'Dispute over a very Italian Piglet' by Amara Lakhous (Review)

Finding the right book for the right occasion can be difficult at times, but sometimes it just happens.  Recently, I had to spend a day at the local shopping centre while my car was being given a once-over, so I needed something short(ish) that I'd be able to read while 90s power ballads were playing in the background and kids were running around screaming.

Who'd have thought that it would be good too? ;)

*****
Amara Lakhous' Dispute over a very Italian Piglet (translated by Ann Goldstein, review copy courtesy of Europa Editions) is a short novel set in Turin towards the end of 2006.  Enzo Laganà, a journalist with a sense of humour and a liking for the finer things in life, is caught out when some murders occur in Turin - mainly because he was in bed with his girlfriend in Marseilles at the time.  He manages to cover his tracks by coming up with a theory of an Eastern European mafia war, giving himself time to get back to Italy undiscovered.

However, Enzo's white lie hits a chord with popular sentiment, and the story spirals out of control, with the public desperate to know more about the conflict between Romanian and Albanian criminals.  As Enzo desperately tries to backtrack (and find out what's really going on), he gets involved with a beautiful film-maker and a couple of grumpy detectives.  And that's without even mentioning Gino.  Gino?  He's a pig...

Lakhous' novel is a clever story, a tale of a city built on corruption and racial discrimination.  From the very start, as we learn about Enzo's Calabrian roots, we see that ethnic diversity will play a large role in the novel, with each group despising the next to arrive.  Even Enzo's Ukrainian cleaner is caught up in the trap:

"Natalia can't stand the Romanians, it's impossible to make her change her ideas or at least sow some healthy doubts in her mind.  The more I go on, the more convinced I am that prejudice is an incurable disease.  There is no medicine or preventive measure that works.  What can we do?  Maybe we have to reluctantly accept living with prejudice.  That likable genius Albert Einstein wasn't wrong: it's easier to split an atom than a prejudice."
p.92 (Europa Editions, 2014)

This racial tension, however, is exactly what makes it easy for Enzo to get away with his exclusives - including getting an actor friend to provide the voice of the 'Deep Throat' informers!

The second main story, though, is that of the piglet, and it's a very good one.  When a video surfaces of a pig running through a local mosque, it's seen by the local Muslim community as a calculated insult, and only one man can be the culprit.  You see, everyone knows that Joseph from Nigeria keeps a pet pig in his apartment, and there's no chance of porcine mistaken identity.  There's only one pig around who likes wearing a Juventus scarf...

It's up to Enzo, in between fake meetings with informers, to keep the peace and try to negotiate a solution to the problem.  In doing so, he has to talk to Joseph, the local Muslim community, animal welfare activists and the local right-wing leader, all in an attempt to (literally) save Gino's bacon.  As Joseph solemnly states:

"Enzo, the important thing is for Gino to emerge from this business with his head held high." (p.128)

What can Enzo do?  He can't leave a fellow Juve fan in the lurch ;)

As you may have realised. Dispute... is a very funny book, but the humour hides some serious issues.  Lakhous looks at the vicious circle of racism towards new arrivals in the city, despairing of ever really being able to achieve harmony in a world of differences.  The incident with the pig is just a small example of the kind of misunderstandings that arise in a multicultural society.

However, the real story is hidden deeper within the book, and anyone with a passing knowledge of Italy might be able to guess where the real problem lies.  The harder Enzo digs in attempting to solve the puzzle of the murders, the clearer it becomes that far from being a matter for outsiders, this issue is a very Italian affair.  Gradually, Enzo realises that he needs to be very careful who he trusts, no matter how friendly (or beautiful) they are...

This is Lakhous' third book, and all have been brought into English by Ann Goldstein and Europa Editions; on the basis of this one, I'm very keen to try the others.  It's a clever work, one which deals with some heavy themes by surrounding them with some pig-shaped antics, fitting a surprising amount into 160 pages.  I highly recommend it - especially if you're hanging around a shopping centre waiting for a call from the local mechanics...

'An Appointment with his Brother' and Other Stories by Yi Mun-yol (Review)

As I mentioned in my recent post on Kim Young-ha, there's a lot of free (short) Korean fiction out there, and it's a good way to get a taste of a writer's work.  I'm taking that route again today, with five short pieces by an excellent contemporary writer, Yi Mun-yol, but first there are a couple of people to thank.  The first is Charles Montgomery, the host of the indispensable blog Korean Literature in Translation (always your first stop for sourcing some free stories).  The second?  Well, that's Brother Anthony of Taizé (An Sonjae) - translator extraordinaire, and the man responsible (as far as I'm aware) for bringing all of today's works into English :)

*****
The first story, 'An Appointment with his Brother', would probably be my recommendation as a first step into the writer's fiction.  It's a short novella which follows a South Korean professor on a trip to an autonomous Korean region in China, right on the North Korean border.  His father moved to the North when he was a child, and a new acquaintance offers to arrange a secret meeting on the Chinese side of the border.  Sadly, by the time the arrangements have been made, the father has passed away, and the man Professor Lee eventually meets is none other than his younger half-brother...

Naturally, the two initially struggle to find common ground, despite their uncanny physical resemblance, but they eventually manage to let their guard down a little.  Eventually, they are able to make a trip to a nearby mountain, where they are able to bid farewell to their father properly, together.  It's a touching scene, a brief moment snatched from the realities of the Korean divide.

