Bundu by Chris Barnard (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 12)

It's always nice to try something a little different, and today's book is certainly not the usual translated literature fare.  We're heading off to South Africa, for my first book in Afrikaans, and we'll be going out into the African wilderness.  A word of warning - watch out for hippos...

*****
Bundu by Chris Barnard (translated by Michiel Heyns - from Alma Books)
What's it all about?
Brand de la Rey is an ecologist living in the bundu (the South African equivalent of the outback).  Working hard on his projects, he prefers to keep himself to himself, but a visit to the local mission station brings an unwelcome interruption to his routine.

After years of drought, the land is bare, and refugees come flooding across the border from Mozambique, hoping for some food and help in South Africa.  The doctor and nurses at the station try to help the newcomers, but the more they do, the more people congregate outside the buildings.  The South African army, regarding the far-flung province as part of Mozambique, refuses to help, forcing Brand and the mission staff to think of an alternative plan - which is where a crazy man and an old plane come in...

Bundu is an interesting adventure story, with an exotic backdrop and a love interest thrown in too.  The text is peppered with Afrikaans and Swahili, and when you read Barnard's stories about a hunt for an injured hippo and donkeys trekking to the nearest settlement, you can almost feel the stifling heat and the dust.  Oh, and let's not forget Malume, the enigmatic leader of the baboons...

While the main focus of the story is the plan to save the dying refugees, one of its strong points is its depiction of the strains and stresses on the mission staff.  The overworked nurses collapse from exhaustion, only to get right back up again - they have no choice.  Death is all around, yet there is no villain here, just the harsh reality of a land without rain.  As the ordeal draws on, the characters become painfully aware of the fragility of human existence:

"Julia and I were standing washing our hands and faces in a basin in front of her back door.  I stood watching our hands and our arms while we were washing; I saw her bare shoulders and her neck, the tongue brushing the lips, and realized that under Julia's tanned skin, under all the youthful softness and unblemishedness, there was a pale white skeleton washing along, participating invisibly, a skeleton preparing itself slowly but surely for the day when it could cast off the winding sheet to show its true face."
p.178 (Alma Books, 2012)

Of course, times of trouble often have the effect of breaking down barriers, and it isn't long before Brand and Julia, one of the nurses, seek comfort in each other's arms...

Bundu is also a novel which explores the concept of communication and silence.  People go to the bundu to avoid human contact, and many of the characters (Brand, Julia, madman Jock Mills) are running away from something.  Even when they do talk, they often prefer to be sparing with their words, and in a country of many languages, conversation can become even more complicated.  Several of the characters conveniently fail to understand when talk becomes too involved, while others switch languages to better express themselves (or, in one case, to swear more strongly!).  Of course, mere words are the least of the walls preventing mutual understanding:

"Vusi's Afrikaans was even more limited than my stunted and stilted Zulu and that in itself was enough reason to put a damper on a natural exchange of thoughts.  But in addition we were both still victims of the society in which we'd grown up and in which black people and white people had to coexist on either side of an invisible wall, like fish in the same pond but separated by glass.  It went much deeper than a language problem or a superficial prejudice - it was a blind assumption that the other one thought, felt, experienced things in a different way, was different." (pp.109/110)

Bundu is an entertaining read, an interesting glimpse into another world, but if I'm honest, it isn't really my kind of book.  On the whole, it read more like genre fiction than a novel from a literary fiction longlist, and it definitely favoured plotting (and romance) above the writing, especially in the first half of the novel.  I also thought that the first-person point of view led to a lot of info dumping, especially regarding Julia's back story.  While the old chestnut about showing, not telling, isn't always appropriate, I definitely felt that Barnard could have introduced the information more subtly.

Which is not to say that it's a bad book - far from it.  I enjoyed it, and I think most people would get something from it.  I honestly can't say though that it's one which will stay in my memory for long...

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Not really.  It's a nice story,and there's more to it than the first half would suggest, but the writing is nothing special.  Many people will like it, but that doesn't make it a book to shortlist.

Will it make the shortlist?
I wouldn't think so - I think the longlisting was probably a surprise.  A word of caution though: I was very negative about an Alma Books entry last year, and we all know what happened there...

*****
By the time you read this, the shortlist will finally have been announced, and my predictions will (I'm sure) have been shown to be the ramblings of a deluded, bitter old man.  Join me next time for a commentary on the choices - and we'll continue with our journey next week :)

IFFP 2013 - Shortlist Predictions

We started out with sixteen titles longlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and tomorrow will see ten of the works fall by the wayside, leaving us with six heavyweights to battle it out for the prize.  In a longlist which I believe to be stronger than was the case in 2012, there are bound to be a few surprises - and I'm sure some of my early favourites will be hitting the canvas before the final bell...

