Review by Jacob Silverman for the New York Times:
“Satantango,” the latest novel by the Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai to be translated into English, takes place over a few rain-sodden days in a dying hamlet. The local estate has been closed, its animals hocked, its mill shut down. Perhaps a dozen residents remain. Like the surrounding buildings, they are rife with rot.
As in much of Krasznahorkai’s work, a sense of hallucinatory conspiracy is in the air. People speak ominously, if vaguely, about what lies ahead. They see visions and hear bells they can’t place. “If they read the papers properly,” one character says, “they would know that there is a real crisis out there.”
But there is also a shared belief that things aren’t as they appear. Some mistake must have been made; things can’t be as bad as they seem. And so the residents “are waiting. They’re waiting patiently, like the long-suffering lot they are, in the firm conviction that someone has conned them. They are waiting, belly to the ground, like cats at pig-killing time, hoping for scraps.” (This repetition, with its gradual slathering of metaphoric detail, characterizes Krasznahorkai’s style.)
The book’s title refers to a dance performed when the hour is late enough and the people, gathered at the local watering hole, find themselves sufficiently sozzled. It could also describe the book’s structure: ever moving forward and back, orchestrated by a knowing, even otherworldly figure behind the scenes.