One of the fascinations of the story is the cultural divide that has sprung up between the North and the South, and it's not quite as an ignorant westerner would expect it to be.  Lee comes across as brash at times, looking down on his half-brother for having neglected certain customs, while the Northener is quick to take offence.  When he sees the alcohol and chestnuts the Southener has brought for the funeral rites, he is quick to point out that they have those things in the North too.

The writer (whose own father left for the North) also uses the story to talk about possible reunification.  In a conversation at the hotel, he addresses the practicalities of the idea:

"Well, what do you think of in connection with 'unification'?"
"The first thing I think of is how we can feed the twenty million hungry people, and how we can make North Korea even superficially resemble the South."

It's refreshing to see a discussion of the subject that doesn't revolve around war and nuclear bombs...

*****
Moving on, I next read a few shorter pieces.  'Winter that Year' is a brief story where a man looks back at a time spent working at a country inn, a tale that looks at local government corruption and the lot of the Gisaeng (Korean Geisha).  'The Old Hatter', on the other hand, looks at the passing of traditional customs in the country, focusing on a hatmaker unable to adjust to modernisation.  It's a story with a sad ending, an allegory for what was lost in the great push towards modernity.

The third short piece is actually an extract from a novel.  In the first chapter of 'Son of Man', we are thrown into a murder mystery, where a local detective is investigating the murder of an unknown traveller.  I've heard good things about the novel, but this first chapter is rather prosaic and wouldn't really entice me into reading the whole thing.  If anyone out there has read the book, please let me know what the truth of the matter is ;)

*****
My favourite piece, though, was another novella, called 'Garuda' (AKA 'The Golden Phoenix). It's the story of a master calligrapher on his death bed, a man looking back at his life in an attempt to weigh up its worth.  Much of the story is an attempt to come to terms with the fraught relationship he had with his own master, whose differing views on art led to conflict:

"Was their meeting truly doomed by evil fate, as Master Sokdam had said?  Even after accepting him as a pupil, their strange relationship had continued unchanged."

Despite our friend Kojuk's unique talent, Master Sokdam never truly accepts him as a real artist.  As Kojuk nears the end of his life, he begins to wonder if his mentor was right...

In addition to being an excellent story about a clash of strong wills, 'Garuda' also looks at the nature of artists and the way in which art demands sacrifice.  Kojuk is shown as a selfish, thoughtless man, abandoning his wife and children to roam the country displaying his talents - and abandoning himself to pleasure:

"What held him firmly captive in that time of profligacy and dissipation was the strange vicious circle between that awareness and the sense of futility.  Base pleasures stimulated his sense of futility, and the futility called forth further pleasure."

While he enjoys himself, reaping the rewards of years of painstaking practice, others (including his master) suffer the consequences of his neglect.

It's a beautifully-written story, and one which reminds me more than the others I've read of Japanese literature, possibly because of its focus on traditional arts and customs and the lack of any political edge.  'Garuda' (which is the name of a mythical golden-winged bird) shows us the impossibility of achieving perfection in art and the sacrifices which have to made in seeking it - a story well worth reading :)

*****
Overall, then, I've greatly enjoyed my first taste of Yi Mun-yol's work, and I already have my next one lined up.  At some point, I hope to try his highly-regarded novel The Poet to see if his longer work is as good as his shorter pieces.  Yes, the year of K-Lit will continue very soon ;)

April 2014 Wrap-Up

April was a big month of reading and reviewing, with IFFP-longlisters and ARCs clamouring for my attention.  Luckily, I managed to get through somehow - and here are the usual numbers to prove it ;)

*****
Total Books Read: 12
Year-to-Date: 46

New: 11

Rereads: 1

From the Shelves: 2
Review Copies: 6

From the Library: 3

On the Kindle: 2 (1 review copy)

Novels: 7

Novellas: 1
Short Stories: 3
Non-Fiction: 1

Non-English Language: 11 (3 Korean, 2 French, 2 Italian, German, Icelandic, Chinese, Hungarian)

In Original Language: 1 (German)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (0/3)

*****
Books reviewed in April were:

1) The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature by Michael Emmerich
2) The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon
3) At Least We Can Apologize by Lee Ki-ho
4) Exposure by Sayed Kashua
5) Where Tigers are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès
6) Nagasaki by Éric Faye
7) Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
8) Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
9) Lonesome You by Park Wan-suh
10) Rücken an Rücken (Back to Back) by Julia Franck
11) Photo Shop Murder and Other Stories by Kim Young-ha
12) Liveforever by Andrés Caicedo

Tony's Turkey for April is: Nothing

I wasn't a huge fan of Lonesome You, but there was a lot to like about it - and that's as close as we're getting this month ;)

Tony's Recommendation for April is:

Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès' Where Tigers are at Home

Astoundingly overlooked by both the IFFP and the BTBA, Where Tigers are at Home is a great big rambling book that deserves to find a wider audience.  Apologies to Andrés Caicedo and Michael Emmerich (Liveforever was also a mesmerising read, and I loved Emmerich's examination of a Japanese classic), but Blas de Roblès' novel was a big winner this month :)

*****
Let's look ahead to May then, and having finally polished off the whole of the IFFP longlist, I have a bit more freedom to branch out a little.  I'll probably be continuing with my recent project, with more K-Lit adventures - then again, I've been meaning to get around to a certain Japanese classic too...

