'The Things We Don't Do' by Andrés Neuman (Review)

After reading three of Andrés Neuman's books over the past couple of years (one in Spanish!), and having met him in Melbourne a while back, the Argentinian-Spanish author has definitely become one of my favourite contemporary writers.  However, where those three books were novels (in the case of Traveller of the Century a rather hefty one), his latest offering in English is very different, a collection of short vignettes no sooner tasted than devoured.  So, does his shorter work live up to his longer books?  The answer is a most emphatic 'yes' :)

*****
The Things We Don't Do (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, review copy courtesy of Pushkin Press) is a wonderful little collection of short stories, divided into five sections.  Each section contains seven thematically-linked stories, few of which run for more than three or four pages.  In addition to the stories, there's also a collection of four 'Dodecalogues' at the end, semi-serious guidelines for writing short stories (the choice of twelve rules for each set is, as the writer says, to avoid the absurd perfection of ten...).  Together, it all adds up to 170 pages of great reading.

One frequent feature of the collection is the short, short story, pieces barely managing to fill a page or two.  While I used to be a little suspicious of these, they've actually become my favourite type of short fiction as they distinguish themselves more clearly from novels than longer short stories do.  A good example is the opening story 'Happiness', a one-page piece about a man who condones his wife's adultery.  The reason for this is fairly bizarre - it's mainly because he wants to be the man she's sleeping with.  Once he's managed to live up to this standard, his wife will, of course, come back to him...

Another good one is the first section's title story, 'The Things We Don't Do'.  One of the shorter pieces in the collection, it's a list of things the writer loves about their relationship:

"I like that we don't do the things we don't do.  I like our plans on waking, when morning slinks onto our bed like a cat of light, plans we never accomplish because we get up late from imagining them so much."
'The Things We Don't Do' p.31 (Pushkin Press, 2014)

It's a less a story than an ode to the joys of a lazy Sunday in bed.

While there's a lot to enjoy in the shorter contributions, the longer ones are pretty good too.  A story about a rather less loving relationship is 'A Line in the Sand', where two stressed partners are separated by a literal line, scratched out on the beach.  Standing in the burning sun, the man slowly realises the deeper significance of the line the woman has drawn, and his unwillingness to accept it is indicative of the controlling nature the woman is attempting to highlight.  (Mind you, being compatible isn't all that great either.  In another of Neuman's relationship stories, 'A Terribly Perfect Couple', he shows how being perfect for each other can cause all manner of unexpected issues.)

Another of the main topics is writing, and in 'Theory of Lines' we get a light-hearted hint at one of Neuman's own inspirations.  This one is a short piece narrated by a writer inspired by the washing his neighbours hang out:

"As the years go by at my window, I have learned that you should not go too far in changing what you observe.  You can discover more by concentrating on just one point rather than transferring your attention hither and thither,  This counts as a lesson in synthesis.  Three or four washing lines ought to provide sufficient material for a thriller."
'Theory of Lines', p.158

There you have it - a story in every soiled item of underwear...

One of my favourites in this collection is 'Mr President's Hotel', an intriguing story in which a VIP is constantly asked to sign the visitor's book at hotels.  However, this apparently tedious task takes on more importance when he discovers that a mysterious N.N. always seems to have been there first.  When the sinister message leaver begins to direct their comments at the narrator, he suddenly feels threatened by a shadowy figure with no existence beyond the two initials and the notes.  It's a fascinating story, one that has you thinking of Kafka, and his protagonists pursued by unseen menaces.

There is definitely evidence of other influences on Neuman, though, with the short pieces paying homage to Argentinian writers like Córtazar and Borges.  Examples include 'Man Shot', a brief monologue of the thoughts of a man about to be shot by a firing squad, and 'A Cigarette', a bloody tale of honour amongst criminals.  A more obvious nod in the direction of Neuman's influences is given by the story 'The God of the Blind Men', in which a small literary society is honoured to receive none other than Jorge Luis Borges himself as its guest of honour ;)

The content is excellent, but it's the variety of styles and voices which makes The Things We Don't Do stand out.  'Delivery', for example, is a mesmerising, one-sentence stream-of-consciousness telling of an unusual birth.  Thoughts of the conception, the speaker's own childhood and the birth intermingle, all in a story with a definite (and unusual) ending.  The style is very different, though, in 'Juan, José', a tale alternating between the points of view of a psychiatrist and a patient.  The story is full of professional jargon, clinical and to the point - the only problem is that we're not sure which of the men is the psychologist and which the patient...

Another pleasing aspect to the collection is the translation - after recent disappointments, it's nice to find something which reads so well.  One of the final stories, 'The Poem-Translating Machine', examines the frustrations of translation in more detail, as a poet disappointed by a poor translation of his work begins to experiment with having it retranslated over and over again:

"Unless the poet's good taste is failing him, this fourth version of his poem is full of errors and is already close to unintelligible.  The referents have gone out of the window, the theme has been cast to the remotest margins, the enjambments sound like saws.  Devastated but at the same time amused, for a moment he imagines all his books translated into this or any other language.  He sighs gloomily.  No two ways about it, he thinks to himself, poetry is untranslatable."
'The Poem-Translating Machine' (pp.152/3)

It's an interesting idea, one with a familiar ring...