Anyway, so far I've managed to get through fifteen of the sixteen longlisted titles (sadly, I'm still waiting to get a copy of Satantango), so I have a good idea of who I think deserves to progress to the next stage.  Now, as for other people (including the real jury), I'm not quite so sure ;)

Today, I'll be announcing two shortlists: one made up of the books I think deserve to make the cut; the other composed of the titles I suspect the real judges will opt for.  Not having read Satantango (which I'm expecting to make both lists), I'm adding a reserve title, just in case Krasznahorkai's novel doesn't live up to expectations.  And the nominees are (links to my reviews, where available):

Tony's Preferred Shortlist

Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas

Traveller of the Century by Andres Neuman

The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker

The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Satantango by László Krasznahorkai

Reserve - A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgård

Tony's Predicted Shortlist

Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas

Traveller of the Century by Andres Neuman

HHhH by Laurent Binet

Trieste by Daša Drndić

A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgård

Satantango by László Krasznahorkai

As you can see, three of the books appear on both lists, so expect those to be the ones that miss the cut ;)  Was I right?  Well, we'll soon find out...  Later this week, I'll be having a look at the real shortlist, and (as if that wasn't exciting enough) I'll also be comparing it to the six chosen by our collective Shadow Panel!  As was the case last year, we will be choosing our winner from our own shortlist, not the official one (and last year, the two lists were very different...).  The finish post is in sight...

'Black Bazaar' by Alain Mabanckou (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 11)

Important as it is to look back at history, sometimes it's good to just relax and chill out with some friends.  Time to head off to Jip's Bar then to meet a man who likes to watch the world (and women) pass by - in style, bien sûr ;)

*****
Black Baza(a)r by Alain Mabanckou (translated by Sarah Ardizzone - from Serpent's Tail)
What's it all about?
Our entry into Mabanckou's world is an aspiring writer from the Congo ('the little one') living illegally in Paris.  He's a happy soul, enjoying life in the French capital - until, that is, he is deserted by his partner, who runs off with their daughter (and a Tom-Tom player...) back to his home country.  What's a man to do...

Fessologue, as our friend is known (because of his elevation of considering women's derrières to a science), copes with it all by sitting in Jip's café, talking rubbish with other African immigrants and visiting a writer friend who gives him advice.  Eventually, he decides that the best way to cope with his issues is to buy a clunky old typewriter and start writing a book about his experiences - a book called Black Bazar...

Mabanckou's novel appears at first glance to be just a series of events and anecdotes, fun stories about the African diaspora in Paris.  However, they soon become more personal, exploring the relationship between Fessologue and his partner, Couleur d'origine ('Colour of Origin'), perhaps in an attempt to understand why it went wrong.

Don't get me wrong though - this is not a book of regrets and tears.  Fessologue is a dedicated follower of fashion, a man who is just as at home choosing Italian hand-made suits as discussing the relative merits of female posteriors.  He heads out into the Parisian night, on the prowl for fresh arrivals from his home continent to (as he says) "chasser sans merci les gazelles sauvages" ('mercilessly hunt down the wild gazelles').  It's easy to conclude that he deserved everything he got...

Black Bazaar though is also a novel about writers and writing.  The book begins with a great prologue in which a friend interrogates Fessologue at the bar, referencing famous novels in an attempt to pin down what exactly it is the writer is planning to write.  Frustrated by the rejection of ideas about white sheep, old men and fishing, and love in a time of cholera, Roger the Franco-Ivorian dismisses his friend's ability to ever get a story down on paper:

"Écoute, mon gars, sois réaliste!  Laisse tomber tes histoires de t'asseoir et d'écrire tous les jours, y a des gens plus calés pour ça, et ces gens-là on les voit à la télé, ils parlent bien, et quand ils parlent y a un sujet, y a un verbe et y a un complément.  Ils sont nés pour ça, ils ont été élevés dans ça, alors que nous autres les nègres, c'est pas notre dada, l'écriture."
pp.13/14 (Éditions du Seuil, 2009)

"Listen up, my boy, be realistic!  Drop your sitting around and writing every day, there's people much better at it, and those people, you see them on telly, they talk well, and when they talk there's a subject, there's a verb and there's an object.  They're born for that, they're raised in that, while us blacks, it's not our thing, writing."***

I wonder how autobiographical this conversation is...

Black Bazaar reminds me of a Russian book I read last year, Happiness is Possible.  Both deal with a writer in a big city, telling stories about life there for someone who was born elsewhere.  Both have been left by their partners and use their writing to deal with the hurt, gradually moving from humorous sketches of daily life to more personal stories.  Were it not for the snappy clothes and the Pelforth beers, Fessologue would fit in well in Moscow ;)

As it is, he's another writer in (self-imposed) exile, able to look at matters from a distance, from a different perspective, and it's a point which isn't lost on our Congolese friend.  He muses:

"Est-ce qu'un écrivain doit toujours vivre dans un autre pays, et de préférence être contraint d'y vivre pour avoir des choses à écrire et permettre aux autres d'analyser l'influence de l'exil dans son écriture?" (p.182)

"Must a writer always live in another country, and preferably be forced to live there, in order to have things to write and to allow others to analyse the influence of exile in their writing?"***

Hmm.  Perhaps I should read some of Mabanckou's other books, set in his home country, to find out ;)

In the end though, this is a book about our friend Fessologue.  It's an enjoyable romp, a welcome change from the tone of the rest of this year's longlist, and I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that it has a relatively happy end.  But even this ending is a little ambiguous - what constitutes a happy ending for our African immigrant?  Is it keeping a firm hold on his roots, or adapting to life in a new country?  Or is there a middle ground?  One to consider for all the ex-pats among us...

