Growing Old Disgracefully

Translated literature can often have a reputation for being worthy, solid and dull, so it's good to occasionally stumble across a book which takes itself a little less seriously.  On which note, let me introduce Swedish writer Jonas Jonasson's novel The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared, a title which immediately tells you that the contents are probably not going to be overly concerned with existential angst and the play of light across dusty tables.  I was (obviously) intrigued by this title and requested a review copy from Hesperus Press.  I didn't regret it - this is a great book to liven up a bleak Melbourne winter :)

*****
The Hundred-Year-Old Man... (translated by Rod Bradbury) is about Allan Karlsson, an aimiable old fellow who decides to abscond from his nursing home hours before a party planned to celebrate his centenary.  Sprightly for his age, he manages to make it to the nearby bus station, where he sits down to wait for the next available bus (destination not important).  A man desperate for the toilet then asks Allan to look after his suitcase while he rushes to the little boy's room.  Unfortunately, by the time he gets back, the bus has come and gone - and there is no sign of either Allan or the suitcase...

As you may already have guessed, there was more inside the suitcase than a few shirts and ties, and the rather angry young man is very eager to track our geriatric friend down, and possibly put a dampener on his birthday celebrations.  Allan, however, is not your average pensioner, and is able to get by with a little help from his friends - and Allan has some very influential friends...

The Hundred-Year-Old Man... is, to put it bluntly, a romp.  A picaresque adventure in the style of Don Quixote, the book alternates between the mad-cap adventures Allan and a motley crew of shady characters and animals experience, and sections telling us about Allan's earlier life.  And if you think his modern-day adventures are fascinating, just wait until you hear about what he got up to in his youth...

After his father's unfortunate demise over in Russia (don't ask), Allan takes stock of his life, in a short passage which shows both the dry humour and sense of understatement that pervades the novel:

"...he understood that his father was dead, that his mother coughed and that the war was over.  As for himself, by the age of thirteen he had acquired a particular skill in making explosions by mixing nitroglycerine, cellulose nitrate, ammonium nitrate, sodium nitrate, wood flour, dinitrotoluene and a few other ingredients.  That ought to come in handy some day, thought Allan..." p.35 (Hesperus Press, 2012)

As you may have guessed, this talent will stand him in very good stead one day, particularly when some very famous men ask him for help :)

Allan is a wonderful character, a man with absolutely no moral or ideological compass who, left to his own devices, would like nothing more than to sit on the beach with just a comfortable chair, a bottle of vodka and the occasional opportunity to blow something up.  Alas, the twentieth century was a turbulent one, and anyone who happened to be caught up in the Spanish Civil War or the Korean conflict is bound to have little chance of a quiet life.  As Allan quietly floats from one disaster to the next, we really begin to wonder how he made it to the age of one hundred at all...

The Hundred-Year-Old Man... is an excellent novel, a wonderful example of dry, sardonic humour that occasionally had me bursting out in laughter, but it's not perfect.  It's not the most literary of novels, and I doubt it will be in the running for many prizes (although Bradbury's translation is a very good one).  It could also be argued that it's not exactly original in some aspects; anyone who has seen (or preferably read) Forrest Gump will see the influence of the American story running right through this one.  I also found that it lost momentum a little towards the end, understandable after the frenetic pace of some of the earlier episodes.

The fact remains though that whenever I put the book down, I wanted to pick it up again as quickly as possible to see what antics Allan and his friends were up to, which historical figure would make a cameo appearance next, and whether Allan could finally find a decent vodka to enjoy.  Not that Allan himself worries too much about any of these things.  Right to the end, he lives by the motto (the book's preface) he inherited from his mother in his childhood:

"Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

Sometimes, even as a reader, you just have to go with the flow...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Fourteen

After my two-part odyssey around the world of Péter Nádas' Parallel Stories, you'd think that the next review for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize would be a lighter, more carefree affair.  Alas, we're back to the heavy stuff, the third-largest of this year's entrants, with a subject matter to match.  Take the strain...

*****
What's it all about?
Steve Sem-Sandberg's The Emperor of Lies (translated by Sarah Death) is a chunky novel, running to well over 600 pages, taking place during the Holocaust.  The book is set in the Polish city of Łódź and revolves, initially at least, around Chaim Rumkowski, the de facto leader of the city's Jews.  Rumkowski, or the Chairman, is a crafty businessman who has somehow risen to civic leadership at a time when this leadership is vital.  The occupying forces have divided the city, segregating the Jewish population in a ghetto and forcing them to work for the German war effort.

Knowing that the Germans have no time for people who are not useful, the Chairman decides that the best way through these troubled times is to create an unparallelled industrial zone in the ghetto, a collection of factories which will ensure the continued survival of his people.  As the war progresses though, and times get tough even for the Germans, the Chairman will have to make some very difficult decisions.  The question the reader is faced with is just as tricky: is Rumkowski really protecting the best interests of the ghetto, or is he just saving his own skin?

The Emperor of Lies is based on a true story, and there is no denying that the Swedish author has done his homework.  However, I had a lot of trouble getting into this book, and I wasn't the only one.  Lisa explained in her post why she was unable to get through more than the first fifty pages, and I agree with her in many ways.

For me though, the problems mainly lay in other areas.  One was the fragmented, report-laden style of the start of the book, seemingly designed with the intention of putting the discerning reader off.  Some of Sem-Sandberg's writing is wonderful, but you have to wait a long, long time before you find any examples.  While many readers may appreciate the historical accuracy and the inclusion of posters and memos, they just worked as roadblocks for me.

The main issue I had with the first half of the book though was probably due to a misconception I had, albeit one encouraged by the title of the novel and the blurb.  I went into The Emperor of Lies believing that the book would sink or swim depending on the character of the Chairman and the credibility of his moral dilemma, and if this had been the case, the book would have been a disaster.  The man was evil, no doubt about it, and by the half-way stage of the book, I was seriously considering flinging it aside (which, as you probably know, would have been a first for me in my blogging career!).

Once the focus shifted from the vile Rumkowski, however, widening to include the other inhabitants of the ghetto (and the German officers controlling the city), the book actually became a lot more interesting.  The writing was better, the relationships became more detailed and nuanced, and I found myself actually becoming interested in the story.  The original title of the book is De fattiga i Łódź (The Tired in Łódź according to Google Translate), and that seems a more accurate summary of the situation.  If you take the book as an overview of the whole history of the ghetto, it is much more interesting - if only Sem-Sandberg (and the publishers!) hadn't got quite so obsessed with the figure of the Chairman...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
Not really.  It wasn't one which came up at all in the Shadow Panel's discussions for the shortlist, and I don't think anyone was upset when it failed to make the cut for the real prize.  Personally speaking, the second half of this book would have put it mid-table on my list, just outside the top six, but respectable enough.  As a whole though, I wasn't impressed.  It was too long, repetitive, slightly unfocused and perhaps unsure of whether it wanted to be fiction or biography.

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
From the make-up of the final six books, I would say that the judges' focus is on short, elegantly-written novels, and The Emperor of Lies certainly doesn't fit into that category.  Besides, while we on the Shadow Panel weren't overly impressed with Aharon Appelfeld's Blooms of Darkness, the real panellists obviously were, and... is it too cynical of me to suggest that there was one spot reserved for a Holocaust book on the shortlist?

*****
We're getting closer to the end of our journey now, but next time we have a significant detour to make.  You see, the writer wants us to go with him on a journey into the unknown - into the heart of darkness you might say.  Now, where did I put those malaria tablets...

Rocking Out In The Snow

Last week, somewhere on the net (alas, my memory has failed me here), I came across a mention of Mikael Niemi's Popular Music, a coming-of-age novel set in the far northern provinces of Sweden, and I decided I wanted to reread it.  So I did.  Life really can be that simple sometimes :)

I got the book as a Christmas present a good six or seven years ago, and while I remember liking it, I hadn't read it since.  On a second reading, it hasn't lost any of its charm; in fact, I probably enjoyed it more this time around.  Popular Music (translated by Laurie Thompson) follows Matti - a thinly disguised Niemi, no doubt -, a young Swedish boy beginning to move through the treacherous time between childhood and manhood.

Living in an Arctic village so remote that most Swedes would have trouble pin-pointing it on the map, the male residents of Pajala are encouraged to be manly and, above all, to avoid any activity regarded as knapsu (unmanly, effeminate or - my preferred interpretation - poncy).  Probably not a good idea to be the lead singer of a pre-pubescent rock band then...

The book is structured into a series of loosely-linked stories, following Matti (and his best friend Niila) from elementary-school days to late teens, and the narrator tells the story in the first-person, looking back at his distant youth.  However, he's not always your standard narrator; at times, he can go off into flights of fantasy, and some of the earlier stories seem to be told more by the boy than the man (unless you believe that Matti really did spend a winter cooped up in an old boiler before bursting out in the Spring!).

Life in the region of Tornedalen was not a particularly easy one, and although Niemi's style is light and playful, the events he describes are not always so fluffy.  In an area of great isolation, alcoholism, casual sex and violence are rife, and while Matti himself has a relatively normal family and upbringing, some of his friends, in particular the hapless Niila, appear lucky to reach adulthood unscathed.  Of course, a part of growing up is learning how to cope with adversity, and it isn't long before Niila and his brothers start to rebel against their strict and unnecessarily cruel upbringing...

Another interesting result of the isolation is the cultural and linguistic diversity on display.  Marooned in the frozen north, close to the Finnish border, the residents are seen as country hicks by those from the south, and this is shown in the school scenes, where the children who can only speak Finnish (or the local dialect) are hesitant to even open their mouths.

Of course, this goes both ways, and the northerners are scornful of the 'soft' Southerners, with their fancy inventions like electric saunas...  When the families gather for weddings or funerals, the interplay between the various family members, those who emigrated, those who moved to Gothenburg or Stockholm, and those who stayed behind in Pajala, is a fascinating study for anyone interested in intercultural communication.  Or domestic arguments ;)

In the end though, Popular Music is primarily about Matti and his friends in the band.  As the years go by, Matti and Niila are joined by the guitar prodigy Holgeri and the rhythmically-challenged (but usefully-muscled) Erkki on drums, and by the end of the story, our fab four have finally started to perform real music in front of actual audiences.  We leave them (literally!) at a crossroads, flat out in the snow with the whole world ahead of them.  Despite a rather poignant epilogue, it is this image of joy and hope that the reader takes with them on finishing the book.  And a wonderful one it is too...