Η Ευρώπη μετά τη βροχή

by Alan Burns, Ρένα Χατχούτ (Translator)

Σε μια χώρα κατεστραμμένη από τον πόλεμο, ο ανώνυμος αφηγητής αναζητά μια γνωστή του κοπέλα. Οι πορείες τους συγκλίνουν και αποκλίνουν σ’ ένα εφιαλτικό τοπίο: μάχες, στρατόπεδα συγκέντρωσης, θάλαμοι αερίων και άνθρωποι απελπισμένοι που προσπαθούν να επιβιώσουν. Ποιοι είναι οι «καλοί» και ποιοι οι «κακοί»; Ποιοι συνδέονται με αντιστασιακές οργανώσεις; Πού ανήκει o αφηγητής και ποιος είναι ο σκοπός του; Ο πόλεμος τελείωσε;

Ο Άλαν Μπερνς (1929-2013) αναγνωρίστηκε ως «ο καλύτερος πειραματικός Άγγλος συγγραφέας» (Ίαν Μακγιούαν) του ’60. Εμπνεύστηκε τον τίτλο του έργου από τον ομώνυμο πίνακα του Μαξ Ερνστ, όπου επικρατεί μια εικόνα απόλυτης ερήμωσης.
Πίνακας και βιβλίο δείχνουν τη βαναυσότητα αλλά και το ψυχικό σθένος των ανθρώπων, χωρίς το οποίο η επιβίωση θα ήταν αδύνατη. Το έργο αποτυπώνει το συλλογικό ασυνείδητο του 20ού αιώνα με απαράμιλλη σουρεαλιστική τεχνοτροπία που δίνει στην αφήγηση ένα κλίμα ονειρικής φρίκης.

Genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Dystopia, Literature

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Alan Burns published eight novels, two essay collections, a play, and a short story collection. Major works include Europe After the Rain, Celebrations, Babel, and Dreamerika! A Surrealist Fantasy. From the 1960s on, he was associated with the loosely-constituted circle of experimental British writers influenced by Rayner Heppenstall that included Stefan Themerson, Eva Figes, Ann Quin and its informal leader, B. S. Johnson.

In 1982 he co-edited (with Charles Sugnet) The Imagination on Trial: British and American Writers Discuss Their Working Methods, which the Washington Post "Book World" called "diverting, iconoclastic, and compulsively readable". The book included interviews with 11 authors (as well as Burns himself): J. G. Ballard, Eva Figes, John Gardner, Wilson Harris, John Hawkes, B. S. Johnson, Tom Mallin, Michael Moorcock, Grace Paley, Ishmael Reed, and Alan Sillitoe.

Angus Wilson called Burns "one of the two or three most interesting new novelists working in England."

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the midst of an ambiguous phantasmagoria of wartime or cataclysm, a man on ill-defined official business is consumed instead by the search for a girl whose path crosses and diverges repeatedly from his own. Sound familiar at all? Sourcing inspirations, perhaps, as this was first.* And fantastic.

Europe After the Rain is an image of a devastated moral and social landscape. At first it seems to be the wake of war, possibly even a relatively accurate vision of post-wwii Europe, but later the situation seems more like an endless occupation, a limbo of war never quite ended and rebuilding never quite begun. Through this country of broken bridges, empty fields, buildings without upper stories, orphanages, military bureaucracy, insurgent plots, bandits who are nothing more than hungry children being hunted down as adults - through this our narrator drifts with little judgement, inevitably complicit in the scenes he enters, if only by his willingness to leave them unchallenged in order to move through them and escape. In this destroyed world, all is haze and muddle, details are in extreme shortage, and even the narrator can express only vague descriptions that constantly bleed into eachother and out of focus, as if everyone is so worn down by continual strife that nothing registers more than the barest acknowledgement. "We walked fast in a strong cold wind, among loose stuff lying about." It's the vagueness of bad soupy prose, but wielded with full intent to devastating effect. Blunt statements of grim fact pile up and overwhelm, intercut by nonsequiters of unexplained observation or bits of disconnected thought. It is a kind of poetry.

The mutual dislike had increased. Then there had been a horrible incident. They had held up a car and robbed the passengers, the driver had been taken out and shot. And I had discovered the fun in such business.

