 December 9, 2024
A serious book with "goblins" in the title? an explanation and a preview by the author Zsolt Kerekes |
| The
Goblins are Coming! - the novel I've been writing throughout 2024 -
revolves around people who value books: which artifacts, unlike
narrative histories, provide a more complete record of what life was like before
the wars. Exactly which wars we're talking about and how they are perceived by characters in different parts of the story... are back story in the book. Suffice it to say here - the world has changed since the last of those old books were printed. Speculation from references within books that maybe there used to be substantially more titles. But ebooks - a big thing in my life-time - well they don't get a mention. You may guess what would remain of them. In the novel we (readers) see that even when books which describe the world as it was are found their contents are liable to misinterpretation. Events in past history (which the novel's reader knows to be true) are regarded as fables. Lost volumes in histories leave unanswered:- why did that war begin? how did it end? Names of places, people and objects preserved in lists are the only remnants of landscapes unmapped, lineages long crumbled and purposes unguessable. As a library is assembled, impossible in scale to catalog by the few scholars who can still read these rare surviving works in their original formats, the big question arises:- how much of this past is good for children to know? Not just a single past. Questions compounded by there being many strands of histories to sift to a safe soft narrative - despite spiky punctuation. In the beginning - a war which one side won (but forgot it had ever fought at all). At the end - a war the unforgetting side won. How to prevent a new war and educate people to live at ease together? The recoding of language to erase frowned-upon, value-laden words and the rewriting of history for the sake of the children take new twists in my story of the New/Old School - when succeeding generations of teachers find that progressive historicides have been applied to the foundation myths of their own school. The Goblins are Coming! - a novel written by me - Zsolt Kerekes - will be published in 2025. I hope that when the time is right for you, you might be interested in reading a sample. Perhaps you know others who may not be deterred by seeing a book which has the word "goblins" in its title. And as to - why that name? A story in itself (which began 25 years ago) and which I'll relate in a future blog. |
| posts related to the writing of this new novel |
 Just
got back from a break in Weymouth, Dorset, in an apartment on the Esplanade
overlooking the sea front. Couldn't see anything for a couple of days due to
fog. I had a library scene I wanted to write while the weather was bad. Where
better to do it than in a
library
itself?Apr 14, 2024 |
| Learned a new word yesterday in
a blog by the translator of a book I'd just finished reading. (A real person
translator not an AI.) Word for a concept which has shadowed my life is often in
my reading and is a theme in my wip. Mixed feelings knowing it's grown to be.
Historicide. Jul 10, 2024 The blog in which I first saw the word "historicide" is The Censorship of Memory by @AnnaGunin - available here https://criticalmuslim.io/the-censorship-of-memory/ I found it when reading Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich and being curious about the translator's other works. |
| Did you ever find the missing
books? Sandy asked. Just the one. Volume 1, The Civil War. I wrote in the
cover: We are safe. Now you'll know how it started. X Roy Sent it down with
drifters. To: a good man called Sue, loves books, lives down South, little
North of Hellcome. Oct 12, 2024 |
| Mister Sandy, a teacher at the
New School, compiled a Primer of grammar and vocab. In order to decouple the
name of his first language from its war torn history (and by selective rewriting
of books from the forbidden library) he argued it be called Olden instead of
English. Nov 7, 2024 |
I knew when I went to look at
the "hard to categorise" books arrayed up along the staircase and at
its very top in MuchAdo Books in Alfriston I'd find something interesting to
read. The most expensive book I've bought in years and a hardback too. And why did I find it so appealing that after 420 pages I felt sad at closing it and having to say goodbye? As if to a new friend met on a long journey? I could say I enjoyed reading an academic study into a topic which is a plot thread of a novel I'm writing now... Jul 23, 2024 |
