Thread 24807073

give me your best books on this part of the world

>>24807073 (OP)
Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina River) by Ivo Andrić.

You will cry.

>>24807073 (OP)
nSk's book.

>>24807080
i've heard of this. is this the best novel that the balkans has to offer?

>>24807073 (OP)
real issue is you won't find most of it translated anywhere, and if you do it's going to be so dry or so buried in context a foreigner wouldn't understand

>>24807080
>>24807131
is every single novel going to be about killing?

>>24807101
>>24807157
Is every response to books that were requested going to be glib and flippant?

>>24807168
i am 100% serious

>>24807073 (OP)
Is there a single author from this region worth reading besides mircea eliade?

>>24807157
No, but Balkan history is extremely tragic, so it will feature in many books.

>>24807469
you don't think other regions have tragic history also?

I would recommend O Armatolos if you enjoy a good tragic poem.

>>24807073 (OP)
Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and Sarajevo Marlboro are my best recs; both are very good, but nothing I've read from the Balkans has blown me away. If you like Borges and/or The Master and Margarita you'll probably enjoy Dictionary of the Khazars, even if it's overhyped by people desperate for a Serbian novelistic masterpiece.
>on
wait a sec are you looking for nonfiction?

>>24807786
dude i just learned about this and read some of it, the 19th century was crazy, how the fuck did a bulgarian write this poetry in greek?

>>24807469
>>24807529
Other regions tend to have bloody but contingent histories. History in the balkans is bloody and necessarily bloody, and all you can do is try to turn away from the bloody necessity but find yourself drawn to that necessity, or turn towards the necessity of blood and live it as forced being.

He is using tragedy in the specific sense, not in the sense of "bad things happen."

If bad things merely happened to the Balkans everyone would celebrate as they had escaped fate. Bad things are *fated* to happen to the Balkans.

>>24807928
For the Outsider "My war gone by, I miss it so" is an English aristocrat's account of fucking his way through the Bosnian war. This may help the new reader orient to the Balkans.

I consider pic related to be one of the best novels from a Bulgarian writer. The commie regime made sure to translate it in many languages because it was used for propaganda (the novel deals with the forced islamization of a Christian region in the 17th century and the commies in the 1980s were trying to do the reverse to the Muslims in Bulgaria). But apart from the novel being used for shitty politics it's actually very good, it has an interesting style, plot and characters, I love it.
There are a couple of other novels I would consider top-level but yeah, nobody bothered to translate or popularize them abroad. I think all small countries have some gems that are never going to get recognition outside their borders. There was this quote from a book with interviews with Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere and Eco said something like "There could never be a great Bulgarian poet", meaning that works in small languages are doomed to never have the reach of the big languages like English, French, Italian, etc.

>>24808077
The Bulgarian and Greek orthodox churches fought amongst themselves over who can have larger territories. More land and more people means more power. The churches become defacto tools for spreading state propaganda, and also state power. Both nations wanted more land. Prlicev was a poor kid from Ohrid, a city that was right in the middle of the church battle. So the Greeks at this time were going with a program of helenizing the non greek populace, the Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs, etc. Prlicev won a scholarship since he was seen as a perfect propaganda piece, a genious with a sob story that can get more slavs to abandon their language and culture and become helenized. He wrote O Armatolos in Greek, won a prestigious prize, and was even named as the second coming of Homer. But he eventually turned on the Greeks and regretted this part of his life, becoming a nationalist. But all of this is irrelevant as his work transcends petty national interests and focuses on the tragedy that befalls the hero.

>>24808178
Fantastic book. One of my all-time favourites.

