Invitation
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Book Overview
This 1987 novel by Nobel Prize-winner Claude Simon is a sardonic look at glasnost Russia, where recent reforms and improvements carry all the conviction of rouge on a corpse. The narrator is one of fifteen international guests who have been invited on a goodwill tour of the new Soviet Union. Whisked from one staged event to another, from Moscow to Central Asia, enduring hours of rigid Soviet hospitality, the guests react with varying degrees of stupefaction and disgust to a society whose recent renovations ill-disguise a bloody and repressive past. The Invitation is a reminder that although the Cold War may be over, the past cannot and should not be forgotten; the Soviets have a new game to play--diplomacy rather than military force--but Simon voices skepticism in our current era of pro-Soviet sentiment.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0916583902
ISBN13:9780916583903
Release Date:August 1992
Publisher:Dalkey Archive Press
Length:80 Pages
Weight:0.27 lbs.
Dimensions:0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
mesmerizing
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
Claude Simon's style can be described most briefly as mostly commas. While this hints at the challenge, it fails to reveal the rewards. Wend your way through this field of phrases and you'll soon notice that each contains a pearl of beautifully crafted thought. Let the images patter past you like a rain of notes from Phillip Glass and the vision of a horribly broken, flawed, terrifying system of lies, lies, lies, forms before you. As the limousine-load of dignitaries is dragged blearily through a series of limping staged functions by a crowd of strenuously posturing diplomats who have never heard of their guests but seem vaguely aware of their importance, behind the droning, endless speeches you can hear the mechanism of evil chattering insanely to itself. Behind the softly turning leaves you can see bland, vainglorious promenades blithely slathered across the bleak, silent steppes. It is the literary counterpart of Shostakovich's fifth symphony.
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