'The Light and The Dark' by Mikhail Shishkin (Review)

After reading (and loving) Maidenhair a while back, I was keen to try more of Mikhail Shishkin's work, hoping that another book would appear in English.  I was pleasantly surprised then when the kind people at MacLehose (well, Quercus, actually) sent me a review copy of another of his novels, his most recent translation into English.  In some ways it's a very similar book to Maidenhair - however, in others it's very different...

*****
The Light and the Dark (translated by Andrew Bromfield) is an epistolary novel (written in letters) between Sasha and Volodenka, a pair of young lovers who have been parted.  As Sasha talks about everyday life and reminisces about her childhood, Volodenka writes about his experiences in the army, on the march to China to help crush the Boxer Rebellion.  The Boxer Rebellion?  That happened at the turn of the twentieth century - hang on a minute...

That's right.  You see, unlike Australia Post (who can struggle to locate a sturdy letter box with a large number painted on it) the Russian postal service seems to be able to work in four dimensions.  Sasha appears to be living in modern times, and moves further on in life as each letter goes by.  On the other hand, Volodenka's side of the story takes place over a matter of hot, sticky, blood-drenched months.  Is there any hope for two people separated by space and time?  Well, I'm sure love will find a way ;)

Anyone expecting a story reminiscent of the Hollywood movie The Lake House is barking up the wrong tree though, and those who have already experienced Shishkin's work, in the form of Maidenhair, will have guessed that there is a lot more to The Light and The Dark than a cheesy tale of star-crossed lovers.  In fact, the two writers barely acknowledge each other's letters, leading us to suspect that their missives aren't really reaching their destination after all.  If we attempt to make sense of the story, it would be tempting to surmise that perhaps Sasha is pining after a lost love, a soldier who died long ago...

...but the plot, as you may already have suspected, is of little consequence here.  The story is merely a canvas upon which Shishkin can sketch out his theories on time and relationships.  It's a book of childhood memories and stories of the past in which the two protagonists open up about their formative years.  Both Sasha and Volodenka have a lot to say about their relationships with their parents and the effect that marriage break-ups had on their childhood.  However, a more prominent theme is a circular return to their parents, this time in the role of carers, later in life.  For Shishkin, dealing with death is an important part of life:

"It's very important for people when their dear ones leave them.  That's a gift too.  It's the only way they can understand anything about life.  The death of the people we love, people dear to us, is a gift that can help us understand the important reason why we are here."
p.243 (Quercus Books, 2013)

It's a lesson Sasha and Volodenka are to learn in different ways.

As much as the book talks about death though, the two main characters also grow to understand the importance of embracing life.  Caught in the middle of a horrific conflict, Volodenka discovers the joy of life and a desperate wish not to die.  What he is yet to realise (and what Sasha discovers over the course of the novel) is that it is your body which drags you down, pulling you closer to death:

"Do you know what made me feel afraid the first time?  When I was fourteen or fifteen - it was a realisation that suddenly hit me: My body is dragging me into the grave.  Every day, every moment.  Every time I breathe in and breathe out.
Isn't that alone already a good enough reason to hate it?" (p.183)

But then, the body is also used to enjoy life - as we see in other parts of the book...

Just as in Maidenhair, the writer uses his characters to discuss the nature of time, refuting the idea of linear progress.  One metaphor used is that of a book already written, meaning that life is little more than acting out what has already been put down in black and white.  However, other people may read those lines at different times, causing those caught in the action to experience a feeling of déjà vu (no, me neither...).  In any case, physical objects like coins or letters link everything together, present, future and past connected to a vanishing point in time...

I enjoyed The Light and The Dark, but I'd have to say that it's not as awe-inspiring as Maidenhair.  It took me a while to get into the book, especially as the first letters seemed to make up little more than a he-said, she-said work.  At one point, I found myself agreeing with Sasha:

"I'm lying here contemplating my own navel.
 What a wonderful occupation!" (p.52)

While it was all well written and interesting, over the first half of the book I didn't feel too inspired to rush back after finishing a section.  In a sense, the lack of a strong plot and the episodic nature of the structure meant that I was treating it more like a collection of short stories than a novel...  Eventually though, The Light and The Dark did win me over, especially as the two lovers drifted further apart.  The further you advance into Shishkin's deceptively-light prose, the more you understand what he is trying to do. 

Genius or merely a good writer?  I'm not quite convinced yet that Shishkin is the next-big-thing he's been touted as.  Which is not to say that he's a one-hit wonder, quite the contrary; this is definitely a writer you'll hear more of in the future.  If you haven't already, perhaps it's time to get on board the bandwagon :)

*****
P.S. For anyone interested in sampling some of Shishkin's other work, Dwight, of A Common Reader, shared some links to online stories in the course of his posts on a Shishkin podcast.  In the Q&A session held at San Francisco's Center for the Art of Translation, Scott Esposito chatted to Shishkin and the American translator of Maidenhair, Marian Schwartz.  Anyone interested in Shishkin's work should check out the interview - and read the stories, of course ;)

The Official IFFP 2013 Winner - And Some Reflections...

Yesterday, in London, at a ceremony sparkling brighter than a pixie's bling collection, the five brave IFFP judges announced their choice for the best work of translated fiction in the UK in 2012.   After starting off with sixteen works, and then whittling that down to a slightly-controversial six, we were finally left with the pick of the pile...  Their decision?  The official winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2013 is:

The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker

(translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, published by Harvill Secker)

Congratulations to the writer and translator - commiserations (and respect) to the rest of the people on the longlist :)

*****
And that's it for another year... almost!  Before I wrap up my IFFP commitments for 2013 though, I thought I'd just share a few thoughts on the winner and the whole IFFP process.  Before last night's ceremony, I must admit that I was a little nervous.  I wasn't overly impressed with some of the decision made in 2012, and I was fully prepared to be disappointed again...

