{"id":26915,"date":"2019-12-09T14:13:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T18:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=26915"},"modified":"2019-12-09T14:14:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T18:14:02","slug":"emilio-fraia-sevastopol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2019\/12\/09\/emilio-fraia-sevastopol\/","title":{"rendered":"Emilio Fraia: “Sevastopol”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Sevastopol”<\/strong><\/span>
\nby Emilio Fraia<\/span>
\nfrom the December 16, 2019 issue of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]E[\/fusion_dropcap]milio Fraia is a Brazilian writer who was on\u00a0Granta<\/em> magazine’s 2012 list, “The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists” (see here<\/a>). I was reading and writing about those stories for a bit in 2012 and 2013 before I apparently stopped . . . right before Fraia’s story, “A Temporary Stay.” While I think I read it, I’m not sure. I’m coming to this story with no sense of Fraia’s other work.<\/p>\n

He has one novel, O ver\u00e3o de Chibo <\/em>(2008), and one graphic novel, Campo em Branco <\/em>(2013), to his name (though I don’t think either have been translated into English) and a 2018 collection of three stories, Sebastopol<\/em>, from which “Sevastopol” is taken. This collection is slated to be published by New Directions in 2021.<\/p>\n

I’m intrigued by this collection of stories (and, therefore, by “Sevastopol”) because Fraia suggests he took his inspiration, in part, from Tolstoy’s collection of three stories called\u00a0Sevastopol Sketches<\/em>. Fraia, for his part, doesn’t necessarily set this story in Sevastopol; rather, we are in S\u00e3o Paulo amongst the less well-to-do theatre people, who “will flatter you to your face and stick a knife in your back, that’s a fact.” Our narrator is a woman named Nadia, and she has met a director she “got a good vibe from.” This is Klaus, a rather eccentric individual. When the story begins, Nadia shares a story she’s written, one about a woman named Nadia. “I asked Klaus whether he thought it might work onstage. He said that it was a lousy story and clearly nothing about it worked.”<\/p>\n

The next sentence is also the beginning of a new section: “I think Klaus took a shine to me.”<\/p>\n

I think this is developing into an interesting story, and I’m anxious to get deeper! Please let me know your thoughts!<\/p>\n

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