'Ten' by Andrej Longo (Review - IFFP 2014, Number 14)

The winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize will be announced in a few weeks' time, and here at Tony's Reading List our trip around the world is also nearing its end.  The penultimate stop takes us to sunny Naples for a look at la vita when it's not quite so dolce.  We won't be seeing too much sun either - it's really more about the nightlife...

*****
Ten by Andrej Longo - Harvill Secker
(translated by Howard Curtis)
What's it all about?
The title is a clue for what lies within the covers as Longo's book is a collection of short stories set in southern Italy, each with a biblical twist.  You see, the ten stories are based on the ten commandments, and in lieu of a title, each story simply has a number plus the commandment at the start.  The stories don't follow the commandments exactly, but if you wait long enough, a connection usually appears.

As you would expect, several of the stories play on the role of organised crime in Naples, and there's often a mafioso lurking somewhere in the shadows.  The two stories which bookend the collection are the most obvious examples, portraying two differing encounters with the local heavies.  In the first, a local boy is trying to stay out of the way of the mafia, hoping to live an ordinary life.  Sadly, this is unlikely to happen in Naples, and events conspire to push him into the orbit of a local mafia leader.

The final story sees a more serious encounter though, as a group of teenage toughs discover that it's always worth thinking about your actions, especially when there are bigger, more dangerous people around.  A night of fun ends with serious consequences, with the book finishing on a pivotal note...

The city is an important backdrop to the action of the stories, with Longo casually sketching a picture of a squalid town, a place guaranteed to deaden any hopes the people may have:

"Under the stairs there were three junkies shooting up.  A mangy dog was wagging its tail behind a guy trying to sell a car radio.  An old man passed by, talking to himself out loud."
'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery', p.79 (Harvill Secker, 2013)

It's unsurprising that a couple of the stories feature people who are trying to escape Naples, either by working in Rome or making plans to leave for good.  It's equally unsurprising that those plans don't really work out all that well.

The translation, by Howard Curtis, is an interesting one, in that it makes a deliberate choice to relocate Naples vocally to London.  The working-class accents and slang are deliberately reminiscent of the criminal underclass of the British capital.  For an English reader, echoes of the Kray twins (or, at a lower level, the Mitchell brothers from Eastenders!) are unavoidable.  I wonder if there's an American version floating around, with a Goodfellas vibe instead ;)

For me, though, the stories which feature the gangsters are less interesting than those where the disappointment is more subtle.  One of my favourite stories is one where nothing really happens - a dad just takes his son out to an amusement park for the day.  The problem is that the dad is obviously a man caught up in some heavy business, and every excursion into public is fraught with tension:

"I don't know how much a seven-year-old really understands.  He nodded and gave me a big hug.  And as he was hugging me, with his heart beating fast inside his chest, I could feel the cold gun pressing into my thighs, and I realised I couldn't do anything more for him.  My one hope was that he never became like me.  My only hope."
'Thou Shalt Not Kill (p.76)

It's a moving moment, where we begin to understand the wider implications of the bravado described in some of the other stories.

While Ten takes us on a trip around Naples, the visit is rather fleeting.  The book runs to 151 pages of very large print, and if you're in a hurry, you can easily knock it off in an hour.  What remains afterwards are a few confused impressions of the trip - fights, drugs, music, cars.  Oh, and an overwhelming feeling of relief that you've made it out in one piece.  It might be a nice place to visit, but...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
No.  I enjoyed this book, but the more I think about it, the less highly I rate it.  Some of the stories are rather obvious (particularly the mafia-heavy ones), and many of them blur into each other.  A few do stand out, but Ten is a little too light-weight to be considered for the main prize.  I waited five weeks for my library to get this to me - it wasn't really worth that much of a wait.

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
While there are several other slim books on the shortlist, this is one of the slightest, in terms of both volume and content.  I also feel that while there's nothing really wrong with the book (it's a great, quick read), it really suffers in comparison with Yoko Ogawa's Revenge.  Now *that's* how to write a series of nasty, interlinked stories ;)

*****
And, so, dear reader, we head off again on the last leg of our journey.  The final stop for 2014 will be in Poland, where we get to trudge through the snow to witness a rather tension-fraught meal.

I hope there's something for us to eat too - I'm starving...

'Liveforever' by Andrés Caicedo (Review)

Maybe/ I don't really wanna know/ how your garden grows/ 'Cos I just wanna fly
While the title of today's book immediately brings a certain band to mind for my generation, we're actually travelling a little further afield than Manchester.  Almost twenty years before Liam Gallagher sang those words, in Colombia a young writer was putting pen to paper on a work which was to sear his name into the country's literary history - and yes, it's all about the music...

*****
Andrés Caicedo's short novel Liveforever (translated by Frank Wynne, review copy courtesy of Penguin Classics) is a pulsating, energy-laden work which thrusts the reader into a world of drugs, violence and music (oh yes, lots of music).  It's set in Cali, Colombia, between 1973 and 1974, and is the story of a generation doomed to failure.  There'll be no fading away here, though - these are the kind of kids who like to burn out, often spectacularly...