***All translations into English are my sorry efforts...

***** Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Possibly.  It'll be there or thereabouts, a book which is entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time.  On finishing this one, I ordered two more of Mabanckou's novels - which shows how much I liked it :)

A couple of points...  I'd love to see a woman's take on this work, as I occasionally got the feeling that old Fess was a touch on the chauvinist side.  Would a female reader relate with him enough to enjoy the book?

Also, I read this in French, so I have no idea how good the translation is.  The only thing I know is that the protagonist's name was translated as 'buttologist'/'buttocks man' - which I dislike for many reasons (my preference would have been to leave the name in French!).

Will it make the shortlist?
Possibly not.  I'd love it to make the final six, but I'm not sure the judges will be able to squeeze this past some of the doom and gloom stories - and the shortlist will be a dourer place for it ;)

*****
Another one done and dusted :)  From an African story, next time we'll be looking at a story in Africa.  Buckle up - we're going off road...

'Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories' by Word Awareness (ed.) (Review)

While I've mostly been occupied with the IFFP longlist recently, I have had a few other works waiting to be read and reviewed.  One of these is a book I was asked to review a while back, something a little different.  So, how's your Portuguese?

*****
Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories is a collection which comes from the web-site of the same name.  Word Awareness (run by translator Rafa Lombardino) invited writers from Brazil to submit short pieces of fiction which would be translated into English and published on the web-site.  It's a project which hopes to give young Brazilian writers more exposure to an international audience - and perhaps more success too :)

The collection contains twenty-two stories, the majority of which are fairly short (some coming in at a little over a page) with only a few stretching to more than five pages.  Almost all of the stories are translated by Lombardino, but for those of you who do know a little Portuguese, there's an added bonus.  Just as at the site, you can also read the stories in the original version...

But what is it actually like?  Well, as you can imagine in an anthology of this sort, there is a variety of moods and styles.  While the majority would fall under the umbrella of literary fiction, there are a few stories which you could label as genre fiction.  Kariny Aciole's 'Return to Shantra' is a fantasy tale, with a hint of erotica thrown in for good measure, while Elisabeth Maranhão's 'Glass and Porcelain in the Garden', a story about a woman uncovering her husband's affair, could (possibly!) be considered chick lit.

There are also some rather short, poetic pieces, stories which need to be reread several times to get the idea behind the words.  Ludmila Barbosa is described in her blurb as a poet, so it is no surprise that her 'Notes on Dreaming' reads a little like a poem.  I also enjoyed Lorena Leandro's short work 'Relationship', in which a woman's unconditional love is shown to have a rather unusual object...

A few of the stories have an aspect of Brazilian culture as their focus, and some of these were perhaps among the more successful stories in the collection.  Roberto Denser's 'The Chick Who Read Clarice Lispector Too Much' is a clever story set at a bus stop, in which the dangers of being a book snob are on display for all to see.  'Eternally Lying in a Splendid Cradle' by Simone Campos, the longest story in the collection, is an intriguing look at Brazilian culture seen through the eyes of a foreigner.  As for Gui Nascimento's 'I Love São Paulo', well that's just a few pages of two friends talking drug-influenced nonsense about the great city ;)

For me though, the best stories here are also fairly simple and universal ones.  José Geraldo Gouvêa's 'The Girl Who Liked Listening to Stories' is a tale which will resonate with anyone who remembers discovering the beauty of words.  My favourite story in the collection though is the very last one, by Paulo Carvalho.  A man thinks back to the day he discovered love, a story of riding bikes down hills and finding new feelings for a girl.  The title? 'Simple'...

The book is available on Amazon (in both paperback and Kindle format), but the stories are also available for browsing on the CBSS web-site.  Two new stories are published each month (on the 1st and 15th), and there's a wide range of stories to explore.  Anyone interested in what's coming out of Brazil (which may well become the next big thing in translated fiction) should definitely check it out :)

*****
One last thing I'd like to comment on is the translation, as it's rare that I have both the original and the translation in front of me at the same time.  While my Portuguese is fairly poor (just a year of wasting time while at university...), having studied most Romance languages, I can get a feel for the original from the translation.  There was a distinct difference in style between the two versions, one which came across in many of the stories I compared.

One story I'd like to focus on is Wilson Gorj's ' The Black Mulberry' ('Amora negra'), and I'll just give you one paragraph from each version:

"Deliciosa, porém pequenas.  Havia, sim, uma bem grande, mas esta amora pendia na ponte de um dos galhos estendidos sobre a agua." (pp.121/2)

"They were delicious, but too small.  There was a very big juicy mulberry hanging from one of the branches right above the water." (p.23)

With a bit of luck, you'll be able to see the differences in style between the two versions.  The English gets across the content of the original, but I'm not sure that the rhythm and style of the Portuguese is captured, and that means that the story comes across as a little prosaic in English, where the Portuguese (to my untutored ears) seems more melodic.  If it had been translated like this, would the meaning have been lost?

