سودازدگی زیدان و چند داستان دیگر

by Aleksandar Hemon (Editor), زهرا باختری (Translator), کامران برادران (Translator)

کتاب سودازدگی زیدان گلچینی است از بهترین داستان‌‌های کوتاه اروپایی که در سال ۲۰۱۰ نوشته و جمع‌آوری شده‌اند. داستان‌‌های کوتاه در قرن اخیر اهمیت فراوانی دارند؛ چرا که آدمی دیگر آن فراغت را ندارد که رمان‌های بلند چند جلدی بخواند؛ از این رو با مطالعه داستان کوتاه گویی خود را تسکین می‌دهد و خویش و زندگانی‌اش را در آینه داستان کوتاه می‌جوید. داستان‌های این مجموعه که سعی دارند تصویری از ادبیات معاصر اروپا ارائه دهند، حاصل قلم نویسندگانی هستند که عمدتاً به زبان‌‌های غیرانگلیسی می‌نویسند و نبوغ قلمشان کمتر به غیر هم‌زبانانشان نشان داده شده است. نویسندگان اروپایی این داستان‌ها بخشی از فرهنگ و تاریخ کشور خویش را در آثار خود به نمایش می‌گذارند. اولین داستان در این مجموعه سودازدگی زیدان است که عنوان کتاب نیز براساس آن انتخاب شده است. نویسنده این داستان ژان فیلیپ توسن به فوتبال می‌پردازد که به نظرش در دنیای امروز اهمیت فراوانی یافته و جهان معاصر را تحت تأثیر قرار می‌دهد. او با انتخاب موضوعی که در ظاهر ادبی نیست، درحقیقت زیدان را به ‌نوعی شمایل مدرن بدل کرده است. داستان پیرامون ماجرایی است که در بازی نهایی جام جهانی ۲۰۰۶ آلمان رخ داد و منجر به اخراج زین‌الدین زیدان کاپیتان تیم ملی فرانسه شد؛

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Literature, Contemporary, European Literature

223 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2009

About the author

Aleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian American writer known for his short stories and novels that explore issues of exile, identity, and home through characters drawn from Hemon’s own experience as an immigrant.

Hemon was raised in Sarajevo, where his father was an engineer and his mother was an accountant. After graduating from the University of Sarajevo with a degree in literature in 1990, he worked as a journalist with the Sarajevan youth press. In 1992 he participated in a journalist exchange program that took him to Chicago. Hemon intended to stay in the United States only briefly, for the duration of the program, but, when war broke out in his home country, he applied for and was granted status as a political refugee in the United States.

In Chicago Hemon worked a series of jobs, including as a bike messenger and a door-to-door canvasser, while improving his knowledge of English and pursuing a graduate degree at Northwestern University. Three years after arriving in the United States, he wrote his first short story in English, “The Sorge Spy Ring.” Together with several other short stories and the novella “Blind Jozef Pronek & Dead Souls,” it was published in the collection The Question of Bruno in 2000, the same year Hemon became an American citizen. Like much of Hemon’s published work, these stories were largely informed by Hemon’s own immigrant experience in Chicago. Hemon brought back Jozef Pronek, the protagonist from his earlier novella, with Nowhere Man: The Pronek Fantasies (2002), the story of a young man growing up in Sarajevo who later attempts to navigate a new life in Chicago while working minimum-wage jobs. The book, like the rest of Hemon’s work, was notable for the author’s inventive use of the English language. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2004.

The Lazarus Project (2008) intertwined two stories of eastern European immigrants to Chicago. Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian immigrant writer and the novel’s narrator, becomes obsessed with a murder case from nearly a century earlier in which Lazarus Averbuch, a young Russian Jew, was shot and killed by Chicago’s police chief. Hemon received much critical acclaim for the novel, which was a finalist for a National Book Award. He followed this with Love and Obstacles (2009), a collection of short stories narrated by a young man who leaves Sarajevo for the United States when war breaks out in his home country. The Making of Zombie Wars (2015) chronicles the quotidian difficulties of a workaday writer attempting to finish a screenplay about a zombie invasion.