However, while I certainly wasn't expecting Bakker's name to be the one inside the envelope, I was very glad to hear that The Detour had won.  It's a great novel, well-written and thought-provoking, and it's the kind of book I personally believe should be rewarded in this type of competetion.  Like many, many people, I was also glad that Andrés Neuman's Traveller of the Century was singled out for special praise; it's a book I (and a couple of other Shadow Panellists) have been championing for a good while now :)

So why was I so worried?  Well, after a couple of years of shadowing the IFFP, I'm still not completely sure what the prize is about.  Is it purely a search for the best work of literary fiction in translation, or is it more of a campaign to promote works originally written in languages other than English?  The answer, of course, is probably a bit of both.  I'm not sure whether the judges are subject to any kind of guiding 'advice' from Booktrust, but they must surely feel a responsibility beyond the simple act of filtering the gems from the dross.

I also wonder whether there is a focus on the kind of book the organisers would like to promote.  Was the omission of László Krasznahorkai's Satantango from the shortlist (and the inclusion of Chris Barnard's Bundu) a sign that more accessible, readable fiction was preferred to difficult literary texts?  It did seem odd that the American IFFP equivalent, the Best Translated Book Award, chose Satantango as best in class when it couldn't make the top six here...

Perhaps, however, the longlist reflects the state of translated fiction in general (including the prevalence of works set during the Second World War...).  Does the lack of women on the list indicate that there weren't enough quality works by female writers translated last year?  Or were they simply not up to scratch?  Was it really a poor year for Asia, Africa and the Middle East, or were there simply not enough submissions from these regions?

All of which leads inevitably to another question - what exactly was submitted for the prize in the first place?  There's a lack of transparency in the process which makes it hard to determine exactly how representative the longlist really was (I, for one, would love to see what the publishers thought might be of interest to the panel).  This is not a criticism of the way Booktrust run things - just a gentle nudge to help them make things even better next year ;) 

As for next year, while it might be a little early still, it's worth thinking about what could be on the longlist in 2014.  While Japanese literature was absent this year, Ryu Murakami's From the Fatherland With Love (Pushkin Press) is a chance for next year, and Portobello Books is repackaging Hiromi Kawakami's The Briefcase as Strange Weather in Tokyo for a UK release later in 2013.  While we wait for Mikhail Shishkin's BTBA-shortlisted novel Maidenhair to appear in the UK, his British debut from MacLehose Press, The Light and The Dark (which I'll be reviewing in a few days time!), may be one to watch.  A couple of Arabic-language works I've read this year (Hassan Blasim's collection from Comma Press, The Iraqi Christ, and Elias Khoury's excellent White Masks, again from MacLehose) could also be in the mix, and I suppose you can't discount the next instalment in Karl Ove Knausgaard's cathartic six-pack ;)  My one to watch though is Birgit Vanderbeke's The Mussel Feast - Peirene have been longlisted three years in a row, and this is the one which will finally make it to the shortlist.  Remember where you heard it first (unless I'm wrong, in which case please forget all about it...).

If you want to relive the magic of this year's IFFP, you can find links to all my reviews of the longlisted books on my 2013 Challenge Page, and Lisa and Stu have dedicated pages with links to reviews from the whole Shadow Panel.  And speaking of the Shadow Panel...

...thanks are due to Lisa, Gary, Mark and chairman Stu for their company and support on the campaign.  It's been a long, arduous journey, one that has taken us all over the world (without leaving our armchairs), but it's been one I've thoroughly enjoyed.  I hope all my readers have enjoyed the trip too, and perhaps you'll think about joining us next time around.  I'll certainly be back to do it all again in 2014 :)

And the (Shadow) IFFP 2013 Winner Is...

We started off in March with sixteen titles, the cream of the fiction in translation published in the UK last year.  After a hard month of reading, thinking, discussion and cursing, the list was cut down to six by the offical panel - which is where we parted ways.

Having chosen four of the same titles as the official panel, the Shadow Panel (Stu, Lisa, Mark, Gary and myself) opted for two others to complete the full half-dozen, and then set about deciding which was to take out the prize...

Our road took us on a long journey through many times and lands.  We spent a bizarre time in an ever-shifting, nineteenth-century German town, working on translations and kissing the local girls.  We moved onto a dark exploration of Communist-era Hungary (and an even darker examination of human souls...).  We went for walks around the rainy city of Barcelona, and then flew off to Dublin for a Bloomsday jaunt.  We witnessed an extraordinary dinner party in Albania - and its consequences ten years on.  We followed a boy from the Siberian wilds on his trip to Helsinki and watched as he encountered civilisation in all its forms.  We fled to Wales (seeking some solitude) and shared a woman's house - but not her secrets...

Then we came back to earth with a bump.  There were discussions, disagreements, grudging acceptance, and then a decision...

Our choice for the winner of the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is:

Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas

(translated by Rosalind Harvey and Anne McLean)

Congratulations to the writer and translators - Dublinesque is a great book, and it would be a worthy winner of the real prize.  So, can it do the double?  We'll find out very soon...

'Blue Bamboo' by Osamu Dazai (Review)

Back at the start of the year, during my January in Japan event, Patrick of my so-called research wrote a J-Lit Giants piece on Osamu Dazai.  Having only read The Setting Sun and a couple of short stories, I was naturally keen to try some more of the books Patrick talked about in his piece.  The opportunity to do this soon came about when Kurodahan Press sent me a review copy of a short story collection - which turned out to be a little different to what I'd read before...

