The Crowning Glory by Pit Kralsky is a book of hybrid micro-fictions inspired by the prose works of Beckett, Borges, Cortázar, Harms, Kafka, Kiš, Queneau, with a self-conscious writing style and exciting cinesthetic atmosphere.
Pit Kralsky is the nom de plume of Macedonian-born writer and director Goran Trenchovski. Experienced in all media, he has written extensively for cinema, TV and the theatre. He has also written some dozen books of essays on literature, film and drama. His PhD thesis was entitled ‘Intermedial verifications of the novels “The Red Horse” by Tashko Georgievski and “The Gentle Barbarian” by Bohumil Hrabal’. He has taught and collaborated in many international cultural, artistic and educational projects and academic programmes. Founder and Director of the AsterFest International Film Festival, he is also a member of the British Comparative Literature Association, the European Film Academy and the Macedonian Writers’ Association. His feature film The Golden Five had its world premiere at the Raindance Film Festival and won an award at the Cardiff International Film Festival, and since then he has continued to live and work in the United Kingdom.
The author notes that there are 22 short stories in this collection, just as there are 22 chapters in the Apocalypse and 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.Most of them are new and fresh, and in some of them he refers to some well-known and also some unknown motifs. But a few of them he has began some thirty years ago and has just finished now. All these prose pieces are inspired by his decades-long ascetic encounters and contacts with dramatic and film art and with the humanities. They are all linked with the thread of identification and recognition and sealed with the natural patina of memories.
The stories comprised in this book are: Medallion, Artaud, Aster-Globalism, The Fan, Late Summer Days, Smoking King Size for the Last Time, Checkmate, New Orpheus of Our Times, The Tortoise People, Listening to Wagner, Clockwork Homes, The Sky is Different in All Places, At First Breath, Angelic Post, Václav and I, Tibu & Rosa, The Glorious Five, Lumen Coeli, A Beggar or a King, Einstein in Bermuda Shorts, Pit(er), and Chronology.
The afterword is written by prof. Mimoza Reyl: ‘This is a work in which the artist’s dreams dream together with him, collected in all these amazing metaphysical writings of his creative genius. The author climbs the pyramids aided by his unusual talent, striding with his feet into infinity and riding the waves of the divine, swimming in the deep mystical waters as a narrator, places inaccessible to ordinary people, presenting us with exhilarating scenes from some distant and magic worlds…This collection of short stories poses some crucial questions about the world, and confirms in a Shakespearean manner that this world is a stage and each one of us is just playing a role. The stage of life keep asking us feverishly when we are going to get rid of our masks and when we are going to look in the eyes of the other to find ourselves, in order to tell our story out of the deep abysses of the subconscious and liberate ourselves from the heavy burden of earthly melded unions…While travelling through the linear space of eternal time, Pit Kralsky, the pyramid climber, notes everything down and reminds us that everything that exists in this labyrinthine world is only a personal and individual perspective. At this point he calls us to join him in climbing to the higher frequencies of the heavenly, those that exist above the apexes of the pyramids and pull away from the worldly kingdoms dominated by pointlessness and stupidity on Earth where Man is constantly engulfed in the double shade of evil.’
The shorstest story in the book is ‘Tibu & Rosa’.
Tibu & Rosa
History repeats itself in cycles and in those countries ruled by dictators it is often corrected. The ambitious professional diplomat Tiburcio and his intriguing wife Sinforosa, after many years of service, were caught in the trap ‘Caribana’, placed for them by their closest associates, all of them anchored safely in the deep state. Their greed and profligacy were revealed when they were caught spending seven times more than the usual yearly budget of the embassy. This internationally notorious and scandalous fable was used as an example when teaching the school subject called the Animal Kingdom that did not identify the old and new civil servants by their technology, but by their approach to the democratic jungle.
The moral of the story:
When someone Supreme rules for too long, they forget that their chair is open to change.
The signed book copy is on sale on eBay for 6.99 £.