>>24808175
the amount of warfare that takes place in the balkans is no different to the amount of warfare that has taken place in other regions of the world, but the key difference is that balkan people are not really capable of creating or cultivating anything so naturally they only know how to focus on simple, natural things, the most dramatic and arresting obviously being bloodshed
think i'm wrong? take a look at every other part of the world and see what they were developing with their cultures in between wars

>>24808977
so true! switzerland and bosnia have experienced the same amount of warfare

>>24808977
>>24808178
Why are balkanoids obsessed with dying in pointless wars?

i'm learning serbo-croatian and i'm completely taken aback by the amount of turkish, arabic and persian loanwords
it's like, you'd think that these balkan people didn't even have a language until the ottomans arrived, that's the extent of the linguistic influence
also the cuisine, architecture, most things, really

>>24809211
>Why are balkanoids obsessed with dying in pointless wars?
It is their culture and tradition.

>>24809707
>i'm learning serbo-croatian
that language doesn't exist
>you'd think that these balkan people didn't even have a language until the ottomans arrived
we probably had our language longer than your shitty nation

>>24807073 (OP)
Marinković's Cyclops
It's the only one of his book that was translated to English. I'm thinking of translating his book Ruke ( Hands) in English. Is there any interest from anons in such an endeavour?

>>24809707
They had no culture and this is why they needed all these words to describe things outside of their lived experience. Slavs are the negros of europe for a reason

>>24809826
>>24809707
if you weren't so ignorant and uncultured and if you had any knowledge of art and history you would know that this is not true.
alas, here we are

>>24809838
>>24809838
>if you weren't so ignorant and uncultured and if you had any knowledge of art and history you would know that this is not true.
>alas, here we are
t. slav diaspora in muttland coping hard

>>24809826
it isn't even things which are outside of their lived experience, it's everyday things which everybody knows about. words like neighbour, cemetery, money, words like that
and don't even get me started on the food, which is enormously influenced by ottoman cuisine

>>24809888
meant for >>24809838

>>24807073 (OP)
I don't think there's been a single good novel that's come out of Bulgaria desu, the closest thing we have is under the yoke but that one is not going to be particularly interesting for outsiders. In fact, to a certain degree it's a showcase of Vazov's enormous influence over Bulgarian culture and its value lies in its role as a bridge towards western literature.
The best Bulgarian book in my opinion is a historiography of the revolutionary war - Notes on the Bulgarian uprisings. It's somewhat (very distantly) reminiscent of Carlyle's French revolution, though I don't think it has been translated into English.
>>24808287
I've never actually read the book, I only remember trying to watch the old movie adaptations as a kid, maybe I should give it a try some time

>>24809838
He's probably a seething mudslime

>>24808977
>take a look at every other part of the world and see what they were developing with their cultures in between wars
there really was no "between wars" in Balkans, at least until 20th century

>>24809888
Maybe in serbia and bosnia, thats not the case in my country.

>>24808287
>the novel deals with the forced islamization of a Christian region in the 17th century and the commies in the 1980s were trying to do the reverse to the Muslims in Bulgaria
Ah, if only all commies were this based!

How did this thread go on for this long without The Mountain Wreath getting mentioned at all?

>According to British Jewish reporter and political analyst Tim Judah "there was another side to The Mountain Wreath far more sinister than its praise of tyrannicide. With its call for the extermination of those Montenegrins who had converted to Islam, the poem was also a paean to ethnic cleansing ... it helps explain how the Serbian national consciousness has been moulded and how ideas of national liberation are inextricably linked with killing your neighbour and burning his village."

>>24809968
> Serbian national consciousness
Serbia is the only Ex-Yugo country wich never left the Union to become an ethnostate. They were the only ones who wanted to keep the multicultural communist government. What facts is your anti-Serbian bias even based upon?

>>24809985
I quoted that dude exactly because it is so typical of the hysterical nature of westoid discourse about the balkans.

>>24809968
>How did this thread go on for this long without The Mountain Wreath getting mentioned at all
because translated versions are kinda meh and you don't really want to spend your time explaining the political situation in 18th and 19th century Montenegro to give it context every time you recommend it to someone

>>24809985
Well except for Bosnian, Montenegrin and Kosovo Serbs

>>24810065
Why the hell would you say that?