Our guide through the world of salsa and rumbas is María del Carmen Huerta, a respectable, intelligent, beautiful middle-class teenager, growing up in Cali.  One day, though, she decides it's time to break free of her bourgeois upbringing and explore the world of music.  It proves to be a fateful decision:

"Every life hinges on the course we decide to take at one precise, privileged moment.  On that Saturday in August I broke with my routine, and the same night I ended up at Skinny Flores's 'rumba'.  It was a simple decision, but one that would have extraordinary consequences.  One of them is that I now find myself here, safe in this haven of night, telling my story, shorn of all social standing and the crass manners I was raised with.  No doubt I'll be held up as an example.  'Peace and goodwill over my land'."
p.29 (Penguin Modern Classics, 2014)

This one night, a frantic escape into music, is to set the course for her future.  Once she's made the decision to venture into the night, there's no going back.

Liveforever could be described as the story of María's descent into an underworld of drugs and debauchery.  Caicedo, using the voice of María herself, relates detailed descriptions of drug use, hedonism and week-long parties, and we see the youths of the street crumble into pieces, drained by music and drugs:

"Music that feeds on live flesh, music that leaves you with nothing but blisters, music hot off the wax, that's what I want, what I live for; bring it on, sap my energy if you can, turn my values on their head, let me founder, abandon me to criminality, because I don't know anything any more..." (p.115)

This is a generation that will most definitely die before it gets old...

When night falls (as it does, suddenly and brutally, at 6 p.m.), the languid behaviour of the hot day gives way to an outpouring of carnal energy, a situation María quickly comes to terms with:

"So what if I grabbed the night by the balls, so what if I broke its spirit, wore it out and drained it dry?  At least I was still standing: not like the men, who drop like flies." (p.5)

It's then that we see the city come to life, as María pulls us in her magical wake from rumba to rumba, looking for parties, hunting down the music.  Sure, we get to dance, but death and destruction is left in our wake.

Yet that's not how it is for María herself.  Beautiful and vibrant, with the face (and hair) of a goddess, she becomes a focal point of the nocturnal community, the heart of the dance.  She looks damned good on the dancefloor, and she knows it (so does everyone else); in fact, there's something, magical, mystical about her.  In the blonde-haired dancing diva from the right side of town, the street boys find someone to worship.

Worship of this kind is not without its dangers, though, and María is a goddess of the most pagan kind; the music may feed on live flesh, but so does our María.  She's a dangerous woman, a Colombian femme fatale, the flame into which the moth-like youths who surround her at the rumbas cannot help but fly. Like a Latina Medusa, or siren, she inflicts wounds on men, her hair slicing cuts in the soul of any man who moves into her orbit, cuts they cherish when they're coming down after the long night.  Each man that she encounters is entranced by her spell, but ends up wasted, worn, spat out and humbled - she sucks their spirit dry, then moves onto the next.  One night in Cali can make any man humble, hard or otherwise.

The whole book is like one long, pulsating dance, a hypnotic, spell-binding, energy-sapping tribute to music.  María needs music, she senses it, hunts it down, then, when she finds a worthy gathering, a rumba with feeling, she uses the men she meets to absorb it.  From her childhood friend Ricardito, she receives the gift of translated English lyrics, from the red-headed gringo Leopoldo Brook, live music, pulsing and throbbing, from Rubén Paces, lessons in the history of salsa...

...and they all come to a sad end (just stayin' alive is a feat in the underworld of Cali...).  María seems less a woman at times than a force of nature, the goddess of the dark dance, music incarnate.  With Colombian music interfused with African rhythms and pagan language, it's tempting to see her as something otherworldly, a succubus, a wraith...

As you might have realised, this is a book I loved, devouring it in a matter of hours.  The writing is wonderful, with the frantic energy of the voices and the ceaseless, constant twisting of direction, the language is heavily descriptive, attacking the reader's senses with colours, textures, emotions - we can feel the rhythm, smell the sweat, hear the music...  The text is intermingled with song lyrics, half prose, half music, our journey through the world of salsa...

Spare a thought then for the poor translator...  In addition to having to transport Caicedo's dazzling words into English, Wynne also had to identify the lyrics embedded in the prose and make it clear for the Anglophone readers who (as he points out in his Translator's Note) are hardly "...likely to have an in-depth knowledge of salsa and the many related styles of Afro-Cuban music..." (p.xviii).  Poor Frank - I can imagine the time and energy that must have gone into this translation.  Perhaps his wonderful rendering into English comes at the cost of becoming María's latest victim...

In short, Liveforever is a wonderful book - I'd say I'm surprised that it hasn't appeared in English before, but, let's face it, I'm not (I've been in the game of reviewing translated fiction for far too long for things like that to surprise me...).  For those who want to know more about Caicedo though, this, sadly, is just about it.  On the day, he received a copy of the book, he killed himself, overdosing on pills, a sad post-script to his work.

The story, though, lives on, as does the music, and while I prefer the poignant English title, the original is probably a little more apt.  You see, in Spanish the book is called ¡Que viva la música!, which translates to something like 'Long Live Music!'.  This seems a fitting epitaph for the book as we leave María to her life in Cali, with the music beating on into eternity.  You see, you simply can't stop the music - nobody can stop the music...

'Photo Shop Murder' and Other Stories by Kim Young-ha (Review)

Those of you who have been paying attention will have noticed my reviews this year of Dalkey Archive's Library of Korean Literature (four to date with more to come).  However, there's more out there than that particular series of ten books, and in today's post I look at a few stories from a writer who, while not covered in that collection, has plenty of books available in English for you to try.  And, even better, you should be able to find some of these tales online for free...

