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Fado (2009)

by Andrzej Stasiuk(Favorite Author)

3.93 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1564785599 (ISBN13: 9781564785596)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Dalkey Archive Press

review 1: Fado begins as a dream, middles as a travelogue through Eastern Europe, a land with the highest density of nations and conflicts, in between dabbles as a Fukuyama for Europe, and then ends as a memoir. Stasiuk struggles to maintain a coherent spine along the book but at several places, his writing is sharp and almost prescient. His forecast of Europe's decline seems well on track. His description of the lack of present in Eastern Europe and its ability to only absorb mass culture from the West probably stands true for most aspirational cultures. The highlight of this book, for me, are his rather disconnected musings on his own fatherhood and the day to day life of his grandparents. In a few pages of elegant musings, his writing makes one crave for eternal life, continuity,... more and a craving to be with the people long dead.
review 2: Stasiuk, Andrzej. FADO. (2006; Eng. trans. 2009). ***. I had to look it up. “Fado” is a kind of mournful Portugese song. At first I thought it might be some untranslateable Polish word, but it wasn’t. This is a collection of what might be called travel pieces by this respected Polish writer. Although the writing (in translation) is clean and often lyrical, the author deals with areas that are mostly totally unfamiliar to me. I could not relate to either where he was at the time or the subsequent comments he made on the history of that particular region. He concentrates on arcane regions of Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Slovakia, and Poland. My travels into those countries have been limited to the large cities of Yugoslavia and Poland, where I went to conduct business. Stasiuk doesn’t even get near the cities I went to. His main focus seems to be the areas around the Carpathian Mountains, where there is lots of history, but mostly of a feudal kind. I can imagine a similar reaction from a Pole reading travel pieces about our Appalachian range in translation; he wouldn’t be able to relate to the topics. Stasiuk’s use of imagery is excellent, and his sense of the pervasiveness of history is fascinating, but much beyond these surface abilities, much of the writing was lost on me. less

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