Sin by Andrej Nikolaidis

Sin Reviews

• 
  S̶e̶a̶n̶

  Less digressive than
  The Coming, but still loose in its plot and aimless in its distracted stroll toward yet another mildly revelatory closing. It sort of reads like one of Thomas Bernhard's monologists narrating a perverse satire of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, set in post-Communist Montenegro. (And Bernhard is in fact name-checked here.) Darkly amusing at times but in general a rather bleak affair.

  One moment of blind faith in anything, even in the most utter nonsense, brings a person more happiness than all the reason and knowledge in the world; for reason and knowledge do nothing but destroy any possibility of happiness and reveal everything we've tried to link our life to as worthless. That's why we float like balloons, bloated to bursting point with reason, just waiting for the moment when one tiny extra bit of knowledge will blow us to smithereens – when our body, as fragile as the membrane of a balloon, explodes from the despair which fills us.
• 
  Ertl

  2011 Avrupa Birliği Edebiyat Ödülü almış bu novellada yazarın diğer bir kitabı Kıyamet gibi karanlık bir kitap. Fakat Oğul’un anti kahramanı fazlasıyla –bence- gerçekçi. Toplumsal nezaketten, reflekslerden çok etkilenmemiş değerlendirmelere sahip. İnceltmiyor, empati kurmuyor, olduğu gibi anlatıyor. Bana Ian McEwan’ın İlk Aşk Son Törenler kitabındaki soğukkanlılığını hatırlattı. McEwan’ın olayları anlatışı ne kadar tarafsızsa Nikolaidis’in de durum/ilişki değerlendirmeleri o kadar soğukkanlı. Can acıtan, acımasız, ürkütücü ama itiraz edilemeyecek doğruluğa sahip. Gerçeğin bu kadar net olması insanı ürkütüyor bir bakıma.
  
  
  3,5dan 4 yıldız verdim.
  
  Spoilers:
  
  “sadece çocuklar ve budalalar arkadaş edinebilir…çocuklar ve budalalar.. dışında başka kim, en derin düşünce ve duygularımızı açacak kadar güvenebileceğimiz, işler sarpa sardığında, işler gerçekten de hep böyledir, yardım edecek yüce gönüllü ve iyi insanların var olduğuna inanır.”
  
  “.. yani Gazali haklıydı; cehennemdeyim çünkü hazlar ile çevriliyim. Sartre de haklıydı cehennem başkalarıdır derken. Onların hazzı benim cehennemim.”
  
  En beğendiğim satırlar ise:
  
  “..iyi kalpli olmak, benliğini aşma ve kendi doğası üzerinde yükselmek demektir; bu yüzden “iyi insan” denilenler “iyiliklerini” kendilerine unutulmaz bir haz yaratmak için kullanırlar, bu bir insanın hissedebileceği en derin hazlardandır. Kendi iyiliklerinin tadını öyle bir çıkarırlar ki geri kalanımızdan onlar için bir şey yapmasını falan beklemezler. Aslında onlara ne kadar kötü davranırsak, bize o kadar iyi davranırlar ve bunun karşılığında duydukları haz da bir o kadar artar. “
  
  İyi okumalar.
• 
  Ferda Nihat Koksoy

  Olumsuzdan beslenen, yaşamın her alanını kötülüğe bağlamaktan haz alan, bunun hep böyle olduğundan ve olacağından emin olan, E.Cioran/T.Bernhard ile aşık atan ve epeyce beceren, aslında bununla insanın sadece hayvani/leptil/limbik sistemini pohpohlayan sistemi yeniden üreten, toplumsal yaşamıyla hayvani güdülerini yenmeye çalışarak gelişen kortikal beyni yok sayan, insandan iyilik, erdem, daha iyi bir toplumsal yaşam çıkmaz diyen bir edebiyat.
  
