Ein Haus In Istrien

by Richard Swartz

In formerly communist Eastern Europe, there are many empty houses. Inhabited in turn by very different families -- Jews, fascists, communists -- the houses now stand empty, decaying, the objects of countless lawsuits.

Richard Swartz's quirky and marvelous first novel revolves around one such house and the Western European man obsessed with it. Narrated by his wife, the action takes place over just seven blazing hot days in Istria, formerly Yugoslavia. His obsession drags his poor wife, a native of Istria, into long burlesque conversations with lawyers and owners; her out-of-control husband (who doesn't speak the language) involves them in surreal scenes with nearly insane characters. Since everything the husband knows (and everything the reader knows) must be channeled through the wife, we enter a world in which nothing is directly intelligible and everything is skewed. The unusual, antic, hilarious style calls Capek, Gogol, and Kafka all to mind.

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Pascale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. At the heart of this novel is the troubled marriage between the narrator, a Croatian woman, and her excitable, boorish and self-righteous husband, of unknown nationality. His passion for the operetta composer Kálmán, whose superiority to the more famous Lehár he is forever trying to drill into his wife, might suggest he is Hungarian, but the crucial thing is that he is uninterested in learning any foreign language, and has to rely on his wife for translation of every scrap of daily conversation. At the beginning of the book, he gets it into his head that they have to buy the house next door, which is much larger than his wife's, and has been sitting empty for years. We realize later on that life in the small house has become almost untenable, and acquiring more space is some kind of last-ditch attempt to save the marriage. However, from the start, the wife, who knows how fraught any property deal is in a part of the world where borders and regimes have changed too often, foresees difficulties he won't even stop to discuss. In spite of her misgivings, she does her best to find out who the house belongs to, consult her lawyer and meet the owners. Each encounter is more surreal than the last. The local drunk, Beppo, who acts as caretaker for the absentee owners, is cunning enough to give the husband the wrong key for the house, even when bullied hard. Their closest neighbor, Dimitrij, who is ostracized by the whole village because of his Ukrainian, or possibly Ruthenian origins, bullshits them with some tale about his illustrious ancestor Major Borejko, later to return at night to try and sell the Major's portrait to the wife. The wife's lawyer, Franjo, explains to them at length that they can't buy the house because most of its windows face East, which can't possibly suit their lifestyle. The wife subsequently realizes that old Franjo has completely lost his credibility within the community, and covets the house for himself. Finally the couple gets to meet with the genuine heirs, Nina and Antonio, who live in Trieste. The dynamic between these 2 is as complex as that between the principals. Antonio is on dialysis, which creates a bond with the narrator's husband, whose life was saved thanks to the graft of a kidney. Nina still resents her husband for taking early retirement from the Post Office, and insists he only fell truly ill out of boredom, whereas Antonio claims his illness forced him to retire. For an endless, airless summer afternoon, Nina and Antonio bicker about old grievances, like Antonio's failure to produce an entry for a poetry competition, or his folly in attempting to climb up to the top of the tower of Pisa. Within their apparently aimless and recursive chatter are hidden barbs about about how Tito treated Italians after the war. This marathon of obfuscation ends with Nina briskly affirming that their guests have now bought the property for 1 hundred million Lira. The last scene takes place in THE house, which Nina and Antonio consider sold although no negotiation has taken place and no document has been signed. The local priest makes an appearance just as conflict is about to escalate between Nina and the husband, who has already decided that some partition wall must come down. Before leaving the property, everyone present is invited by Father Sverko to admire a toad in the well. Will the couple ever get to buy the house and live in it? Should we wish that on them? Is Father Sverko's casual statement that he's recently seen Luigi Tartini, a former colleague of Antonio's who may or may not have been his best friend, an innocent remark, or a hint at some double dealings with regard to the house? (After all, Tartini is the name of a composer, born in an Istria town now part of Slovenia, whose most famous piece is "The Devil's Trill Sonata".) This perfectly crafted story is a delight from start to finish and I don't understand why I had never heard of it before picking up a copy at some book sale.

[Bronwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Istria, island off Trieste, has repeatedly shifted hands between Italy and Croatia.

A native of Istria lives in a small village with her foreign husband. But her “sweetiepie” becomes obsessed with an empty house, scrapes his hands climbing over its wall, refuses to understand why it can’t be his.

Long conversations ensue about nothing much, negotiations of native vs. foreign in the banal details of potatoes and post office jobs.

This everydayness earns a profundity about language and translation: “I’m completely at your mercy, my sweetie keeps saying, he doesn’t realize that each language defends itself against experiences made in another one.”

[Branka Baraković Ušić]

Uopće mi nije jasna poanta ove knjige!

Jasno mi je jedino da je danas, 27 godina od njenog izlaska, Istra prepuna likova poput "njenog dragog", prepotentnih, bahatih, umišljenih, nadasve fino nepristojnih, pohlepnih, patronizirajućih, bez smisla i osjećaja za život pod istarskim nebom. Hvala Europskoj uniji i našim političarima (običnim ratnim profiterima) koji su stvorili uvjete za pustošenje ove predivne zemlje, i fino se ogospodili i oni, te svakako si u nekom Pelegrinu kupili "našu kuću" a vjerojatno i više "naših kuća". Stranci koji postavljaju pravila i "hrvatska krema" hara i naružuje pejzaž i briše kulturu ove zemlje.

Jadna Istra, moj prekrasan zavičaj.

Btw, ženu Riječanku, uopće nisam doživjela kao Riječanku, bezlična neodređena osoba koja gleda tog svog govnjara kao Boga.

Ocjena knjige istovremeno je 1 i 5 !!!

P.s. tražila sam po policama u knjižnici nešto iz skandinavske književnosti i naletjeh na ovu. I ta je situacija tragikomična i pomalo apsurdna kao što je i sama knjiga. 🐸

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Narrated by the Croation wife of a man from another country who neither understands the history nor languages of the region, the book is a really a series of conversations which the wife translates for her husband as they seek to buy an abandoned house next door to their home. The pleasure in the read comes from the characters involved in the sale of the house and the long run on sentences that convey the obsessions, prejudeices and moods of those involved.
(I need to do some research to see why it was translated from Swedish.)