The Last Window-Giraffe

When I first saw it, I thought it was just a children book with a very attractive cover and funny pictures in a bright yellow package. But then I glanced at its sub title, and for that instance, I felt that this book must be something! And that you'd better have it before it's gone from the book stores' shelves. No kidding! Published by my favorite publisher; Bentang Pustaka, it also featured a writer that came from Eastern Europe, something that happened as often as the blue moon.The book turns out to be a very wild, energetic, yet fantastic reading! Its translation into Bahasa Indonesia is quite excellent, but still I found some difficulties here and there, perhaps due to its original language is uncommon, or maybe the editor have to put some extra works for its upcoming revised edition - if any, or simply because we have to stop periodically to recall what was being told, sometimes in subtle story line. But I strongly appreciate Bentang et.al. for the hard work given and the extra time taken to explain as many as pretty simple things in the writer's world to be in context to the everyday world as known by our fellow Indonesian readers. If only other 99% of our army of Publisher, Editors, and Translators would have done that, life would be much easier for the rest of us.Have I told you that this is NOT a children book? Due to its cover, it might be miss perceived as a novel, but a pictorial dictionary would be a closer definition. The book is full of interesting photographs, taken by the writer, to accompany the story and sometimes to explain it further. Its title itself is just another meaningful story; the window giraffe perhaps doesn't mean a thing in the English world, or even in Bahasa Indonesia. And made you wonder, what the heck does it mean? But pardon it for the translation; because it was derived from Hungarian, the window giraffe is actually their way to say the alphabetical sequence "A-B-C" in our language. Window, stands for the first character or "A" (="Ablak"), whilst Giraffe, is for the last one or "Z" (="Zsiráf"). And to capture the pupil's attention, they draw cute and funny picture on it: the Window Giraffe, also adopted as the book cover, of course with a bright yellow background, to secure our attention. Clever!The book focused on the harsh and sometime absurd daily life under the political oppression of the - you know - Iron Curtain, a.k.a. Eastern Europe under the USSR/Soviet's occupation. Things that should have been very simple yet turned into some ugly realities and sometimes chaotic schemes. A rare look into the life far away from us. A rare, but a deep look definitely worth to be read. The book somewhat is mind boggling for it shifts in theme and time, changing itself between prose and poetry, also either fiction or nonfiction, move back and forward between history and autobiography. All things happened in the Serbia demonstration 1996-1997, but yet universally told thus even if you don't know about it at all, you still can correlate it with your life for being on the same track: freedom, youth, struggling for better life, and hope..

This is a fantastic read. The language is beautiful, a great translation, and it's great to look at, too, full of the author's own photographs. The interesting thing is: you can read it on many levels, and it's definitely worth re-reading it because each time you begin to see more and more connections and layers. Nothing is what it seems at first glance. And that is also what the author is trying to tell us, I guess. It has a powerful flow that takes you in.Sometimes you don't know if you should laugh or cry. For me, that's the best kind of humor. Another strong point is that even though much of the action takes place in Serbia, during the demonstrations in the nineties, somehow it becomes universal, even if you don't know much about the events or the culture of the region. Because besides being a lot of fun, the book deals with major issues such as innocence, freedom, identity and hope.I definitely recommend The Last Window- Giraffe, there's something for everyone in this book. Here is a description of the bullet-ridden walls of the author's hometown:'We climbed walls, stuck our fingers into the holes and with our eyes shut tried to imagine the bullets. A Braille modern history of Budapest - a city that cannot be seen by the eye, only felt with fingers, read between the lines: house-wallsized hieroglyphs, epic and lyric variations, wartime graffiti, crude erotic messages, an inside-out archive.'I hope to see many other books by this writer in translation!