Celebration

A Paris Review Book of the Year. In four fragmentary stories set in the mountainous Lika region of Croatia, Mijo's life unfurls not with the chronology of time but in episodes, each in flow with the textural grain of this remote earth. With sparest of prose, Karakas has crafted an exquisite sense of place and of family within it. The result is among the most powerful modern homages to a landscape and its people. As an unwilling combatant on the run in "The House", Mijo has not strayed far from home. From his hiding place in the woods above their cabin he observes through the cross hairs of his rifle his beloved wife go about her daily routine. Autumn is advancing and Drenka has agreed that at night it might be safe for his return to the crawl space beneath the house. In "Dogs" Mijo is a child working on his family's land the day the local authorities pass an edict that all dogs in the valley must be killed. No reason is given. Around the table, his father and mother evaluate a warm life in terms of raw pragmatism, and the journey Mijo decides to make will become his pilgrimage to adulthood. Mijo arrives at the door of his girlfriend, Drenka, on a day of festivity in the final, eponymous story, "Celebration". The couple plans to walk through summer fields to the revelry in town. With her brother as chaperone, the two lovers lag behind. The contours of the horizon have shifted with the seasons and their direction becomes as uncertain as the events that will unfurl at the festivity awaiting them.