'Delicious, but small.  There was, it's true, a very big one, but this mulberry hung from the end of one of the branches extending over the water."

The word 'delicious' was mentioned in the previous sentence, so I don't feel the need to add the pronoun 'they'.  I also think that there is no need to alter the Portuguese sentence structure in the second sentence...

You can tell that I'm a frustrated translator, but I think that perhaps content wins out over style occasionally in this collection, especially in the simplification of sentences.  English is less tolerant of long, rambling, comma-filled sentences than the Romance languages (except, of course, when I'm on a roll in my blog posts!), but I enjoy reading this style of writing.  I hope Rafa takes this as a comment on, and not a criticism of her translation style :)

'Trieste' by Daša Drndić (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 10)

We're back to WW2 fare today, this time along Italy's Adriatic Coast.  However, the book we'll be examining looks at things from a slightly different angle from usual.  So, where are we exactly?  Well...

*****
Trieste by Daša Drndić (translated by Ellen Elias Bursać - review copy from MacLehose Press)
What's it all about?
In 2006, Haya Tedeschi, an elderly lady, sits at home in Gorizia, near Trieste, surrounded by piles of papers and newspaper clippings.  The mounds of paper scattered on the floor all have to do with the events of the war, stories of atrocities and biographies of some of the heroes and villains of the era.  It may seem to be history to many people, but for Haya the war is still very real.

We then move back in time to the start of the twentieth century and are introduced to the Tedeschi family and the region around Trieste.  It is a European crossroads, a city on the borders of Empires, a multilingual cultural melting pot - great for music and literature, very bad when the great European powers decide to go to war...

The writer takes us carefully through the first part of the 20th century until we reach the main focus of the novel, the Second World War.  It is here that Haya meets SS officer Kurt Frank and has a secret affair.  The result of the relationship is a son, Antonio Tedeschi - a boy who one day goes missing, leaving his mother with a sixty-two year wait for his return.

Trieste is a heavy book on a weighty subject.  Drndić uses the novel to discuss what happened during the war in and around the title city, an area many people would know little about.  We learn about the death camps in the region and the men who ran them (and what happened to them after the war...).  We read about the post-war trials and how some of them were conducted in the absence of the accused, empty procedures which had no consequences.  In short, we are reminded of the past, a past which the writer wants to make sure is not forgotten.

Eventually, the focus shifts to the Lebensborn project, a Nazi plan to ensure the dominance of their Aryan super race.  Homes were opened all over the German Reich, where suitable women gave birth to children who were then to be brought up in a manner deemed fit for the heirs of the master race.  When Himmler realised that the numbers weren't impressive enough, he decided to order the removal of suitable children born to inferior races in the region (including little Antonio Tedeschi...).

The final section of the book is devoted to Hans Traube, a man who knows that his name and upbringing is a lie, and his quest to uncover the truth.  Like his birth mother, Hans has been searching through documents in the vain hope of finding his true identity, in the process finding out much more about his possible biological father than he would like to know.  The Lebensborn children are doomed to live with uncertainty, hoping they might some day uncover their true origins, but also scared of what they might find:

"Then, when I least expected it, the Past jumped out at me in a flash, Hop! like a carcass, like some rotten corpse it draped itself around my neck, plunged its claws into my artery and it still isn't letting go. I'd like to shake it off, this Past, but it won't let me, it swings on me as I walk, it lies on me while I sleep, it looks me in the eye and leers, See, I'm still with you."
p.339 (MacLehose Press, 2013)

Of course, it's not just the Lebensborn children who have to worry about the burden of the past.  Drndić contrasts their fate with that of the children of the SS officers, the men and women responsible for crimes against humanity.  They also struggle to live with the legacy of the past...

Trieste is minutely researched, comprising a dizzying collage of fact and fiction, stories and interviews.  In its inclusion of photographs and original documentation (and even forty pages of the names of Italian holocaust victims), with a narrative frequently shoved aside in favour of a tangent, there is something almost Sebaldian in its structure.  We are taken on a tour of WW2, from Aushwitz and Treblinka to Reinhard Heydrich at the Salon Kitty brothel in Berlin (for the second time in a week...), with anecdotes about concentration camp guards shooting prisoners for fun, and convoys of the doomed through Switzerland, where locals think they are helping by providing blankets and warm soup...

What comes through very clearly though is the mass slaughter, the senseless, deliberate waste of human life on a grand scale.  One of the more interesting features of the novel is the occasional Q & A with both holocaust victims and their captors, giving insights into what happened - and how.  As one guard says:

"When I was on a trip once, years later in Brazil, my train stopped next to a slaughterhouse.  The cattle grazing in the pens trotted up to the fence and stared at our train.  They were very close to my window, one jostling the other, looking at me through that fence.  I thought then, This reminds me of Poland.  That's how the people looked at me there: trustingly, just before they went into the... I couldn't eat tinned meat for a long time after that.  Those big cows' eyes staring at me, those animals who had no idea that in no time they'd all be slaughtered...

