Short stories
Šaha partija
Not translated into English
Jānis Ezeriņš · 1923
Synopsis
Seven brief short stories, set in Latvia in the first half of the twentieth century, in which characters lost on the great chessboard of fate see small ironies upend quiet lives. Mocked or despised, they go through absurd situations; beneath a carnival gaiety a darker reality shows through, and the stories surprise the reader without ever drawing a moral.
Context
The collection appeared in Riga in 1923, in the middle of a career of five or six years: Dziesminieks un velns had preceded it in 1920, and Leijerkaste would follow from 1923 to 1925. Central European University Press links this manner to Boccaccio, Maupassant and Poe. Gita Grīnberga and Jean-Jacques Ringuenoir translated it into French under the title Partie d'échecs, published in 2022 by the éditions de l'Arbre vengeur, in Bordeaux, in one hundred and sixty-four pages, with an afterword; they had already published in 2008 a selection of Jānis Ezeriņš's stories, L'Âne rose. The publisher explains by the narrowness of his language why this talent has remained little recognised.
Who it is for
Seven brief short stories, with a slightly chilling humour. It helps to know that they refuse any moral and play on the absurd.
Prizes and reception
Translated into French in 2022, after L'Âne rose; its French publisher sees in it the overlooked talent of a short-story writer who died young.
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The pages consulted to check this page.