A strange sort of book, this. A mixture, it seems to me, of fiction and autobiography. But some of the autobiography is, I believe, more true in an emotive sense than in a literal one; evocative, in the same way that Parisienne Walkways is evocative.
When people die, there is always a sadness, I think. As if their legacy is not necessarily anything tangible, but resides in the thoughts and memories of the people who threw them. Reading this book made me feel how I felt when I wrote about the Gold hawk café.
Click the here to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
The story about visiting Borges’ grave was, dare I say it, haunting, and describes an occurrence that I think would have appealed to Borges himself.
The one about Kraków is beautiful, but punctuated abruptly by recollections of the Nazis, One such shocking interruption is the one about the Jewish ghetto, in which thousands of Jewish people died of malnutrition or disease.
The beautifully written introduction very much sets the tone of the booki: wistful, a little sad, but triumphant too.
