Word: cela
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...those who live through it, war creates a world antithetical to organized society or ordinary fiction. It is appropriate, then that Camilo Jose Cela's 1983 book Mazurka for Two Dead Men, only recently translated into English, is not an immediately recognizable or understandable novel...
...Cela, who won the Nobel Prize in 1989, recreates the world of a rural village around the time of the Spanish Civil War. Mazurka is a bizarre story, told in bits and pieces and filled with a confusing array of characters who are violent and lustful, pathetic and whimsical. The novel appears to be the result or transcription of several interviews with older women and men from the village, who are remembering the scandals and gossip from days past. Their stories are wandering and repetitious, but not without an ironic sense of humor--although at whose expense we cannot...
...difficult reading; the same half-imagined memories are told at various points by various people, each interrupting themselves and each other within the same sentence. This method can at first be irritating and even boring; the many plots are difficult to sort out and keep track of. But Cela's sympathetic and sometimes outrageous humor give these ramblings coherence...
...Muslim villagers in Cela tell a different story, not of harmony but of terror. First a lamb was stolen during weapons searches. Then 15 men were taken away for "interrogation"; only 14 returned. Another man was sent to the Serb-run mountain prison camp at Manjaca. Drunken militiamen set fire to the mosque, killed an old Muslim man and dumped his body down a well...
Cowed by the intimidation, the Cela Muslims tried appeasement. "We made a deal with the Serbian authorities," said a village leader. "We fly white flags on our houses as a sign of our loyalty. We will not oppose them, and they will not harm us. So far, they have kept their word, but we don't know about the future." Meantime, they try to lead normal lives, harvesting their plums to sell to Serb neighbors for making slivovitz. Though most are afraid to leave the village, a few brave souls carry food each day to the men at the Trnopolje...