>>24809985
>only ex-yugo country which never left the union to become an ethnostate
>milosevic argued serbs have a right to self determination within every single country of the union regardless of the local government
less serbian primary school history propaganda more non-serbian sources

>>24810077
I have a great misfortune of living among Bosnian, Montenegrin and Kosovo Serbs and having to listen to them regularly whine about not finishing the job in the 90's

>>24809888
Balkan languages also have a lot of loanwords from Greek and Latin, so? What a weird thing to bitch about. If you want some purity (whatever that means when talking about language) read some medieval texts.

>>24809917
>the closest thing we have is under the yoke
That's a 6/10 novel, bro, even by Bulgarian standards. It's only popular because it's Vazov and it's patriotic and has been in schoolbooks for 100+ years.

>>24810086
How does 'right to self-determination' equate with genocide?
>>24810087
What a weird and nonsensical thing to say.

>>24810227
Yeah I forgot how much time Serbs spent fighting for a multicultural Kosovo. Silly me

>>24810244
Well the Albanian Kosovo abolished all Serbian institutions in the Kosovo last year. Why?

>>24810252
Whataboutism 101

>>24810264
I'm not denying any genocides, just that they were done on both sides, and that the people performing them weren't working on behalf of the majority population. Plenty of Albanians and Bosnians living in Serbia as Serbian citizens, if Serbs are so intolerant that wouldn't be possible.

>>24810129
That's the only good Bulgarian novel bro, as bad as it may be. The 6/10 rating is according to the philistine standards of half-literate proles

>>24810280
Good thing that I wasn't talking about Serbs from Serbia, but about Bosnian, Montenegrin and Kosovo Serbs then

>>24810365
The Montenegrin Serbs are the chillest guys ever. Kosovo Serbs, many of them left the Kosovo because of Albanians burning down their houses. As for the Bosnians Serbs, they have a federate government together with the Bosnians, so they can't be that intolerant either.

>>24810376
Montenegrin Serbs have a long history of trying to ethnically cleanse their own country, Bosnian Serbs were fighting to ethnically cleanse if not all of, then at least Serb majority parts of Bosnia, and Kosovo was victim of multiple experiments of ethnic cleansing, colonizations and treating Albanians as second class citizens since it's liberation from the Ottomans

>>24810414
Except Serbs were treated like second class citizens in Yugoslav Kosovo, everywhere outside governmental offices.
Why are you pretending that like only Serbs are at fault when the other groups are just as racist?

>>24810425
see
>>24810264

>>24810252
How are the institutions of Albanians living in Kosovo doing?
>>24810425
Source?
What was the official language of Kosovo. Did Albanian speakers have access to higher education in their language? The answer is no, and it's just an example. Strange notion of second class citizen.

>>24807338
cioran

>>24810947
On who's behalf are you even arguing? Yes, some Serbs are racist, most of the ones I know aren't, some even had life-long friendships with Albanians, Bosnians, friendships that outlasted the war and the Exodus of Serbs from the Kosovo.

>>24810988
And not all Croats are Ustase.

being balkan sucks
there's nothing to be proud of and everybody is only interested in fighting each other

what do we think about whole process people's democracy?

>>24807073 (OP)
Broken april

>>24807073 (OP)
The opening sentence to the Balkans chapter in JB Bury's first volume of the History Of The Later Roman Empire is hilarious.

>>24808977
Weak take, relies too much on fantasy and too little on facts

>>24809771
It's one of my all time favorites, that one, but how the hell does one even go about translating a work like that? The whole rhythm of the writing is so heavily based on wordplay in Croatian, I figured it'd be a near impossible task to do it justice.
Then again, maybe it's just translation for translation's sake... I recall being horrified how bad Dostoyevsky reads in English translation as compared to its Croatian counterpart (not really surprising though, given linguistic distance between Rus and Cro on one hand and Rus and Eng on the other).

I would recommend Djilas' Land Without Justice, if only the cover of the English translation wasn't abysmal dogshit

>>24812685
I feel like people should know about a book this great, so it should be translated one way or another. Here's first couple of sentences, i feel like they read pretty good. It's a tedious but rewarding work

They should have never abandoned the Habsburgs.

