Zyranna Zateli (Greek: ) is an acclaimed Greek novelist born in Thessaloniki in 1951. She attended a drama school from 1976-1979 and then worked as an actress and radio producer, before becoming a full-time writer. She won the National Book Prize for Literature in 1994 and 2002.
Ovu knjigu je mogao da napi拧e svako ko je imao prababu koja voli da pri膷a o starim vremenima. Ko nije bio te sre膰e, Zirana Zateli 膰e mu veoma fino nadomestiti manjkavost.
Re膷 je o balkanskoj porodi膷noj sagi 膷ija je radnja sme拧tena oko po膷etka XX veka u neimenovano selo ili varo拧icu kontinentalne Gr膷ke. Ta porodica je neobi膷na, kao i svaka, kao i svaka ima periode sre膰a i nesre膰a. Jedino se razlikuje po brojnosti 膷lanova i mo啪da po na膷inima pro拧irenja. U tom segmentu podse膰a na Markesa, ali nigde drugde.
Zirana Zateli lepo pi拧e: jednostavno i lako, sa 啪enskom opa啪ajnjo拧膰u, bez patetisanja. Kad ukrasi ili zasladi, to je diskretno 鈥� prah 拧e膰erom ili satenskom ma拧nicom. Re膷ju, pisanje nije ni blizu Krueli de Vil na koju neodoljivo podse膰a fotografijom sa omotnice Prosvetinog izdanja koje sam 膷itala. Da sam ja neko, dala bih joj da pi拧e knjige za decu. A Gagu Rosi膰 bih u膷tivo zamolila da se mane prevo膽enja. 鈥淜ad u vu膷ji sat eto ih opet鈥� vam mo啪e pru啪iti u啪itak 膷itanja lepe, duga膷ke pri膷e i ne mnogo preko toga. Sve krivine su ispeglane, sve je jasno, svakodnevno i stvarno da realnije ne mo啪e biti. Likovi su izuzetno lepo razvijeni, 膷esto su sasvim nedvosmislene asocijacije na na anti膷ke bogove. Zateli je realna do te mere da, naprosto, ni Olimpljanima ne dozvoljava da postoje bez pandana me膽u smrtnicima. A ljudske doplgengere im nalazi veoma lepo.
Ne mogu da ka啪em da smara, o tome nema govora, ali sam negde oko 600. strane imala blagi ose膰aj ratimirskog mrcvaruckanja.
Ne 膷itam da bih prekratila vreme, ali, ako postoje knjige kojima je to shvrha, ovo je jedna od njih. Prebaci膰u na 膷etvorku sa stvarne trojke plus, zato 拧to sam sigurna da je prevodilac poprili膷no izgubio usput.
This is an important work of world literature, and I'm glad to have had a chance to read it in the early days of its new English translation. It's so important I'm going to make a direct association with another book, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, one of the great Russian epics everyone admires.
At Twilight They Return isn't a Russian epic, though, it's Greek. Greeks have had a rough time of it, culturally. They hosted the Olympics, and that turned out to be a horrible economic decision. Since At Twilight was originally published in 1994, pop culture has become more familiar with Greeks from stuff like 300 (which celebrated the very warrior culture Greeks themselves wanted to suppress, other than in the glorious past as seen in The Iliad), the Percy Jackson series (which author Rick Riordan seriously posited as making Greek myth more relevant than at any other point in history), and yes, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which was mostly about the wonders of Windex, I think). All of which probably seems Greek to actual Greeks. I don't know, I could be wrong.
Either way, I experienced that kind of literary confusion when I read Faulkner's As I Lay Dying in high school, which like At Twilight and Brothers Karamazov was all about exploring the various facets of a single family. I was never as convinced as other readers that Faulkner really nailed it. I may have to reread it someday. But when I read Karamazov ten years back I had no such reservations. Dostoyevsky chose to go as big as you can get in literature, using a murder investigation to tackle the secrets of the universe. If he were making films today, he'd be Terrence Malick. But he also did a wonderful character study of a whole family, the eponymous siblings and their father.
