Satantango by László Krasznahorkai

 

I initially read the title of this novel as Santiargo, it wasn't until I pulled it out of my bedside drawer that the real title dawned on me.

Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian writer. He spent some of his younger years as a jazz pianist (which explains quite a bit about his writing) and moved around several different jobs, not staying in any one place long enough to be drafted into military service. 

On paper, this should be right up my street. It's dark, absurdist, and full of atmospheric detail. Satantango is set in a small village in rural Hungary, the remains of a collectivist farm. The locals dream of a life beyond the confines of their crumbling, rain-soaked village, and yet are mired in inaction, unable to escape their shambling existence. Then one day the enigmatic Irimiás turns up, promising them a better future, but ultimately is revealed as a con man. I imagine Irimiás is intended as an embodiment of the capitalist dream, following the collapse of the communist state; originally promising so much, but ultimately delivering only a different kind of poverty. 
However, for reasons I don't fully understand, I just couldn't get into Satantango. Each chapter is a single very long, very dense, paragraph, presumably mirroring the drudgery of the characters' lives. But this, along with the convoluted writing style, really did make it hard going, to the extent that I think I lost much of meaning, bouncing off the prose rather than getting down into it. 

With lot of stylised novels I find that by trying not to get too hung up on the individual components, the work washes over me, and it all makes some kind of coherent sense. However, with Satantango, whilst I can appreciate all the elements of the novel, as a whole it just didn't really work.

★★★☆☆