So you didn't feel the camp inmates were people?

Cargo.  They were cargo." (p.206)

Trieste is certainly an ambitious, expansive work, but if I had a criticism to make, it would be that it is a little over-ambitious at times.  The main story, what little of it there is, is frequently pushed into the background, seemingly only there to serve as an excuse to write about the history.  As with HHhH, the reader is left wondering what the actual focus of the work is, and whether it might have been better left as non-fiction...

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Possibly not.  It's a worthy book on an important subject, but it wanders a little (OK, a lot), and I was never quite sure what the focus was meant to be.  The last section, centred on Hans Traube and his search for the truth, is excellent, and I would personally have preferred a much narrower focus on the Lebensborn project.

Will it make the shortlist?
Despite what I said above, I think it has a good chance.  I don't think I'm the best judge of literature dealing with the Holocaust, and other readers seem to appreciate books like HHhH and Trieste a lot more than I do.  I suspect that one of those two will make the cut, and this one is much weightier and better written. 

*****
Moving on, and we're (finally) lightening the mood a little; it's time to head off to Paris for some drinking, dancing and writing in the park.  Whatever you do, make sure you dress for the occasion - suit up, everyone ;)

'The Iraqi Christ' by Hassan Blasim (Review)

A new Comma Press publication of translated fiction is always exciting, and another collection has just been released.  It is a second group of stories from Iraqi-in-exile Hassan Blasim, whose first collection (The Madman of Freedom Square) was longlisted for the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (and, apparently, banned in Jordan...).  It will be interesting to see how this one goes - both critically and politically...

*****
The Iraqi Christ (translated by Jonathan Wright, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a series of tales set both in Iraq and overseas.  It is a collection set against the chaos of life in a country where normal rules seldom apply and people get on with matters as best they can - easier said than done when money, jobs, electricity and water are in short supply.  A mixture of realistic and slightly-more fantastic tales allows Blasim to paint a vivid picture of his mother country.

From the very start, we know we are in dangerous territory:

"People were waiting in queues to tell their stories.  The police intervened to marshal the crowd and the main street opposite the radio station was closed to traffic.  Pickpockets and itinerant cigarette vendors circulated among them.  People were terrified a terrorist would infiltrate the crowd and turn all these stories into a pulp of flesh and fire."
p.1, 'The Song of the Goats' (2013, Comma Press)

It is a stunning start to the collection, one which sets the scene for much of what is to follow in later stories.

This start to the collection introduces two concepts which the writer will expand upon throughout the book: the importance of stories and the constant presence of death.  The first story, 'The Song of the Goats', has a radio station set up a competition to tell the best story about life in the war-torn country (hence the long queues...).  This is closely followed by 'The Fifth-Floor Window', in which a group of sick men tell stories to pass the time as they see the chaos unfolding from the window of their room.

From here, the stories increase in intensity, with the writer painting images of violence and madness, with the crudeness of the language at times matching the events depicted.  Many of the stories abound in sex, drinking and (very) black humour, whatever it takes to make the pain go away.  In 'The Killers and the Compass', a psychopath roams the suburbs of what could be described as post-apocalyptic Iraq.  There is certainly more than a hint of Mad Max here (this is a man who is definitely dangerous to know).  'The Iraqi Christ', the title story of the collection, then introduces us to an ex-soldier with a sixth sense for danger - on the very day his luck is about to run out...
 
There is more to The Iraqi Christ than news from Iraq though.  Blasim, who now lives in Finland, also looks at what happens to people who leave their homeland behind.  'Dear Beto' chronicles a tale of depression in Finland, narrated by an emigrant (albeit a rather unusual one...) while 'Why Don't You Write a Novel, Instead of Talking About All These Characters?' is centred on refugees in Hungary and the ordeals they face in getting to their new home.  It also features a certain writer, who appears to be travelling under a pseudonym...

...and in fact this slice of meta-fiction is just one of a series of excursions out of realism and into something more akin to Magical Realism.  Many of the stories are slightly more fantastical than you would imagine, again perhaps an attempt to escape the disappointments of everyday life.  In 'The Hole', a soldier falls down a hole and makes the acquaintance of a 'Djinni' (not something that occurs on a daily basis, even in Baghdad), and 'A Wolf' is a tall tale about cruising bars for sex, Jehovah's witnesses, mosquitoes... oh, and a wolf ;)  For fans of Kafka or Murakami (like yours truly), these stories are actually some of the most entertaining in the collection.

The Iraqi Christ then is a mix of different styles of stories, all trying to make sense of a chaotic society where the past has been thrown out of the window and where the future is uncertain, a world of madness and constant noise:

"Applause at the Peace Prize award ceremony at a time when new wars are breaking out in new hotspots,the sound of cars crashing, car bombs exploding, the cars of thieves, an ambulance, a bank truck loaded with bundles of banknotes, a fire engine.  The sounds of mosques and churches, of Friday sermons and homilies, of group sex and glass breaking, sounds coming in the right ear and sounds going out the left ear."
p.73, 'Dear Beto'

What can you do in the face of a reality like this except drink, sleep around, surrender to the madness - and tell stories...