Hemon also cowrote the screenplay for The Matrix Resurrections (2021), the fourth installment in the popular sci-fi Matrix series. His other works included the memoirs The Book of My Lives (2013) and My Parents: An Introduction/This Does Not Belong to You (2019). The latter book consists of two volumes.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

This European Fiction series is a commendable and awesome idea, and as Zadie Smith says in her intro, one size does not fit all with anthologies. But the Best European Fiction 2011 collection was ordered in a more palatable way (not alphabetical by country as arranged here) and seemed a richer and more bountiful batch than this debut. Among my personal favourites were the excerpt from Ornela Vorpsi’s novel The Country Where No One Ever Dies, Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s ‘Zidane’s Melancholy,’ Georgi Gospodinov’s ‘And All Turned Moon,’ Giulio Mozzi’s ‘Carlo Doesn’t Know How to Read,’ Cosmin Manolache’s ‘Three Hundred Cups.’ Other pieces impressed here and there (like the excerpt from Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home) but many of the stories were surreal or meandering in uniformly frustrating ways. A mixture of poetical, imagistic writing and Barthelme-influenced whimsy, no concrete aesthetic or unifying feel at play, unlike the 2011 anthology. The Polish story ‘Didi’ was outright appalling—full of awkward slang and pouting street cool. Denmark and Switzerland have yet to prove their capability at producing semi-decent hacks. And Scotland shamed itself with an appalling ballad by Alasdair Gray. Plus yellow is never a popular cover colour. Look, I did like this—in spots. A good start to a series that will hopefully run for decades to come.

[Yngvild · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally, I avoid anthologies of short stories. They tend to collect the second rate, those pieces not quite good enough to make money for the author any other way. Best European Fiction 2010 was an exception: the quality of the writing was excellent overall, and one or two pieces were outstanding.

Considering European populations, this was not a statistically “fair” survey of countries (30), languages (26) or genres, although it was a good mix. For example, there was a crime mystery by Orna Ní Choileáin from Ireland, a ballad by Alasdair Gray from Scotland, dystopian stories by Георги Господинов (Georgi Gospodinov) of Bulgaria and Peter Terrin of Belgium, and an Irish comedy involving priests and explosives by Julian Gough. Russia provided my favourite, a very clever pseudo-scientific explanation of why the rich get richer by Виктор Олегович Пелевин (Victor Pelevin).

The anthology presents the works alphabetically by country, but I started at the top left in Iceland and worked my way round clockwise. If I expected clear regional difference to appear, I was mostly disappointed. Without name clues, I would probably have guessed which were the Nordic pieces by their style of writing. The eastern bloc stood out for how often the poor economic situation of the characters featured as a background. The Latvian piece by Giedra Radvilavičiūtė mentioned the social costs of people needing to move abroad to make money. And where was this land of milk and honey? Ireland.

In the preface, Zadie Smith makes a good point.

If the title of this book were to be removed and switched with that of an anthology of the American short story, isn’t is true that only a fool would be confused as to which was truly which?

Just out of curiosity, I looked at recent statistics for best-sellers in Europe. If you want your book to sell, write a crime mystery. Otherwise, unless you can write a cookery book, the best bet is some kind of a spiritually mystical romance. Despite rather too many self-consciously “literary” pieces, this anthology was a reminder that good modern fiction is still out there -- if you look for it.

[Laura Leaney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology moves from the completely depressing to the completely depressing. Who can blame the writers? Not me. I can't possibly know what living outside of America's fat and relatively peaceful boundaries might be like - but it's more than interesting to read the artistic sensibilities of Latvian, Estonian, and Croatian writers. The stories here all seem linked thematically by death - and in one fascinating story by Peter Terrin of Belgium, the world's citizens are allowed to kill two people per year. After I read this, I couldn't get the idea out of my mind. Who would I kill? Maybe I'd rebel and kill nobody. I'd probably end up as part of somebody else's quota though - I think I know whose quota it would be, too!

