“Songs for the Lost” was one of the best books I have read recently. And of course for this to have any value I will put the names of some books I read at least this year:

• Sob o Sol Jaguar, Italo Calvino (Teorema)
• Nove Histórias, J. D. Salinger (Quetzal Editores)
• O Deserto dos Tártaros, Dino Buzzati (O Marcador)
• Kafka à Beira-Mar, Haruki Murakami (Casa das Letras)

Getting Started…
I finished reading the book “Songs for the Lost” by Alexander Zelenyj, edited by Eibonvale Press, and the first conclusion I reach is that I really haven’t finished reading the book. Sounds absurd, I know. This is said because it’s a book whose words stay in memory and make me think, suddenly of some lines, of some sentences; like that melody that in the morning, for no apparent reason, does not come out of the head and is constantly being hummed.

Alexander Zelenyj is a master weaver holding me in a labyrinthine web of words – when I notice I am stuck (suspended) such as a puppet, inanimate, until the puppeteer gives me life.

Alexander Zelenyj has a complex and visionary writing and here, of course, I’m not saying anything that has not already been said about him. What I can say, as a reader, and not as a literary critic, that I am not of course, is how the book touched me for its beauty, for its insanity, for its soul, for its melancholy.

The words of “Songs for the Lost” are not innocent and paraphrasing Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864):“Words – so innocent and powerless As They are the standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil They Become in the hands of one who knows how to combine Them.” – from “Defrocking the Devil: Theology of Fear” by Thomas J Boynton.

Yes, Alexander Zelenyj is not a prolific writer, but when he writes – writes dazzling stories. Alexander Zelenyj is a writer that makes you sweat, shake your head and makes you think “what next?” at the turn of every the page. This book is really a thunderstorms of words.

To Alexander Zelenyj I just need to throw a sentence of Boris Pasternak: “Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.”

Thank you.