Early stretches are vague but still seemingly concrete. Later, even this level of grounding is disturbed by circumstances, all dissolves into further uncertainty. Journalism gives way to contradiction. Character bearing only basic descriptors or pronouns become confused, conflicting accounts are offered and forgotten. The narrative itself seems to have been shelled into an indistinguishable ruin with only a few features to rest the eye on -- a bit of a doorframe here, a cornice there, a gargoyle and bits of flowers beyond -- only a few landmarks from which to imagine a continuous whole long since lost.

A fine-looking man, the son transformed, doomed to meet his death, stopped to talk to me, on his way back. He had been dying on the battlefields. I invited him to lunch. I was filled with admiration for what he had seen. He ruined my velvet-covered furniture by scraping his greased boots over it. The incident gave rise to satirical verses. He was a troublemaker who tried to kidnap and kill, but the plan was found out, troops were summoned, with instructions to shoot on sight. So order was restored. A strike was called, no papers were printed, the town was still. I could not find out, men and women were falling, soldiers caught the disease, the schools were turned into hospitals, thousands died. Bread was sold by card. A relative sent me all I needed from home, but I could not cook the food, the people's police were free to enter. I found a room unoccupied, and there I sat on a chair. It was raining on the bright uniforms. Shivering, weary, unable to walk, ill and tired, I discussed plans for my return, and for the return of those who planned the commander's fall.

Also above, the telescoping of time. The story spans a few weeks of amnesiac repetitions or several lifetimes of unending strife. Some events can only be caught in a purely surrealist disintegration. But it never feels automatic or easy, it feels as though drawn from the body at great personal cost.

It was amusing to watch their backs, one lost her footing and rolled over, she was seized by the legs and pulled along. Divided from the women by the width of the room, the guards watched in silence. Two girls carried fire from behind a screen in iron dishes as tall as themselves, suffering magnified their limbs, no greetings, no word, the wind rising, their voices lamented, I could not distinguish one from the other, we went on eating, their breasts hanging over us like long potatoes. The sound of drums on stage confused with exploding shells outside, the building was roofed with tiles, the pillars painted, the walls streaked with lime. She was seated in shadow, her face oval in the dim room, she carried an umbrella which she twirled to prevent any man staring at her, she offered me a bowl of milk, placing it at my feet, it was not necessary to know what she meant by the movement, there was no mystery,she used a poem to kill. The troops were outside, there was no time for marriage, I gave her some clothes but she would not put them on, she sent them out of the room. Because she had been bitten by one of the dogs, she kept her face half-hidden. I had only to wait, the idea was to do nothing at all. The stage was a fortress surrounded by a wall,loopholed, on either side were piles of grenades for the last troops who kept guard. The crumbling of the place brought out the rats and other vermin, circus dogs dressed in yellow, wearing caps, trotted on money. Her hunger was so strong her flesh was like earth that disappears, with her skirt held up she ran with the spotlight, she scrambled for paper and rubber, there was no space, she had no form, she drifted in the strong light, in the haze of dust her face was white, her body bare, she wore no jewels, I had no desire at all.

Impressively and hermetically trapped in its world and language, this rages without escape or outlet. Boiling and sturming in an unending despair that never quite overcomes it nonetheless. A kind of perseverance. There is no final ruin, no absolute terminal point. The world, broken, irretrievable, carries on.

Possible comparisons abound: Becket's existential monotony rendering the vignetted moral voids of Jerzy Kosinski's Europe, recomposed via the nouvelle roman in a kind of Burroughsian cut-up text without beginning or end. And yet, none of these fully capture the singular sensation of the novel. And what's more, all of those live on, whereas Burns' novel (and much of his work in general) has been buried nearly to the point of oblivion. I only found it by summoning it up from the hidden archives of the brooklyn library, where it can only creep on, like those who inhabit its pages, in everlasting darkness and obscurity.