>>24808287
>the commies in the 1980s were trying to do the reverse to the Muslims in Bulgaria
a bloo bloo

>>24807073 (OP)
sad how serbia lost so many lovely churches to vermin that can't decide whether it's muslim or larping christianity

>>24812740
it's not as if the habsburgs were going to stick around forever

>>24812783
>to vermin that can't decide whether it's muslim or larping christianity
so...serbs?

>>24807073 (OP)
Ovid - Metamorphoses
Aristotle - complete works
Tesla

>>24810319
Dimov's "Tobacco" (1951) is great.
And I never bothered to read the uncensored original, I read the communist version with the cartoon communist characters.
And it was still pretty good.

Has anyone read the uncensored version? Is ti worth rereading?

(Not that anon)

>>24813121
I've read both versions and they are equally infantile and lame commie slop. I had to read up on the actual story behind its 'censorship' after I finished the original to make sense out of it. The fact that people still keep raving about its status as some sort of a 'banned book' its hilarious and a proof of the depressing illiteracy of the nation.
And no, Dimov hasn't produced a single work of value, all his books are masturabotary socialist realism and carbon copies of each other.

>>24807080
Second this. Great novel.

>>24807131
I need to read this one but my Croatian isn't too good and I'm just gonna wanna kill myself reading it probably but it'd be blasphamy to read it translated to English

As someone from the region whose first language isn't Croatian but speaks it to a native degree, Balkan literature tortures me because I know it's good but my preferred language for reading and writing is English (first language and language I have consumed all my media from childhood) so I can read a novel in literary serbo-croatian but it's gonna take me 2x long to read it as opposed to reading in English. However, on the other hand if I were to read these works in English all of their charm would be lost and there you go it just ends up sucking again.

>>24811965
Exactly. If you have any degree of self-awareness of the western world, it's just embarassing to be from the Balkans. You're European without any of the cool things that come from being European. It's like being stuck in a whirlpool of retardeness and everyone you meet being affected by this whirlpool of self fulfilling fate of retardedness. For example, the retards in this thread arguing over genocide. Like, of course it's going to happen. I can't stand Balkaners.

>>24812738
My bad man, should've specified I was talking about Cyclops as untranslatable (to any degree that would do it justice anyway) and wondering how the hell they did that.
Figure I should look for Ruke next? Haven't read that one yet, but Marinković is about as good as it gets for local lit here.
Side note to anyone else though, Nehajev's Bijeg (escape, or flight) is a damn good one too, not sure if it's been translated to English yet, but that one easily could be.

>>24809968
oh buhu not the poor innocent child stealing moslems

Dante's Inferno

>>24809707
>it's like, you'd think that these balkan people didn't even have a language until the ottomans arrived, that's the extent of the linguistic influence
You can say exactly the same about English. Just take a look at your own post:

>completely
>amount
>people
>language
>arrive
>extent
>linguistic
>cuisine
>architecture
All French and Latin loanwords.

>>24809707
"Influence" and "really" too.

My personal favourite Croatian writer is August Šenoa. His writing style is somewhat of a mix between romanticism and realism (leaning a bit towards the latter I would say); he wrote a lot of historical novels about Croatian history through which he explored the social and political themes of his time (eg. declining importance of nobility, (struggles of villagers trying to adapt to a new urban life...) I would recomend his novel Zlatarovo zlato and his shorter work Vladimir (his lesser read work but my personal favourite).

No one has mentioned Miroslav Krleža yet, considered the best Croatian writer by a wide range of people. I did not read much of his work but everything that I did was great. His style is diverse, depending on the period of life his works were written in, but he does pay particular attention to the aestheticism of his works while also being quite intellectual in his picking of themes. My recommendations would be Povratak Filipa Latinovicza, Gospoda Glembajevi and Na rubu pameti.

As some other anon said earlier in the thread your main problem is finding good translations and understanding the historical context behind the works since they heavily depend on it.

>>24813241
>You're European without any of the cool things that come from being European.
i would argue that balkan people aren't truly european like french people or dutch people are
i believe that the balkans is sort of like its own enclave within europe

>>24813398
i know, thank you for proving my point

Any good epics from this part of the world?