March 2013 Wrap-Up

March is coming to an end, and a busy month it's been round these parts.  I've been frantically racing through the books on the IFFP longlist, hoping to get through the twelve I hadn't previously read before the shortlist is announced.  I think I might just about make it - but it'll be close ;)

Anyhow, all this means that the numbers are well up this month on my fairly slow start to the year - shall we?

*****
Total Books Read: 12
Year-to-Date: 26

New: 12

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 1
Review Copies: 3

From the Library: 8

On the Kindle: 0

Novels: 12
Novellas: 0

Short Stories: 0

Non-English Language: 12 (2 Arabic, 2 French, Spanish, Norwegian, Dutch, Turkish, Croatian, Afrikaans, Albanian, Italian)

In Original Language:1 (1 French)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (0/3)

IFFP 2013 Longlist: 11 (15/16)

*****
Books reviewed in March were:

1) The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

2) Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal

3) The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

4) White Masks by Elias Khoury
5) A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard
6) The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker
7) HHhH by Laurent Binet
8) Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Tony's Turkey for March is: nothing

While HHhH didn't really grab me, it was far from being a turkey - and that's as close as it got this month :)

Tony's Recommendation for March is:
Gerbrand Bakker's The Detour

Bakker's slight novel was easily my favourite of the five IFFP longlisted books, but the other books I posted on in March were all good too.  I was tempted to give the prize to Trollope's magnus opus, and Khoury's and Barbal's books gave me pause for thought.  However, I couldn't really go past The Detour, an excellent example of why we read these longlists - to discover great books and great authors :)

*****
A couple more from the IFFP and then the pace is off (thankfully).  Well, as far as the reading goes anyway - there'll be plenty of IFFP reviews for you all to enjoy in April :)

'Silent House' by Orhan Pamuk (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 9)

Our next leg of the IFFP magical mystery tour takes us off to Turkey to consider a work by a very familiar name.   It's no surprise that a Nobel-Prize winner finds himself on the longlist - it is surprising that it's taking this long though.  Today's choice was originally published three decades ago...

*****
Silent House by Orhan Pamuk (translated by Robert Finn - from Hamish Hamilton)
What's it all about?
The year is 1980, the location Cennethisar, a coastal village fifty kilometres from Istanbul.  Three siblings have come to visit their grandmother, making their annual pilgrimage to pay their respects, visit their parents' graves and have some fun in the sun while they're at it.  This year, though, is destined to be different - turbulent times are just around the corner, and the family is about to be caught up in the fever sweeping the country.

Pamuk's novel is set at a time of great upheaval in Turkey.  According to Wikipedia, the overall death toll in the country in the 1970s from violence is estimated at 5,000, with nearly ten assassinations per day.  Just a month after the events of this novel, there was a coup d'état, after which the military ruled for three years.  Even in the sleepy town of Cennethisar, rival gangs of 'Communists' and 'Fascists' are roaming the streets, extorting protection money and attacking the enemy.  This summer is unlikely to end well...

Silent House is narrated by five voices, each of which is distinct and well written: Fatma, the grandmother; Faruk and Metin (Fatma's two grandsons); Recep, her servant; and Hasan, a character whose relationship to the family is a lot more complicated than it first appears.  The five voices provide a continuous narrative, one taking up the story where another breaks off, and because of this, the novel is a little slow to get into gear (as many reviews have remarked).  During the first half of the novel, there is little plot to speak of, and when bookish Faruk talks about his literary plans, it's hard to avoid drawing parallels with the book in hand:

"Someone reading my book from cover to cover will during those weeks and months end up able to glimpse that cloudlike mass of events that I managed to perceive while working here, and like me he'll murmur excitedly: This is history, this is history and life..."
p.165 (Hamish Hamilton, 2013)

Like Pamuk, Faruk is more concerned with depicting life than fascinating the reader with his narrative.

Gradually though, the family squabbles and parties give way to more serious issues.  We see hints of potential trouble as Hasan and his friends start to throw their weight around.  The right-wing gangs frown upon the flesh the holidaymakers show on the beach and the alcohol the rich kids swig back each night.  As they grow in confidence, the gang members begin to throw their weight around more and more, which spells trouble for anyone caught reading a Communist newspaper - like Fatma's grand-daughter, Nilgün...

What eventually develops from the pages of Silent House is a picture of two cultures clashing, a national challenge mirroring the global struggles of the Cold War.  The two sides feel themselves locked in a fight where there can be only one winner.  It's a fight between the new ways and the old, Communism versus Fascism, secular life against the appeal of Islam - and it provides young men with a taste for violence with an outlet for their rage, justified or otherwise.  Hasan (who has a lot to be angry about) certainly has no intention of leading a quiet life:

"I know that the day they see I've grown used to it, they'll be so pleased, and they'll declare with satisfaction, He's finally learned how it goes in life, but I'm not signing up for your life, gentlemen, I'll get a gun and teach you how it goes." (p.154)

Over the course of the novel, it is Hasan's development which mirrors the events starting to happen in the country, and his fate which Turkey shares.