*****
Blue Bamboo was originally released by Kodansha USA, but was recently reissued by Kurodahan Press.  It's a collection of short stories from Dazai's middle period of writing, and this reissue gave the original translator, Ralph McCarthy, the opportunity to give his work a bit of a face-lift.  Its 200 pages comprise seven stories, and while Dazai's longer work is steeped in depressing realism, these tales have a much lighter, other-worldly focus.

Two of the stories ('The Chrysanthemum Spirit' and 'Blue Bamboo') are loose adaptations of old Chinese folk tales.  In the first, a stubborn, cantankerous old man, with a passion for growing chrysanthemums, encounters an unusual brother and sister combination on his way home.  What follows is an amusing little story involving pretty flowers and the supernatural, not a sentence I find myself writing often!

In the title story, one which keeps you guessing as to whether it is to be a tragedy or a comedy, a poetic soul, with no aptitude for civil service entrance exams, is at his wits' end.  Observing a flock of ravens outside a temple, he wishes to become one of the sacred birds - and has his wish granted. What follows is a tale exploring the ups and downs of getting what you want...

Another fairy-tale story is 'The Mermaid and the Samurai', an adaptation of a famous Japanese short story from the seventeenth century.  Konnai Chudo, an exemplary samurai, kills a mermaid which is threatening to sink a boat he is travelling on.  However, when news of the event gets out, a courtier laughs at him, forcing Konnai to seek evidence of his feat - a quest which will end in tears for most involved...  It's a story which emphasises the importance of trust and belief, underlining its pivotal place in Bushido, the way of the samurai:

"To a true samurai, trust is everything.  He who will not believe without seeing is a pitiful excuse for a man.  Without trust, how can one know what is real and what is not?  Indeed, one may see and yet not believe - is this not the same as never seeing?  Is not everything, then, no more than an immaterial dream? The recognition of any reality begins with trust.  And the source of all trust is love for one's fellow man.  But you - you have not a speck of love in your miserable heart, nor of faith."
p.55, 'The Mermaid and the Samurai' (Kurodahan Press, 2012)

Then again, if someone told me they'd just taken out a mermaid, I'm not sure I'd believe them either ;)

'Romanesque' is an earlier piece, again verging on the surreal, as Dazai outlines the lives of three absurd characters (a wizard, a fighter and a liar) in order to... well, I'm not really sure.  This story is then mentioned in 'Alt Heidelberg', an autobiographical sketch of a youthful, drunken summer spent at a friend's house trying to write a story.  It's well written and humorous, and, in its more realistic tone, a welcome contrast to some of the other stories in the collection.

My favourites though are the two which bookend the collection.  The first story, 'On Love and Beauty', introduces us to a family of five unusual siblings, whose characters are sketched out for us by the writer.  They too tell stories, so Dazai is telling us a story within a story - one which works very well.  There's a lot more to the idea than mere storytelling, and Dazai uses his meta-fictional idea nicely.  As the eldest son muses:

"The description of physical appearance is extremely important in a work of fiction.  By describing what a character looks like, you bring him alive and remind people of someone close to them, thereby lending intimacy to the tale and involving the audience, so that they cease to be mere passive observers."
(pp.22/3, 'On Love and Beauty')

This is exactly what Dazai does, and the story works wonderfully precisely because the reader has a clear mental image of the family members.

The family are back for the last story, 'Lanterns of Romance', which takes up sixty of the two-hundred pages.  This time the five spend the first days of the new year spinning a longer story, to be written down, then performed.  It starts with a happily-ever-after fairytale, but goes on to become something both more realistic and grotesque.  Dazai also extends his portrait of the characters narrating the tale, adding new members to the family and fleshing out the personality of the mother.  While he uses a Hans Christian Andersen story to kick off the family's effort, the style is all Dazai's own :)

When I read The Setting Sun and Dazai's other stories, the impression I was left with was one of wasted lives, squalor and depression.  This collection is much lighter, comical and humorous, but just as enjoyable.  Dazai shows a deft touch in his humour, and McCarthy has done a good job in bringing it across into English.  There are dozens of examples like the following:

"People in the neighborhood were wont to remark that it was just like a scholar to be so perverse as to name his only son Saburo, which is of course a name normally reserved for third sons.  The fact that no one could explain what it was that made that particular act so typical of scholarly perversity was, it was said, precisely what made it so."
(p.134, 'Romanesque')

Obviously, I haven't read McCarthy's original translation, but I'm sure that whatever he did was for the better!

Entertaining stories, a good translation and a brief introduction with information about the background of the stories make this a book well worth reading.  I'd recommend it to anyone interested in J-Lit (or in tall tales!).  Give it a go - I doubt you'll be disappointed :)

'Popular Hits of the Showa Era' by Ryu Murakami (Review)

Welcome, one and all - it's time for more Murakami madness from Pushkin Press!  After giving me a copy of Coin Locker Babies to review during January in Japan, the small publisher (with the big new web-site) recently sent me a copy of another dose of the inimitable Ryu's style.  It's a little different though: where Coin Locker Babies was bad, this one is plain mad...

*****
Ryu Murakami's Popular Hits of the Showa Era (translated by Ralph McCarthy) is a book deserving of the luridly-coloured cover you see on the left.  We begin with six young men having a 'party', a sad social gathering of inept losers.  Right away, the writer leaves us in no doubt as to his thoughts on the group:

"These young men, in other words, represented a variety of types, but one thing they had in common was that they'd all given up on committing positively to anything in life."
p.14 (Pushkin Press, 2013)

Murakami mocks his creations mercilessly in this first chapter, and when we get to see the purpose of their gathering, a drunken, cross-dressing costume karaoke party on the beach, we're laughing along.  However, the kids are not as harmless as they first appear, and pretty soon the tone changes.  One of the six, sex-starved and brain-dead, follows a woman down the street, touches her inappropriately - then kills her.

