There are some books I don’t look directly in the eye. This is one of them.
This is a book of Krav Maga sentences that flash in front of your face and the next thing you know, you are on the floor.
The Devil Is A Black Dog, is a minimalist blow, that will have you wiping your face and getting up for more. This is truly truly not for the faint hearted. Consider this your trigger warning. These are short stories set in some of the worst war and conflict zones. Its protagonist (like the author himself), is a Hungarian writer and photojournalist covering war in the Middle East and Africa.
As it blurs memoir with fiction, it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The last story in the collection (The Dead Ride Fast) is a KO that has kept me knocked out since I first read it 9 years ago. I was so distraught I frantically trawled google to check if this was a true story. I don’t remember where I read it, but thankfully, it isn’t based on a real incident. Phew!
Sándor Jászberényi (pronounced shahn-door yahs-beh-ray-nyee), writes about war. You know that when you get in the ring with him. When the theme itself is so grim, it would be easy to let it do the heavy lifting. But here, the author prefers to flex his narrative muscles. It is his writing – staccato gun-fire bursts – that pummels the reader sentence after sentence. The words he chooses, what he leaves for the reader to fill in, the few details he reveals, the suddenly dispassionate recital of dark events, leading you to lower your guard (at your own risk) following up with a frenetic dash.
While the author doesn’t glorify war or violence, the stories provoke anger, sadness, and disbelief. Feel them but expect no sympathy. This is minimalist writing at its best; the nineteen stories are covered in about 200 odd pages. I can make droll remarks about wearing a helmet while reading this, or sitting on the floor while reading (for you will keep falling so often), but not for this book. This book terrifies me.
Yet, as a writer, I cannot pick a better book to learn technique and storytelling. And of course, the craft of sparse, gritty, writing that will wring an emotion out of you. Like many, as a school kid I was scared of a teacher. Now, as a fully functioning adult, there is Sándor Jászberényi. For those who have only heard the usual clamour of Hemingway, Hemingway when it comes to minimalist writing, learn to pronounce this name.
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