*This was published in 1965, Kavan submitted the first draft of Ice (then still called "The Cold World") in '66; as members of the British avant-garde of the time they probably couldn't have escaped eachother, and Kavan was certainly not opposed to subverting other masculine visions into stories written at the same time. But whereas Kavan's "Tiny Thing" is clearly a cynical unmaking of The Girl Beneath the Lion, her repurposing of Burns' narrative synopsis to her own sophisticated ends still dovetails more with Burns own bleak outlook, even as she diverges wildly in structure, style, overriding intent, veiled plot engines, and personal subtexts. So that while the link is real (I believe) and interesting, both works stand on their own and need to be read.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Burns’s intriguing and original fictions have not had the pleasure of a second life like fellow British brains Ann Quin or B.S. Johnson. His first novel (barring Buster in New Writers 1), is a classic postwar novel probing the randomness of evil and whatnot: bleak staccato prose limning a scorched wartime landscape. His efforts in the cut-up field are what set him apart from other novelists—however, the range of skill Burns brought to his full-length works is evident: as with Johnson or Quin, no novel is a mere retread of the previous. Each seeks to break new ground and open up new avenues in fiction and makes the whole enterprise seem effortless. Burns’s marvellous novels are in dire need of republication (one, Babel, is available on demand from Marion Boyars, the rest are all unattainable even in the used market).

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the essay on his work that he wrote for Beyond the Words, Alan Burns describes the events that led to the writing of this novel. First, he saw the Max Ernst painting, the title of which became the title of the book, and then he picked up two books in bookshops: one, a transcribed account of the Nuremberg trials, and two, a journalist's report about life in Poland after the war, which came to provide the background material for his novel. He began to write:

I had this badly written guidebook on my desk and I typed from it in a semi-trance. My eyes glazed and in the blur only the sharpest and strongest words, mainly nouns, emerged. I picked them out and wrote them down and made my own sense of them later. I dug up characters from that book though as a mere travelogue it hardly contained any. Perhaps some of Europe After the Rain's 'numbness' derives from this distanced technique of writing from the unconscious. Painters often screw up their eyes when looking at a landscape so that in the blur they catch the essence.

Burns writes that the novel's 'climate of detachment reflected my own numbness in the face of two deaths', that of his older brother and his mother. The characters in the novel are unnamed; their characterization is fractured. There is a man and a woman, sometimes traveling together, sometimes apart with him seeking her. Her father plays a leading role in a political revolution. The menacing 'commander' wields control over her; she wants to escape and yet she also appears to willingly stay. There is a similarity to Anna Kavan's Ice, published two years later. The narrative is even more disjointed here, though, and the characters are even more splintered. But the destroyed settings, relentless searching, detached violence, and ambiguous relationships all feel familiar, as does the urgency of the prose driving the reading forward. Highly recommended for those who enjoyed Ice.

A yellow bar of light dissolved, we lay on the rough sand, the last light of the sun in her mouth.

[Tasos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Βιβλία για τη φρίκη του πολέμου έχουν γραφτεί άπειρα, κανένα όμως δε μοιάζει με το «Η Ευρώπη Μετά Τη Βροχή» του Άλαν Μπερνς, όπως και ολόκληρη η λογοτεχνική παραγωγή του Άγγλου συγγραφέα παραμένει μια μοναδική και ιδιάζουσα περίπτωση στην παγκόσμια λογοτεχνία του 20ου αιώνα.

Κύριος εκπρόσωπος ενός βραχύβιου κινήματος ακραίου πειραματισμού στη δεκαετία του 60, που οδήγησε την έννοια της αφήγησης στα όριά της, ο Μπερνς εφάρμοσε τεχνικές του κολάζ και του κινηματογράφου, πειραματίστηκε με τη γλώσσα και τη φόρμα και άφησε ως παρακαταθήκη οχτώ δύσκολα και κρυπτικά μυθιστορήματα, που μόλις τα τελευταία χρόνια βγήκαν από την αφάνεια κι άρχισαν να επανεκτιμώνται.

Αυτό το μυθιστόρημα πήρε τον τίτλο του από τον ομότιτλο πίνακα του Μαξ Ερνστ και παρουσιάζει μια μεταπολεμική Ευρώπη, στην οποία οι λέξεις μοιάζουν να αδυνατούν να περιγράψουν το έρεβος στο οποίο έχει βυθιστεί. Οι ήρωες είναι ανώνυμοι, δεν υπάρχουν χρονικοί και γεωγραφικοί προσδιορισμοί, η δράση είναι σχηματική. Όλοι και όλα κινούνται μέσα σε ένα ομιχλώδες και ασαφές παρόν, στο οποίο ακόμα και τα υποκείμενα χάνονται από τις προτάσεις, αφού έχει κατακερματοστεί κάθε έννοια προσωπικότητας, αφηγητικής συνέχειας και λογικής αλληλουχίας.

