The Last Window - Giraffe

Michael Levitin, Times Literary Supplement In his rollicking novel The Last Window-Giraffe, Péter Zilahy has revisited the prouder chapters in the history of the Balkans. Blending history and reportage, linguistics and politics, family memoir and Balkan myth, Zilahy delivers a generational confession which suggest the fragmented destiny of a post-Soviet Europe. Zilahys jokes take the form of political one-liners Belgraders count riot cops instead of sheep to get off to sleep; If the US is a human melting pot, then Eastern Europe is a scrap yard as he takes us through the narrators childhood. The books rambling passages on freedom and sex are also politically aligned: My bumpy road to sexual maturity was paved with the death of Communist dictators. Zilahys story his generations story and the story of Soviet-trampled Eastern Europe comes down to choices, the narrator declares in the closing pages, even when there is nothing to choose from.