*****
Kim Young-ha is one of the big names in modern Korean literature (he's a certainly a name that's come up a lot in most K-Lit discussions I've seen) and after rummaging around some of the outlying corners of the Internet, I was able to find six stories to sample his work.  Some involve murder cases, others look at big-city life in present-day Seoul; one thing they have in common though is that they're all entertaining :)

The first three stories were collected on a PDF I found a while back, and the first is one of his most famous, 'Photo Shop Murder' (translated by Jason Rhodes).  It seems to be a standard crime story and starts with a great hardboiled line:

"Why do murders always seem to happen on Sundays?"

However, as the story progresses, the attention strays from finding the murderer, instead focusing on the detective's marriage and a possible relationship between the two main suspects.  It's a dark story, and the ambiguous ending adds to the sense of depression surrounding the detective.

On the other hand, 'Whatever Happened to the Guy Stuck in the Elevator?' (translated by Jason Rhodes) is a much lighter tale.  A typical Korean salaryman (to use the Japanese expression) is rushing off to work when he sees some legs poking out of the doors of the lift.  Running late for an important presentation, he decides to contact the authorities on the way - if only modern life didn't keep preventing him from doing his civic duty...  And what exactly is so important that he can't be late for work?

"And anyway, I was already late for work, and I had to give my presentation.  It was an important report about more efficient use of office supplies.  To be more exact, I had to get up in front of the trustees and speak clearly and confidently about my plan to reduce the use of toilet paper at the office."

Ah - all is forgiven...

The third story here is 'Moving' (translated by Kim Chi-young), in which a young couple's move to a dream apartment runs into complications.  These include a dust storm, some malicious removal people and an ancient earthenware pot - and there may even be a ghost in there somewhere too ;)

Sadly, despite there being links to this PDF all over the place, it appears to have been removed from its original location.  I suspect that this is because the first two stories are actually lifted from the Jimoondang bilingual edition of 'Photo Shop Murder'.  Unless you have a spare US$2000 lying around though, I'd start looking for the PDF...

Update - 27/4/14
I've just found these stories online again!  The first two can be found on a new PDF here, while 'Moving' can be read on translator Kim Chi-young's (Chi-Young Kim's?) website here :)

*****
Luckily, though, there are some stories out there to try for free.  Charles La Shure's translation on his web-site of the story 'Christmas Carol' is one.  It's about a man who hears of the death of a Korean woman visiting the country after years abroad in Germany.  The thing is, he used to sleep with her - and he saw her on the night she was murdered...

There are also a couple of stories over at Words Without Borders (one of which appeared while I was in the middle of planning this post!).  'The Man Who Sold his Shadow' (translated by Dafna Zur) is a fascinating tale involving a writer, a Catholic priest and a woman they both used to know.  It's a lovely story, one which obviously incorporates a lot of the writer himself (as you'll see in a moment...).

The other story, one of many in this month's South Korea issue of the online magazine, is 'The Suit' (translated by Sora Kim-Russell), a short tale about a Korean man on a mission in the States to retrieve the ashes of a man who may or may not have been his father.  In this story, we get a twist on the old conflict between nature and nurture - and we also find out whether clothes truly do make the man ;)

*****
While that's quite enough for one day, there's one last link I need to provide you with.  As I mentioned when discussing 'The Man Who Sold his Shadow', there's a lot of Kim Young-ha himself in the story.  Don't take my word for it though - listen to the man himself :)  Last night, I watched an interview in which he talked about this story, and his latest book to appear in English, Black Flower.  It was all very interesting, and while the writer's English is far from perfect, he talked very well - and was also very funny at times!

All of which means that I'm keen to try more of his work - I'll let you all know when I manage it ;)

'Rücken an Rücken' ('Back to Back') by Julia Franck (Review - IFFP 2014, Number 12a)

Today's stop on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize trail takes us back in time, and behind the Iron Curtain.  It's a novel which looks at growing up in a country whose doors to the outside world are about to be closed, a decision which will leave its mark on the coming generations...

*****
Back to Back by Julia Franck - Harvill Secker
(translated by Anthea Bell)
What's it all about?
(East) Berlin, 1954 - an eleven-year-old girl and her ten-year-old brother are cleaning their house in preparation for the return of their mother from a journey.  Ella and Thomas spend two days scrubbing the house from top to bottom, and when their mother finally arrives, the two hope that she will recognise their efforts.

Käthe, however, a sculptress obsessed with her art and politics, is not your average mother.  She ignores her children's efforts, just the first in a long line of actions which will affect their lives as they grow up in a country which won't leave them alone.  As they finally reach adulthood, the ideological line between East and West is reinforced by a more tangible division.  Under the shadow of the wall, Tom and Ella will need to find ways to cope with life in a prison state...

Back to Back is not a pleasant book to read.  Right from the tense homecoming described in the first section, Käthe overshadows her children, trying to form them with her will into offspring worthy of the new state she believes in.  Tom and Ella actually have other siblings, twins who spend most of their time farmed out to foster families and homes, but Käthe has no time for the softer side of family life, caught up as she is in her art and her politics:

"Ihre Liebe war unbarmherzig, aber es war Liebe, daran mochte er nicht Zweifeln.  Grimmig verzog sie ihr schönes Gesicht: Was weißt du schon von der Welt?"
p.144 (Fischer Verlag, 2013)

"Her love was merciless, but it was still love, of that he had no doubt.  She fiercely screwed up her beautiful face: what do you know about the world?" (my translation)

Käthe's actions are underpinned by her belief that she is right, but this belief is a heavy weight which her two eldest children are forced to carry.

