Book review: Seiobo There Below

Reader be warned, this is a daunting novel that demands diligent reading and, possibly, a knowledge of Italian crosswords, writes Tod Wodicka.

Born in Hungary in 1954, László Krasznahorkai is one of contemporary fiction’s most serious and challenging writers. Susan Sontag, famously, called him “the contemporary master of the apocalypse”, which is accurate, especially if your idea of the end of the world includes complex punctuation and sentences far longer than this book review.

Krasznahorkai is a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize this year, the winner to be announced on Tuesday. This month also features the UK publication of the English translation of Krasznahorkai's acclaimed 2008 novel, Seiobo There Below.

Seiobo There Below is the first novel that I have read by Krasznahorkai that doesn't feel like its events take place in black-and-white – or in hell. Satantago, his revered 1985 novel about an infernal, decaying, rain-beleaguered community losing its collective mind, was so bleak that, putting the book aside, it made even the most mundane things in life seem joyous and colourful. The Sun still existed. The trees had pretty green leaves. Reading it was an experience both exhilarating – those mad, unfurling sentences – and relentlessly depressing.

Seiobo There Below is something altogether different. There is beauty in this novel. In fact, an investigation into the nature of beauty, art and the divine are Seiobo There Below's primary concerns.

This, however, does not mean that it is an easy read. In fact, it may be Krasznahorkai’s most challenging book – which means that it may be one of the most challenging books published in recent memory. Casual readers beware.

Firstly, those sentences. For the most part, the sentences in Seiobo There Below go on for pages, sometimes entire chapters, words caught in a huge net of commas and semi-colons and dashes. On top of that, most of these sentences consist of independent stories, or vignettes. You're not allowed a moment's respite. It can be infuriating. For the effect to work, one has to enter a patient, almost meditative state, and let Krasznahorkai's sentences pull you along, twist around the subject, illuminate this or that crevice, constantly moving, like light on water.

This can either sweep you in, or you send your attention spiralling out into the margins. Both happened to me while reading. There were times where I’d lose my place, my patience, literally lose the plot, and I would back up, try to catch hold again, fail, and finally have to put the book down for a break. Then there were the sentences that were mesmerising, had an almost psychedelic effect, and it was as if time bent along with the words on the page until both completely disappeared.

But what is Seiobo There Below about? Well, endless sentences aside, herein lies the novel's primary difficulty. There is no single story or conventional plot in Krasznahorkai's novel. It is a 450-page book that jumps between time, characters, lands and even languages. The creation of art, music and theatre feature heavily, as does the exploration of the artistic ritual as a conduit to or for the divine. What is the role of true beauty in our lives, and is it good or bad, seem to be what is being explored.

That being said, the second chapter opens up with an untranslated Italian crossword puzzle. Why? I have absolutely no idea. The novel did not come with a Google Translate app and my Italian is non-existent.

The names of characters and places pile up in a way I at first took to be gently humorous, like a parody of the Bible or The Iliad. The Japanese goddess Seiobo appears once to my knowledge. There is a museum guard enthralled by the Venus de Milo, a doomed tourist visiting the Acropolis, the cities of Venice and Kyoto, a Buddhist monastery, Russian icons, and things happening in biblical times, Renaissance Italy and contemporary Barcelona. It's an encyclopaedic puzzle of a book, like a David Mitchell novel for the Mensa set. Thematically and philosophically things seem to link or complement each other, like the novelistic equivalent of a musical movement, a variation on a theme. But characters and stories do not link. My favourite chapter had an increasingly agitated man lecturing to peasants about how awful music has become since Bach.

Should the novel come with a glossary? Should it be essential to look up something on Wikipedia every second page? There is a certain kind of reader who finds pleasure in this sort of challenge and the debatable depth provided by so much erudite information. I do not think that I am this kind of reader.

One can imagine a full semester university course being taught on this daunting, strange novel. One can also imagine László Krasznahorkai deservedly winning the International Booker next week. Seiobo There Below is an extraordinary book that avoids the apocalypse but demands diligent reading and patience – and a knack for Italian crossword puzzles wouldn't hurt either.

Tod Wodicka lives in Berlin. His second novel, The Household Spirit, will be published by Jonathan Cape in June.