Clean Sweep
Philip Horne, 10 May 1990
Love and Garbage
by Ivan Klima, translated by Ewald Osers.
Chatto, 217 pp., £12.95, March 1990,0 7011 3362 7 Show More
by Ivan Klima, translated by Ewald Osers.
Chatto, 217 pp., £12.95, March 1990,
The Storyteller
by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Helen Lane.
Faber, 246 pp., £12.99, April 1990,0 571 15208 2 Show More
by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Helen Lane.
Faber, 246 pp., £12.99, April 1990,
The Chase
by Alejo Carpentier, translated by Alfred Mac Adam.
Deutsch, 122 pp., £9.95, March 1990,0 233 98550 6 Show More
by Alejo Carpentier, translated by Alfred Mac Adam.
Deutsch, 122 pp., £9.95, March 1990,
Aura
by Carlos Fuentes, translated by Lysander Kemp.
Deutsch, 88 pp., £9.95, April 1990,0 233 98470 4 Show More
by Carlos Fuentes, translated by Lysander Kemp.
Deutsch, 88 pp., £9.95, April 1990,
“... Klima’s fine, disconsolate novel is scarcely the cliché its blurb makes it out – ‘a moving account of the fate of the dissident artist under an oppressive regime’ – because Klima’s reason for joining a team of Prague street-sweepers is not exactly that he has been forced to do it by the state. ‘I needed to go somewhere in the morning, at least I’d now have a natural objective for a while: set out somewhere, perform whatever kind of activity and listen to whatever kind of talk, just so I don’t have to sit amidst the silence listening to the snapping of threads ... ”