Which, as the police have no leads, is where the matter might have rested, were it not for the victim's friends.  You see, this is another gang of six, half-a-dozen mid-thirties women of the Oba-San (auntie) variety, women verging on middle age, unattractive and unloved by society.  The six women, all called Midori, form a tight-knit group, and the loss of their friend causes the remaining five to shake off their apathy.  It's time to get some revenge...

Popular Hits of the Showa Era is a black farce, a comic fight to the death between two groups of people from the less-known side of Japanese society.  J-Lit often focuses on the beautiful, the aesthetic, cherry blossoms framed against a backdrop of Fuji-san - it's a refreshing change to see one-cup sake, dubious discos and cheesy dance tunes featured so prominently.  This is a novel which focuses on the working classes, featuring two groups who are not part of the trendy, successful Japan we know.

Despite the over-the-top humour and violence though, there is a serious side to the book.  Murakami depicts two groups of people stuck in a rut with very little to live for, and the added motivation of their vendetta actually brings them back to life.  This is particularly true for the Midori society, who suddenly find themselves becoming more attractive and desirable as their concentration and focus on the feud spreads into other areas of their lives:

"What all four Midoris shared was an indelible, very serious, and very real secret - a secret that served both to bolster their self-confidence and to lend them a certain air of mystery.  And that combination of self-possession and intrigue is what makes a woman truly appealing, especially when she herself seems unaware of it." (p.156)

Sadly, they might not live to enjoy this discovery, as murder follows murder in ever more gruesome ways.  The sad truth is that revenge is a never-ending spiral, consuming those who attempt to control it.

Enough of the philosophising about Murakami's critique of Japanese society - this is a book which could also simply be enjoyed on the level of an action movie.  The two tribes are complemented by a weird supporting cast who add to the pleasure of the book.  There's a film director and bomb expert, a cheerful old man in a gun shop, and a very creepy schoolgirl, who is just... wrong.  Add to this the mental images of the cross-dressing and cavorting on beach to cheesy old-fashioned pop tunes (the Showa Era of the title finished in 1989), and you've got a pretty good idea of what awaits you :)

It's also very funny, and one of the running jokes is Japanese society's prejudice against the useless Oba-Sans, women who are no longer young enough to attract the attention of eligible men, and whose grey existence is made worse by the scorn they experience:

"Do you sell these to just, like, anybody?"
The storekeeper laughed, his wrinkles fanning out like rays of the sun.
     "Hell, no.  Only to people I feel good about.  I like your spirit.  They always say that when human beings are extinct, the only living thing left will be the cockroach, but that's bullshit.  It's the Oba-San." (p.71)

On a side note, it's surprising how easy it is to get access to some pretty serious weaponry in Japan ;)

Popular Hits of the Showa Era is a lot lighter than Coin Locker Babies, but it's still a good read with a few serious messages hidden beneath the bloodshed and karaoke.  I thought it was a great translation, the second from McCarthy that I've enjoyed recently, and I'm looking forward to more from the Pushkin-Murakami-McCarthy connection :)

A word of warning to finish today's post: from the two novels I've read so far, Ryu Murakami really seems to have it in for the good people of Tokyo.  In terms of mass destruction of the major Japanese metropolis, he's right up there with Godzilla.  Please, if you notice Murakami around, be very careful when you're in this part of Japan...

'A Heart So White' by Javier Marías (Review)

Last week, I posted on a new-to-me writer, José Saramago, who I decided to try after listening to a podcast, and today is another of my podcast-influenced library choices.  There has been a lot of talk recently about Javier Marías, mainly because his latest book (The Infatuations) is out in English in the UK (August in the US), so I decided to give him a try.  And I'm very glad I did :)

*****
A Heart So White (translated by Margaret Jull Costa) was the winner of the 1997 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and it is a great novel.  The main character is Juan, an interpreter and translator who has just got married to his colleague, Luisa.  While you would expect him to be happy,  he has some nagging doubts about the future, mainly because of a conversation at the wedding with his father, Ranz.  Marriage is all well and good, but as Ranz asks, what happens next?

Ranz has good reason to be nervous (or sceptical) about the future.  In the very first scene of the book, we learn how his wife killed herself shortly after the honeymoon, and while he later married her sister, happiness (despite his financial and work success) has proven elusive.  He has always been reticent about the past, preferring to keep silent about his misfortunes, even when Juan asks him directly.  However, some of Ranz's friends are a little more careless, and after Juan's wedding, startling details begin to emerge.  It appears that there is more to the suicide than Ranz is telling...

This is not an adequate summary of the plot of A Heart So White, and it never could be.  It's a book so exquisitely written and cleverly thought out, a wonder to read, but fairly difficult to summarise.  The story is told through Juan's eyes, and at first the reader struggles to work out where the writer is taking us.  We move around in time, swap continents and learn small details about seemingly unconnected people.  Slowly though, shapes start to appear from the void, connections are made, secrets are uncovered...  It all finally comes together in a memorable chapter.

While A Heart So White is wonderfully plotted, a large part of the attraction lies in the writer's style.  Marías, like Saramago, uses long sentences with multiple clauses, but his style is very different to that of the Portuguese writer.  His sentences are long and languid, repetitive at times, circling slowly around, and the meaning often only becomes clear a lot later in the novel when they are repeated, usually in a very different context.  There is a confessional nature to Juan's narrative, and his chains of thoughts, innocuous at first, slowly creep under the reader's skin.  It took me a while to catch on to his style, but I raced through the second half of the book.

In a sense, it's a novel about the nature of relationships, and a central theme is the way love is rarely a two-way street, with one partner obliging, compelling the other to love them, or being compelled to do so:

"Any relationship between two people always brings with it a multitude of problems and coercions, as well as insults and humiliations... Everyone obliges everyone else."
p.178 (The Harvill Press, 1997)

It's an interesting thought, but for an Englishman the most intriguing thing about it is that it first comes from the mouth of a female English politician - surely a thinly-veiled Margaret Thatcher...

Another focus is on secrets, and the importance of keeping them.  Marías, through his creations, constantly stresses that what isn't told, never happened, and that time levels everything anyway:

"...what takes place is identical to what doesn't take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us is identical to what we accept and seize, what we experience identical to what we never try..." (p.179)

This sense of the past slipping into oblivion (providing we take good care never to try to uncover it) is what allows Ranz and Juan to peacefully co-exist.  Of course, when Luisa decides that Juan needs to know more about his father's past, this balance is threatened.

The careful reader, on speeding through A Heart So White, may also pick up on the frequent allusions to Macbeth, and in fact the title of Marías' novel is a quotation from the play.

"My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white"
Macbeth, II.2 (Lines 64-5)

Lady Macbeth is talking to her husband after he has 'done the deed', and it appears that she is chiding him for his timidness, although Marías, through Juan, also talks about how the white heart refers to Lady Macbeth's innocence, in as far as she herself did not wield the knife.  Whatever the interpretation, the quotation is inextricably linked with the events of the book - I'll say no more...

In the end, Marías ties everything together so well.  Echoes and parallels resound and rebound across the years, continents and pages, and the events of decades all serve to bring Juan (and the reader) to one fateful evening.  It is only then that we understand the true meaning behind the words Juan casually utters near the start of the novel:

"I have a tendency to want to understand everything, everything that people say and everything I hear, even at a distance, even if it's in one of the innumerable languages I don't know, even if it's in an indistinguishable murmur or an imperceptible whisper, even if it would be better that I didn't understand and what's said is not intended for my ears, or is said precisely so that I won't hear it." (p.244)

A Heart So White is a wonderful book in an excellent translation (thanks, once more, are due to the incredibly-talented Jull Costa), and Marías is a writer I'll be reading a lot more of in future.  I'm a little late to the party, but arriving fashionably late does have its advantages - I've got a lot of catching up to do :)

When is a Peirene Book not a Peirene Book?

As mentioned in my post on Sea of Ink a few weeks back, I have now read (and reread) all ten Peirene books published so far, and I'm waiting eagerly for number eleven, Mr Darwin's Gardener, to appear next month.  However, the ladies over at Peirene HQ (particularly, I suspect, the nymph herself) beg to differ.  You see, of the ten so far, I've only read four in the Peirene version - the other six have been bought and read in the original language...

...which got me thinking.  Is there really a difference between a Peirene book and what Meike Ziervogel (founder of the press) dubs 'Peirene choices'?  Is the Peirene experience different if you don't get the book directly from the nymph?  Well, let's have a little think about that, shall we?

*****
The first difference, of course, is one which is immediately evident - the cover.  One of Peirene's strong points is its individual and identifiable branding, and Sacha Davison Lunt's cover designs are a vital part of this.  The cream background, overlaid with geometric shapes, is instantly recognisable, ensuring that the books stand out, and go together nicely.

The covers create connections not only within the Peirene stable, but also within each series.  Most of you will know that the publisher publishes a different series each year, selecting three books which fit together, and for 2013 ('Turning Point') this is reflected in the cover designs, which are slightly different to previous series.  Of course, this is not the case for the original versions, which come from different publishers - and often different countries...

The original books are also stand-alones in terms of content, each one chosen for individual interest, where Peirene's books are carefully selected in groups of three.  The books are thematically linked, each suiting the banner chosen to represent the selection.  Whether it's 'Turning Point', 'Small Epic' or 'Male Dilemma', the Peirene books have a lot more in common than the cover that surrounds them.  In this sense, I would have to say that the first series, 'Female Voice' is probably the most coherent, a set of three books which really should be read as a trilogy.

Another difference I've been weighing up is one of voice.  I've read all the French- and German-language books in the original, and at times I've felt a difference in the way the language comes across.  They seem to be of a more confessional nature, many of them (for example, Beside the Sea, Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, Next World Novella) consisting of monologues, almost soliloquies.  In contrast, some of the books I've read in English (e.g. Tomorrow Pamplona, The Brothers, The Murder of Halland) are a little more plot based and outward looking.  But then, Stone in a Landslide would fit nicely in the first group, and Sea of Ink wouldn't really... hmm.

Perhaps then we can explain the split with differences in style.  There are some unique writing styles among the Peirene authors, with several experimenting with very long, multi-clause sentences (e.g. Birgit Vanderbeke's The Mussel Feast, Matthias Politycki's Next World Novella), in one case with just one, book-long sentence (take a bow F.C. Delius!).  Again, some of those I've read in English, such as Tomorrow Pamplona and The Murder of Halland, seem to prefer shorter sentences.  So are we getting somewhere?  Probably not - I'd say that Sea of Ink and Maybe Next Time don't really have the same style as the other German-language books...

Perhaps I'm approaching this the wrong way though.  You see, another potential variable in this puzzle is Meike herself.  Perhaps the real difference is whether the books are Meike's personal choices or recommendations from other people, friends or translators.  I mentioned the cohesion of the 'Female Voice' series above, and I suspect that those three (including the Catalan book Stone in a Landslide), plus Next World Novella and The Mussel Feast, are much more personal choices than the others.  Are we perhaps being treated to a glimpse of Meike's own literary preferences?

