Travels of the Enu: Story of a Shipwreck
Jakov Lind
Language: English
Pages: 136
ISBN: 2:00213809
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Pseudonym of Austrian writer Heinz Jakov Landwirth (1927-2007), in the UK from 1954; his most famous books – Eine Seele aus Holz (coll 1962; trans Ralph Manheim as Soul of Wood 1964) and Landschaft in Beton (1963; trans Ralph Manheim as Landscape in Concrete 1964) – are grotesque Satires based on his experiences as a Jew in hiding during, and utilizing a deep overall knowledge of, World War Two. These works have evoked comparisons with two Czech writers of interregnum and doom, Franz Kafka in general and Jaroslav Hasek (1883-1923), for The Good Soldier Schweik (1923); like almost all Czech writers of his set of mind, Lind is deadpan, blackly funny, extremely desperate. Two late novels – Travels to the Enu: Story of a Shipwreck (1982) and The Inventor (1987) – are sf; the first compactly combines Fantastic Voyage and Island Utopia, again applyi - See more at: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lind_jakov#sthash.kKASRNmY.dpuf
from inner flap:
This book is a major publishing event,
since it marks the reappearance o f a great
writer, one o f the most important literary
figures o f the 1960s. And what a reappear-
ance it is Travels to the Enu is a savage
satire, always hilarious and usually quite a
bit more, modelled after Swift, but uniquely
a book for this time.
Trapped on a pleasure cruise in circum-
stances tantamount to a mass hijack and
cast adrift on an island previously recorded
only in the writings o f an eighteenth-
century Portuguese traveller, the hero of
Jakov Lind’s entertaining and provocative
story encounters a race o f men and women
whose affinities with the world o f birds are
striking but perhaps only skin deep.
Had carried m any a supreme ruler into noisy battles and even noisier peace conferences. T h e m onarch was a tall, fat, venerable, decorous and awe-inspiring man, definitely more m an than ape, with the pulsating muscles o f a Japanese wrestler and the heroic chest o f a field marshal. O n his head he wore no triple crown or m itre but a scabrous, nodular, knotted hair construction at least four feet high. As king and nobles halted a mere tw enty feet before me, I noticed that the birds’ nests o.
Had not w atched me as I studied the Cosm ic message. ‘ Us do the w ork for the crew , w hat n e x t? ’ ‘W e are all doing it and so are you. D o n ’t you clean up your own mess in your cabin ?’ ‘ I thought they were on strike.’ ‘T h a t’s no strike, M r O rland o, th at’s the system. T h e system hits at our love o f comfort. Social tourism is the gam e.’ ‘ It’s a disaster,’ I heard m yself say, solemnly. Lockw ood had been pretending not to listen. ‘W h at disaster are you referring to? A n yw.
That feeds our vast es tablishm ent. Through the western gate one enters the cerem onial reception rooms via three ‘goth ic’ arches. T h e rooms themselves are scantily furnished with low tables and hollowed-out wooden egg-shaped chairs. T h e seats for the guests o f honour stand a few inches taller than those o f the hosts, so as to give the guests a sense o f their own im portance. T h e walls o f the reception rooms are decorated with m any bas-reliefs o f hunting parties, reminiscent o f.
Modesty. T h e entire place is in rem arkably good taste but the architectural masterpieces o f the edifice are undoubtedly its toilets, splendidly decorated like H indu shrines. A t first we are simply impressed and more than a little puzzled that so much effort should be spent to beautify this hum ble place o f privacy. O n our first arrival, when the K in g 78 said we would one day be eating the same as the rest o f his people, i.e. shit, we had thought that this was his ordinary vulgar w.
Instead.’ ‘I f you say so.’ ‘T h e bird w ill find it a little hard to settle down at first, because you m ight still be a bit shaky on your legs. These birds, remem ber, are very sensitive. I f you feel weak at the knees, the birds feel nervous. I f your stomach gets upset G od help you. Switch o ff your mind. O ne stupid idea and it m ight even die on yo u .’ ‘D ie from one stupid th o u gh t?’ ‘T h a t’s how sensitive they are. It would be a very bad omen. T h e people m ight lynch you on the.