Of the two children, it's Ella who attracts most of the attention early in the book.  As she grows up, she begins to rebel against her mother, stealing money from her purse and only attending school when she feels like it.  Her strong exterior hides the fact that she's actually powerless, though, and her growing sexuality is tempered by experiences in her own home which she really shouldn't be subjected to.

As the novel progresses, the focus switches to Thomas.  A gentle, intelligent boy, Thomas would seem set for a bright future, were it not for the fact that he's trapped in prison-ship GDR.  Suspicion of intelligence, coupled with disdain for Käthe's privileged upbringing, means that a boy who should have been sent straight to university is forced to endure hard labour and outright bullying.  While Käthe believes that it's all for the best, she doesn't realise just how damaging her plans are for her beloved son:

"In einem abgeschlossenen System ist Zukunft undenkbar.  Michael holte kräftig aus, er streckte sich, um der länge nach mit dem Pinsel über die Tapete zu streichen.  Die Mauer macht uns endgültig zu Tieren im Zoo." (p.193)

"In a closed-off system, the future is unthinkable.  Michael reached right out, stretching himself to paint over the wallpaper with his brush.  The wall is turning us into animals in the zoo." (my translation)

With no future in sight, at least none that he wants, Thomas' fate is destined to be a gloomy one.  If only someone can come and lift him out of his depression...

Back to Back is not a happy book for anyone, least of all the reader.  It's a depressing, claustrophobic story, with the parallel prisons of Käthe's tough love and the newly-formed Communist state taking their toll on both reader and protagonists alike.  Of course, it's written in hindsight, and that colours the way the book has been structured.  However, if this really is how life was 'over there', it's little wonder that the fall of the wall (initially, at least) was met with such joy...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
No, not quite.  I eventually had this as a top-ten book, which was a lot higher than most of my fellow Shadow Panelists viewed it!  My background in German studies probably helped endear this book to me as I'm very interested in East Germany (and surprised that another book on the country, Eugen Ruge's In Times of Fading Light, was overlooked this year).

It's far from perfect though, and the book falls into the trap of being too black and white (the good are angelic, and the bad are demonic).  Käthe is slightly too much of a caricature at times, although Franck does manage to give her some human moments.  All in all, it's a book I'm glad I read, but I can see why others might not have liked it.

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
Quite simply, because there was too much competition this year, particularly from some natural competitors.  In particular, Birgit Vanderbeke's The Mussel Feast did a lot more in a much shorter time.  Like the GDR itself, Back to Back can be a little too stiff and restrictive, meaning that it doesn't have that spark of life which makes a book shine...

*****
If this one was a slow, ponderous read, next week's book is anything but.  We're off to Italy to spend some time pounding the streets of Naples.  Thou shalt not miss this one, really - it's an offer that's too good to refuse ;)

'Lonesome You' by Park Wan-suh (Review)

With 2014 seemingly becoming the year of Korean literature here at Tony's Reading List, I'm continuing my look at Dalkey Archive's Library of Korean Literature.  Today's choice is from a very well-known and popular writer, and after a few novels, this time we're looking at a collection of short stories.  What's it all about?  Well, many things, but mostly it looks at growing old in a changing society - and the problems this entails...

*****
Park Wan-suh's Lonesome You (translated by Elizabeth Haejin Yoon, review copy courtesy of the publisher) contains nine longish stories focusing primarily on issues the elderly face in modern-day Korea.  From love in life's twilight years to dealing with the in-laws, Park examines the way changing traditions have left the older generations adrift, at the mercy of relatives who no longer feel quite as much veneration for the elderly as was previously the case.

Several of the stories look at the realities of striking up new relationships at an advanced age.  The opening story, 'Withered Flower', sees a widow meet a handsome widower on a coach journey back to Seoul, gradually developing a close friendship with him.  However, there are a couple of obstacles in the way.  One is the determination of overbearing family members to push the two into marriage; the other is slightly more personal:

"I strutted out of the bathroom into the adjoining bedroom naked - moments like this undoubtedly being one of the perks of living alone .  I threw a small towel under my feet to catch the water dripping from my body and reached for the phone.  Then I froze in mid-action.  Who was that hideous old woman?  I almost screamed out loud at the reflection in the mirror."
'Withered Flower', p.26 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)

It's an unwelcome reality check for a woman who prides herself on her appearance...

The title story, 'Lonesome You', takes a slightly different look at the topic as it explores the life of a couple who have virtually separated.  Meeting at their son's graduation, the two escape from the son's girlfriend's interfering parents, ending up alone together for the first time in a while.  Initially the wife is repelled by the man she is tied to by law, but she gradually starts to realise why he has turned out as he has and the extent of his sacrifices for the family.  While his actions may have angered her at times, she comes to realise that he was always thinking of what was best for his wife and their children.

Unlike the protagonists of these stories though, some of the elderly characters are dependent on their families, and the responsibility of caring for parents is a common theme running through the collection.  In 'Psychedelic Butterfly', an old woman frequently shuttled between her children's houses runs away, and the children feel guilty about their inability to decide what to do:

"This world was too, too small, and allowed all kinds of associations.  One could always find a link, however remote, among relatives, school friends, and hometown acquaintances.  Even a bottom feeder and a top dog were connected in some way, if one searched hard enough."

'An Unbearable Secret' (p.97)

It's this societal pressure which makes things so difficult.  Everyone expects the eldest son to take on the responsibility of caring for a widowed mother, and when this doesn't happen, people start to talk...

