A Concise Blog

A Concise Blog had some nice things to say about Extraordinary Renditions. I have to like any blog with a Gombrowicz book on the main page.

I love the title. And the cover photograph. But that’s not all. Budapest is palpable.

The first section sets the book up nicely, lands you in Budapest with a Hungarian composer who’s come back for the first time in four decades for a performance of his final opera. The second section is the hardest to digest, about an African-American soldier stationed near Budapest for whom this military is no more than the definition of slavery with Stalinist overtones–and I fear it’s all true, as all fiction is. My favorite section is the last one, about an expatriate violinist, by whose rebellious inspiration I was kind of inspired.