My Father’s Books

Luan Starova (Author), Christina Kramer (Translated by)

9780299287948

Paperback / softback, published 16 July 2012

136 pages
20.9 x 14.7 x 1.1 cm, 0.15 kg

In My Father's Books, the first volume in Luan Starova's multivolume Balkan Saga, he explores themes of history, displacement, and identity under three turbulent regimes - Ottoman, Fascist, and Stalinist - in the twentieth century. Weaving a story from the threads of his parents' lives from 1926 to 1976, he offers a child's-eye view of personal relationships in shifting political landscapes and an elegiac reminder of the enduring power of books to sustain a literate culture.     Through lyrical waves of memory, Starova reveals his family's overlapping religious, linguistic, national, and cultural histories. His father left Constantinople as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the young family fled from Albania to Yugoslav Macedonia when Luan was a boy. His parents, cosmopolitan and well-traveled in their youth, and steeped in the cultures of both Orient and Occident, find themselves raising their children in yet another stagnant and repressive state. Against this backdrop, Starova remembers the protected spaces of his childhood - his mother's walled garden, his father's library, the cupboard holding the rarest and most precious of his father's books. Preserving a lost heritage, these books also open up a world that seems wide, deep, and boundless.

Translator's Note  
Part One 1 My Father, Our Family, the Books  
 
 
Love  
 
 
The Fate of the Books  
 
 
Differences  
 
 
The Garden  
 
 
The Fountain  
 
 
The Balcony  
 
 
The Cabinet  
 
 
Identity  
 
 
The Life of the Books  
 
 
The Death of the Manuscript  
 
 
A Secret  
 
 
Learning about the Deities  
 
 
My Father's Fatherlands  
 
 
My Father's Languages  
 
 
My Father's Dictionaries  
 
 
The Radio  
 
 
Old Age 2 The Books and My Father's Friends  
 
 
Eastern Dream and Western Dream  
 
 
Friends  
 
 
Autodidacts  
 
 
Libraries  
 
 
A Boarder in Babel  
 
 
Language Quarrels  
 
 
Balkan Babel  
 
 
A Choice  
 
 
Sacrifice for Books  
 
 
The End of Time  
 
 
The Books in One's Life 3 Father's Books, Migrations, Stalinism, the Balkan Wall  
 
 
The Spyglass  
 
 
The Globe  
 
 
The Family Clock  
 
 
Travel  
 
 
The Bomb  
 
 
Flags  
 
 
The Mother Tongue  
 
 
The Holy Books  
 
 
Dreams of a Lost Time  
 
 
The Power of Languages  
 
 
Rakija and Meze  
 
 
The Taste of the Dough  
 
 
Holiday Tikush  
 
 
Stalin's Portrait  
 
 
Shock Workers  
 
 
The Silver Mirror  
 
 
The Medal  
 
 
Holiday  
 
 
Ration Books  
 
 
A Coin in the Trevi Fountain  
 
 
La Rinascente  
 
 
The Balkan Wall  
 
 
Prayer  
 
 
Tears  
Part Two 1 The Margins of My Father's Books: The Constantinople Dream, In Search of Lost Time  
 
 
The Third Exit  
 
 
The True Path  
 
 
At a Crossroads in the Labyrinth  
 
 
Between Constantinople Heaven and Balkan Hell  
 
 
Mission  
 
 
The Game of Defeat and Victory  
 
 
Janissary Fate  
 
 
The Key of Destiny  
 
 
The Waves of Illusions  
 
 
The Debt to Time  
 
 
Between East and West  
 
 
The Dream of the Sea  
 
 
Holidays in Defeats  
 
 
Lost  
 
 
Tattered Fate  
 
 
Bartering with Fate  
 
 
The Dream of the Books  
 
 
The Eastern Sword of Damocles  
 
 
The Fedora 2 Time Discovered  
 
 
Documents I  
 
 
Documents II  
 
 
Documents III  
 
 
The Meaning of the Silence  
 
 
The Documents (Epilogue) Perhaps the Real Ending  
 
 
A Borrowed Book