![]() ![]() References permeate throughout, making this work less distinctly a novel at times and more a metacommentary-a sort of thinking script, which benefits the more cultural ballast one can bring to it. Sometimes sentences balloon to nearly Krasznahorkai scope and complexity in other places, traditional dialogue and pacing situate scenes squarely in more familiar twentieth-century literary territory. Yet as with all such works, it’s not the categorizing, of course, but the work’s own strikingly individual, grounded yet independent streak that is such a delight. This places it in such immediately contemporary company as Georgi Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow, Louis Armand’s The Combinations, certain works of Pynchon, and so on. In spirit, this novel feels like a noble descendant from Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, which Sjón describes as a formative early influence. The work is in three parts, identified as “a love story,” “a crime story,” and “a science fiction story,” but what it really is is an intellectual playground, one where the author can exercise his considerable gifts roaming modern Western civilization. Icelandic author Sjón’s masterful tome CoDex 1962 is now available in English translation-and this is cause to celebrate. ![]()
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