From Powells.com
Our favorite books of the year.
Staff Pick
An exhaustive repudiation, EEG piles high the remembrances and ramifications of a century marred by fascism's violent toll. Drndic again dons the guise of Andreas Ban, a dwindling and dyspeptic intellectual, as he trains his gaze on misdeeds large and small, from the systemic eradication of dissent to the scourge of cellular telephones, while remaining ever vigilant to the task at hand — naming the dead. Unparalleled, uncompromising, and righteously incensed, EEG is an apt monument to the enveloping fog of time. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
In this breathtaking final work, Daša Drndic reaches new heights.
Andreas Ban's suicide attempt has failed. Though very ill, he still finds the will to tap on the glass of history to summon those imprisoned within. Mercilessly, he dissects society and his environment, shunning all favors as he goes after the evils and hidden secrets of our times. History remembers the names of the perpetrators, not the victims — Ban remembers and honors the lost. He travels from Rijeka to Zagreb, from Belgrade to Tirana, from Parisian avenues to Italian castles. Ghosts follow him wherever he goes: chess grandmasters who disappeared during WWII; the lost inhabitants of Latvia; war criminals who found work in the CIA and died peacefully in their beds. Ban's family is with him too, those already dead and those with one foot in the grave. As if left with only a few pieces in a chess game, Andreas Ban — and Daša Drndic — play a stunning last match against Death.
Review
"[T]he fact that death eludes a would-be suicide does not mean that it has stopped looking to reap him. This is a
novel of ideas but also of exquisite poetry." Kirkus Reviews
Review
“There is great wisdom, along with dark history, in these pages, for those ready to take on the challenge.” The Guardian
Review
“Perhaps the most ambitious novel of the twenty-first century so far.” New York Review of Books
Review
“The formidable Daša Drndic has created something like a modern-day Homeric narrative of wars that are anything but glorious. In Celia Hawkesworth, she has a translator of genius who shares her vision. It is difficult to suggest a contemporary English-language novel with which to compare it, or one that might even approach its eloquence and daring.”
Los Angeles Review of Books
About the Author
Daša Drndic (1946-2018) wrote Trieste — "a masterpiece" (Financial Times) — shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Belladonna — "one of the strangest and strongest books" (TLS) — winner of the 2018 Warwick Prize, and EEG — "a masterpiece" (Joshua Cohen).
Celia Hawkesworth has translated The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugresic, Belladonna by Daša Drndic — shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize — and Omer Pasha Latas by the Nobel Prize-winner Ivo Andric.