Η ανάγνωση του βιβλίου δεν είναι εύκολη υπόθεση κι αυτό κάνει την ελληνική μετάφραση ακόμα πιο θαυμαστή, αυτό που μένει όμως στο τέλος της ανάγνωσης (πέρα από το αναμενόμενο σπαζοκεφάλιασμα) είναι η καταβύθιση σε ένα εφιαλτικό ταξίδι που αποτυπώνεται στις εξαιρετικής δύναμης εικόνες, στην δημιουργία μιας πνιγηρής ατμόσφαιρας από την οποία δεν υπάρχει έξοδος, ούτε τέλος, στην παγερή αποστασιοποίηση του συγγραφέα που αφήνει εξίσου παγωμένο και τον αναγνώστη.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Το αντισυμβατικό αυτό μυθιστόρημα πήρε το όνομά του από τον ομώνυμο πίνακα του Μαξ Ερνστ. Ο Μπερνς έχει δηλώσει ότι είδε μια αναπαραγωγή του πίνακα σε ένα βιβλίο και ότι ταίριαζε ακριβώς με το ζοφερό τοπίο του μυθιστορήματος που έγραφε. Διαδραματίζεται σε μια μεταπολεμική Ευρώπη με σαφείς αναφορές στο Ολοκαύτωμα. Εξίσου αντισυμβατικοί και οι χαρακτήρες του βιβλίου. Η ανορθόδοξη (σχεδόν ανύπαρκτη) πλοκή ακολουθεί έναν ανώνυμο αφηγητή που μπορεί να είναι ή να μην είναι κάποιου είδους αξιωματούχος σε μια απροσδιόριστη χώρα της οποίας τα σύνορα και η κυβέρνηση αλλάζουν περισσότερες από μία φορές. Ο αφηγητής αναζητά ένα κορίτσι, του οποίου ο πατέρας και ο αδερφός συνδέονται ( ή και όχι!) με κάποιου είδους επαναστατική δραστηριότητα. Ο αδερφός είναι μέρος μιας ομάδας που ονομάζεται "ληστές", ενώ ο πατέρας, όπως τα περισσότερα από τα στελέχη της εξουσίας, καταλήγει εκτός ηγεσίας και τιμωρείται.

Οι εικόνες σε αυτό το βιβλίο ξετυλίγονται διαδοχικά παρουσιάζοντάς μας ενα τοπίο τόσο βάναυσο, άσχημο και απόκοσμο. Η καταστροφή είναι παντού, η ανθρώπινη ζωή είναι φτηνή και βυθισμένη στο σκοτάδι. Βλέπουμε σκληρή μεταχείριση προς όλους, χωρίς ουσιαστικά καμία ελπίδα για λύτρωση ή διαφυγή. Εν ολίγοις, στην Ευρώπη του Μπερνς, μετά βίας αξίζει να ζει κανείς.

Μέσα από την αυτόματη γραφή,τον σουρεαλισμό και την συνειρμική απόδοση των ιδεών του ,εγκαταλείποντας κάθε λογική αλληλουχία, ο συγγραφέας δεν προσπαθεί να μας πει ακόμη μια ιστορία από τον πόλεμο. Αυτό που προσπαθεί να κάνει είναι ,κατά τη γνώμη μου, να τον καταδικάσει, να τον ξεμπροστιάσει ,να τον ξεγυμνώσει μπροστά στα μάτια του αναγνώστη ώστε να καταστήσει το έργο του διαχρονικά αντιπολεμικό.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through a heavily fractured narrative (almost a collage really) an unnamed man seeks a young woman in a variety of situations against a backdrop of an ongoing war or insurrection.
Don't try to piece this story back together (the pieces won't fit and many are missing) and admire Burns' skill at building an atmosphere of violence and insecurity

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 2 out of 5]

İngiliz yazar Alan Burns'ün, Max Ernst'ün aynı isimli tablosundan ilhamla yazdığı romanı Yağmurdan Sonra Avrupa'yla pek anlaşamadık maalesef - bir tabloda mükemmel çalışan "şey", romanda çalışmayabiliyor pekala. Ernst'ün tablosuna bayılırım, zaten o gazla okumaya başladım kitabı ama postmodernlik ve deneysellik düzeyi benim kabul edebildiğim eşiğin üstünde çıktı maalesef.

