22.04.2015

Farewell, Cowboy garners main review in Irish Times

Literary Editor of the Irish Times calls this a '..a beauttiful, subversively appealing novel'

''Farewell Cowboy, by Olja Savičević: a beautiful, subversively appealing novel. In Dada, the Croatian writer Olja Savičević has created a compelling witness who is also a survivor, not particularly heroic, but likeable and sympathetic.''

So writes the Literary Editor of The Irish Times, Eileen Battersby, who gave the book a perceptive review worhty of a major literary novel. Some of the highlights can be found below, with more on the website here.

''Savičević has already introduced Western movies, one of the defining motifs of this wonderful novel, and in truth she is something of a lone gunslinger herself. She has ridden into town, well, not quite, she has acquired a Zippo, a little scooter and she needs to discover the truth behind a family tragedy.''

''Savičević’s prose, which is always relaxed and descriptive, and sustained with conversational ease, becomes increasingly beautiful in moments of high drama. The distinguished translator Celia Hawkesworth continues to serve Balkan literature brilliantly and she conveys the mood of the moment in Farewell, Cowboy, as well as she did in Vladimir Arsenijevic’s much earlier despatch, In the Hold (1994), which appeared in English two years later.

Dada, having completed her mission, takes her leave not only of her home town, but of her younger, naive self. A dramatic version of this novel is about to be staged, and it should also be filmed. The humour and sheer anarchy of the action combined with the comic exasperation, unforgettable characters and Dada’s wry acceptance of the way life happens to be, make this subversively appealing novel all the more profound; even, unexpectedly, beautiful.''