>>24811026
>And not all Croats are Ustase.
You too are shooting Bosniaks.

>>24807073 (OP)
Bulatovic's A Hero On a Donkey is great. Very funny and very dark.

>>24814868
Apparently >>24807131 this one is really good

>>24807073 (OP)
>>24809917
Zachary was a better narrator than all of his contemporaries, it's actually crazy how easy and interesting his prose is to read. Still, the digressions are too much for me.

Under the yoke is extremely juvenile, any good modern bulgarian literature teacher acknowledges that.

Bai Ganyo is not very funny for someone above teenage years.

Tobacco's prose is so damn boring and tell-don't-show, it makes a novel with honestly an interesting premise into such a damn bloated slog.

The iron candlestick is a try to make the best of our corncob story filled literature by then, but it's also a dreadful slog.

I've not read wolf hunt, I have hopes for it.

I also haven't read much of Gospodinov, I'll give him a try some time, I know that natural novel got boring after a while.

I hope to be Bulgaria's bastion in having a beautiful novel like the Greats of world literature, especially as I lean towards the post-modern and there's been none of it here.

>>24809968
>jew critiquing someone for ethnic cleansing of Muslims
kek

But even if it were not for that, it's such an oversimplified view, one that completely ignores the circumstances of 19th century Balkans and the fighting for self determination and liberation from the Ottomans with whom Islam was associated.

It's like those people critiquing Palestinian liberation for antisemitism lol.

>>24813683
As a fellow Croat, youre completely right. Šenoa might be the best, though i gotta confess i havent read much of him (yet). He actually died for a noble cause, helping his fellow citizens after an earthquake. He was pure and noble. His writing is high art with a strong message.
Krleza, on the other hand, was a politician. His writing is purely product of his contemporary political climate. He was a communist and he wrote to get in good terms with the communist party of the time

>>24813162
Infantile? Slop? What are you talking about?
Forget about the banned book, nobody is raving about it. It's just obvious how they inserted communists.

>>24815214
I read Gospodinov's Time Shelter and it's a really good and really bad at the same time.
Good depiction of bygone eras.
Internal philosophisising that starts well and then you are sick of it.
The mysterious plot becomes more and more absurdist and leads to an incomplete resolution.
I understand why non-Bulgarians don't care about the "Bulgarian" chapters (the tone also changes in a certain way, but I don't even want to start the conversation about it and its causes).

I remember people saying that even those who dislike him will like "The Gardener of Death", but I have not time to check the claim.

>>24809707
That's how empires work, same thing is happening today with English terms penetrating all languages under the Global American Empire.

>>24807080
I hate this book so much. Ivo Andric was a tool of the Yugoslavian state and sold out his Croatian heritage to larp as a Serb. The book itself is incredibly biased because the writer himself was a panslavist.

>>24809707
>>24809888
Two things:
1. My impression of reading a lot of obscure Bulgarian is that there are native words for 99% of the Persian, Arab, Turkish words. Most directly follow the old medieval ones, others appear to have been invented during the Ottoman period.
But I know what you mean.
2. About cuisine, music and even architecture - it appears that the middle easterners borrowed heavily from the Byzantines, so I wonder what was actually present before the Ottomans and is now attributed to them.

>>24819253
>so I wonder what was actually present before the Ottomans and is now attributed to them.
i wonder that also

>>24819233
Meh. It's a beautiful book and it stands on its own merit in my opinion.

>>24816261
>first balkan person i've ever heard of that's died for "a noble cause"
>look him up
>he's actually czech/german

are there any bosnian writers?

>>24819371
It’s a lie peddled by Belgrade as the Balkan experience because it portrayed them (Serbs) in a better light while the Bosnians are simple minded and complicit. I only wish that fool of a man lived a longer life to see how the Serbians put a bullet in the head of his fantasy.

