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Ghost Geographies: Fictions
A wry, propulsive, visceral collection of stories about the afterlives of utopia, imagined and real, from the author of the Writers' Trust Prize-winning Siege 13.
Fleeing communist Budapest by air balloon, a wrestler tries to reinvent himself in Canada. On a formal invitation from the Party's General Secretary, a Belgian bureaucrat “defects” to communist Hungary, chasing the dream of a better world. Meanwhile, a provocateur filmmaker drinks and blasts his way to a final, celluloid confrontation with fascism, while an enfant terrible philosopher works on his prophetic, posthumously panned masterpiece, Dyschrony. These are among the decadent and absurd characters who hover around the promise and failure of utopia across the pages of Ghost Geographies.
A polyphonic descendant of Kadare, Bolaño, and Sebald, Tamas Dobozy masterfully traces and thwarts the porous borders between fact, fiction, ideology, history, and humor. The stories that make up Ghost Geographies simply confirm that, in the words of the The Washington Post, Tamas Dobozy's “approaches to telling stories, and his commitment not only to provoke thought but to entertain, constitute a virtuoso performance.”
Fleeing communist Budapest by air balloon, a wrestler tries to reinvent himself in Canada. On a formal invitation from the Party's General Secretary, a Belgian bureaucrat “defects” to communist Hungary, chasing the dream of a better world. Meanwhile, a provocateur filmmaker drinks and blasts his way to a final, celluloid confrontation with fascism, while an enfant terrible philosopher works on his prophetic, posthumously panned masterpiece, Dyschrony. These are among the decadent and absurd characters who hover around the promise and failure of utopia across the pages of Ghost Geographies.
A polyphonic descendant of Kadare, Bolaño, and Sebald, Tamas Dobozy masterfully traces and thwarts the porous borders between fact, fiction, ideology, history, and humor. The stories that make up Ghost Geographies simply confirm that, in the words of the The Washington Post, Tamas Dobozy's “approaches to telling stories, and his commitment not only to provoke thought but to entertain, constitute a virtuoso performance.”
- GenresShort Stories
344 pages, Paperback
Published September 16, 2021
3 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Tamas Dobozy
20 books20 followersTamas Dobozy was born in Nanaimo, BC. After receiving his Ph.D. in English from the University of British Columbia, he taught at Memorial University. His work has been published in journals throughout North America, and in 1995 he won the annual subTerrain short fiction contest. When X Equals Marylou, his first collection of short fiction, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award. Tamas Dobozy now teaches in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 27, 2023
Seven out of ten.
(I came into contact with this book because Dobozy is a professor in the English department at Laurier.)
This is a fascinating collection. Dark, absurd, guilt-ridden. More than once it reminded me of The Death of Methuselah--also a book about a people in diaspora (although I would say that the despair there is driven by grief rather than guilt).
Some of the story resolutions puzzled me, and I wasn't sure whether I had missed a crucial point or whether they were simply meant to be cruelly absurd. But their absurdity was not without its pathos, their searching not entirely unanswered.
This book wouldn't fly well as a Christmas gift to your grandparent or precocious eleven-year-old (unless perhaps you are Hungarian), but for mature and modern readers, it’s an entertaining read with bits of significant interest.
(I came into contact with this book because Dobozy is a professor in the English department at Laurier.)
This is a fascinating collection. Dark, absurd, guilt-ridden. More than once it reminded me of The Death of Methuselah--also a book about a people in diaspora (although I would say that the despair there is driven by grief rather than guilt).
Some of the story resolutions puzzled me, and I wasn't sure whether I had missed a crucial point or whether they were simply meant to be cruelly absurd. But their absurdity was not without its pathos, their searching not entirely unanswered.
This book wouldn't fly well as a Christmas gift to your grandparent or precocious eleven-year-old (unless perhaps you are Hungarian), but for mature and modern readers, it’s an entertaining read with bits of significant interest.
March 1, 2022
Dobozy brilliantly balances fantastic storytelling with the hardened facts of the trauma that war, sacrifice, and struggle imprint on people. Within many of this book's stories, the author highlights "the perversity at the heart of all authority" and the "empty ritual[s]" people use to keep their heads down and their hopes high as they work through each day.
In particular, 'Ray Electric' is a masterclass in crafting a gripping and heartbreaking story, mixing just enough of the absurd to make the reader laugh (and question whether they should be laughing), while building toward a pitch perfect finish.
In particular, 'Ray Electric' is a masterclass in crafting a gripping and heartbreaking story, mixing just enough of the absurd to make the reader laugh (and question whether they should be laughing), while building toward a pitch perfect finish.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews