Masterpiece 'The Fantastic Twins' returns to Vietnamese readers

Published in 1986, 1988, 1991 and written in French, for decades, The Twins has been considered one of the best works of modern Hungarian literature in both content and writing style.

The book consists of 3 parts: The Big Book, Evidence and The Third Lie. The first part revolves around 2 twin brothers (names unknown) sent by their mother to the countryside, where their grandmother lives on the border of a war-torn country.

The novel The Fantasy Twins published by Book Hunter and Literature Publishing House, translated by Hieu Tan

Here, under the cruelty and neglect of their grandmother, the two brothers lived together and helped each other survive. They learned to pretend to be blind, deaf, to become beggars or not to react to pain... and later applied them to the challenges they encountered on their journey.

At their grandmother's house, they also meet a foreign officer, a church maid, a priest, and many others. It can be said that Ágota Kristóf's character system in this first part is extremely complex. They do not have clearly established personalities. They are unreliable narrators, while good and evil in them are not separated but are a switch that can be turned on at any time.

Requires readers to always be in the mindset of self -discovery

Following the story, the author gradually shows us the unimaginable by revealing the hidden corners of the characters. With a cold, neutral and unemotional writing style, the author does not hesitate to challenge the classic motifs of literature, when children are always innocent or a priest is as pure as the source of water. As we go deeper into the story, violence gradually becomes more prominent, and with a unique way of recreating, that turbulent world also appears differently.

Perhaps because of this, many critics have compared it to Grimm's fairy tales, when the motif of the two abandoned brothers reminds many of the story of Hansel and Gretel . And also with a restrained writing style, hiding the fierceness behind a genre for children, the Hungarian female author has also dug a "trap" waiting for readers to discover.

Although the author does not specify where that land is or when that time is, through the few details that he reveals, we can guess that it was World War II and the Jews were suffering.

Ágota Kristóf's literature has no excess, but on the contrary, requires the reader to always be in a state of decoding it.

PHOTO: THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ágota Kristóf shows herself to be an author who has absolute control over the plot. She reveals only what is necessary and the only clues for the reader to find.

The first book, The Big Notebook, in this trilogy is also very special in its writing style, consisting of 63 small paragraphs. This can be explained by the fact that the author was writing in French - the language of exile that she had to endure due to the changes of the times, but even then, it still depicts fragments that are true to the mood from which the novel was developed.

The following two books, Evidence and The Third Lie , are written in a graceful prose style, showing the author's greater familiarity with the new language she uses. However, the mystery remains, and it is impossible to determine the answer.

In these two parts, the identities of the two brothers appear for the first time, they are Claus and Lucas, each with their own life. While the younger brother Claus stays in town to run a small bookstore, Lucas crosses the border, changing himself.

But it doesn’t stop there, the deeper we go, the more the doubt about whether they are twins or just one and a shadow having a dialogue with themselves gradually grows. Until the end, Ágota Kristóf doesn’t give us any specific ending, inviting the reader to solve it for themselves. But the main focus on loneliness, violence and extremism is conveyed clearly and uniquely.

Through The Fantastic Twins, Ágota Kristóf has created a haunting story of a turbulent period written in a unique and unmistakable style. True to the title, this is a book that straddles the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between the normal and the abnormal, between the bearable and the irreversible.

Ágota Kristóf (1935 – 2011) was a Hungarian writer who lived in Switzerland and wrote in French. She received many prestigious awards, including the Prix Europe awarded by the Association of French-speaking Authors, the Gottfried Keller Prize in 2001 in Switzerland, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2008.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/kiet-tac-cap-song-sinh-ky-ao-tro-lai-voi-doc-gia-viet-nam-185241127155649868.htm