What I didn't care for was the painfully fragmented structure of so many of the pieces. And the lack of character development. And the dearth of interior narrative. But Zadie Smith's preface makes me feel a little parochial in my taste; perhaps I'm just an American behind the times?

Maybe I should be looking ahead. This could be the beginning of the neo-minimalist literary style. Post-post-post-modernism. Should there be another "post" in there? Where are we anyway? Digitalpostmoderntwitterism perhaps. These terms are giving me a headache.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a challenging read in many ways, but I was glad of the experiece. Since it was a fiction collection rather than a short story collection, some of the pieces left me confused and unsatisfied without understanding of the point or "ending", but there were a few pieces that struck me & I believe will stay with me such as "Resistance", about a chess teacher's effect on a group of schoolboys over a few weeks, and "The Orphan and the Mob" which was incredibly funny... especially the strange demise of each priest in the story. I was also drawn to some of the futuristic pieces, like "The Murderer" & "Full Moon"...I enjoyed most of the pieces though a lot of them left me wanting more. I'm not sure if I'm just not reading them correctly with my Western sense of story but many of the pieces were underwhelming. Overall, the collection was profoundly sad, leaving me with a sense of what the psyche of the Eastern European must have had to cope with over the last 20-25 years which I deeply appreciated.

[Megan]

Not sure if I'm going to finish this one. It started out with a fabulous Albanian story, which got me really excited about the collection. But then it devolved into a mass of post-apocalyptic pseudo-stories with anonymous protagonists. In one (Finnish?) piece, it has become legal to commit a certain number of murders, as long as we report our acts to the government. In another piece, an elderly man writes an old-fashioned letter to his son who is now living several planets away, inviting him to visit before he commits suicide. Not exactly happy visions of the future.

[debra47 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommend these stories as the plot lines quite unusual. Also great way to be introduced to new authors.

[Christopher Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection was a terrible let-down. Most of the stories were overrun with narrative intrusion, meandering vantages, and dull premises. The ones that worked best, such as Peter Stamm's, were stories in the truest sense of the art: they worked around a singular premise, used precise and clear yet not simple language, and intended to simply tell a damn good story (as Stamm explained in his bio/statement). The other 90% were frustrating, overly self-conscious, pretentious, or just plain dull. Many I found myself rushing to finish. I do not recommend this collection, though that does a disservice to the few good stories in here, which deserve praise and attention: Stamm's, Naja Marie Aidt's, and the one about the chess teacher.

[John Vanderslice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A superb edition in what is a regular, long-running series. Picked it up several years ago, and just recently got around to reading it. Wish I had done so sooner! If you're an American, it's great to encounter writers you never have before but probably should have. A nice mix of styles too in this volume, from the satirically ridiculous ("Friedmann Space" by Victor Pelevin) to the subtly impactful ("Ice Moon" by Peter Stamm) to the word-heavy ("The Sky Over Thingvellir" by Steinar Bragi) to the folkloric ("Jeremiah's Terrible Tale" by George Konrad). A good anthology for a reader's library.

[Nima M. Ashrafi]

دوستان، من یکی از مترجم‌های این کتاب به زبان فارسی هستم. نشر چترنگ نه پولی بابت تجدید چاپ این کتاب به من داده و نه کتاب رو بهم پس می‌ده تا بتونم با همکاری ناشران منصف و غیراستثمارگر منتشرش کنم. وظیفه داشتم شما رو از پشت پرده‌ی انتشار این کتاب مطلع کنم و تصمیم رو می‌ذارم به عهده‌ی خودتون که این کتاب رو تهیه کنید یا نه. #مترجم_جان_به_لب

[lara phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read the stories from Iceland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuiania. They were mostly existential and not really my thing.

