Alternating chapters tell competing stories: one from the Middle Ages and one of Yugoslavia just after Tito split with Stalin in 1948. An excellent book ill-served by its translator (another grad student working on his MFA in translation). Although another professional translator (whose work I have read an enjoyed) is credited, I suspect he had little hand in the actual work. The translation is too literal and doesn’t flow as easily as it should. Very well done and I’ll look out for his work in the future. ( )

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A Castle in Romagna by Igor Štiks (translated by Russell Scott Valentino & Tomislav Kuzmanovic) is a fictional book alternating in timeline and places, telling two stories which are connected. Mr. Štiks is a prolific Croatian author and editor.

The novel alternates between Renaissance Italy and Tito’s Yugoslavia. A young Bosnian and his friends are touring an Italian castle in 1995, which once held poet Enzo Strecci captive. A friar who live at the castle, Niccolò Darsa, starts talking with the young man offering his own story of escaping from a hostile environment, politically charged.

The story parallels those of Darsa and Strecci where all powerful leaders use their position for petty vendettas, destroying lives and country in the process.

A Castle in Romagna by Igor Štiks (translated by Russell Scott Valentino & Tomislav Kuzmanovic) is a short, but verbose novel. I’m glad I read it, but for much of it I was trudging through, until it comes together at the end.

Even though this is a short book (about 100 pages), it is not easy to read. The author’s rambling style, incorporating long, drawn out sentences is hard to follow and I found myself reading the same line twice.

The subject matter is serious and dark. Emotional leaders making bad decisions, abusing their authority. Humanity, however, stays the same regardless of the external circumstances.

This book is dramatic, but it simply didn’t excite me. There was something muted in the narrative and the delivery. I got the themes, I got the parallels, and I got the ideas (I believe) that the author was trying to convey. Overall the novel was enjoyable, I just felt it fell a bit short. ( )

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away….

This could easily have been the introductory sentence for Igor Stiks’ A Castle in Romagna, an amazing novel that explores parallel stories from two different time periods. Both stories feature the theme of betrayal, by close companions, from the least expected sources.

It begins in Northern Italy in 1995 where three friends go to visit an ancient castle in Romagna. They are there to visit the castle because of the internment there, centuries before, of the poet Enzo Strecci. Before they can explore the ruins, one of them is delayed by a caretaker, who is fascinated that he comes from Bosnia, at the time a scene of frequent violence. As the other two go to explore, the Bosnian tries to politely escape from the talkative caretaker. But soon, the man reveals that he, too, is from Bosnia, and begins telling his own life story as well as the story of Enzo Strecci.

His story takes place when the schism occurred between General Tito and Josef Stalin. This led to Yugoslavia trying to become autonomous, with the result that eventually it divided into the complicated political region where Bosnia is located. The caretaker recounts how he barely escaped with his life from those convinced he was a Communist informer. He ends up, scarred and mutilated, in Italy. He describes his own connection with the castle while explaining how Strecci ended up at the same location during the Renaissance, and how it ended in Strecci’s execution.

It’s clear that at first the listener feels like he’s missing out on exploring the ruins, but the story revealed soon becomes far more fascinating. The voice of the caretaker is witty and nostalgic, but he’s not wasting anyone’s time. He reveals only the relevant details in both accounts, which makes the novel move very quickly. The style is unusual but the essential meaning has almost a fairy-tale quality to it. While it’s easy to predict what’s going to happen, watching it unfold is thought- provoking because of the corelation of both accounts. The concepts of trust, vengeance, and betrayal are all classic story lines, but explored here in a way to remind the reader that often the danger lies closer to us than we may wish to realize. The fate of Strecci may be appropriate, but it’s a poignant moment when all his former friends are called to testify against him to save their master. He realizes then the “logic of power.”

I was fascinated by this book, as it’s the first Croatian translation that I’ve read, and because the author is relatively young. He says a great deal about human nature with very few words, and he points at the blind spots most people have when it comes to reason. Historically, I never really understood the divide between Tito and Stalin and what it meant for the residents of Yugoslavia. This book may be difficult to find but worth the search, as it's a fascinating look at little-known time and place. ( )