December 12: When the Birches Leaf Out Up There by Breda Smolnikar

Friends of The Readings,

Please join us for a Zoom discussion on Breda Smolnikar's novelette When the Birches Leaf Out Up There.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1177936519401550?ref=newsfeed

Register in advance for this meeting: https://washington.zoom.us/.../tJYrfuiurjsrGNb3...

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. 

After you register, you can pick up a free copy of Breda Smolnikar's book When the Birches Leaf Out Up There at the University of Washington Allen Library information desk (in the ground floor lobby) weekdays through Friday, December 10, anytime between 9am and 5pm. Please give your name to the staff person at the desk to receive your free copy.

Designed by Otilia Baraboi.

On the 75th anniversary of Breda Smolnikar

  

 

 

On the 75th anniversary of Breda Smolnikar

https://www.nuk.uni-lj.si/eng/node/496

 

 

https://newsbeezer.com/sloveniaeng/anniversary-of-breda-smolnikar-a-symbol-of-the-struggle-for-freedom-of-artistic-speech/

Photo courtesy of Breda Smolnikar and Michael Biggins.

Breda Smolnikar's amazing novelette, When the Birches Leaf Out Up There - December 12

Breda Smolnikar's amazing novelette, When the Birches Leaf Out Up There, translated by Michael Biggins, is our read for December 12. This book is not commercially available in North America; individuals who register will be sent instructions to pick up their free copy at UW's Suzzallo-Allen Library between now and December 10.

The registration link is coming soon.

Breda Smolnikar's portrait. Courtesy of Breda Smolnikar and Michael Biggins.

Special thanks to Professor Violeta Kelertas and more on the topic of White Shroud

Many thanks to our special guest, Professor Violeta Kelertas!

Post-discussion references

Here is a link to a review that was addressed by one of the discussants during the meeting by Erik Noonan: 

DREAM THE BEHOLDERS 

And more on the topic.

With regards to the personal recollection of Jonas Mekas at the end of "White Shroud," a link to Mekas's website:

http://jonasmekas.com/diary/

From Jonas Mekas's recollection (2016):

I think it was in 1947, in the Kassel Displaced Persons camp, that myself with a couple of younger, post-Škėma generation writers, we read one of the short stories that had just came out in Škėma’s first collection of prose pieces. We were taken by one of his short stories which ended with a very clinical description of a spittoon by hospital patient’s bed. It was so minimal and so clinical like nothing before in Lithuanian literature.

As much as we were critical of the writings of the generation “before us,” we admitted that Antanas Škėma was “OK.”

...

Later, some five years later, in Brooklyn, I met Škėma in person. He had just opened a theatre studio. I decided to join it. I have to confess that my joining his studio was not motivated by my wanting to become an actor: I joined it because I was falling in love with a young woman who had joined it… And it was amazing to find out how Škėma was able to take a sentence from a play and analyse it in the same clinical, down to earth way as he did with the spittoon in his short story. Piece by piece he was bringing the sentence alive in front of our eyes, very factually

And clinically. Only later I found out that before joining Kaunas and later Vilnius National Lithuanian Theatre, where he worked as an actor and director, he had studied medicine and law. So now he applied it all to his writing. No baloney, as they say. No unnecessary ornamentation. Algimantas Mockus, a poet of “our” (“younger”) generation later described his generation as a “generation without ornamentation.” Škėma, more than any other Lithuanian writer of the immediate post-war period, with BALTA DROBULĖ represents most uniquely that generation, the generation with no ornamentation.

White Shroud by Antanas Škėma with our special guest Prof Violeta Kelertas - November 7

Widely acclaimed as Lithuania's great modernist novel, White Shroud by Antanas Škėma will be our book for discussion on Sunday, November 7, at 5:00pm Pacific time over Zoom, with our special guest Prof Violeta Kelertas (U. of Illinois-Chicago), one of America's leading experts on Lithuanian literature. 

Register for a Zoom link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../tZ0lcuyuqjosG9we4Dv5h8xxJK9H7...

E-book and print editions are available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/White-Shroud.../dp/B0817D7J3X

or direct from the publisher, Vagabond Voices in Scotland: 
https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/ebooks/white-shroud-ebook?rq=white%20shroud 

 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/events/595693064966093/?ref=newsfeed

Designed by Otilia Baraboi

November-December 2021 Schedule and More...

 

 

Friends,

 

We're back!  After the long summer and early fall break, plan to join us for our first meeting of the 2021-22 season on Sunday, November 7, at 5:00pm Pacific time for a discussion of our first featured book from the Baltic countries, Lithuanian author Antanas Škėma's novel White Shroud.  

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2018/04/12/in-review-white-shroud-by-antanas-skema/

 

Our December 12th meeting at 12:00 noon Pacific time will be given over to the English-language début discussion of Slovenian author Breda Smolnikar's 1998 novelette, When the Birches Leaf Out Up There.  Readers who register for our December meeting will be able to pick up a free copy of its recently produced English translation at the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library (exact location to be announced).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda_Smolnikar

 

 

In January (date TBA) we'll resume our first brief march through the literatures of the Baltic countries Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia with Estonian author  Andrus Kivirähk's The Man Who Spoke Snakish.

https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-man-who-spoke-snakish/

 

 

And in February (date also TBA) plan to join us to explore Latvian author Nora Ikstēna's novel Soviet Milk, praised in The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/31/soviet-milk-by-nora-ikstena-review

 

Look for the link issued on Facebook to register for November 7 discussion of Škėma's White Shroud soon.

 

Michael Biggins

Otilia Baraboi

Zorica Miroslava Wacker

Daniela Nyberg

June's title and guests:

 

Our reading for May 2021

 

Chronicel in Stone, by Ismail Kadare, March 25, 2021

 

March 25, 2021, 4:30 Zoom Event

Design by Otilia Baraboi

As If I am not There (S.: A Novel About the Balkans), March 28, 2021

 

March 28, 2021 4:30 Zoom Event

Designed by Otilia Baraboi

Sweet Darusya by Maria Matios with Translators Naydan and Tytarenko February 28, 2021

 

February 28, 2021, 4:30

Designed by Otilia Baraboi

Mr Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult; and All My Cats by Bohumil Hrabal with Special Guest Paul Wilson

 

                January 31, 4:30

              Designed by Otilia Barboi

Happy New Year 2021!

 

Happy New Year, friends of Readings from the Heart of Europe! 

We hope you had a wonderful end of 2020 and that you are looking forward, as we are, to more engaging encounters with amazing writers from Eastern and Central Europe!

Check out our book list for the first half of the year, we hope you will be able to join us for most of the sessions. Specific events for each discussion will follow soon.

1) January 31 - two books: Bohumil Hrabal (Czech): Mr Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult; and All My Cats

2) February 28: Maria Matios (Ukrainian) - Sweet Darusya

3) March 28 - Slavenka Drakulić (Croatian) - S. (Croatian original title: Kao da me nema)

4) April 25: Ismail Kadare (Albanian) - Chronicle in Stone

5) May 23: Tea Obreht (Croatian American) - The Tiger’s Wife

6) June 27: Lidija Dimkovska (North Macedonian) - A Spare Life

Once you register by filling out this form - you will receive a zoom link that will allow you access to all meetings listed above:

https://forms.gle/oJgxYmbFkpQoF9aa8

 

Michael Bigging

Otilia Baraboi

Zorica Miroslava Wacker

Daniela Nyberg

 

Designed by Otilia Baraboi