Europe through literature discussion

Hi all!

This thread is for the discussion of our Sep/Oct 2021 read of Serhiy Zhadan's Mesopotamia.

- Feel free to discuss anything you like about the book! The following questions might get you started:

What made you want to read the book?

How do you like the characters? The plot? The style? The portrayal of characters and their surroundings?

All of the characters so far seem concerned with sex and the behaviors of neighbors, relatives, bosses and drinking. Everyone appears very shallow.

The translated English is very good and the writing is very good. But I don't like the characters.

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "All of the characters so far seem concerned with sex and the behaviors of neighbors, relatives, bosses and drinking. Everyone appears very shallow.

The translated English is very good and the writ..."

I haven't started it yet, but from your description, it seems very Eastern European already. All the people in the village where I grew up could be described like that. LOL

; D

My review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I am halfways through this one and enjoying it so far. It has an interesting structure. It is divided into 9 chapters of which some if not all allude to the Bible - four chapters are bearing the names of the four Evangelists and the first chapter is full of references to the biblical story of Jesus to whom the chapter's protagonist Marat is compared. The references to the Bible are also interesting insofar as we are also reading Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita where the story of Jesus is also told but way different from the story in the New Testament and here, Marat's story told by his friend John is about a "Ukrainian Jesus"...

The author is making a sly connection to the disciples of a theology - Soviet communism.