On the Edge of Reason
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- 8,99 €
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- 8,99 €
Publisher Description
From the great Croatian writer: a masterly work of literature—hilarious, unforgiving, and utterly reasonable
Until the age of fifty-two, the protagonist of On the Edge of Reason suffered a monotonous existence as a highly respected lawyer. He owned a carriage and wore a top hat. He lived the life of “an orderly good-for-nothing among a whole crowd of neat, gray good-for-nothings.” But, one evening, surrounded by ladies and gentlemen at a party, he hears the Director-General tell a lively anecdote of how he shot four men like dogs for trespassing on his property. In response, our hero blurts out an honest thought. From this moment, all hell breaks loose.
Written in 1938, On the Edge of Reason reveals the fundamental chasm between conformity and individuality. As folly piles upon folly, hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, reason itself begins to give way, and the edge between reality and unreality disappears.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
``As far as I could gather until I was fifty-two, no one ever heard a disparaging or malicious statement about me. I was, in fact, quite nameless and invisible, so discreet that nobody ever took any notice of my existence.'' The narrator of Croatian novelist Krleza's 1938 novel is a prime example of a successful homo cylindriacus or ``top-hatted man'' until, overwhelmed by the self-assured inanity of his peers, he mutters a truth about a prominent industrialist at a dinner party. That truth becomes the ``fatal experience'' that overturns his comfortable existence but also breaks the strictures binding him. As the report of the narrator's attack spreads through the town, he is called lascivious by a thrice-divorced profligate, insane by the aged representative of a long line of madmen. Refusing to withdraw his ``slander,'' the narrator undergoes a trial, imprisonment, self-imposed exile and finally a whole new slew of lawsuits. Krleza (1893-1981) was a convinced communist, and his disdain for the robber-baron capitalism of Croatia between the wars is pervasive, sometimes a little deadening. But Krleza (The Return of Philip Latinovicz) is a shrewd observer of man as social animal, and his wry, sardonic style fits cleanly into the Eastern European tradition of bureaucratic satire by the likes of Kafka, Karel Capek and Jaroslav Hasek.
