Dance Dance Revolution
A searing indictment of the privileged Western attitude of westsplaining and looking the other way
In four magical realist storylines about the war between the fictional countries of Besulia and Tenebria, Lisa Weeda draws parallels with the Russo-Ukrainian war, which has been dragging on for almost a decade. Cynicism and indifference to what’s happening in war zones – that sums up the attitude of many people in the West. The characters in 'Dance Dance Revolution' don’t have this luxury.
The title refers to the svabova samover zhenza, the dance that was once meant to keep the enemy at bay and can now bring the dead back to life. This dance is the only hope for the victims and survivors of the war in Besulia.
The various storylines are set two and a half years, two years and one year after, and four days before the start of the war in Besulia. People try to keep going about their lives as the enemy approaches their village. Some are tasked with the surreal responsibility of picking up dead bodies from homes and transporting them to special centers where they are stored until they can be danced back to life. Amid the madness of war, the dead soldiers Danylo and Maks are danced to life but have a hard time settling back into the land of the living. Toni has to pick up the dead bodies of children and Baba Yara, the village elder, teaches the svabova samoverzhenza to the other residents, wearing her ceremonial furry white suit, mask and headdress. Her young granddaughter Anna tries to use social media to encourage the rest of the world to get involved and dance with them – the only way the people of Besulia can be saved.
'This part is the hardest. Stomp your feet on the ground, hard, like you’re trying to break the earth into pieces. Then lift up your hands and feel there is an orange lying in them. Feel it, really feel it. In a moment, you will twist the orange in half and squeeze all the juice onto the land.’
Publishing details
Dans dans revolutie (2024)
240 pages
43,300 words
5,000 copies sold
Sample translation available
Publisher
De Bezige Bij
Marijke Nagtegaal
m.nagtegaal@debezigebij.nl
Rights sold
Germany (Kanon Verlag)
Translated titles
Aleksandra: Czech Republic (Garamond), Denmark (Turbine), France (Le bruit du monde), Germany (Kanon Verlag), Norway (Cappelen Damm), Poland (W.A.B.), Rumania (Casa Cărții de Știință)
Sample Translation
“A breathtaking debut about a young woman in search of the history of her Ukrainian family during Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s and in present-day, war-torn Ukraine.”
“With her stunning debut Aleksandra, Lisa Weeda chronicled the charged history of a Ukrainian family – a story that has taken on additional urgency with the war.”
A Way Out
Magda is a young teacher at a primary school in Warsaw. She is caring, kind, responsible and has her life in order. But then she gets pregnant. The pregnancy is unwanted, but abortion is illegal in Poland. The subject is so controversial in Poland’s conservative political climate that it’s hard to talk about, even with her friends and family. The only person she is able to confide in is her sister.
Higher Powers
It’s the early decades of the 20th century. James Welmoed is too British for his Dutch school – just like he’ll be too Dutch for London later in life. In 1930s Indonesia, he is an inscrutable member of the colonial establishment. No one knows what to make of him – including Elisabeth van Elsenburg, an eighteen-year-old so witty she could only be the brainchild of an author with a keen intellect and boundless dexterity. She’ll grow up to be a writer, but first she embarks on a love affair with Welmoed which, even though it will be cut short, will shape both their lives.
No Goodbye Today
‘Someone is already going to die in this chapter,’ the nameless narrator cautions on the very first page of No Goodbye Today. En route to his holiday destination, Oskar van Bohemen collapses at Schiphol Airport, which turns out to be a place of departure in more ways than one. From there, we follow his three grown children, who each had their own difficult relationship with him and experience his death in very different ways.
Public Works
'Public Works' is written in a florid style, highly appropriate to the historical period of its setting: the late 19th century. Rosenboom‘s stately prose lends to his novels that slow-moving tempo so essential to their effectiveness, it is this tempo with which the plot unfolds which enables the reader to see disaster coming long before the novel ends, making you want to call out to the characters, to warn them that they are making a terrible mistake.
-gaby-jongenelen.jpg&w=640&q=75)