Whatever destroys dignity is funny
THE LAST WINDOW-GIRAFFE:
A Picture Dictionary for the Over Fives
By Péter Zilahy, Tr. by Tim Wilkinson
119 pp. Anthem Press $22.95
Reviewed by Elizabeth McCullough
The Last Window-Giraffe takes its name from a common alphabet primer from author Péter Zilahy’s school days in Hungary: Window-Giraffe: a Pictorial Encyclopaedia. In Hungarian, the word for “window” begins with the letter a; the word for “giraffe” begins with the letter z. We might call a similar book in English Apple-Zebra. “A is the first letter of the Hungarian alphabet,” Zilahy explains. “A is the first letter of the Serbian alphabet. A is the first letter of the Croatian alphabet. A is the first letter of the Bosnian alphabet. A does not equal A.”
And so begins Zilahy’s tragic romp through the disintegrating political landscape of post-Tito Yugoslavia. The year is 1996, and Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, is wracked by student demonstrations against President Slobodan Milošević…
Filed under: authors, books, history, virginia Tagged: | Belgrade, Peter Zilahy, Serbia, The Last Window-Giraffe, Tito, Yugoslavia
