De palimpsesten

Here's a book with a polyglot perspective. Author Aleksandra Lun, who grew up speaking Polish, wrote this novel in Spanish; its main character is Czeslaw Przesnicki, an Eastern European by birth living in an asylum in Belgium after the failure of his first book, a vampire novel. Przesnicki wrote

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the book in Antarctic after following his now-dead lover, Ernest Hemingway, to Antarctica, thus derailing his veterinary ambitions and angering the Antarctic literature writers into following him around Europe, beating him, and kidnapping him. His fellow residents of the asylum include many other writers who wrote in languages other than their native tongues, from Nabokov to Samuel Beckett to Isak Dinesen, who break into his therapy sessions with their thoughts on literature and language while the impassive doctor tries to convince Przesnicki to forget Antarctic and write his second novel in Polish.

As you can tell from the plot description, there's plenty of crazy things happening. Lun has many interesting ideas about immigration, adopted cultures, Eastern Europe, and the connections writers feel to literature and languages. The wild inventiveness, absurdity and comic repetition of Lun's tale keep the main character's perspective from becoming grim despite his circumstances. I also appreciated a truly interesting and informative note by the translator, Elizabeth Breyer, at the end, a very appropriate and enlightening addition for this book. Obviously, it's not a book for everyone, but if you're a fan of words and writing and you're willing to give it a chance it's a lot of fun.

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