Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Eleven Sooty Dreams (2010)by Manuela Draeger
Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This was a powerful piece of writing! Imagine being raised in an apocalyptic world, trained to be a Communist revolutionary from birth, in an environment in which physical punishment of children is absolutely forbidden, yet the psychological toll of living & breathing revolution is possibly worse. The book is essentially about the end of the human species and the experience that extinction as it happens. A decades long battle between capitalism and communism, in which the communists want total egalitarianism, finally achieves oneness, ironically as death is meted out equally. The concept of the Bardo is a central feature, both in legend as told by the old and wise Granny, and in the reality of the characters.. Quite fascinating. Yes, it is a dark read, yet the writing and structure are powerful. no reviews | add a review
Eleven Sooty Dreams could also have been calledMeeting at Bolcho Pride, orFire Deep Down Below, orStation in the Heart of the Flames, orGranny Holgolde's Stories, orThe Liars' Bridge, orEve of Battle After the Defeat, orNever Without My Embers, orGood-Bye to Death, orFire Stories, orTerminal Childhoods, orGranny Holgolde's Childish Sickness, orEven the Nursing Home Is in the Line of Fire. In Manuela Draeger's poetic 'post-exotic' novel, a group of young leftists trapped in a burning building after one year's Bolcho Pride parade plunge back into their childhood memories, trading them with each other as their lives are engulfed in flames. They remember Granny Holgolde's stories of the elephant Marta Ashkarot as she travels through the Bardo, to find her home and be reincarnated again and again. They remember the Soviet folk singer Lyudmila Zykina and her melancholic, simple songs of unspeakable beauty. They remember the half-human birds Granny Holgolde called strange cormorants, the ones who knew how to live in fire, secrecy, and death, and as the flames get higher they hope to become them. Draeger, a heteronym for the acclaimed French writer Antoine Volodine, and a librarian in a dystopic prison camp, gives post-exoticism an element of tenderness, and a sense of nostalgia for children's tales, that is far less visible in the other authors' works.Eleven Sooty Dreams is her first book written for adults, a moving story of the constancy of brotherly, loving faithfulness. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.914Literature French and related languages French fiction Modern Period 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
The novel's hunting idée fixe:
"You are burning. I go to you. In this moment, we are with you. We are all moving toward you. We are exchanging our last breath. Your memory trickles from your eyes. My memories are yours." ( )