That's exactly what Zyranna Zateli accomplishes in At Twilight. If (in my opinion) Faulkner went too small and Dostoyevsky went too big (Karamazov never really seems to contend with Crime and Punishment for the bulk of Dostoyevsky's legacy, probably because it asks too much of its readers), then Zateli finds a happy medium. She manages to write in a style that has become increasingly familiar to anyone who's been watching movies in the past twenty years. From Quentin Tarantino to Christopher Nolan, the nonlinear narrative has become about as mainstream as it will ever get. There's also a contemporary aspect to irreverence that creeps in around the edges of a story that's otherwise fatalistic, since Zateli chooses to approach the narrative from a distance, as events she's trying to convey about a family a hundred years in the past. Her ability to comment on as well as narrate the proceedings is one of the book's great strengths.
It's billed as "a novel in ten tales," but really it's one story split into diverging narratives, because there are a number of characters who contend for center stage. The three most important ones are the patriarch Christoforos, the unbelievably handsome Hesychios, and the repeatedly tragic Julia, but there's a wealth of rich characters around them. This is as close to a complete portrait of a family, regardless of the bad things that happen to keep happening to this family, as I've ever seen. It's ironic that I read a book about Daniel Boone earlier this year, because in a lot of ways, Zateli paints a portrait similar to the approach the author of that book did, from someone trying to recapture an earlier generation from the scraps of family lore. The Boones were a large, extended family, too, and that's something that's striking about At Twilight, too, something that's increasingly drifting into the past of American life, certainly (although I don't know how rare it might be in other countries), so on that score, from the perspective of a reader who remembers what it was like for previous American generations, that aspect of the book strikes a considerable cord and reason enough to appreciate Zateli's efforts.
But the storytelling itself is great. While I can appreciate Christoforos as the nominal lead character, and how Julia tends to steal much of the book, Hesychios lays claim to Zateli's best writing, whether in his youthful efforts to escape a cultural tradition that probably seems barbaric today, even though it's only a hundred years in the past (far too often we're happy with myopic views of life) or eventually marrying the woman he stumbled upon later that same day. When Zateli finally reveals that catharsis, it's the element she needed to justify the whole thing, a sprawling work that might otherwise have come off as a series of unfortunate events (no offense to those books intended!), which is too easy a theme for any storyteller to be allowed to get away with on that level alone, even though far too many storytellers try. From that single revelation you can see how all the other dominos fall around it, and so from there see what Zateli was getting at, how all these isolated incidents, these isolated lives, have greater significance than they can sometimes seem. By combining them all into one big family, she can give further resonance to the human story great fiction always tries to tell, going well beyond what most fiction actually does in the process.
So yes, this is a classic. Greeks have long thought so, and I think they were completely justified. If more readers had been aware of this book, these past twenty years, maybe not just the Greeks would be standing more proudly today, but the rest of us, too. That's what great storytelling ought to do, right?
English-speaking friends! This is a mastepiece of a book, and definitely one of my favourites of the year. The author manages to tell a multi-generational story consisting of hundreds of different characters and events, and manages to juggle them all perfectly (you never feel lost) Combine that with some folklore elements that I've recently discovered I adore, a beautiful, dense writing style in which no sentence is misplaced, and a vague macabre/ foreboding element that keeps you on your toes the entire time. I LOVED it.
Tre膷ios Kal臈dos ir jau turb奴t galiu sakyt, kad 膷ia tradicija - pasiimti ka啪k膮 i拧 seniau skaityt懦, patikusi懦 ir pasi啪i奴r臈ti, o kaip viskas dabar atrodo.
Tebeatrodo magi拧kai ni奴riai. Vis dar daug aistros, kuo mane pirm膮 kart膮 knyga su啪av臈jo taip, kad buvau tikrai nusivylusi, jog nieko daugiau lietuvi懦 kalba i拧leisto ir neb臈ra. Gimin臈s istorija persipynusi ir susipynusi, vaik懦 ir t臈v懦 devynios galyb臈s turb奴t, ta膷iau svarbiausi懦j懦 istorijos susiveja 寞 vien膮 gij膮 ir tai gra啪u.
Kas kitaip - per laiko nuotol寞 man viskas 拧viesiau atrod臈. Man atrod臈, kad jie visi tiesiog paslaptingi, gal kiek susipainioj臋, o dabar matau, kad jie savaip labai nelaimingi. Tod臈l ir 拧viesa vilk懦.