Duncan Robertson – författare

During the Middle Ages the act of reading was experienced intensively in the monastic exercise of lectio divina 'the prayerful scrutiny of passages of Scripture, savored in meditation, memorized, recited, and rediscovered in the reader's own religious life. The rich literary tradition that arose from this culture includes theoretical writings from the Conferences of John Cassian (fifth century) through the twelfth-century treatises of Hugh of St. Victor and the Carthusian Guigo II; it also includes compilations, literary meditations, and scriptural commentary, notably on the Song of Songs. This study brings medievalist research together with modern theoretical reflections on the act of reading in a consolidation of historical scholarship, spirituality, and literary criticism.

"Visegrad is very funny and very insightful—into Central Europe, into the US, into the expat mind. I also have to reread it, probably right away, to sort out all the dizzying detail Robertson has packed it with. So, while I’m rereading it, you should be getting started now on reading it the first time."--Arthur Phillips, author of Prague and The King at the Edge of the WorldMeet Rye, a young American writer adrift in Visegrad, where the national sport is appearing to work as hard as possible while doing nothing at all. Things get complicated in this rollicking satire when Rye partners with a loan-shark who has purchased the outstanding student debt of his fellow expats. He squares their accounts by signing the likes of Colin Having, who suspects the world’s dogs of conspiring against him, H. Defer, who is developing a universal theory based on the wetness of feet, and the SEC man, who has been sent to Visegrad to determine how Rye’s boss acquires individual student loans.Before long, Rye discovers he is being followed. Customers disappear and he is no longer free to leave the country. Rye realizes that he must sabotage the lucrative business he has helped build, or else abandon his friends to a shady cabal in the Visegrad government.Visegrad presents a world at once familiar and preposterous—an imaginary world, and yet one that is historically accurate in its an amalgamation of Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, Krakow, and Berlin. It is about getting away with something—being young, being cruel, falling in love. A must for fans of Prague (Arthur Phillips); The Sellout (Paul Beatty); Necessary Errors (Caleb Crain); All That Man Is (David Szalay); and Temporary People (Deepak Unnikrishnan).