  Bana göre değil bu kadarı: Tek uçlu, onarılmaz, kaderci yanı çok ezici, neticede 81.sf.da "Dünyayı geliştirme çabasıyla, hayatı herkese daha da zorlaştırırsın." diyerek, müesses nizama teslimiyete çağıran Nihilist, itaatkâr, kinik bir edebiyat.
• 
  Anna

  Bezimienny pisarz wyrusza w podróż wgłąb siebie - wędrując po ulicach czarnogórskiego miasta Ulcinj. Jego wędrówka zasadza się na relacji z ojcem - człowiekiem bardzo bliskim, mieszkającym nieopodal, z którym jednak łączy pisarza bardzo trudna relacja. Obwiniany o śmierć matki, nie jest w stanie nawiązać z ojcem nici porozumienia, a ten konflikt rzutuje na jego pojmowanie świata.
  Wyruszając na ulice turystycznego miasta, pisarz spotyka przeróżne postaci - trudno powiedzieć, czy są to realne spotkania czy oniryczne wizje, istotnym jest, że temat relacji ojca i syna przewija się niemal w każdym spotkaniu. Jest więc ojciec, który prostytuuje swoje córki, jest szkolny kolega, który stracił kontakt z synem, syn, który zabija ojca czy też rodzina chorych na trąd uchodźców z Kosowa, której ojciec decyduje, że życie w postsowieckim podziemnym garażu jest dla nich najlepsze. Ten korowód dziwacznych postaci przypomina wędrówkę po piekle - każda historia odkrywa bezmiar ludzkiego okrucieństwa lub nieszczęścia. Czarnogórskie piekło tworzą jednak w pierwszej linii turyści, którzy zalewają ulice miasta i zachowują się jak zwierzęta. Obraz tak bardzo mi bliski, jak pewnie każdemu, kto mieszka w turystycznej okolicy.
  
  Ciąg dalszy:
  http://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot.c...
• 
  Guy

  The Son, a novel by Andrej Nikolaidis opened with a quote by Thomas Bernhard. I took that as a good sign, and, possibly, an indicator of things to come. Would the novel be morose yet shaped by grim humour? I hoped so, and my expectations were met amply in this dour, yet bleakly funny book. Author Andrej Nikolaidis was born in 1974 and brought up in Sarajevo, Bosnia/Herzegovina, but is of Greek-Montenegrin background. In 1992, Nikolaidis and his family moved to Ulcinj, in Montenegro.
  
  The narrator of the book is a nameless writer, and as the title indicates, he’s the son of a “blighted family.” He lives in isolation on a hillside in the middle of his family’s olive grove, “fifty hectares of viper-and-boar-infested scrub blocking our view of the sea.” He hasn’t seen or spoken to his father who’s in bed,”paralyzed by the depression which had abused him for two years,” even though they live just a few yards apart. Stuck in his own swamp of depression, our narrator rants, moans and complains about a range of things–his ex (she finally got the gumption to leave), and the tourists who litter the landscape.
  
  Our narrator is repulsed by the human race and does not exclude himself from his savage, unforgiving, pessimistic commentary. Unable to read anything but the most lurid crime stories, and unable to masturbate, he acknowledges that his “own hunger for the grotesque will destroy” him. Freud could have written a book about this character if he ever sought professional help, but these days, we’d throw Prozac at the problem. The bitterness, the ennui, disgust, and self-loathing all add up to a narrator who’s fun to read but a real downer to live with–hence the departed Mrs. and who could blame her? Even the narrator admits that they had a “fragile and bloodless” marriage, which was tested to breaking point, as they lived, stuck together in a small, smelly house for two years. Our insomniac narrator finds mild interest in life through the most outrageous stories about serial killers.
  
  For two whole years I hadn’t read anything except the crime column in the newspaper. The only things which still interested me were crime news and books about serial killers. It was as though only overt eruptions of evil could jolt me out of my indifference. I no longer had the energy for the hermeneutics of evil. That was behind me now. I could no longer stand searching for evil in the everyday actions of so-called ‘ordinary people’. Instead I chose vulgar manifestations of evil. If a man killed thirty people and buried them under his house, that still had a wow factor for me.
  
