The Return of Philip Latinowicz Book

A curious but classic book, which I've read twice. An artist returns home after 20 years abroad, to face up to the personal demons that send him into exile in the first place. It's a trip into the stifling and stuffy world of provincial Habsburg aristocracy, their endless intrigues, backbiting, and attempts to move up the foodchain and avoid the fate worse than death - having to work for a living. How such a society is ultimately doomed to self-destruction, and how hard it is for anyone born into it to live a normal life without emigrating. We see this world through the artist's eye, as despite himself he is constantly inspired by the coarse world around him to create new paintings, that capture the rawness of country life and elevate it to the eternal. Interesting parallels with today's HDZ, the dominant political party in Croatia since the war, and a haven for the unscrupulously ambitious. Croatia is also undergoing a demographic crisis as young people leave in droves for the more established EU countries (as they are from the rest of the Balkans). Go west! Very well written, long and complex sentences ensnare and suffocate the reader in the moribund world described by the author.