>>24819809
Not only did the Serbs destroy Bosnia, but they also ethnically cleansed Andria’s beloved Visegrad of its Serbs, used the bridge as an execution grounds, and dumped the bodies into the river. Then the locals built a gaudy tourist village dedicated to Andric sans the Bosnians. It’s incredibly surreal.

>>24820124
>Visegrad of its Serb
Meant to say Bosnians

>>24807073 (OP)
I'm not a pessimist or anti-natalist, but A Short History of Decay is a masterpiece

>>24809707
there are a lot of loan words but they've slowly either been forgotten or just rarely used. It also depends on in which country and what part of said country you're in as some places were under the turks longer or just cucked out harder.

>>24819505
There are lots of croatian soldiers who died for a noble cause in the 90s. And they arent czech or german. Look up Blago Zadro. There are so many its stupid to list them

>>24817616
I will read him sometime. I've seen him in real life and he looks very down to earth. And seeing his books in bookstores when I'm on vacation somewhere does inspire patriotism.

>>24809955
The commies had some based things during the cold war, sad that they're all dead now

>>24809968
>there was another side to The Mountain Wreath far more sinister than its praise of tyrannicide. With its call for the extermination of those Montenegrins who had converted to Islam, the poem was also a paean to ethnic cleansing
Based
>>24809985
>Serbia is the only Ex-Yugo country wich never left the Union to become an ethnostate. They were the only ones who wanted to keep the multicultural communist government.
Gay

>>24821143
Of course there were because most Croatian soldiers who were fighting within Croatia itself were just defending their homeland. I don't understand this Serb propaganda where they pretend that Croats were just as equally depraved and nationalistic as them when they were literally the ones attacking THEIR country.

I understand that there was shit that Croatia was doing in Bosnia but I don't understand where this view that Croatians were equally bad as Serbs come from when they were the ones protecting their lands from getting bombed and taken over. Not to mention there were also Serbs who fought on the side of Croatia as well because they saw what was really going on.

An Undiplomatic Diary is one of the most unintentionally funny historical books I've ever read. It includes several balkan nations.

>>24821655
see Russian aggression on Ukraine.

>>24822013
What have Balkaners ever accomplished or contributed to warrant their delusional levels of self-importance? They have spent their entire existence as the regional bicycle, mercilessly passed between the Romans, Ottomans, Habsburgs, Soviets, and now NATO. And yet, even with the civilizing influence of all these empires, the only noteworthy thinkers they have produced are an inventor who got cucked by Edison, a couple former Iron Guard supporters, and a Lacanian glorified-eceleb, who all immediately left their respective countries the second they were able. How can any region have such a miserable history yet still be so egotistical and ultranationalist?

>>24824193
Simple, being a self-hating cuck is not selected for, as modern westerners can see. Even if you have a shitty history, pride and a self-bias are a strength.

Also I have no idea how your post is even connected to that image to begin with.

>>24823734
Pretty much.
>>24824308
>Even if you have a shitty history, pride and a self-bias are a strength.
They are not. They make you unselfaware and cringe. You can be proud of the beautiful things your country and people have to offer without having to justifying the pathetic garbage and bagage your country carries. Would you rather have a racist Englishman who is proud of their nationalistic past or one that is just chill and proud of his local traditions and people because that's where he comes from?
The problem here is that if you swapped out an Englishman for a Serb in this example, the question would be what the fuck has Serbia (or any other Balkan nation) ever done to be racist or so fucking proud of itself? The answer: nothing! At least in the case of the hypothetical backwards Englishman, the retarded skinhead's logic at least seems to make sense within his own fascist worldview. In the case of Balkan nationalists, this world view does not even make sense on that level of being an advanced civilization when you're a bunch of fucking mud eating retards.

Be proud of your people, be proud of your customs and be proud of yourself but that doesn't mean you have to justify your country's misdeeds and paint murals of actual in your mudhut little village. But to do that, that would actually require you to admit that your uncle, father or grandfather or best friend's dad is a child murdering sociopath, oh well.

>>24824585
>They are not.
Yes they are.

I'm not sure what brought on this spergout.