Books in One's Life
3 Father's Books, Migrations, Stalinism, the Balkan Wall
The Spyglass
The Globe
The Family Clock
Travel
The Bomb
Flags
The Mother Tongue
The Holy Books
Dreams of a Lost Time
The Power of Languages
Rakija and Meze
The Taste of the Dough
Holiday Tikush
Stalin's Portrait
Shock Workers
The Silver Mirror
The Medal
Holiday
Ration Books
A Coin in the Trevi Fountain
La Rinascente
The Balkan Wall
Prayer
Tears
Part Two
1 The Margins of My Father's Books: The Constantinople Dream, In Search of Lost Time
The Third Exit
The True Path
At a Crossroads in the Labyrinth
Between Constantinople Heaven and Balkan Hell
Mission
The Game of Defeat and Victory
Janissary Fate
The Key of Destiny
The Waves of Illusions
The Debt to Time
Between East and West
The Dream of the Sea
Holidays in Defeats
Lost
Tattered Fate
Bartering with Fate
The Dream of the Books
The Eastern Sword of Damocles
The Fedora
2 Time Discovered
Documents I
Documents II
Documents III
The Meaning of the Silence
The Documents (Epilogue)
Perhaps the Real Ending
A Borrowed Book
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012 Paper: 978-0-299-28794-8 eISBN: 978-0-299-28793-1
In My Father’s Books, the first volume in Luan Starova’s multivolume Balkan Saga, he explores themes of history, displacement, and identity under three turbulent regimes—Ottoman, Fascist, and Stalinist—in the twentieth century. Weaving a story from the threads of his parents’ lives from 1926 to 1976, he offers a child’s-eye view of personal relationships in shifting political landscapes and an elegiac reminder of the enduring power of books to sustain a literate culture.
Through lyrical waves of memory, Starova reveals his family’s overlapping religious, linguistic, national, and cultural histories. His father left Constantinople as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the young family fled from Albania to Yugoslav Macedonia when Luan was a boy. His parents, cosmopolitan and well-traveled in their youth, and steeped in the cultures of both Orient and Occident, find themselves raising their children in yet another stagnant and repressive state. Against this backdrop, Starova remembers the protected spaces of his childhood—his mother’s walled garden, his father’s library, the cupboard holding the rarest and most precious of his father’s books. Preserving a lost heritage, these books also open up a world that seems wide, deep, and boundless.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Luan Starova is a novelist, poet, scholar, diplomat, and literary translator. An Albanian from the Republic of Macedonia who writes in both the Albanian and Macedonian languages, he has served as the Republic of Macedonia’s ambassador to France, Spain, and Portugal, and was formerly professor of French at the University of Skopje. His books have been translated into many languages. Christina E. Kramer is professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto. She is the author of the language textbook Macedonian and co-translator of the novel Bai Ganyo: Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
REVIEWS
“My Father’s Books, with its hypnotic repetitions and its varied meditations on one and the same theme, is like an extended prose poem, an elegy in the form of a novel. Beautifully translated, it is a book to be savored.”—Madeline G. Levine, translator of Milosz’s ABC’s
“Powerful, articulate, subtle, and moving, My Father’s Books goes beyond the genre of memoir—it is at once a meditation on life and a history of the Balkans in the twentieth century told from a unique point of view with universal values. Kramer’s translation renders Starova’s language with accuracy and grace.”—Victor A. Friedman, University of Chicago
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Translator's Note
Part One
1 My Father, Our Family, the Books
Love
The Fate of the Books
Differences
The Garden
The Fountain
The Balcony
The Cabinet
Identity
The Life of the Books
The Death of the Manuscript
A Secret
Learning about the Deities
My Father's Fatherlands
My Father's Languages
My Father's Dictionaries
The Radio
Old Age
2 The Books and My Father's Friends
Eastern Dream and Western Dream
Friends
Autodidacts
Libraries
A Boarder in Babel
Language Quarrels
Balkan Babel
A Choice
Sacrifice for Books
The End of Time
The Books in One's Life
3 Father's Books, Migrations, Stalinism, the Balkan Wall
The Spyglass
The Globe
The Family Clock
Travel
The Bomb
Flags
The Mother Tongue
The Holy Books
Dreams of a Lost Time
The Power of Languages
Rakija and Meze
The Taste of the Dough
Holiday Tikush
Stalin's Portrait
Shock Workers
The Silver Mirror
The Medal
Holiday
Ration Books
A Coin in the Trevi Fountain
La Rinascente
The Balkan Wall
Prayer
Tears
Part Two
1 The Margins of My Father's Books: The Constantinople Dream, In Search of Lost Time
The Third Exit
The True Path
At a Crossroads in the Labyrinth
Between Constantinople Heaven and Balkan Hell
Mission
The Game of Defeat and Victory
Janissary Fate
The Key of Destiny
The Waves of Illusions
The Debt to Time
Between East and West
The Dream of the Sea
Holidays in Defeats
Lost
Tattered Fate
Bartering with Fate
The Dream of the Books
The Eastern Sword of Damocles
The Fedora
2 Time Discovered
Documents I
Documents II
Documents III
The Meaning of the Silence
The Documents (Epilogue)
Perhaps the Real Ending
A Borrowed Book
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE