Hungarian Sprats

HUNGARIAN SPRATS
“All over Europe, people opened cans, expecting to find fish, but instead finding the following: a single hanky, a container of liquorice-flavoured lozenges,…”

…and there follows one of the most incredible lists you will ever read in literature, as if Proust has become a hoarder rather than a word-textured fin de siècle. The rest of this book has similar lists, but none quite like this one… All part of a hilarious account of a so-called Baron Dąmski (Charlus?) investing in the canning of luggage, to avoid loss in transit. The sort of cans that people have panic-bought in recent real-time beyond this story. But instead of food, these purpose-tinned cans contain his belongings as luggage. The work ends even more hilariously with his self-isolating in a fur coat.