Bait

by David Albahari, Peter Agnone (Translator)

Overview

In self-exile in Canada after the collapse of Yugoslavia and his mother's death, the narrator of Bait is listening to a series of tapes he recorded of his mother years before. As her story is told, he reflects on her life and their relationship, attempting to come to terms with his Jewishness and his own new life in a foreign culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810118829
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	06/20/2001
Series:	Writings From An Unbound Europe
Edition description:	Translated
Pages:	117
Product dimensions:	4.75(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

DAVID ALBAHARI was born in 1948 in the Serbian village of Pec. He is the founder and was for many years the editor-in-chief of Pismo, a magazine of world literature. He is also an accomplished translator of Anglo-American literature. His previous novels include, Words are Something Else (Northwestern University Press, 1996) and Tsing (Northwestern University Press, 1997).

PETER AGNONE studied Serbian at the University of Pittsburgh and has made numerous visits to the former Yugoslavia since 1991. A nuclear engineer by trade, he is an author as well as a translator of the works of Serbian political scientists.

Editorial Reviews

David Albahari's Bait (trans. from the Serbian by Peter Agnone) opens with the narrator's attempts to tape-record his mother's voice, her life story. We learn that she has since died and the young man is a Serbian exile living in Canada, listening to the tapes and trying to make sense of the events that have shaped his life. The book is essentially an extended meditation on history (both grand and intimate), family and loss. Alas, the pace is sluggish and the tone relentlessly somber; that the book is arranged in a continuous block of text without paragraphs doesn't help. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"Bait is perhaps the most unified and most balanced book Albahari has written till now, a book that, for its consistency and the demands it places before itself, announces to use the coming of age of a truly rare authoristic concept." —Vreme Knjige


"The narrator tells his reader, again and again, that were he a writer . . . he could bring a better eye for metaphorical significance to the story. But Albahari's artful meditations on the meaning of otherness will convince many that he is indeed a writer." —Booklist

From the Publisher