İsimsiz anlatıcımız, tam anlayamadığımız bir gizli görevle Avrupa topraklarında dolaşıyor. İlk bakışta İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası Avrupa'sı gibi gözüküyor gezdiğimiz yerler ama hikaye ilerledikçe öyle olmadığını anlıyoruz. Arka kapaktan alıntılayayım: "aslında bitmek bilmeyen bir işgalin, sona ermemiş bir savaşın, bir türlü tam anlamıyla başlamayan bir yeniden inşa sürecinin karmaşası hüküm sürüyor."

Zaman ve mekan belirsiz, tarafları ayırt etmek güç. Sadece korkunç bir şiddet var her yerde. Çocuklara, kadınlara, hayvanlara karşı. Büyük bir belirsizliğin içinde dolaşırken okuduğumuz en belirgin şeyler işkence ve tecavüz sahneleri, onlar maalesef olanca detayıyla aktarılıyor. 1967’de ilk yayımlandığında 20. yüzyılın “kolektif bilinçaltı”nı ortaya koyduğu söylenmiş kitabın aktardıklarına edecek bir lafım yok; savaş sonrasının büyük karamsarlığı içerisinde Avrupa'da yaşanmakta olan dehşet ve yıkımın bundan çok da farklı olmadığı muhakkak. Ancak dediğim gibi bu kadar deneysellik bana fazla geliyor, metinden sık sık koptuğumu fark ettim ve bu da okumamı epey güçleştirdi.

Meraklısına, diyeyim.

[George K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Βαθμολογία: 5/10

Χμ, μάλιστα! Πολύ περίεργο βιβλίο, η αλήθεια είναι, ουσιαστικά χωρίς αρχή, μέση και τέλος, με σχεδόν ανύπαρκτη πλοκή, λίγο μπερδεμένο και πολύ σουρεαλιστικό, δύσκολα το αποκαλείς μυθιστόρημα αυτό το πράγμα, περισσότερο μου κάνει με κολάζ εικόνων και σκηνών που δημιούργησε ένας μεθυσμένος καταθλιπτικός. Οφείλω να πω ότι το πρώτο μισό μου άρεσε αρκετά (παρά το σπαζοκεφάλιασμα), γιατί πολύ απλά μου άρεσε ο τρόπος που ο συγγραφέας περιέγραφε τα πράγματα, μου άρεσε πολύ η ατμόσφαιρα -έτσι μαύρη και άραχλη όπως ήταν-, από κει και πέρα όμως έχασα τελείως την μπάλα και αναπόφευκτα το ενδιαφέρον. Έχω κι εγώ κάποια όρια, τι να κάνουμε. Σίγουρα ο Μπερνς, με τον δικό του παράξενο τρόπο, έχει κάτι να πει με αυτό το βιβλίο, όμως δυστυχώς εμένα με έχασε από ένα σημείο και μετά, και στο τέλος δεν με ένοιαξε τι ακριβώς ήθελε να πει. Οπωσδήποτε μου άρεσαν μεμονωμένα κομμάτια, η γενικότερη ατμόσφαιρα, καθώς και η περίεργη αίσθηση που μου άφησε στο τέλος, αλλά σαν σύνολο με απογοήτευσε. Δεν μπορώ να πω ότι είχα και τόσο υψηλές προσδοκίες, μιας και δεν ήξερα τι ακριβώς να περιμένω, αλλά δεν ήταν το διαμαντάκι που κατά βάθος ήλπιζα ότι θα έβρισκα.

[Mayk Can Şişman · Rating 3 out of 5]

kitabın distopik ve karamsar havasını az biraz sevsem de yazarın yazma stiliyle pek barışamadım. sanki metni besleyen tüm gerekli detaylar bir tuşa basılıp silinmiş ve sadece eylemlere dökülen kısım kitaba taşınmış. halbuki daha okkalı ve detaylı bir aktarım çok daha şıklaştırabilirmiş kitabı.