  Events take our narrator out of his self-imposed isolation and out into town for the evening, and most of the book chronicles his misadventures and encounters with various people. These encounters include a meeting with an old school friend, talking to a Muslim preacher, an assignation with a prostitute and a surreal run-in with a family of lepers who live in an abandoned underground Soviet era parking garage. Everything the narrator sees appears to underscore his life view that “everyone abuses everyone else” and that ”human misfortune doesn’t derive from a social system of a geographical location, but from existence itself.”
  
  This is just a short book, but author Andrej Nikolaidis packs a lot in these bleak, wickedly funny pages. There’s no down-time between diatribes as the narrator vents against the human race with a wide range of subjects which include cannibalism, PC porn, the comparison between being a writer and a pimp, crime (“every family home can turn into a slaughterhouse,”) and the “impertinence of beggars.“
  
  For its bitter, morose humour, The Son should appeal to fans of Thomas Bernhard. Extra house points must be awarded to Andrej Nikolaidis for having the wit, intelligence and balls to take a literary baseball bat to the knees of one of the most over quoted sentences from the giant of Russian literature: Tolstoy. This event takes place in an underground car park and the father of a family of lepers tells the narrator that they stay underground, because they’re “happy there” away from the society that rejects and ridicules them for their afflictions. The narrator sardonically notes that the leper is ”unaware that he’d just convincingly refuted Tolstoy, who claimed that all happy families are happy in the same way.” Yet that realization underscores an encounter the narrator has with another family–Djuro and his daughters–all prostitutes. Djuro drives a car a “rusted red Moskvich with ‘Dirty Djuro and Daughters: Sex for Every Pocket’ painted on the side.” The family home, located in a cellar, is a “ three-room brothel,” and the narrator is confronted by the fact that even though Djuro, “endowed with entrepreneurial spirit,” has condemned his daughters to a life of degradation and prostitution, they still worship him. In spite of the narrator’s bleak world view, it’s these encounters that somehow, strangely, show how the human spirit endures–in spite of humiliation, degradation, and the bleakness of the human condition. Perhaps this paradox can be explained by the contrast between our self-focused narrator and those he encounters–people who genuinely lead miserable lives and yet find some sort of philosophy to transcend tragedy and cope with life.
  
  
  The phone rang. A friend was calling to tell me that a DVD edition of the film Cannibal Holocaust had just arrived from America.
  
  “What’s that?” I asked him.
  
  “A film about an expedition of film-makers, who come across a tribe of cannibals in the Amazon jungle,” he said.
  
  “Sounds good for starters. What happens after that?”
  
  “Nothing much–the rest of the film is about the cannibals eating them. ….”
• 
  Marina

  Recensione originale:
  https://sonnenbarke.wordpress.com/201...
  
  Cominciamo subito col dire che questo libro è disponibile in italiano: è stato tradotto nel 2014 da Zandonai con il titolo che ho indicato in oggetto,
  Nel nome del figlio. Io l'ho letto in inglese per l'unico motivo che l'ho comprato nel 2013, quando ancora non sapevo che ci sarebbe stata una traduzione italiana. Il libro è originariamente scritto in montenegrino e nel 2011 ha vinto lo
  European Prize for Literature.
  
  Il breve romanzo, appena 115 pagine, non è per niente brutto, tutt'altro, ma io non l'ho apprezzato, purtroppo. Forse se lo rileggessi fra un po' di tempo mi piacerebbe di più, non lo escludo. Forse non era il momento giusto, il suo momento.
  
  In realtà è scritto molto bene, anche se in questo caso chiaramente non posso giudicare l'originale ma sono la traduzione letta da me. E non solo lo stile è ottimo, anche la storia è interessante. E tuttavia mi è rimasto indigesto, forse per la cupezza, sebbene, com'è noto, non si possa certo dire che io rifugga davanti ai romanzi/racconti cupi, anzi.
  
  La copertina dice che si tratta della storia di una notte della vita del protagonista, ma questo è vero in parte. Certamente la storia si svolge nell'arco di un pomeriggio/sera/notte/mattino successivo, tuttavia è piena di ricordi che passano per la mente del protagonista, quindi quello che dice la quarta di copertina non è esatto.
  