[Aiden O'Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is any general statement possible about fiction coming from over thirty different countries across Europe?
Surprisingly one or two can be made. Fiction in the English-speaking world places great value on colloquial dialogue and realistic setting. The reader might be expected to have some familiarity with the location, might even have followed a soap opera set there. But a writer in Latvia will be not be so concerned with communicating the idiosyncrasies of Rigan slang. Instead there are more generalised settings and an ever-present readiness to deviate from realism, to disrupt the narrative and reflect upon it.
Hemon’s selection emphasises these tendencies. Many stories here veer toward the metafictional. Radvilaicute’s The Allure of the Text tells us his five criteria for any effective text. Through the rest of the piece the reader will find himself continually referring back to these, to see if the text conforms to or breaks the rules. Albahari’s The Basilica in Lyon begins by following a hitch-hiking girl who is disconcertingly referred to as ‘the story’. “The story thought it would be sad sitting alone in the back so it sat between the two women.” This turns out to be something more than a metafictional whimsy, and we are led into disturbing reflections on how we create a story of ourselves and how that story might be abandoned.
Other pieces that play around with ideas rather than characters. Mozzi’s story Carlo Doesn’t Know How To Read looks at man who has a radically different structure of consciousness. The inspiration here is more Wittgenstein than Dickens. And Pelevin’s story Friedmann Space draws on classic science fiction as it looks at the discovery of “the Karataev effect”, whereby large amounts of money create a distortion of reality. The conceit is followed to its fascinating and hilarious conclusion: a sufficient quantity of money will create a black hole from which no information can emerge.
The story that most deeply impressed me was the Icelandic writer Bragi’s The Sky Over Thingvellir. A well-educated boy and girl argue at a picnic. Their conversation ranges from the Copenhagen interpretation to the way sarcasm has insinuated itself into the whole of Western culture. It’s a conversation which serves both to conceal and reveal the fundamental differences between them. And as the narrative voice withdraws to a cosmic distance, we are led to see the young couple not as absurd, pretentious figures, but as creatures driven to seek out the truth.
Some pieces however seem more appropriate to a college lit magazine, feeling like samples to show off a writer’s skill. The many novel extracts, seven in all, reinforce this impression. These extracts may be well-written, but surely it would be better to have chosen stories written to be complete in themselves.
So don’t mind the “Best” in the title: this is an eclectic and sometimes puzzling choice from across Europe. It will hopefully show the reader some possibilities in fiction that are missing in the English-speaking world.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting collection of short stories from around Europe. There's one piece from each country, so it really felt like a broad and varied collection rather than being weighted toward particular countries. One thing I didn't like is that some of them were extracts from longer pieces, which I don't think works very well. A short story is crafted specifically to fit that length; an extract from a novel, no matter how well-written, often feels dissatisfying to me because I feel as if I'm missing things by not reading the rest of it. Also I found it strange that, despite the 2010 in the title, the stories themselves were written between 2006 and 2009. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I like the idea of surveying the best things written in one particular year. The 2010 just means that this is the inaugural edition of what will be an annual collection.

The stories gave me some really interesting ideas. They were so varied in style and subject matter, and even the ones I didn't like at least had a fresh and interesting style. Nothing was boring or predictable - I didn't enjoy all of the stories, but never because it felt too similar to something I'd read before. Some of my favourites were:

Bulbjerg by Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark): an idyllic family walk in the countryside that quickly becomes nightmarish - they get lost, the boy falls off his bike and is seriously injured, the husband confesses to an affair with the wife's sister...

Resistance by Stephan Enter (Netherlands): reminiscence about a childhood chess teacher, which really captured well the dynamics of boyhood, the difficulty of escaping from the group mentality, the ease of going along with the crowd rather than standing up for a teacher who is different, better, but easy to mock.

Friedmann Space by Victor Pelevin (Russia): clever satire of the greed, chaos and corruption of post-Soviet Russia, in which the phrase "money attracts money" is taken literally and a character goes around Moscow carrying thousands of dollars of cash and ends up finding a lot more. I liked how the writer used the language of science to add a faux seriousness to a comic tale.

