The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel

Magadela Zyzak is a Polish-born writer, now living in the US, and this novel was written in English. Set in the imaginary Slavic country of Scalvusia, in the 1930s, the book follows Barnabas Pierkiel, a young swineherd, very enamoured with his own beauty, and bent upon seducing Roosha, the mistress of another man. It's difficult to describe what this book is like: I've seen it called a picaresque, a folk tale, a satire, and an adventure. The truth is it is all of these at once and none of them. It's written in this mocking, absurdist style that will either annoy you or thoroughly entertain you (I found it funny in a slightly dark, terrifying way, but I can see how some might not). The book is often ribald, rife with references to Scalvusia's imaginary history, customs, and practices, and full of remarkable small asides that merit close and careful attention. Reading this book was like enjoying a really unusual meal, to me - I ate it slowly and found each bite interesting. Like very successful writers who write in their second-language, Zyzak takes the rules of English and twists them to produce something completely new.

Barnabas Pierkiel believes himself to be very beautiful: the first chapter is titled, "In which the hero self-admires". Indeed, you could spend a fair bit of time on the index alone, which has chapter titles like little gems: "In which Barnabas discovers an arboreal abomination"; "In which too much transpires to be summed up," and "In which Barnabas encounters Satan". Living in a small village called Odolechka, Barnabas tends his pigs, admires his own jawline reflected in a pan full of water, and clumsily tries to woo Roosha, a beautiful Romani (the author says 'gypsy') woman who is the mistress of a local wealthy businessman, his rival, von Grushka. Among the cast of this absurd set up are Barnabas' grim grandmother ("endowed with negligible imagination and no tolerance for daydreaming"), a priest, Kumashko, tormented by his own desires and driven insane by pondering on a fig tree, Apollonia, the athletic and miserable wife of the ineffective local police chief, Barnabas' murderous cousin, escaped from a local asylum, and Duchess Dorotka, Barnabas' prize pig. To win Roosha, the naive Barnabas performs a series of increasingly absurd quests: in the background, the slow infiltration of Nazis into their village turns the comedic tone to something darker, as Barnabas bumbles through.

Zyzak is leaning heavily on stereotypes of rural people, whom she describes as unintelligent, violent, and narrow-minded, but her portrayal is not without sympathy. The broader picture she's trying to draw is of the effect that the Soviet regime has had on the lives of these people, and of the looming threat of Nazism to come, as well as the social discrimination directed towards the Roma people. The plot is minimal, and I think the focus really should be not on what happens, so much as how it unfolds - slowly at first, and then with stunning rapidity. This was a very unusual book, and I'm still not sure if I really liked it or if I was just fascinated by how bizarre it is. I'll leave you with a little quote, to taste (it is both, violent and ribald, so be warned):

"One harvest afternoon, his mother (who, sadly, not long after that harvest, had perished, it was said, of acute incomprehension after being shown into the private back room of the tavern to identify the corpse of Barnabas' father, who had stripped nude with his drinking buddies to play what later were reported as "men's games," which, harmlessly enough began with Olek the carpenter drinking a liter of vodka from Boleswav Pierkiel's boot, but then escalated into Kazhimiezh the shepherd cutting off his big toe with Olek's hand-cranked spinning saw. At this point, the archived police report maintains, Boleswav, not to be bested, grabbed the still-spinning saw and shouting, "Watch this, then!" swung it at himself, to the detriment of the connection between head and neck. "It's funny," says the testimony of Kazhimiezh in the report, "when he was young, he once put on his sister's underclothes. But he died like a man.") had left the cottage door ajar, and Barnabas had crawled into the field." (p.9)

Do you see what I mean? It's very strange, and very dark. Zyzak is better known now as a film director, and this is her first novel. She will have a second book out this year, and I'm likely to read it too (and hopefully, I shan't 'perish of acute incomprehension'). I am very interested in seeing how she follows this up.