  Ad ogni modo, la storia segue appunto il protagonista, che non ha nome, in meno di 24 ore della sua vita, dopo che la moglie l'ha lasciato andandosene di casa. Il protagonista vaga per la città di Dulcigno, in Montenegro, in preda a ricordi di cui ci rende partecipi. E in questo suo vagare incontra numerosi personaggi che lo fanno affondare ancora di più nel suo male di vivere: per esempio, il vecchio compagno di scuola che era costantemente preso di mira dai bulli, i quali alla fine gli avevano spezzato le braccia mentre il protagonista, suo amico, guardava da lontano mangiando il suo pranzo; oppure l'uomo che vende tre delle sue figlie come prostitute in uno scantinato del paese, e altri ancora. Ognuno di questi personaggi finisce per raccontare al protagonista la storia della propria vita, oppure in altri casi è il protagonista stesso a raccontarcela. E queste vite inevitabilmente, inestricabilmente si intrecciano.
  
  Il protagonista è affetto da un male di vivere inguaribile che lo porta a vedere tutto lo schifo presente in tutte le cose del mondo: ad esempio, il fatto che siamo tutti sporchi, perché la nostra normale condizione è la sporcizia e non la pulizia. Oppure, sempre concentrandosi sullo schifo, il protagonista si interessa alle storie di serial killer, e ci racconta di alcuni cannibali di cui ha letto. Il protagonista crede che il mondo sia un enorme, gigantesco schifo, e non vuole niente, non vuole apparire, non vuole fare, non vuole prendere decisioni, vuole solo passare inosservato, come dirà lui stesso.
  
  L'apatia e il desiderio di non fare si estendono a tal punto che l'uomo si arrabbia ferocemente quando la madre, malata terminale di cancro, gli chiede la grazia di ucciderla. E non si infuria, come potremmo pensare, perché non condivide il desiderio della madre, ma perché le rinfaccia di non averlo fatto lei stessa quando ne aveva ancora la possibilità, le rinfaccia di chiederlo proprio a lui, che non vuole assumersi la responsabilità di niente.
  
  Scopriamo ben presto che il protagonista ha un rapporto orribile con il padre, che non vede da tantissimo tempo sebbene siano vicini di casa, e che questo pessimo rapporto è dato da un terribile senso di colpa che il protagonista non riesce a cancellare: quando erano bambini, suo fratello Milan cadde da un albero, morendo, ed era stato proprio il protagonista a sfidarlo a salirvi. Nonostante ciò, il padre tutte le sere gli dava il bacio della buonanotte e non parlava mai dell'accaduto di fronte a lui, e questo per il protagonista è sempre stato peggio di una punizione. La mancanza di punizione è stata per lui una punizione peggiore di quanto avrebbe potuto essere una vera punizione. Il protagonista non sopporta il perdono.
  
  Questo tema, come vedremo, ricorrerà in alcuni dei suoi incontri, in particolare in quello che fa subito dopo questa rivelazione: incontra per la strada un assembramento di persone che commentano un delitto appena avvenuto. È troppo complicato da spiegare in due parole, ma diciamo solo che un figlio ha ucciso suo padre, precisamente perché suo padre lo ha perdonato ogni volta, anche dopo morti che sono state causate dal figlio stesso. Anche questo ragazzo non sopportava il peso del perdono, e per questo ha ucciso. Il protagonista non uccide, ma marcisce nel putridume di una vita senza senso.
  
  Il finale è particolare e inaspettato, in un certo senso mi ha piacevolmente sorpresa, ma non è servito comunque a farmi amare il libro.
  
  Nonostante le mie personali riserve, sinceramente mi sento di consigliare questo libro, perché merita, e il fatto che a me non sia piaciuto è una mera questione di gusto personale che non vuole togliere nulla ai meriti del romanzo.
  