Before I get too carried away though, it's very possible that I may (!) be reading a little more into this than there is to be read.  Still, it is fascinating to speculate on just what the differences are between the various Peirene books, even if (as you've seen above) it's much easier to pull together similarities.  Whether it's a matter of language or simply personal preferences, I can't help thinking that there is a logic to it somewhere behind the scenes - although that probably says a lot more about me than Peirene...

The main thing is though that while the nymph would undoubtedly prefer readers to pour all their money into her coffers, it's more important that we get to experience great books, whatever language they're in.  In the end, it doesn't really matter whether you're enjoying Peirene books or Peirene choices - just as long as you're enjoying them :)

*****
Anyway, that's my mixture of musings and wild guesses - how about you?  Have you read any of the Peirene books in the original language?  Have you noticed any similarities between any of the books?  Let me know what your thoughts on the matter are!

'Raised from the Ground' by José Saramago (Review)

José Saramago was a writer I already had on my (extensive) to-try list, but after a couple of pushes, his name was lifted right to the top.  The first was the excellent Saramago month which Miguel, over at St. Orberose, ran last November; the other was a podcast I listened to recently, in which translator Margaret Jull Costa talked about the Portuguese legend's work.  After deciding to give Saramago a try then, the next step was to work out where to start.  Luckily for me, both my sources had a recommendation ready and waiting...

*****
Raised from the Ground (translated by Margaret Jull Costa), begins in an almost Hardyesque manner, as we meet a family trudging along a dusty road in Portugal's Alentejo region.  There's bad weather on the horizon, both literally and metaphorically - rather apt for a man named Domingos Mau-Tempo.  Along with wife Sara and baby João, Domingos is looking for a new home and a new start after a series of setbacks.  He'll find one, but the other is destined to elude him...

The novel is not really about Domingos though; instead, it is a multi-generational tale of life as a peasant in twentieth-century Portugal.  It's a time of great historical change, as the country overthrows the monarchy to form a republic, one which later evolves into a dictatorship.  However, for the poor people nothing changes, even when the dictatorship comes to its peaceful end - the fields, and the hardship the workers face, remain the same.

Raised from the Ground is a personal novel for Saramago, as his grandfather was a poor farm worker.  He uses the work to describe the realities of a life of poverty, detailing the lives of people on the bottom rung of society's ladder:

"The family grows, even though many children die of diarrhoea, dissolving in their own shit, poor little angels, snuffed out like candles, with arms and legs more like twigs than anything else, their bellies distended, until the moment comes and they open their eyes for the last time to see the light of day, unless they die in the dark, in the silence of the hovel, and when the mother wakes and finds her child dead, she starts to scream, always the same scream, these women whose children have died aren't capable of inventing anything, they're speechless.  As for the fathers, they say nothing and, the following night, go to the taberna looking as if they're ready to kill someone or something.  They come back drunk, having killed nothing and no one."
p.80 (Harvill Secker, 2012)

Above all, it's a story of how the poor are always exploited, unable to make ends meet and violently persecuted for any move away from the status quo.  A good example is when four workers quit their temporary job, simply because they can't take the inhumane conditions any more.  Before the four exhausted workers even reach their home village, there are guards waiting to arrest them - for inciting a strike...

It's all made possible because of the vested interests of the landowners and their police defenders.  The land is divided into latifundios, vast, landed estates, passed down through the generations, and the landowners work together, in a kind of cartel, to keep the workers poor and ill-fed.  They treat their employees like animals, ignoring their basic needs and rights, although perhaps a better metaphor would be machines:

"Since they were born to work, it would be a contradiction in terms for them to have too much rest.  The best machine is always the one most capable of continuous work, properly lubricated so that it doesn't jam up, frugally fed and, if possible, given only as much fuel as mere maintenance requires, and, in case of breakdown or old age, it must, above all, be easily replaceable, that's what those human scrapyards known as cemeteries are for, or else the machine simply sits, rusting and creaking at its front door, watching nothing at all pass by or else gazing down at its own sad hands, who would have thought it would come to this." (p.344)

The sad thing is that nothing appears to be able to help the workers move above this semi-servitude, and that there is nobody who can stand by them in their attempt to do so.

The Norbertos, Gilbertos, Adalbertos and Bertos who lord it over the latifundios are less people than types, one interchangeable with any of the others, and with the protection of the guards (who are very much in their pockets), they are safe in their big houses.  They are also protected by the church, which teaches the workers that if they behave in this life, they will surely get their reward in the next one.  The ever-present Father Agamedes, as the narrator points out, is another type, a representative of the hypocrisy of the church, and his behaviour is not exactly designed to instill faith in a benevolent God...

If it all sounds a little grim, you'd be mistaken.  It's a serious topic, but handled ironically; Saramago has a unique style and can always find an intriguing angle from which to get his message across.  Starvation, death and torture are mostly described with a light touch (in one memorable torture scene, we view events through the eyes of an ant - lending matters a very different perspective).  In other hands, this could be an unreadable litany of sufferings; it is the sign of a great writer that Raised from the Ground rises above this.

If the beginning and the setting are reminiscent of Hardy, the style most definitely isn't.  Saramago's writing is unusual and fascinating, with his long sentences, full of short clauses, which constantly dart off on tangents and digressions.  There are no quotation marks and direct speech is introduced solely by use of a comma and a capital letter.  Another common feature is narratorial intrusion, with the narrator often becoming as much a part of the story as the people he is talking about:

"Then the man said, We were so near, and then all this rain, these were words spoken in mild anger, uttered almost unthinkingly and hopelessly, as if to say, the rain won't stop just because I'm angry, well, that's the narrator speaking, which we can quite do without." (p.8)

It's a style which does take a bit of getting used to, and I was initially suspicious of the verbal gymnastics.  However, the more I read, the more it appealed, and the more I appreciated the way Saramago set out his story.