I also appreciated the useful information at the back of the book: very full author bios/personal statements, translator bios, and a list of online resources for literature in each of the European countries featured in the collection. I can't recommend all the stories in the collection, but the book overall was worth reading. I will definitely be reading the 2011 edition.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very interested by an anthology of short stories as well as the clever frame of choosing stories from across Europe. I've found some of my favorite writers by dabbling in a novel here or a short story there, so I picked up this volume with high expectations. I was disappointed.

The editor started by talking about the decline in quality of American writers and the lowbrowing of the American audience, I found that many of the stories in this volume offered little in the way of actual story telling and more in the surface level fluff that seems too clever by half. However, having said that, I did find several stories fascinating and worth mentioning. I'll even look into more by these authors or from other authors in these countries.

I loved the detail that Steinar Bragi (Iceland) brought to the breakup of a relationship in his story "The Sky over Thingvellir." Julian Gough (Ireland writing in English) reaffirmed my love of the comedic/tragic gift of Irish storytellers with "The Orphan and the Mob." Polish writer Michal Witkowski has a great story that explores the life of a street hustler in "Didi." Josep M. fonalleras (Spain writing in Catalan) tells a neat story that's almost like a light strobes on at precise moments to give you a small hint. A thread ties the pieces together but it's the structure that shines. His piece was titled "Noir in Five Parts and an Epilogue." Peter Stamm (Switzerland) told an interesting story that ends where it starts, sort of. "Ice Moon" explores what happens as we age and as we try to get close to one another. Finally, the last story of the collection is "INdigo's Mermaid" by Penny Simpson (United Kingdom: Wales). This is an emotional piece of a father coming to terms with his son's achievements and early death. It's a story that one feels rather than reads. She did a stellar job.

[Poupeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Dalkey Archive and Alexander Hemon, here is a very diverse unique collection of short stories.
Stories that might not make any sense according to traditional rules of writing or what they teach us in creative writing classes, but stories that are very entertaining and engaging nonetheless, taking one on a really European trip - with fresh structures, styles, narrations, characters, etc.

couple of favorite parts randomly picked:

"All my lovers give me bookmarks. They seem to think i must read a lot. I put all the marks into the same book, the one I never open. When I can't sleep at night I think about how I should, how I ought to open it and see what I've marked. What would a story made up of only my marked pages be like?" from "You Do Understand?" by Andrej Blatnik, Slovenia

"... when she got to the basilica and looked down at the city from the surrounding terrace, she believed she would stay here forever, curled up under a tree or on a bench, in a darkness she didn't fear. A story can't feel fear, it thought, it can only shiver at the thought that it might be interrupted or chased downhill ..." from "The Basilica in Lyon" by David Albahari, Serbia

I have so many underlined passages in there. I suggest you read this if you enjoy out-of-the-box stories.

[Charles · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this is the best Europe had to offer in 2010, I would be very surprised and disappointed.
Most of these stories tried too hard to be deep and vague and dreamlike and incomprehensible.
Fortunately it was pretty easy to figure out which ones were like that and I could skim along to the end.
Of course you don't expect to read something like this and like everything.
I was hoping to find a few good ones and I did:

The best was "The Orphan and the Mob" by Julian Gough (Ireland)

Also some pretty good stories by Orna Ni Choileain (Ireland), Igor Stiks (Bosnia) and Stephan Enter (Holland)

One of the authors was quoted in the introduction talking about Dickens, "I weep with boredom over every page he's written."
I believe your reaction to that statement will pretty much determine your reaction to most of these stories.

[Nathanimal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little disappointed that the stories I liked the most were the stories I knew I'd probably like the most, namely Toussaint, Pelevin. However there were some good discoveries, too. Irish guy, Julian Gough, funny stuff! Julian Rios, you reminded me of Borges and Sebald. Montalbetti of France, your imaginary date with Murakami was like a dream in slow motion. Albahari of Serbia and Manolache of Romania, very nice to meet you.

