From Baguette to Bust

Antanas Sileika has written a preposterous yet brilliant novel. Both fabulous farce and formidable fable, it is a work so ambitious that one can only laugh maniacally at its pretension while gasping at its absurdity. But that is what modern art, be it visual, aural or literary, is meant to do to us. It is an art of sensation and provocation. Accordingly, Woman in Bronze is a novel of extremes about our age of extremes, about the ambitious absurdity of modern life.

The story, set in the first third of the 20th century, is as corny as it is camp, in the late Susan Sontag’s sense. Kitsch-ridden yet engaging, it is about our collective journey, away from hearth and home and toward all the clichéd destinations of modernity: to the end of night, to the frontier and to the interior. Stephen Dedalus, Ferdinand Bardamu and Mackie Messer, move over. Make room for Tomas Stumbras, modern picaro and paradox incarnate, intellectual and plagiarist, lover and...