While the writing is often humorous, occasionally it can simply be beautiful.  The best example of this is a ten-page section recounting the birth of baby Maria.  In this chapter, the writer sets out an adapted nativity scene, with the father, uncle and grandfather of the new-born child taking on the role of the three kings.  While the poor men are unable to produce much gold, frankincense or myrrh, they are able to bring some much more important gifts to bless the baby girl with...

In short, Raised from the Ground is superb.  Saramago's style takes time to get used to for a reader encountering it for the first time, but it's definitely worth the effort involved.  After nearly four-hundred pages of struggle, the upbeat ending is throughly enjoyable - just as long as you ignore Miguel's review telling you what really happens...  Jull Costa's translation is also excellent; it must have been tricky to perfect the voice needed, but I think she nails it. 

Oh, I almost forgot - I already have my next Saramago lined up :)

April 2013 Wrap-Up

April has been another good reading month, with a more varied literary diet after March's IFFP feast!  There were a couple more English-language works in there, but the main focus (as always) was on the best in translated fiction :)

Oh, yes - the usual...

*****
Total Books Read: 11
Year-to-Date: 37

New: 8

Rereads: 3

From the Shelves: 3
Review Copies: 6

From the Library: 2

On the Kindle: 0

Novels: 7
Novellas: 1

Short Stories: 3

Non-English Language: 8 (3 Japanese, 2 Portuguese, German, Hungarian, Dutch, Spanish)

In Original Language: 1 (German)

Aussie Author Challenge: 2 (2/3)

IFFP 2013 Longlist: 1 (16/16) - Finished!

*****
Books reviewed in April were:

1) The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim
2) Trieste by Daša Drndić
3) Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories by Rafa Lombardino (ed.)
4) Black Baza(a)r by Alain Mabanckou
5) Bundu by Chris Barnard
6) In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa
7) The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare
8) The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto by Kenji Nakagami
9) Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman
10) The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani
11) Meer der Tusche (Sea of Ink) by Richard Weihe
12) The Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark

Tony's Turkey for April is: Nothing

Another month without any obvious turkeys - I really am going to have to get more critical about my reads...

Tony's Recommendation for April is:
Elliot Perlman's Seven Types of Ambiguity

There were a couple of books from the IFFP longlist which stood out, namely The Fall of the Stone City, and The Last of the Vostyachs, and I greatly enjoyed Eleanor Dark's long historical novel on the first years of modern Australia.  However, Perlman's classic, even at the third time of reading, remains a simply wonderful novel, one I'd recommend to anyone :)

*****
That's all for April - what does May have in store?  The answer is: a few review books, some neglected classics and the odd surprise.  Same as most months, really :)

'Satantango' by László Krasznahorkai (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 16)

When the longlist for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was released, I frantically scanned the list, working out what I needed to do to get through it in time.  I had already finished four of the titles (all review copies) at some point in 2012, and I was able to obtain a further review copy fairly quickly.  The next stop was The Book Depository, where I bought the French-language version of Alain Mabanckou's Black Bazaar, leaving the bulk of the heavy lifting to my wonderful local library system.

While the majority of the books came in fairly quickly, one remained stubbornly in the hands of a library patron in the north of the state - and as that was the only copy in our consortium of libraries...  After weeks of constantly checking online, I began to lose hope, until one day I got the text message I'd been waiting for - Satantango had finally arrived :)

But was it worth the wait?

*****
Satantango by László Krasznahorkai (translated by George Szirtes - from Tuskar Rock Press)
What's it all about?
Krasznahorkai's classic novel dates from 1985, but only appeared in English for the first time last year.  It's a dark, demanding tale, a novel set in the Hungarian backwaters of an abandoned estate, where a small group of villagers have been hanging around for years, waiting for someone or something to rouse them from their torpor and lead them to happiness.  Deserted by the rest of their group, the remaining families pass their time drinking and sleeping with the neighbours, while all around them nature swiftly takes back what civilisation had carved out of the wilderness.

Just as it appears that some of the characters have summoned up enough energy (and cash) to make a run for it, a rumour reaches the village, news of the return (or resurrection...) of a man long thought dead.  The charismatic Irimiás is on his way back to the village, and thoughts of flight are immediately shelved.  The poor, deluded villagers are prepared to put all of their trust and belief, not to mention their hard-won cash, into the hands of the prodigal son.  While the hope they invest in Irimiás is understandable, given the circumstances, you sense that it's a decision they'll come to regret.  You see, Irimiás is no angel - unless it's one of the fallen variety...

Satantango is highly allegorical, of course, a story of people rotting amongst the ruins of a failed forced agriculture project in Hungary.  It consists of twelve chapters divided into two parts, labelled I-VI and then VI -I, making up a story which, while moving forwards, also turns in a circle, bringing us back to where we started.  It also plays with narrative viewpoints, with the first half of the book consisting mostly of the same day and events told by several different voices - in fact, the occurrence promised in the first few pages of the book doesn't eventuate until we are well past the half-way mark...

