Making Skeletons Dance

Šimon Blef, a compulsive note-taker, sits in an Amsterdam pub that is neither dirty nor neat, drinking Dutch jenever with beer, watching the people around him and writing down what he sees, what he imagines and what he dreams, since he may one day turn writer and attempt a novel. Of his origins we learn only that he comes from a small, airless, landlocked country somewhere in Europe. He has fled its monotony, burdensome loves and a language whose deep knowledge means a deep knowledge of human evil, and Amsterdam's impersonal strangeness seems more honest to him than pretended closeness; he may yet move on, perhaps to Mexico. Skeletons, mostly of paper, recur throughout, in paintings, childhood memories and the narrator's visions.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

229 pages in the original

Set in

Netherlands

First published

2010 by Drewo a srd / Vlna

Author's age

44 when first published

ISBN

9788088965978 (original)

9781803094144 (Seagull Books, United Kingdom)