[ book tip by Incentives ] Robert Prosser’s newest novel, “Geister und Tattoos” (“Spirits and Tattoos”), is about the residents of a small village on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. After the Nagorno-Karabakh war, they have decided to leave the conflict behind them, as much as they can, and attempt a new start in another part of the country. There, in the north of Armenia, they live a remote life in every sense of the word: undiscovered, forgotten by state authorities and far from the reach of laws and regulations. Their society is archaic, with its own rules and rituals, myths and miracles. Reason and magic coexist peacefully, and it’s a short step from medicine to medicine man. The people live off the land and the animals they raise. The few things they must buy, they acquire with the money the men earn as day laborers in the nearest larger towns. The remaining time they kill playing cards and distilling - and more importantly drinking - bootleg liquor, the "spirits" of the title.

Most of the book follows one inhabitant of this settlement, some never-defined “you” who is the focal and vanishing point of the novel. But the other settlers and their fates are also given their due, leaving us with an impressive and animated picture of both place and community.

But what draws us most into this novel is its language. As in his earlier works, Prosser leaves nothing up to fate. When necessary - which is fairly often, considering the immense amounts of hard liquor his characters consume - he writes as if intoxicated, constantly searching for what seems to be the only way to express this or that, and always finding or even inventing the perfect phrase. But nothing seems forced, every word fits perfectly and gets under your skin, like the needles of the usually makeshift machines with which the tattoos in this book are inked, tattoos that are more than just adornment for the characters.

“Geister und Tattoos” shows a people trying to live in dignity despite the most adverse conditions of the battered Causasus, making it a novel that is not only a paragon of composition and literary virtuosity, but is also highly political.

Abbreviated review by Simon Leitner, September 2013. English translation by Laura Radosh. Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=10149

[ book info ] Prosser, Robert: Geister und Tattoos. (original language: German) Klever Verlag, Wien, 2013 . ISBN: 978-3-902665-65-2.