the entanglement of history: Daša Drndić’s ‘EEG’

‘When was all this? Time is getting away from me again, overflowing, it will not be tamed, insane time carries me off into the madhouse of its expanse, into the underground of its gloom.’ (224)

fiction and history have seldom been so well entangled as in Daša Drndić’s EEG. the uncovering of the past, of particular atrocities and crimes in recent Europe, weaves its way through Andreas Ban’s personal narrative. statistics, counts, and dates are peppered throughout the text alongside fictional stories from the main character’s life. the most impressive aspect of the novel is its formal ingenuity and the deftness with which Drndić layers the book. we become lost in the horrors only to realize that the formal complexity of the book is staggering. where does history begin and end? where does Drndić turn her work over to Ban? and vice versa? (strange question that.) here we have a book that confronts that most human of events, atrocity, with exceptional high art. indeed the two are woven so closely it is impossible to draw them apart.

text referenced: EEG. Drndić, Daša. translated by Hawkesworth, Celia. New Directions. 2018.