Overall I'm just really pleased with the position Dalkey Archive has taken in the US publishing landscape. I feel like I could spend the rest of my reading year wandering blissfully through their catalog.

[Rachael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple of outstanding stories, some mediocre stories, and some that just tried way too hard to be Huxley or Bradbury.

The writer's statements were amusing. Almost all cited Kafka as an influence. They would all list to or three world renowned authors then one obscure (or at least one obscure to me, an American) as if to say, "See, I read other things, just like you." Some false modesty thrown in for good measure.

I do appreciate Aleksandar Hemon's purpose: I wish there was more international literature available in the US - particularly to offer to our adolescents. It is extremely difficult to find.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of this book is just total garbage. Except - Viktor Pelevin. I will have to make a note - check out Homo Zapien and more Russian Science Fiction... for once, finally, someone has fused Marxist themes, and Socialist ethics, with Science Fiction... definitely the stand out piece in this anthology, in my opinion, was Pelevin's short story - Friedmann Space.

The rest was clearly written on a per word basis... overbloated rhetoric. bleck.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was due at the library before I could finish all of it. A few stories stuck out to me and I really enjoyed them (the one about Zinedine Zidane was my favorite). But I think contemporary fiction like the pieces chosen for this book aren't my thing. I appreciate the writing and what's happening with it, but the style overall isn't my favorite. That being said, from what I read, I think Hemon curated a good and well-represented collection.

[Oriana]

For some reason I've been resisting the idea that I ought to read this book.... But WTF? I love love Dalkey Archive. I definitely respect Aleksandar Hemon. I certainly of course want to read more literature in translation. I think the insanely rad Victor Pelevin has a story in here. Everyone who reviews it says it's a necessary and successful and brilliant project.

So what am I waiting for??

[Jason McKinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of stories that range from the postmodern to traditional, and everything in between. The entries come from all over Europe and several countries are represented more than once. Standouts include "The Orphan and the Mob", "Friedmann Space", and "Revelations on the Boulevard of Crime".

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is very helpful to read fiction from parts of the world where the Iowa Writers school method does not dominate (although a few of the writers in this anthology admire their American counterparts). Of the writers I liked best, I seemed to gravitate to the Balkans: Igor Stiks, Neven Usumovic, and David Albahari especially appealed to me.

[Katie Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really great stories in here. Favorites: Victor Pelevin's "Friedmann's Space" (Russia), Giulio Mozzi's "Carlo doesn't know how to read" (Italy), and Ornela Vorpsi's "from 'The Country Where No One Ever Dies'" (Albania). Others are at least okay, but worth the author bio's and process notes/personal statements at the end; very interesting from a writer's perspective.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an editor, Hemon did an excellent job of choosing the stories to go into this collection. I enjoyed that each country has a selection, which exposes readers like me to new literature. For countries from which I have read many works, I felt that Hemon's selection captured the literary culture of that country.

[Lauren G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this would be all short stories, but I was wrong. It only says fiction so that was my mistake. It is mostly excerpts and short stories with a couple sections that are several tiny stories and there is also one poem. The back has info about the authors and I wish they'd been before each author's section. The stories were a pretty even mix of good, OK, and not so great.

[Marley · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were only a few stories from this collection that I connected to. The rest were very strange or dull. I couldn't help thinking about how important finding a good translator is, in reading foreign authors.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely European. I was amazed at how well it was easy to "read" the country into the tale, even if I hadn't checked to see where one of the stories was from. Some are longer/harder reads than others, but overall, I loved this.

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found most of this collection to be overly dense and "arty," not very accessible. Some of it was frankly incomprehensible. I'm an apologetic Midwestern American on this one. I can't help that I like curly fries.

[Fuschia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very boring for me, was shocked how dull most of them started. Shouldn't a short story grab your attention right away?

I liked only one: Bulgaria's Georgi Gospodinov's, "And All Turned Moon."

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

a cornucopia of great stories (and/or excerpts) from around the world.