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    The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel: A Novel
    The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel: A Novel
    The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel: A Novel
    Ebook270 pages3 hours

    The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel: A Novel

    By Magdalena Zyzak

    4/5

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    A story of love and adventure in an imaginary Slavic nation on the brink of historic change—the debut of a ribald and raucous new literary voice
    Set in the quaint (though admittedly backward) fictional nation of Scalvusia in 1939, The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel follows the exploits of a young swineherd with romantic delusions of grandeur. Desperate to attract the voluptuous Roosha, the Gypsy concubine of the local boot-and-shoe magnate, Barnabas and his short-legged steed Wilhelm get embroiled in a series of scandals and misadventures, as every attempt at wooing ends in catastrophe. After the mysterious death of an important figure in the community, a witch-hunt ensues, and a stranger falls from the sky. Barnabas begins to see the terrible tide of history turning in his beloved hometown. The wonderfully eccentric supporting cast includes a priest driven mad by a fig tree, a gang of louts who taunt our reluctant hero at every turn, and a dim-witted vagabond with a goat for a wife. Even as her characters brush up against one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century, Magdalena Zyzak's humor and prose delight in the absurdities of the human animal.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 14, 2014
    ISBN9780805095524
    The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel: A Novel
    Author

    Magdalena Zyzak

    Magdalena Zyzak was born in 1983 in Zabrze, Poland, and now lives in the United States. The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel is her first novel.