[Booklists_ Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Το ολοκλήρωσα με πολύ δυσκολία. Δύσκολη γραφή, δύσκολη γραμματοσειρά. Μπορεί να φταίει ότι δεν ανήκει και στο είδος που μου αρεσει αλλά σε γενικότερο πλαίσιο δε μου ταίριαξε.

[Tülay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kaos, belirsizlik, bolca gri renk, tedirgin edici atmosfer. Bence bu kelimeler Alan Burns'un kitabını en iyi anlatan kelimeler. Belirsiz bir anlatıcı ve bir kızın hayatları üzerinden kaosun,yıkımın, şiddetin, acının, toplama kamplarinin anlatıldığı apokaliptik bir metin Yağmurdan Sonra Avrupa. Metin boyunca tedirginlik ve o belirsizlik devam ediyor. Roman için bir renk seç deseler sanırım gri derim. Tıpkı Herta Muller'in Tek Bacaklı Yolcu romanı. O kitapta da gri renk hissi geçiyordu okuyucuya. Mekanlar , zaman kavramları hep belirsiz kitapta. Herkesin bildiği bir konuyu; savaşın yarattığı travmaları, yıkıma değiniyor Alan Burns ama bunu deneysel bir uslubla anlatıyor. Bu açıdan bakarsak, herkesin sevebileceği bir metin olduğunu düşünmüyorum. Biraz dikkat ve biraz da üzerinde düşünülmesi gereken bir metin. Okumak isteyenlere iyi okumalar dilerim.

[Sevi Salagianni · Rating 1 out of 5]

Περίεργο βιβλίο, λίγο πειραματικό, λίγο σουρεαλιστικό, λίγο μπερδεμένο.

Προσωπικά δεν μπορούσα να το διαβάσω χωρίς να αποσπάται η προσοχή μου, καθώς μου φάνηκε ασύνδετο.

Καταλαβαίνω την ανάγκη του συγγραφέα να πλάσει μια ιστορία υπεράνω προσώπων, χρόνου κτλ, αλλά καταλαβαίνω και την ανάγκη του αναγνώστη (εν προκειμένω, τη δική μου ανάγκη) να έχει μια κάποια επαφή με αυτό που διαβάζει.

Δεν άντεξα, το παράτησα.

[The Escapist Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 out of 5 stars

SUMMER BOOK MARATHON 2022 #readyourbookshelves
Prompt: It has been recommended to me

Reading this you kind of have to accept that you will not be able to understand a lot of things. Time and space are elusive concepts, wile the focus is on permeating sense of desolation and futility. It's a dystopian picture of Europe after the rain has made the dust settle following a major destructive event. Overall, it was an interesting book, but the writing style was at times disorienting or even verging on unintelligible, which I guess was partly the point.

Happy reading!

[Δημήτρης Μαύρος · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burns stays true to the modernist tradition in this 1965 novel, taking its fragmentation a step further than most modernists would in a prose setting, its disintergration being a method of survival for both the book and its author (method is perhaps too methodical a word for a visceral necessity). It reminds me of the Crate (1974) by Aris Alexandrou (not gonna call it Mission Box so you can find it on GR) but Alexandrou had no interest in such experimentation. Anyway, Europe's a post-war creation consistent with a line of works based on the inability to phrase the ineffable (such as Double or Nothing but less experimental this time), where the chaos that often can't (or even shouldn't) be decyphered gets reincarnated in the syntax for full effect.

[Ilknur Kcr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Savaş, savaş sonrası değişen güç dengeleri, yokluk, yapılanma…Dehşetin içinde yaşarken hiçbir şey geçmez, sona ermez; belirsizliğe, karmaşaya evrilir. insanlar dehşete düşmüş, hiddet dolu, bezmiş olsalar da sadece içinden geçilen anlar vardır.
Anlatıcı olarak kurduğu mesafeli anlatım dilli, belirsizlik, boşluklar, duygulara yer vermeyen görsel ve durumsal tasvirler, isimlerin olmaması deneysel anlatının unsurları
Yüksek edebiyat !, deneysel anlatının başarılı bir örneği olarak gösteriliyor ama iyi bir okuma zevki vermedi.