Silent House is a slow-moving, but ultimately fascinating slice of life.  It's a collection of personal stories set against the backdrop of a time of national importance, and I felt it worked really well.  Now imagine how it might have read when it was first published - only three years after the event ;)

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Yes.  I enjoyed it, despite the slow start.  After a hundred pages, like many people (some of whom never got to the end...), I had my doubts, but it eventually draws you in.  Oh, and it makes a nice change from the Second World War too.  This could well be one of my top six when I finally get to the end of my reading.

Will it make the shortlist?
No.  I'm not sure that the judges will see enough here to get it over the line.  In a weaker year (in need of star power), it'd make it.  This year's longlist is fairly strong, and the shortlist won't need a Nobel Prize Winner to give it extra appeal :)

*****
Onwards and upwards - it's just a short hop from Turkey up to Italy's Adriatic coast.  Trieste is supposed to be lovely at this time of year...

'HHhH' by Laurent Binet (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 8)

If there's one thing that's inevitable about a European-dominated IFFP longlist, it's that you'll come across a few World War Two books sooner or later.  Today we're on a trip to Prague for the first of this year's batch, a story about a man whose ambition may have outstripped his abilities.

And that's just the writer...

*****
HHhH by Laurent Binet (translated by Sam Taylor - from Harvill Secker)
What's it all about?
A French writer obsessed with the Czech Republic decides to produce a novel about the events of a WW2 assassination attempt.  Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's right-hand man, has turned Prague into his own private police state, a model for other German 'provinces'.  Needing to show the British that they are pulling their weight, the Czech government-in-exile in London decides to strike a blow and sends in two parachutists (Slovak Jozef Gabčik and Czech Jan Kubiš) to bring down the 'Blond Beast'.

The subject matter is fascinating, and the story (on the periphery of major WW2 events) is an enthralling one.  In addition to the depiction of a major villain I'd never even heard of, HHhH explains the background of the German march into Central Europe, including the animosity between the Czechs and Slovaks which may have made it possible in the first place.  If you are going to write about the war, looking at a relatively unknown aspect of it is a good way to go about it.

Despite the inherent interest of the story though, Binet is just as interested in telling us about his story, the writing of HHhH.  The novel is written in a detached manner, with the writer constantly interrupting, and commenting on, the action he is attempting to describe.  The novel is written in over 250 short chapters, many lasting less than a page, and it comes across as less a novel than an experiment in historical fiction, one which (as the writer seems to feel) is always doomed to failure.

The story is told with liberal doses of sarcasm and black humour, which works fairly well.  Some of the information given is so bleak that perhaps this humour is the only possible way of dealing with it:

"The first convoy left for Riga on January 9, 1942: a thousand people, of whom 105 would survive.  The second convoy, a week later, also went to Riga: a thousand people, 16 survivors.  The third, in March: a thousand people, 7 survivors.  The fourth: a thousand people, 3 survivors.  There is nothing unusual in this dreadful numerical progression towards 100 percent.  It is just another sign of the Germans' famous efficiency."
Section 123 (Harvill Secker, 2012)

The writer also frequently reminds us that Heydrich (like Hitler before him) could never be accused of deception.  He gave everyone fair warning and told them exactly what he was going to do...

Having said that though, I did find myself questioning Binet's slant.  This is meta-fiction at its most intrusive (and annoying), and it made it difficult to really get into the book.  The lack of page numbers seemed simply gimmicky, and the writer deliberately plays with the reader, constantly contradicting and correcting himself.  In fact, he often makes up information he doesn't know:

Natacha reads the chapter I've just written.  When she reaches the second sentence, she exclaims: "What do you mean, 'The blood rises to his cheeks and he feels his brain swell inside his skull'?  You're making it up!" 
(Section 107)

When he (the writer narrator) is obviously making things up, how can we trust him?  And why should we?

HHhH is an interesting book, but for me the interest is mainly due to the events Binet is describing, not his literary messings around.  At times, the digressions and musings are simply frustrating, preventing the reader from making a connection with the story.  Ironically, once we get to the main action of the novel, the one point where the story takes over, it is all a bit of a let down.  I suspect that the earlier messing around was disguising the fact that there's nothing particularly appealing about Binet's writing.

The narrator has a habit of namedropping, and (amongst others) Flaubert, Borges and Kundera are mentioned in the text.  Kundera actually appears on the very first page:

" In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera implies that he feels a bit ashamed at having to name his characters.  And although this shame is hardly perceptible in his novels, which are full of Tomášes, Tominas, and Terezas, we can intuit the obvious meaning: what could be more vulgar than to arbitrarily give - from a childish desire for verisimilitude or, at best, mere convenience - an invented name to an invented character?  In my opinion, Kundera should have gone further: what could be more vulgar than an invented character?" (Section 1)

As well as hinting at what direction HHhH will take, the writer appears to be introducing the kind of company he would like to be placed in.  He's talking the talk, but I'm not sure that he's walking the walk...

