Cyclops /

First published in 1965 and among the most highly regarded novels of postwar Croatian literature, Kiklop is a portrait of Zagreb on the eve of WW II, a phantasmagoric picture filtered through the fevered consciousness of the young theater critic Melkior Tresic. The novel centers on a pub and its regulars, Tresic among them, who keep imminent violence at bay with bitter literary banter, dense, metaphor-laden, allusive dialogues, and interior monologues. Literary references abound--Joyce, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Homer, dozens of Croatian poets--as do untranslatable semantic associations (though Elias-Bursac and Stojiljkovic labored valiantly). Tresic avoids military service; then he is recruited and then discharged. But plot is not the point. Nor is character development. The style is the point, especially as it conveys the psychological intensity, the nihilism, of that place and time. Marinkovic began publishing in the 1930s, making a name for himself as a dramatist and short story writer. From the early 1950s, he taught at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Art. Heretofore little of his work has been available in English, aside from his notorious anti-Catholic play Gloria (published in Five Modern Yugoslav Plays, ed. by Branko Mikasinovich, 1977) and some other small pieces. Accordingly, this volume is welcome. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. M. Kasper Amherst College