Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai's Seiobo There Below (New Directions) is a trans-valuation of human life seen from heaven and hell through the eyes of a Taoist goddess, Seiobo. Its 17 chapters each describe a way of aspiring toward beauty in a different country at a different time in a different place. Do we humans have a need for a connection with heaven and hell? Krasznahorkai doesn't believe in anything, he says, although he believes in the human-being that yearns for heaven and is interested in the rituals that result. And while we all inhabit earth and commonly struggle through daily life, he is conscious of something he finds in art, which he calls "the beauty."
Read an excerpt from Seiobo There Below.
Banner image by Czimbal Gyula