  Per finire vi voglio lasciare il link a due recensioni che mi sono piaciute molto:
  una, breve, in italiano e
  l'altra, più dettagliata, in inglese.
• 
  Ilana

  I´ve heard more than once that the relationship with your parents influences at a great extent the way you relate to the world and other humans in general. I am not convinced about that in my case, but The Son, by Andrej Nikolaidis - originally published in Montenegrin as Sin, translated by Will Firth, published by Istros Books - spins at a great extent on a disfunctional/missed father-son connection. Nikolaidis is born in Sarajevo, in a Montenegrin-Greek family and is a political advisor, columnist and novelist living in Montenegro.
  
  The book is short, a little bit over 100 pages, and takes place within 24 hours. An unnamed writer with no noticeable work, living in the city of Ulcinj - situated in the Southern part of the city, with a significant Albanian population, according to various tourim-related online sources - is left by his wife. His failed marriage just happened. ´Things never fail because of me, nor do they go off well thanks to me. They always happen with me as a bystander. I just adapt to them´. This is how he imagined his life to be as a child: ´As a child I imagined life as an enormous desert which I had to walk through while trying not to distirb a thing or to leave any trace´. What about his writing career? Why is he doing it after all? There is not answer to that during the aimless wandering journey through life and dreams of this anonymous character which looks so familiar with the soul broken characters of the Central European literature.
  
  A diluted Freudian, he is carrying with him a trauma: ´The trauma I carry with me from my earliest years is my father´. Hence, his radical view on parenthood and family in general: ´As long as they live, parents destroy their children, and their children pay them back for it and don´t relinquish their thirst for vengeance until they´ve sent their parents to the grave. Every family home can turn into a slaughterhouse. A tiny catalyst of just a single word is often all it takes for the history of abuse and hatred hidden under a semblance of harmony and love like in an old-fashioned memento chest, to end in bloodshed´. Fragments of dreams and realities are recomposing in a spinning-way over and over again, with different characters but similar pattern which excludes beauty and kindness and a break from internalizing the projection of trauma. There is no end to the nightmare. The son is obsessed with the father as a source of power and opression and an existential threat as much as the father is obsessed with the son, as his projection of ownership.
  
  The wandering anonymous writer is misanthropic, cruel, cynical and emotionally unstable in his obsession. It seems his obsession of the father´s obsession is breaking him into the cruel pieces of non-existence.
  
  I´ve seen previous reviews outlining the influence of Gargoyles by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. I´ve only read Old Masters by Bernhard long ago so I cannot delve into this specific reference.
  
  The Son by Andrej Nikolaidis, that won the European Prize for Literature in 2011, is not an easy read as filled with a deep dark mood of Weltschmerz. No cure, not too much courage to end it up, all is left is to fill then the files of the notebook with one single word.
  
  
  
  Rating: 3.5 stars
  
  Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
  
  
  
  
• 
  Joseph Schreiber

  I wrote about this book in conjunction with Bernhard's Gargoyles here:
  https://roughghosts.com/2015/01/26/ch...
  Bernhard is a huge influence and an imagined presence in this book.
• 
  Serena

  A brief, but clear and valuable read, and useful to pick up something from a part of the world I know little about. I did pick up some useful history (e.g. the Montenegrin army climbing a hill in Ulcinj to take the city from the Turks) and I really enjoyed the mixed parade of characters the narrator comes across (from Djuro's daughters to the Kosovan family, the latter by far being my favourite).
  
  There is cynicism, then pessimism, and then there's this book. Luckily the disgust expressed by the narrator throughout does invoke a form of fascination and bizarre humour (rather than making you wallow in depression). I personally thought the passage where he has intellectualised pornography to the point of not enjoying it was great, and very amusing. I thought the translation does a really good job of capturing that dry, derisive tone.
  
  Some great notes by
  Swiftly Tilting Planet and
  Winston's Dad. Interesting they both picked up on the reference to Thomas Bernhard.
• 
  Rob Forteath

  It is a very good thing that this book is short, because any more would be too much.
  