A little explanation of the title to finish.  HHhH stands for 'Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich' ('Himmler's brain is called Heydrich'), and I always struggled to think of how to actually say it.  Until, that is, I realised that if the abbreviation comes from German, it should be pronounced in the German fashion...

...Ha, Ha, ha, Ha.  The joke's on Binet ;)

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
What do you think?

Seriously, I'm not saying that this is bad - it's an interesting read, and Binet does get it right in places.  It's just that a lot of the interest comes from the subject matter and not the way the writer handles it.  Of the ten longlisted works I've read so far, this one is my least favourite.  It's not bad, just not good enough.

Will it make the shortlist?
Possibly.  There are lots of conflicting opinions on this one, but it's a big-name book that has its champions.  I haven't read the other WW2-era books yet (Trieste, The Fall of the Stone City), but I suspect that at least one of them will make the shortlist.  I doubt HHhH will win the prize, but it's another book which will look good on paper for the shortlist...

*****
Leaving Prague behind, we head off to Turkey next - for a book three decades in the translating.  See you there ;)

'The Detour' by Gerbrand Bakker (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 7)

You wouldn't expect many novels on translation prize longlists to be set in Wales (especially when the writer isn't even Welsh), but that's the case with my latest choice from the IFFP longlist.  Today's story takes us to North Wales, in the shadow of Snowdon.  There's a dog, a herd of cows - oh, and some geese...

*****
The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker (translated by David Colmer - from Harvill Secker, US title is Ten Wild Geese)
What's it all about?
The story begins with a figure in an isolated house in North Wales.  A Dutch woman who enjoys her solitude, she appears to be a refugee, a runaway - but from what exactly?  From the start there are hints of sexual misadventures in her former life; more importantly, there are worrying signs of health issues:

"That night she stared at the fire just as she had stared at the water.  She had lit candles and put them on the window sill.  Nagging pain in her back.  Before getting into the bath, she had eaten some bread with cheese and a sweet onion.  Hot meals were too much trouble.  Fruit and vegetables were healthy but, of course, things like that only applied to people who were healthy."
pp.70/1 (Scribe, 2012)

Whatever her troubles, the woman is very clear in her desire to face them by herself, leaving her home country, family and friends, and marooning herself in the middle of nowhere.

It is into this backdrop of solitude then that Bradwen enters her life one day.  He is a young hiker attempting to map out a walking trail across the countryside, and after the woman offers him shelter for the night, he decides to stay on, helping out around the house and running errands for his reclusive host.  It seems that despite her decision to live alone, she does feel a need for male company.
 
Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, the woman's husband gradually appears on the scene.  Left bewildered by his wife's disappearance, he initially lashes out, resulting in a trip to the police station.  However, once he finds out a little more about the truth behind his wife's decision to flee, he hires a detective to track her down - so that he can follow her... 

The Detour is a fairly short novel, but it is a skilfully woven story.  We start in the middle of an informational void every bit as empty as the countryside setting.  Gradually though, the writer reveals fragments of information, allowing the reader to piece together parts of the story (even if we never uncover the whole truth).  This style of writing, released in short, terse chapters, has the effect of creating characters who are hard to read, people who have secrets that they are unlikely to divulge in a hurry.

     "Not much snow," the boy said, with his mouth full of fruit cake and his face pressed against the window.  "Maybe at the top.  We have to get off in a minute."
     She didn't say anything.  She would say very little all day.  Her suspicions had been aroused. (p.196)

I'd just like to point out that at that point I had absolutely no idea what that last sentence meant...

Bakker's main protagonist is a fascinating creation, a spiky, almost unlikeable woman.  While she gives her name as Emilie, there are reasons to doubt the veracity of the claim (just as everything she says needs to be taken with a liberal dose of salt).  Before her flight, Emilie was working on her PhD in English Literature.  The topic?  The American poet, Emily Dickinson, with whom our Emilie has a few similarities...

While this may all sound a little bleak, Bakker's novel is interspersed with dry humour, setting off the dark tone of the work nicely.  Emilie is continually mistaken for a German, something she contradicts very sharply (any Scot, Canadian or Kiwi will identify with her pain...), and she also finds it hard to convince people that the injury to her foot was caused by a badger.  You see, they're very shy creatures...

There is so much more I could write about here, more than you would think for such a thin novel.  However, it's probably best to leave you to find out the rest for yourself.  I'd definitely recommend your giving it a try - just don't read it if you're alone in a farmhouse in the middle of winter ;)

Does it deserve to make the shortlist?
Yes.  It's a most enjoyable work, one which deserves and almost demands a reread.  There's so much going on in terms of plot, style, pacing, characterisation...  I liked it :)

Will it make the shortlist?
I'm not sure - it might be a book which most will like, but few will champion.  It's easy to get enthusiastic about a book only to have other readers fail to see what the fuss is about.  Will it be able to knock off enough of the big guns to make the shortlist?  I'm not convinced...

*****
Right, time to leave Wales.  The next stop is Prague, where we have a meeting with Himmler's brain (apparently, his name is Heydrich...).  Just the first of several longlisted books set during the Second World War; hopefully, I'll have more luck with them than I did with last year's crop...