by Andrej Blatnik
translated by Tamara M Soban
Publication Date: 09/07/2010
ISBN: 9781564785992
This collection of sharp, spare, occasionally absurd, cruel, touching miniatures addresses the fundamental difficulty we have in making the people we love understand what we want and need. Demonstrating that language and intimacy are as much barriers between human beings as ways of connecting them, Andrej Blatnik here provides us with a guided tour of the slips, misunderstandings, and blind alleys we each manage to fall foul of on a daily basis--no closer to understanding the motives of our families, friends, lovers, or coworkers than we are those of a complete stranger... or, indeed, our own. Partly parables, partly fairy tales, partly sketches for novels that will never be written, "You Do Understand" is a perfect comedy of errors--the errors of a species of talkers who've never learned how to listen.