Doña Quixote and Other Citizens ; Gold of Ophir

Book excerpt: Leena Krohn makes her English-language debut here with two books in one: Dona Quixote and Other Citizens and Gold of Ophir. These are tales from cities in which life is lived under threat of great disaster. Dona Quixote's reality, that of a modern city, is built up out of a series of portraits centering on the mysterious main character, whose presence is like a flame, drawing the dispossessed of the city to her. Gold of Ophir, with its rich fusion of the language and imagery of science, alchemy and the Old Testament, makes a more mythic approach to the city. Consisting of tiny fragments of poetic prose, both books use fantasy to address the enigmatic relationship between reality and consciousness, and their endless interaction. For Leena Krohn, art and literature are 'a yardstick to measure the infinite complexity of life'. Krohn's controlled and lucid writing finds its space in the borderland between fact and fiction, between the short story and the novella.