[Sena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Romanda zaman ve mekanın yakalanması zor konseptler olarak sunulmasını severim. parçalanmış anlatıları, isimsiz karakterleri, her türlü deneyselliği de. Fakat bu kitaptan hiç haz alamadım, mekanik ve tuzsuz bir deneysellik bu.

2. Dünya Savaşı’nı anlatan bir sürü müthiş kitap varken yazar kitabını sürrealist bir tablodan yola çıkıp yazdı, aklına geleni boş sayfaya dizdi diye okumaya değer mi emin değilim.

[George Makridakis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Βασικά πειραματικό βιβλίο.
Δεν υπάρχει πλοκή, αλλά μόνο στιγμιότυπα όσο ο πρωταγωνιστής μετακινείται ελάχιστα μετά το τέλος του πολέμου.
Παρότι ασφαλώς πρώτα απ όλα η τέχνη αφορά τον ίδιο το δημιουργό, είναι παράλληλα απαιτητικό να ζητείται ταυτόχρονα από τον αναγνώστη να ταυτιστεί με ό,τι έχει ο δημιουργός κατά νου, ενώ ο ίδιος γίνεται δέκτης ενός μέρος αυτού μόνο.

[Arzu Satır · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uzun zamandır bir kitabı okurken bu kadar koptuğum, mevzuyu kaçırdığım olmamıştı. Sürekli bir yeri kaçırdım hissiyle birkaç cümle geriye dönme ihtiyacı duydum ve önceki iki cümleyi okuyup devam edince anladım - atladığım cümle olmamış…
Bağlayamadım cümleleri normalde süreceğinden iki katı sürede okudum herhalde ve çok yordu beni

[Liberis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Διάλεξα κι εγώ στιγμή να το διαβάσω με όσα γίνονται. Αγχωτικό, πνιγηρό, όπως ένας πόλεμος.

[Geoffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was sort of mesmerizing, but one kind of has to admit that there's only so far the conceit can go, and even at barely novella length, it might be a bit much.

[R.L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Τι διάβασα μόλις;;;
Υπερβολικά ακατανόητο και αποσπασματικό για 'μένα...

What did I just read???
Too non-sensical and fragmental for me...

[Rena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Πολύ κουραστικό βιβλίο. Το πρώτο μισό είχε κάποιο ενδιαφέρον. Μετά άλλαξε η ιστορία χωρίς καμία σύνδεση. Βαρέθηκα να το τελειώσω.

[Greek Thinker · Rating 1 out of 5]

An interesting concept with an extremely poor execution. Nothing about this book managed to raise any interest for me. Calling it boring would be an understatement.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rest of Burns's stuff is too experimental for my taste, but this book nails it. Incredible rhythm and mood. Likely inspiration for Anna Kavan's "Ice" which came out two years later.

[giorgos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ο ήρωας, με μια κοπέλα, ψάχνουν τον πατέρα της σε μια Ευρώπη κατεστραμμένη από τον πόλεμο.
Περίεργα γραμμένο. Δεν υπάρχει συγκεκριμένη ροή ή ιστορία, όλα είναι μπερδεμένα.

[Κατερίνα Τοράκη · Rating 4 out of 5]

Το πρόσωπο του πολέμου είναι ίδιο πάντα. Βία, μίσος, αναξιοπρέπεια, φόβος, απάθεια, ανημπόριες, θάνατος, οργή, καταστροφές, ερείπια. Και όταν γίνει "ειρήνη", πάλι ερείπια και αδιέξοδο, ανασφάλεια, φόβος. Εικόνες ανάκατες σαν σκηνές από κινηματογραφική ταινία οι κοφτές προτάσεις του αφηγητή. Περιγραφές σαν να μας αφηγείται το όνειρο της περασμένης νύχτας. "Πειραματικός" συγγραφέας ο Μπερνς, γράφει ακολουθώντας τον Μπέκετ και τους άλλους σουρεαλιστές. Αν και ιδιαίτερο ως προς το ύφος και τη γραφή, το βιβλίο του, γραμμένο στα μέσα της δεκαετίας του '60, με τίτλο από το ομότιτλο έργο του Μαξ Έρνστ, είναι πιο επίκαιρο από ποτέ. Συγκλονιστικό, αντιπολεμικό, κραυγή κατά του πολέμου.