What We’re Reading: Siege 13

Siege 13, by Tamas Dobozy (Milkweed Editions, 2013)

If I could, I would recommend reading Tamas Dobozy’s Siege 13 while in transit; somewhere between points A and B. I say this because that’s precisely where I began Dobozy’s collection of short stories — on a twenty-two hour train ride from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Essex, Montana — and I couldn’t have found it more fitting. Rolling hills, empty plains, and that persistent, nagging feeling that we all get while travelling from one place to another: eventually, I will get to point B. Hopefully. Soon.

Siege 13 is built upon that precise feeling — anxiously awaiting a ‘point B’; the end of one event (or phase, or era) that allows another one to begin. Dobozy’s collection consists of thirteen linked stories, all revolving around the Soviet Budapest Offensive at the end of World War II. Whether his stories exist in 1944, during the horrific siege, or in 2007 within a group of Hungarian émigrés in Canada, each is told behind the lens of transition. Dobozy’s subtlely-crafted characters are constantly moving from one place to another — from one home to another, from one country to another… and always from one frame of mind to another. Dobozy plucks his characters from their worlds, dropping them carelessly into a new, foreign reality, almost as though he himself does not know how his characters will react. And then, of course, he watches with us as his story unfolds.

This theme — transition — creates an interesting rhythm throughout Dobozy’s work. His stories ebb and flow within the transitional period he has created, always ending with his characters’ acknowledgement of the world they have been thrown into. By the end of the book, I found myself expecting this resolution at the conclusion of each story. However, somehow, the author still manages to catch the reader off guard. He satisfies the reader with an ending that he has been expecting all along; however, Dobozy doesn’t get there in a traditional fashion. His stories often end abruptly, leaving loose ends and unanswered questions for the reader. However, I didn’t find this discomforting at all. On the contrary, I felt privileged, as though Dobozy was finally giving me (and all readers) the credit we deserve. I left each of his stories with a sense of closure, but was pleasantly surprised at Dobozy’s ability to bring me to his conclusions without leading me there by the hand.

The worlds that Dobozy has created for his characters — the worlds that they are transitioning between — are almost as noteworthy as the transitions themselves. In each of his stories, Dobozy has managed to establish situations that expertly blur the lines between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’; ‘morality’ and ‘immorality’. He does not allow his characters to tiptoe these lines, but he launches them from one side of morality to another, leaving the audience to judge for itself — that is, if his readers can sort out the complications of a world that is (most likely) completely foreign to them as well. The pushy, nagging ethical questions woven throughout Siege 13 drive the collection from just that — a simple collection of short stories — to a work that sticks with the reader long after its conclusion.

And it’s not just Dobozy’s ethical ponderings that kept me glued to his stories. His prose is as sly and subtlely-crafted as the stories themselves. Siege 13 presents a wide range of events, all reported by Dobozy with stunning clarity. Whether he is describing — in gritty detail — a horrific massacre along battle lines in Hungary, or portraying the dark, witty humor of a college student in Canada (as he does in “The Beautician”), Dobozy has managed to strike a near-perfect balance of detail and emotion within his stories. It is difficult to write a collection in which the story of a student’s senior thesis is as memorable as the story of the slow, wicked demise of a zookeeper in Budapest… and yet, somehow, Dobozy has mastered the skill. To my surprise, I still find myself wondering about Dobozy’s student and his senior thesis.

Dobozy’s prose also has a sort of lilting, melodic quality to it — one that can coax the reader into a heartbreaking conclusion, without warning him of its approach. The following passage, from “The Beautician” does this quite specifically:

“The truth is, it looked like a strategy, as if by losing himself in these fantastical descriptions he might lose me as well[.]”

This beautiful, smart prose, combined with Dobozy’s incredible story-crafting skills and characters, make Siege 13 an incredibly memorable collection. Tamas Dobozy managed to transport me to his world and allow me to exist within it – to find beauty in tragedy, to find right in wrong (and vice versa), morality in immorality. Most of all, he allowed me to recognize all of these things in transition… in the movement of a people, a country, and a culture from one reality to another. And all this, before my train arrived at the station.

It seems as though we’ve seen a lot of transition-based works lately. In fact, one of our recent reads, Woke Up Lonely (by Fiona Maazel), predicts a more contemporary transition — one from our current society to a futuristic culture and society. Are works like this hitting home for you? It certainly makes me wonder about our fascination with movement and change, and how that affects the way we read literature, and in turn, the way we live our lives.