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    Reviews for The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      The story of pig farmer Barnabas and his quest for love unfolds as the fictional eastern European nation called Scalvusia is overtaken by the Germans. I thought it was very good satire from this first-time novelist - some passages had me laughing out loud - and I look forward to reading more from her.
    • 5/5
      Barnabas is a young swineherd in a tiny provincial town in the fictional Eastern European country of Scalvusia, on the cusp of World War II. He is quite clever, though utterly naive and completely guileless. He is besotted with a local gypsy woman, Roosha, mistress to the shoe-and-boot mogul von Grushka. Too bad poor Barnabas' deluded ideas of great romance come from epic love poems and melodramatic movies (a la Rudy Valentino). Along with his trusty (if short-legged) woman-horse Wilhelm, Barnabas is determined to woo Roosha away from von Grushka.The town of Odolechka is embroiled with petty entanglements of corruption, greed, romance, apathy, and revenge. Every resident has a motive, and every motive a complication. Little do the distracted inhabitants of this backward and insulated town know, that just beyond the treeline, a German Panzer scout has come to size up the opposition. The plot is so intricate, and at the same time so utterly simple, I can't divulge much here. But I haven't been so thoroughly entertained by satire in a long time! To get a feel for the pace of the story, imagine the set of Clue, and then imagine a group of grim Nazis knocking on the door-- Wadsworth tersely asking the Kommandant to hold his wrench.The characters are searingly drawn, revealing both goodness and shortcomings, extraordinary failings and trivial triumphs. Roosha is, at the same time, the most shallow and the hardest to read. She's the quintessential roaming gypsy fortune teller: a tease, a flirt, choosing to appear ingenuous but all the while unscrupulously plotting with her sister. I liked our first introduction to her:The contents of her skirts were also passionately debated. Dzawav the tavernkeeper, who claimed to have been given a brief peek, maintained that a rainbow of ribbons with nests at their ends swung about her knees; dark birds laid dappled eggs in these nests.This book is a first-rate, fast-paced, ridiculous farce along the lines of The Good Soldier Svejk, Ivan Chonkin, The Inspector General, and Noises Off!. The author is skilled at setting up a joke in two lines, or two chapters; she can weave each of the separate plots together in a way that shouldn't happen, but must happen, and turns out just right. It is absurd, sure, but delightfully so, even as it winds down to its dark and inevitable conclusion. Zyzak's skill with language and lyrical turns-of phrase are charming. I laughed out loud many times, such as at this scenario:(Barnabas) awoke and drank more river water and then spent some intimate and thoughtful time with his reflection. This reflection on the state of his reflection was interrupted by the sound of not too distant pounding hooves. What mad lancer was it this time? Who would shoot at him next? His life had become romantic at last. His imagination had collapsed onto his boredom like a one-ton unicorn onto a pygmy pig.In all, highly recommended for fans of farce, satire, or just plain fun.
    • 3/5
      I read the novel. I've read most of the farces and parodies mentioned in various reviews, and, I simply didn't find this book as funny as others or as engaging. The closest in tone is The Manila Rope by Vaijo Meri--and that book I laughed out loud when I read that novel. I also enjoyed The Golden Ass, although I found it difficult to get into the story, just as I did with this work. Most of Myzak's plot is quite simple, but there are so many characters and situations which intertwine that is often difficult to follow the storyline. Myzak's writing skill is the only the only reason I finished the novel and I will look at her next work because of it. However, I cannot recommend this novel except to those who absolutely love the absurd and will stick to it.
    • 3/5
      I received an ARC from Goodreads Giveaways in exchange for my review. I wanted to give this a higher rating because its very well-written, but I found my mind wandering toward the latter half. It's a funny satirical tale with comically ridiculous characters engaging in silly antics. Humor is hard to successfully pull off, but the writer is obviously very clever in creating her characters and dialogue. I found myself chuckling aloud a few times and smiling quite a bit. The storyline just lacked punch for me, ultimately.
    • 4/5
      I'm not entirely sure what the whole point of this novel was, but it was fun. There's a lot of cool stuff to compare it to - The Mouse That Roared series by Leonard Wibberley, Don Quixote, long humorous picaresque novels of the 18th century, classic parodies in general, and hints of absurdism. The book wasn't laugh-out-loud funny for me, but it was quite amusing the entire way through.I guess what got me, though, is just the lack of any apparent reason behind everything. It's a fun read, yes, but what points is the author trying to make about history, particularly with regards to small 20th century European nations and villages? It felt like some kind of message is there but never comes through entirely. This message is what would have turned a delightful read into something deeper that makes the story stick with the reader past the conclusion of the book.
    • 5/5
      This is an Eary Reviewer edition I got from LibraryThing.com. It is the author's debut novel and I am stunned that this is a first. This satire/allegory/theater of the absurd story is reminiscent of "Waiting For Godot". I laughed, chuckled and almost wept over the plight of this cast of characters and their slapstick absurdity. At the same time, it is a tragic tale of ignorance and blind acceptance of fear based rhetoric. The kind of twisted logic that cost six million people their lives during WWII and continues to cost lives in the present day around the world. The readers can choose to appreciate this brilliant novel as a funny tale of fools, or can leave themselves vulnerable to a profound tale of the absudity and tragedy of the creatures we call humans!
    • 3/5
      The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel draws on traditional literary conventions to create an unconventional story. The overall form of a young male bildungsroman is reminiscent of Voltaire’s Candide while the stylings of absurdist humor can find their precedents in Ionesco and Monty Python. The result is a farcical tale in which Barnabas, a country bumpkin in the fictional Slavic country of Scalvusia, stumbles though his life in 1939 in search of sophistication and love. While the country is painted as backward and its people stupid and crude, one cannot help but feel a sort of nostalgia and affection for a time and people respectively not yet poisoned by the horrors of Naziism and what would become World War II. In fact, Scalvusia could be seen as something of a metaphor for pre-war cultures, e.g. Poland, that were eventually poisoned by The Reich’s reach into Europe. In that context, allegories abound and Magadelena Zyzak is to be applauded for her cleverness. Where the novel falls short is the uneven combination of story and allegory, props and symbols, often at the expense of each other. The reader is left uncertain as to whether a stool is just a stool for example, or if it’s meant to represent else and; the end of the novel denies the reader of a satisfactory ending to the Story. Ultimately you can read as much or as little into the novel as you will and still enjoy it; but there remains a vague dissatisfaction as to what it was really all about despite the epilogue.
    • 5/5
      In the fictitious backwater village of Odolechka, in the imaginary Eastern European country of Scalvusia (whose capital is Krool) lives the bumbling quixotic peasant Barnabas Pierkiel — and these are his adventures. Set just before the outbreak of WWII, the story seems to take place in a twilight realm that is invisible to those outside it.Barnabas is a pig farmer of uncommon beauty (in his own mind) who attempts to start a romance with the beautiful gypsy Roosha Papusha. Tragedy and hysteria ensue and the tale rambles amongst a colorful set of local characters — a doomed pontificating priest, the garrulous shoe magnate, a local punk gang, a fat police chief, timid mayor and the mayor’s religious turned fascist wife.Zyzak has written a fantastic folk tale whose language is surreal and comic — a fabulous picaresque mash-up suggesting Groucho Marx and William Burroughs, Gary Shteyngart and Anton Chekov. The ultimate chapter grandly enmeshes the imaginary nation with the horror and inevitable reality of 1939. This first novel by Magdalena Zyzak is rich in language and humor and I expect many more from this extraordinary talent.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the funniest books I have ever read, as well as the hardest to review. The characters are so varied, and the plot is so hilarious that trying to describe them is near to impossible. I’ll just say that silent-movie melodrama – meets The Three Stooges – meet dark humor – meets The Keystone Cops – meet Jerry Lewis – meets Monty Python. I hope that paints a mental picture for you.I won’t go into detail about the plot, as you can read it in the various descriptions of the book. Suffice it to say that it is set during World War II, but the war is not dwelt upon. The only thing I will say about the characters is “Poor Barnabas.”Some of you will be offended, some of you will laugh out loud, and some of you will laugh out loud while being offended. Some of the satire is blasphemous, so if you are a Christian, you must be a Christian with a sense of humor, else this book is not for you.The following quotes will give you the flavor of the book, but please bear in mind that the review is for an advanced reader’s edition and may not be exact in the finished product, but I cannot imagine the author’s wanting to change even one word. …Odolechkan intelligence was rather below the national average.… Barnabus himself had not excelled at first, but a certain nimbleness of mind had allowed him to master the alphabet at the budding age of twelve… You have sinned, originally and unoriginally, Appolonia croaked… Lick your spoon before passing it to a neighbor. Only after one’s fifth serving of alcohol is it appropriate to slide beneath the table. The antithesis between lack of property and property, so long as it is not comprehended as the antithesis of thesis and synthesis, still remains antithetical to the thesis synthesized… He…felt himself unable to quell an insurrection in his trousers and immediately wondered if he had fallen a victim to some new gypsy curse. Do we have time to urinate when there are Germans in the woods? You can see my problem, I hope. Every few pages there are sentences such as the above. It was dreadfully difficult to pick out just a few, and I’m not even sure those are the best ones.I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, although it took a few pages to start understanding the satire. I highly recommend it, but be forewarned – you must be broad-minded to like it.

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    The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel - Magdalena Zyzak

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