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Ivan Blank
Aleksandar Šajin's new novel Ivan Blank is a comedy of love and infidelity, about lies and deception, about madness and artistic blindness, about PET, about apparently unfounded asylum seekers and about the Danish judiciary.
Ivan works as a Serbo-Croatian interpreter and when he is out interpreting in some stupid refugee camp there is always another Ivan to interpret. And when Ivan for business purposes is to be security-approved by the intelligence service, it ends in disaster.
Ivan works as a Serbo-Croatian interpreter and when he is out interpreting in some stupid refugee camp there is always another Ivan to interpret. And when Ivan for business purposes is to be security-approved by the intelligence service, it ends in disaster.
375 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 3, 2023
This book... Well, I'm not sure where to start. I have completely mixed feelings about it.
Parts of this book is well written and I got completely entangled in the two main characters' life and thoughts, and I want to save them both (Marie & Ivan) and their kids. I like that the narrator -language of Ivan gets more poetic towards the end, when he realises that he loves Marie.
But this positive feeling doesn't appear until more than half way through the book.
The first half is a constant jump between multiple characters (in 1st person narrator) from Ivan's past ends. The jumps happens too often and to random and sometimes even without mentioning of the name of the character, so its really hard to keep up and you end up being not-so invested in the characters and the book in total.
So in the end it was like a 60/40 experience (bad/positive).
For now, this book will remain in my bookshelf, but mainly because of the absolutely beautiful cover!
Parts of this book is well written and I got completely entangled in the two main characters' life and thoughts, and I want to save them both (Marie & Ivan) and their kids. I like that the narrator -language of Ivan gets more poetic towards the end, when he realises that he loves Marie.
But this positive feeling doesn't appear until more than half way through the book.
The first half is a constant jump between multiple characters (in 1st person narrator) from Ivan's past ends. The jumps happens too often and to random and sometimes even without mentioning of the name of the character, so its really hard to keep up and you end up being not-so invested in the characters and the book in total.
So in the end it was like a 60/40 experience (bad/positive).
For now, this book will remain in my bookshelf, but mainly because of the absolutely beautiful cover!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review