Blameless (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Hardcover – April 11, 2017

A very difficult read, stream of consciousness style. The story within (Luisa's story) more comprehensible and was more what I was interested in.

Magris is not light reading. He is not a conventional novelist, nor a so-called novelist of ideas. He is not Iris Murdoch, and In Blameless, the story is opaque. Ostensibly about the bizarre obsession of an Adriatic arms collector who hopes documenting his collection in a museum will promote peace, it is more about the self-destructive and even “savage” predisposition of humans to destroy themselves. Humans destroy what they do not understand, even the ostensibly “civilized ones” then use history as a vehicle for rationalizing or even normalizing their crimes. The unnamed obsessive is symbolically cremated before he realizes his plan—up in smoke as it were—laudable as his mania might be. It is left to a sort of clerk who herself embodies the legacies of genocide, the slave trade and World War II to compose the extended catalog of the museum, adding her own emendations from time to time.You may regard this as a work of genius or as a put on, depending on your tolerance for “ magic unrealism.” But unless your tolerance for hallucinatory writing and discontinuous narrative la Juan Rulfo is high, you will be disappointed or confused. You may well be anywayMakes Vargas Llosa, who enthusiastically blurbs it, seem like supermarket checkout reading.

I cannot recommend this book. The writing is very beautiful but the whole plot of the book is very confusing to me.

Am exquisitely written book about the futilely of war

A fascinating and informative book set in Trieste during and following WWII but universal in its reach. Based on factual events, the story is concise compared with the historical and political reflections on man's relationship with aggression and war that accompany it . A slow but worthwhile read.

Boring couldn’t finish it and i finish everything

Obtuse