Kin - BookWyrm

No cover — Miljenko Jergovic, Russell Scott Valentino: Kin (Paperback, 2021, Archipelago)

Paperback, 500 pages

Published June 14, 2021 by Archipelago.

ISBN:: 978-1-939810-52-6

(1 review)

Kin is a dazzling family epic from one of Croatia's most prized writers. In this sprawling narrative which spans the entire twentieth century, Miljenko Jergovic peers into the dusty corners of his family's past, illuminating them with a tender, poetic precision. Ordinary, forgotten objects - a grandfather's beekeeping journals, a rusty benzene lighter, an army issued raincoat - become the lenses through which Jergovic investigates the joys and sorrows of a family living through a century of war. The work is ultimately an ode to Yugoslavia - Jergovic sees his country through the devastation of the First World War, the Second, the Cold, then the Bosnian war of the 90s; through its changing street names and borders, shifting seasons, through its social rituals at graveyards, operas, weddings, markets - rendering it all in loving, vivid detail. A portrait of an era.

1 edition

Stephanie Jane reviewed Kin by Miljenko Jergovic

Requires perseverance!

3 stars

I should probably start this review by admitting that Kin is a considerably bigger book than my usual reads. It's about four times the length in fact so I was somewhat intimidated before I even started - hence why this review is appearing nearly a month after the book's English language publication rather than coinciding with that date.

I would describe Kin as something between Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories of a City and To The Lake by Kapka Kassabova. Jergovic tells the history of his Stubler family's life in Sarajevo over pretty much the entirety of the twentieth century from their various immigrations as 'kuferas' (suitcase carriers) from Germany, Slovenia, Austria and beyond to the war of 1992 at which point the Stubler's effectively ceased to be a Sarajevo family. Jergovic begins by mentioning what is perhaps the defining event of that century for his family - the death of …

I should probably start this review by admitting that Kin is a considerably bigger book than my usual reads. It's about four times the length in fact so I was somewhat intimidated before I even started - hence why this review is appearing nearly a month after the book's English language publication rather than coinciding with that date.

I would describe Kin as something between Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories of a City and To The Lake by Kapka Kassabova. Jergovic tells the history of his Stubler family's life in Sarajevo over pretty much the entirety of the twentieth century from their various immigrations as 'kuferas' (suitcase carriers) from Germany, Slovenia, Austria and beyond to the war of 1992 at which point the Stubler's effectively ceased to be a Sarajevo family. Jergovic begins by mentioning what is perhaps the defining event of that century for his family - the death of his uncle, Mladen, in 1943 - before repeatedly circling out and back again to recount stories from the lives of myriad family members, neighbours, and other vaguely linked people. Kin is a bewildering collection of anecdotes that sometimes swept me up into its narratives and, more often, left me confused as to how what I was currently reading about fitted into anything I had read before.

This is certainly a book that requires perseverance! And, actually, it got easier to read as it went along because recurring motifs - events and people - became families, but Jergovic doesn't make it easy for non-family readers to keep up. If I hadn't been keen to plough on in order to claim this book for my WorldReads, I probably would have given up after an hour or so. As it turned out, from the third hour onwards I began to feel more comfortable, although was still frustrated at lengthy diversions into the detailed back stories of minor characters who then never reappear. I would recommend Kin to readers who have an interest in the history of Sarajevo because being able to envisage all the locations and maybe even remembering some of the people from their own experiences would be fascinating. For me though, I would have preferred a more focused, more stringently edited account.