This guilt is also prominent in 'Long Boring Movie', a story in which a woman recalls her mother's last days while planning her father's move to an apartment close to hers.  In this story, her brother is constantly making biting remarks, tacitly accusing his sister of having an eye on his inheritance - despite the fact that he has no intention of looking after his father himself.  This eldest son's pressure is actually mirrored in the father's behaviour as the daughter starts to think that his wandering eye may have stemmed from the pressure he felt as the head of the family.

A slightly different theme which appears in Lonesome You is the connection between Korea and the United States, with several of the stories featuring tales of emigrants in, or coming back from, America.  'Thorn inside Petals', a story of two elderly sisters, first looks at the bizarre behaviour of an elderly ex-pat before showing us how she made her way in the US.  This sombre tale is nicely balanced by 'J-1 Visa', the light-hearted story of a Korean writer desperately trying to get a visa to attend a seminar in the US, one which turns into an amusing rant about colonialism...

There's a lot to interest the reader here, particularly in its view of a male-dominated, patriarchal society, but Lonesome You is certainly not my favourite of the series so far.  For one thing, the stories tend to be overly long, unfocused and rambling.  The nine stories are spread over 250 pages, and to be honest, you get the feeling that they would have been much better if they'd only run to 150.  There were a couple of times when I was simply skim-reading to get back into the flow of the story, not something I usually do.

I'd also say that I wasn't overly convinced by the writing, whether that's the fault of the original or the translation.  There were too many odd vocabulary choices, and at times it all felt rather stilted.  As a whole, it didn't really flow, and there were a couple of stories (including 'A Ball-playing Woman') which I just didn't rate at all...

An interesting comparison to make here is with the undisputed Korean hit-in-translation of recent years, Shin Kyung-sook's Please Look After Mother.  Lonesome You explores many of the same themes, and if you liked Shin's book, you may well enjoy this.  Of course, as my regular readers will know, I hated it with a passion, so it's unsurprising that I didn't enjoy Lonesome You as much as some others might;)

Park may be a big name back in Korea, but I'm afraid her work isn't really to my taste.  There's a lot more K-Lit coming this way over the next few months, but I think I'll continue my K-Lit odyssey with someone else's books...

'Oh, Tama!' by Mieko Kanai (Review)

Kurodahan Press were kind enough to support my January in Japan event earlier this year by offering a few prizes, and while I'd read one of the three offerings, the other two looked quite interesting too...  Luckily enough, I was able to get review copies for myself, and - just as importantly - I was also able to snatch a few hours recently to try one :)

*****
Mieko Kanai's Oh, Tama! (translated by Tomoko Aoyama and Paul McCarthy) is just another in the long line of Japanese books featuring a cat (I'm sure you all know of at least one writer who likes to do this...).  The Tama of the novel is a pregnant black-and-white kitty who is unceremoniously brought to the apartment of Natsuyuki, an unemployed photographer, by Alexandre, the brother of his ex-girlfriend Tsuneko.

The cat belonged to Tsuneko, but she has gone into hiding after using her own pregnancy to fleece several potential fathers of a fair amount of money, so it's up to mild-mannered Natsuyuki to take care of Tama until the kittens come into the world.  However, the arrival of the cat in Natsuyuki's life is to cause several other changes, and from being a loner living a peaceful life in a small, quiet apartment, Natsuyuki suddenly finds himself at the centre of a noisy, chaotic social circle...

It would be an understatement to say that Oh, Tama! isn't really plot driven - in fact, there isn't really a plot to speak of.  Once the initial set up introduces us to the basic concept, and to the characters of Natsuyuki, Alexandre and Tama, it's simply a series of conversations, meals and friends dropping by for a drink.  In that sense, it has a lot in common with more traditional Japanese fare (such as, dare I say it, Natsume Soseki's I am a Cat), but in its tone it's a lot more modern - prostitutes instead of geishas, beer in place of sake.

Typical of this modern taste to the book is the character of Alexandre, an outsider due to his foreign blood (his father was possibly a foreign sailor, but his mother was very vague about this...).  He can't help but stand out in a very homogenous society:

"Alexandre, talking in a rather feminine way, opined that, judging from the color of his hair (reddish-brown) and eyes (light gray), his father would seem to have been a Caucasian; but he might have been a light-skinned Negro, or a Jew.  He was an unspecified person whose very ethnicty was unclear."
p.16 (Kurodahan Press, 2014)

A restless soul, who pops in and out of Natsuyuki's life randomly, Alexandre makes his living with a series of temporary jobs, the most intriguing of which is porn star...

As the novel progresses, though, we find that Alexandre is actually the norm, rather than an exception.  Tsuneko is only his half-sister, and it turns out that Natsuyuki and another of the possible fathers of her unborn (and possibly non-existent) child are related in the same way (this new half-brother becomes one of the occasional visitors to Natsuyuki's tiny flat...).  And, of course, if we're talking about absent fathers, it would be remiss of us not to mention the fact that Tama is also bringing up her kittens without a tomcat to help out ;)

Oh, Tama! is a difficult book to analyse in hindsight.  To use familiar J-Lit markers, it has a Haruki Murakami protagonist forced to socialise with a few of the nicer characters from a Ryu Murakami novel, and they all sit around and talk rubbish in the vein of Banana Yoshimoto's creations.  And nothing much gets done:

"What with thoughts like that swirling through my mind, somehow everything became too much of a bother.  The feeling that there was nothing I really wanted to do crept up from the tips of my toes." (p.85)

At times, you begin to wonder if the writer has fallen asleep on the job too...

