Ágota Kristòf – I Don’t Care Stories

Here, in English at last, is a collection of Ágota Kristóf’s short—sometimes very short—stories, which she selected herself, translated by the peerless Chris Andrews. Written immediately before her masterful trilogy (The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie), Kristóf’s short fictions oscillate between parables, surrealist anecdotes, and stories animated by a realism stripped to the bone, often returning to the theme of exile: the twin impossibilities of either returning home or of reconstructing home elsewhere. The world of I Don’t Care has very hard edges: cruelty is almost omnipresent, peace and consolation are scarce. Austere and minimalist, but with a poetic force that shifts the walls in the reader’s mind, Kristóf’s penetrating short fictions make for extraordinary and essential reading.