On discriminating readers - George Szirtes in TLS:

‘Krasznahorkai’s own first book, Satantango (1985) – which he assumed to be his last – was published when he was thirty-one. It was a great success in its first German translation, in 1990, but it was his next full novel, The Melancholy of Resistance(1989), that won the Bestenliste prize in Germany and that was his first to appear in English (in 1998, in my translation).
As well as in Germany, Krasznahorkai was launched, in a small way, in England and the US. The Melancholy of Resistance received very good but generally very short reviews, and the author developed a reputation among what used to be referred to as “discriminating readers”. War and War followed in 1999 (2006 in English, in my translation), and it was not until 2012 that Satantango appeared in English (also in my translation). This was Krasznahorkai’s miracle moment, when the floodgates of praise opened up in the anglophone world – a moment akin to the “discovery” of Austerlitz in 2001, the year of W. G. Sebald’s death.’ (…)

‘Absurdity, instability and despair haunt the central European consciousness of the twentieth century, and Krasznahorkai’s provincial world is plunged deeply into it.’

(…)

‘Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming did not just mark a return to Hungary, but to the author’s presiding themes and obsessions. In his words: “With this novel I can prove that I really wrote just one book in my life. This is the book – Satantango, Melancholy, War and War, and Baron. This is my one book”. This “one” book presents a vision of the world as corrupted and doomed, as it rolls towards its inevitable destruction. Yet there is an undeniable majesty in the way it goes about this.’

Read the article here.

Here’s to the discriminating readers.

Destruction with majesty, what else should we hope for?

And if absurdity, instability and despair haunt the central European consciousness of the twentieth century, what about the twenty-first century? More instability. More despair. Absurdity and majesty.