  For most of the book, the character is an extreme parody of the main character in Sartre's "Nausea". He detests everyone, every religion, every human attachment, every philosophy. Apart from this, he seems to have no ideas of his own, except one interesting one: forgiveness brings humiliation instead of redemption. This is touched on a few times, and then dropped. The narrator flees his house after a devastating fire -- not due to despair, but rather to avoid having to interact with his father or receive condolences from neighbours. He wanders the tourist town overnight, meeting bizarre characters who serve only to provide him with more to disdain.
  
  Eventually, he meets someone who is more or less like himself. He is at first appreciative, then, without missing a beat, changes his entire perspective on life. "Aha!", you think, "everything up to now has been a straw man which the author will now proceed to demolish." But the denouement is perfunctory and unconvincing.
• 
  Matej Laš

  Prvá novela, Syn, uzemní každého nadšenca brakovej motivačnej literatúry a citátov zo stránky "Citáty slávnych". Toľko úprimného negativizmu, ktorý vie aj zatnúť do najhlbších kútov spoločenských dogiem, sa tak často nevidí. Druhú novelu by som nazval špiritistickou napodobeninou freudovskej psychoanalýzy, ale chýba jej údernosť a až tak ma nezaujala.
• 
  Tomislav Valentić

  "...U kolima sam srećom imao limenku coca-cole, kojom sam ga pogodio pravo među sitne, zle oči. Drugi put je pao kako treba. U retrovizoru sam vidio da mu se krv iz čela slijeva na asfalt. Policija me je kasnije ispitivala zašto sam napustio mjesto nesreće, kako su rekli. Saopštio sam im da je ta formulacija, mjesto nesreće, što se mene tiče, neprikladna, jer me je događaj usrećio."
• 
  Cheryl

  3.5 stars
• 
  Elif

  This will worth every uncomfortable moment.
  
  English:
  https://elifthereader.com/books/the-s...
  Türkçe:
  https://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/o...
• 
  Dagmik

  Kde bola táto kniha doteraz? Niečo tak vtipne pesimistické a asociálne som dlho nečítala a veľmi ma to bavilo. Syn viac ako príchod, oba konce prinášajú priestor na rozmýšľanie, ako to bolo vlastne celé myslené. Ašpirant na top 10 tohto roku.
• 
  gabriela ✺

  'wszędzie w nas tylko puste opakowania zużytych emocji, którymi się karmiliśmy, dziurawych nadziei, na których, jak na napompowanych oponach, toczyliśmy się po scenie naszego istnienienia.'
• 
  Dolf van der Haven

  #99: Montenegro 🇲🇪.
  A dark and cynical novella from Montenegro. Sometimes bizarre, but intelligently written, leaving a lasting impression. There's two more novels to the series that I will go after.
• 
  Nicole Kroger Joy

  #readtheworld Montenegro
• 
  Tonymess

  It’s been an insane time here at Messenger’s Booker, with outside pressures curtailing my reading, not to mention my reviews here. So it is about time I got my life back in order and returned to blogging about books in translation.
  
  My latest read, again comes from Istros Books, park of their “Best Balkan Books” Series, “The Son” by Andrej Nikolaidis.
  
  However little we expect of life, it gives us even less. Disappointment is inevitable, and not even the complete absence of hope can free us of it.
  
  So here’s a warning, are you after a nice uplifting tale? Sorry, this won’t fit the bill....do you want enlightening ruminations on the futility of existence? Well just about every page here contains something to make you ponder your own life.
  
  Our novel opens with heat, the stench of sweat, insomnia, a broken marriage and cannibalism, and that’s just the first four pages. Welcome to the world of our unnamed writer protagonist, a first person narration on a day in the life of “the son”.
  
  For my full review go to
  http://messybooker.blogspot.com
  
• 
  Anamarija

  nevjerojatna knjiga. Nikolaidis je nevjerojatan spisatelj. osobno razgrce na uvid citatelju iskreno i bez patetike. a naoko usput dotice se dogadjaja i patnji na Balkanu u zadnjh par desetljeca. ispisuje tako neke od najboljih stranica na ovim prostorima.
• 
  Caroline

  Very bleak. What are we to do with this? No stars doesn’t mean it’s terrible, it means I don’t have a basis or the interest to assign stars.