Most reviews of Satantango address the style, and Krasznahorkai's way of writing is certainly noteworthy.  Satantango is made up primarily of lengthy, one-paragraph chapters, with long, long sentences spiralling off into the distance:

"His imagination was bewitched, almost to the point of paralysis by the notion that this estate with its rich, generous soil was, only a few million years ago, covered by the sea...that it had alternated between sea and dry land, and suddenly - even as he conscientiously noted down the stocky, swaying figure of Schmidt in his soggy quilted jacket and boots heavy with mud appearing on the path from Szikes, hurrying as if he feared being spotted, sliding in through the back door of his house - he was lost in successive waves of time, coolly aware of the minimal speck of his own being, seeing himself as the defenseless, helpless victim of the earth's crust, the brittle arc of his life between birth and death caught up in the dumb struggle between surging seas and rising hills..."
p.58 (Tuskar Rock Press, 2012)

Apologies - my aching fingers just couldn't quite make it to the end of that sentence ;)

The novel is deliberately obscure, confusing and unsettling.  There's an epigram from Kafka's The Castle at the start, and this is rather apt for what follows, as the reader spends much of the book in a Kafkaesque muddle, unsure as to what is actually happening (and why...).  The second chapter, where we meet Irimiás, has particular shades of Kafka, set as it is in a bureaucratic nightmare, with stairs leading off into the distance, offices leading into further offices and hours spent waiting for appointments.  There's another similarity with Kafka here - if you think you understand what the writer is trying to do, you're only kidding yourself...

Of course, there's so much more to Satantango than a stylistic homage to The Castle or The Trial.  The slow pace allows for some great characterisation, and Krasznahorkai spends time sketching out a cast of wonderful creations.  As the story progresses, each of the characters becomes more fleshed out, and the links between them become more established, allowing us to almost predict how a person is likely to react, and what they might say when events take a turn for the worse.

More than the descriptions of the villagers though, it is Krasznahorkai's portrayal of the environment which is most striking.  Satantango takes place amid a winter of mild discontent, and the reader can feel the cold, the wet, the mud, the rot and the decay:

"The Schmidts hadn't used the room since spring.  Green mildew covered the cracked and peeling walls, but the clothes in the cupboard, a cupboard that was regularly cleaned, were also mildewed, as were the towels and all the bedding, and a couple of weeks was all it took for the cutlery saved in the drawer for special occasions to develop a coating of rust, and what with the legs of the big lace-covered table having worked loose, the curtains having yellowed and the lightbulb having gone out, they decided one day to move into the kitchen and stay there, and since there was nothing they could do to stop it happening anyway, they left the room to be colonized by spiders and mice." (p.7)

In describing how nature has invaded the village, taking back what was once torn from its grasp, Krasznahorkai shows the extent to which the villagers have given up, retreating into themselves and waiting for an unlikely change.

Enter Irimiás...  The star of the show is an enigmatic figure, and it takes a while to find out just who he is (and we never find out exactly what he is doing).  There is a lot of talk in the book about networks, establishing connections to insulate the villagers from the realities of the outside world - and this is something echoed by the vast networks of webs spun by the mysterious spiders at the bar.  However, what he's really up to is swindling money from the villagers.

What's surprising though is just how easy it is for him to do it, especially in such a short time.  He even tells them that there is a good chance that they can lose all the money they eagerly place on the table in front of him.  Devoid of hope and desperate for a way out, the jealousy and infighting leaves the villagers easy prey.  Mrs. Schmidt's lust, Mrs. Halics' faith, the men's greed...  They want to believe, sheep needing to be led.

In fact, Irimiás hypnotises them, to the extent that they are prepared to burn all their bridges, smashing furniture before their supposed impending departure from the village.  However, the greater the drunken (mass) delusion, the more painful the wake-up call:

"It was as if they were just now emerging from some evil spell.  They were sober at a stroke but they simply couldn't understand what had happened to them in the last few hours: What demonic power had taken possession of them, stifling every sane and rational impulse?  What was it that had driven them to lose their heads and attack each other "like filthy pigs when the swill is late"?  What made it possible for people like them - people who had finally managed to emerge from years of apparently terminal hopelessness to breathe the dizzying air of freedom - to rush around in senseless despair, like prisoners in a cage so that even their vision had clouded over?" (p.237)

It's a case of fools fooling themselves...

It seems churlish to look for negatives in a book like this, but there were a few things I didn't like.  The dialogue was noticeably Americanised in places, especially in the early chapters, peppered with expressions like 'buddy', 'pal', 'asshole', 'sonofabitch', and 'dumb ass', and this jarred (perhaps deliberately so) with the style of the descriptive sections.  There was also a rather odd convention where seemingly normal expressions were enclosed in quotation marks, drawing attention to themselves for no real reason.  In addition, I wasn't overly convinced by the ending; it all seemed a little too convenient and perhaps unworthy of the book as a whole...

The title?  Well, it has to do with both a pivotal scene mid-way through the book, one where the drunken villagers decide to dance while waiting for the 'devil', and the structure of the novel.  You see, the way Krasznahorkai has constructed his work apparently reflects the steps in a tango - six steps forwards, six steps back...

*****

Do you think it deserved to make the shortlist?
Of course, I do.  While I may have discussed a few minor issues with the book, the reality is that I'm not judging this to see if it's good or not, but on the level of whether it deserves to be crowned best in (Shadow) show.  It's a wonderful book, and one which I'd love to try again some time.

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
I have two theories...

One - The panel had just written down the six names on the shortlist (of which Satantango was one) and sealed it in an envelope, when the five of them suddenly froze in mid movement.  An alien appeared from nowhere, opened the envelope, erased Satantango from the list with some kind of sonic device, replacing it with Bundu.  After resealing the envelope, the alien then disappeared, and the panellists went on their way (none the wiser), only realising what had happened when the envelope was opened and the news was made public - alas, too late to rectify the error.

Two - The five panellists, having read the sixteen books on the longlist, decided that Bundu was a better novel than Satantango, one which would stand the test of time much better than Krasznahorkai's work.  Then they all went off for tea.

Yeah, I know - theory two does seem a little far-fetched...

*****
Well, that's it - sixteen books read and reviewed.  Very soon, my colleagues and I will begin deliberations to see which of the six works on our shortlist will take out The Shadow Panel prize.  Keep an eye out for our verdict...

...oh, and we'll see if the real panel can come up with a worthy winner too ;)