By the end of the book though, a couple of themes have emerged from the alcohol-fuelled haze.  The unemployed photographer, the foreign-blooded porn actor and the confused psychiatrist are all connected in that they are existing outside the notoriously regimented constraints of mainstream Japanese society.  They all scrape by on a day-to-day basis and occasionally show that they're not quite as cheerful on the inside as it appears on the outside.

However, what they also have in common is a bond which allows them to seek comfort, and what Kanai does cleverly in Oh, Tama! is construct a cohesive social group from very different parts.  While Tama doesn't play a large active role in the story, her arrival in Natsuyuki's life is the catalyst for a change in his relationships with other people.  I said earlier that very little happens, and that's true - however, at the end of the novel, this very little is done by many more people.  Which is a progression of sorts ;)

I don't think this will be for everyone, but it's a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours, and there is a little more to it than may first meet the eye.  And, of course, if you're a cat lover, this may just be a book you'll enjoy spending some time with - whether there's a furry companion on your lap or not!

'Revenge' by Yoko Ogawa (Review - IFFP 2014, Number 12)

Well, we've left the Middle-East behind, and today's leg of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize journey takes us to Japan, where we'll be enjoying some carrots, tomatoes and strawberry shortcake.  Don't get too comfortable though - in the hands of today's writer, any meal is likely to leave a bitter aftertaste...

*****
Revenge by Yoko Ogawa - Harvill Secker
(translated by Stephen Snyder)
What's it all about?
Revenge is a collection of eleven stories, beautifully written in Ogawa's (and Snyder's) usual simple, clipped language.  Everything is set out precisely, and yet the reader always has the sense that the serene surface is hiding something:

"You could gaze at this perfect picture all day - an afternoon bathed in light and comfort and perhaps never notice a single detail out of place, or missing."
'Afternoon at the Bakery', pp.1/2 (Harvill Secker, 2013)

And right from the start, the writer is mocking us, telling us that something is not quite right.  But let's face it, we should expect that - Ogawa is the queen of the slightly askant...

What follows are a collection of tales where ordinary people going about their daily lives are shown to be somewhat other than normal.  From the woman waiting to buy some strawberry shortcake for her dead son ('Afternoon at the Bakery'), to the bag maker with an obsession for perfection ('Sewing for the Heart'), the writer casually introduces her cast onto the stage, gently setting them off walking, knowing all the while that just around the corner... well, you know.  She must be a *very* cruel woman...

There's a lot more to Revenge than isolated stories of oddballs and psychopaths though - as soon as the reader moves on to the second story ('Fruit Juice'), they realise that Ogawa has a slightly more complex idea in hand.  You see, each of the stories takes something from the previous one and runs with it, with minor characters suddenly appearing in the spotlight, their actions now centre stage.  Even better, the deeper we get into Ogawa's world, the more tangled the web of connections becomes, with people and objects harking back to several earlier stories.  By the time we get to the last of the eleven tales, 'Poison Plants', it's no surprise that the central character leads us back to the start of the book, completing a circle.

With this in mind, the reader is always on the look out for recurring themes, spotting reappearances by former characters and speculating on the significance of such innocent items as carrots, bags, clocks and strawberry shortcake.  Every action has to be analysed for similarities with previous (or future) events:

"When I'm curled up in his arms like this, I can never tell how my body looks to him.  I worry that I seem completely ridiculous, but I have the ability to squeeze into any little space he leaves for me.  I fold my legs until they take up almost no room at all, and curl in my shoulders until they're practically dislocated.  Like a mummy in a tomb.  And when I get like this, I don't care if I never get out; or maybe that's exactly what I hope will happen."
'Welcome to the Museum of Torture', p.82

A sweet description of a lover's embrace?  Hmm.  There are echoes there of a similar, less romantic scene from the very first story...

As with other Ogawa works, the central idea here is that people are strange and that it is impossible to see what lurks beneath a smiling face or within a beautiful body.  The idea of being 'normal' is held up to the light and examined, distorted, until it becomes hideous and unbearable.  Revenge goes one better, though, in the way that it also explores the interconnectedness of our society (one thought that popped into my mind is that it's like a dark, twisted version of The Beatles song 'Penny Lane'!), and one reading is nowhere near enough to uncover all the links between the stories.  This is a book that demands to be reread - possibly backwards ;)

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
Oh, yes.  This is easily the most impressive of the books I've read since the longlist announcement, one I devoured in a matter of hours (having started it about half an hour after it dropped through my letter box!).  It's a superb book, well written, with an excellent translation (I'm a big fan of Snyder), and another piece of what should become an impressive Ogawa legacy in English - with over twenty books published in Japan, we have a lot of treats yet to come.

Just one thing puzzles me, though - how on earth did The Housekeeper and the Professor get translated before this?!

Why did it make the shortlist
Because it's an excellent book, a clever collection of stories which is more akin to a novel really, and with the IFFP crying out for female writers on the shortlist, it's little wonder that Revenge made it.  And do you know what?  It stands a very good chance of taking out the whole thing too ;)

*****
Next up on the itinerary is Germany, as we head back in time to Berlin in the fifties.  A woman with two children living in the country, a joyful, idyllic tale...

...sorry - I lied.  More doom and gloom coming up next week :(