Neuman is particularly interested in translation, and his afterword mentions many of the people who have brought his work into English.  Some of the stories were originally released in English in magazines, and he takes care to name the original translators.  However, his main praise is reserved for the work of Caistor and Garcia:

"If any of the texts in this volume touches somebody's heart, that will be thanks to the patient skills of my translators, Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia.  The mistakes, I'm afraid, were my idea." (p.171)

It's nice to see the translators get due recognition :)

I loved The Things We Don't Do, and I think most others will too.  There's far more here than I could cover in a single post, with many delights awaiting anyone who decides to get themselves a copy of the book.  In fact, the only issue here is one which Pushkin Press will have recently had to deal with.  You see, while there's no doubt Pushkin will have put Neuman's name forward for next year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the question remains as to which book, as both this one and Talking to Ourselves were released in 2014...  Personally, I'd go for this one, but you never know what publishers are thinking.  Still, if Neuman makes the longlist again in 2015 (and I'd say there was a fairly good chance of that happening), we'll all find out ;)

'Talking to Ourselves' by Andrés Neuman (Review)

After the huge success of Traveller of the Century, many readers have been waiting anxiously for Andrés Neuman's next work to appear in English - and I certainly count myself among that number.  Perversely though, with such a huge weight of expectation (and having met the writer last year in Melbourne), I've found this is a review which isn't that easy to write.

The keyword here is objectivity - and to imagine that I'm talking to myself...

*****
Talking to Ourselves (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, review copy courtesy of Pushkin Press) is a short novel in three voices, which together reveal the story of how a family deals with terminal illness.  Mario, suffering from an unnamed disease, uses a short grace period of relatively good health to take his ten-year-old son, Lito, on a trip in his truck, his attempt to give his son one last, happy memory of their time together.  Meanwhile, back at home, Mario's wife Elena, physically and mentally exhausted from caring for her husband, sits around and worries - until she finds a way to cope.

After a visit to her husband's doctor, hoping to break through his professional reserve and learn the truth about Mario's prospects, Elena allows herself to become involved in an affair, a brief, physical, charged relationship.  As she details her thoughts in her diary, she struggles to understand what's going on, why she's turning her back on Mario in his final days.  The only place she can search for the answers is in books, scouring her library for any mention of death and illness.  In the end though, the truth is very clear - we all go through this alone...

Talking to Ourselves is an excellent exploration of what it means to live with the knowledge of imminent death, and the way in which we avoid discussing the thoughts constantly circling around in our minds.  By splitting his story into three alternating sections, each told in the first person by one of the family members, Neuman allows each of the main characters a say, all three having their own clear, unique voice (a credit to both the writer and the translators).  While conversations are described in each of the sections, Mario, Elena and Lito are talking very much to themselves - occasionally at cross purposes.

Lito's part is, for obvious reasons, the slightest.  Unaware of his father's illness, he's simply thrilled to be going on a journey he's been looking forward to for a long time, a trip he's likely to remember for the rest of his life.  The writer paints a picture of a boy whose thinking hasn't quite reached the level necessary to cope with his father's illness - he still thinks he can control the weather with his moods and that life is like a rally game (a crash just means you lose time...).

His simple, naive descriptions of the trip are complemented by Mario's story, a digital recording he makes when in the hospital after the trip, waiting for death to catch up with him:

"...will those mp thingamajigs still exist?, or will iPods seem as old-fashioned to your kids as my record player?, formats disappear just like people..."
p.33 (Pushkin Press, 2014)

In a quick, yet rambling monologue, he leaves an oral record to be given to his son at a later date, explaining what really happened on the trip - why they had to take so many toilet breaks, why they slept in the truck, why he hurried Lito out of a bar so quickly...

Of the three family members though, the key to Talking to Ourselves lies with Elena.  The brief respite offered by the trip allows her to think about matters in more depth, which is not necessarily a good thing:

"If Mario accepted the limits of his strength, we would have told all our friends the truth.  He prefers us to be secretive.  Discreet, he calls it.  A patient's rights go unquestioned.  No one talks about the rights of the carer.  Another person's illness makes us ill.  And so I'm in that truck with them, even though I've stayed at home." (p.17)

Elena is obviously drained by caring for her husband, and Neuman examines her emotional instability by allowing the reader to follow her through her relationship with the doctor.

Initially, there's a wall of professionalism between Elena and Dr. Escalante, one which actually frustrates her:

"The cautiousness of doctors irritates me.  Conversing with them is like talking on a phone without any coverage.  In other words, like listening to yourself speak." (p.20)

However, once the ice is broken, it's as if a torrent is bursting through a tiny hole in a dam, thrusting her into a relationship she doesn't know how to handle.  It's a graphic, physical affair, similar to that of Hans and Sophie in Traveller of the Century, but far darker and more twisted; where the two translators are celebrating their bodies in the name of life, Elena and Escalante are merely trying to forget death...

While frank about her motivations and guilt, in her attempts to get to the bottom of her actions Elena does shift some of the blame onto her husband, especially regarding his inability and unwillingness to accept his fate and let his family know about his illness:

"By avoiding the subject of his death, Mario delegates it to me, he kills me a little." (p.49)

Of course, she is no better than her husband in this regard - her thoughts, elegantly set down in her diary, are, just like Mario's words, meant purely for herself.

And this is what the reader is left with at the end of the novel, the feeling that much has been lost in a lack of communication.  Despite appearing to be a close, loving family, each person has their own thoughts and prefers to keep them secret, hidden away inside - together but alone, trapped in their own emotions.  It's honest, but brutally so, and it leaves you with an uneasy sense that this is how it could be for us too.  Something to ponder in a quiet moment alone...

*****
Objectivity.  Hmm.

I could (and perhaps should) leave it there - this has already blown out enough.  However, I'm not a paid reviewer, I'm a blogger, and blogging is all about subjectivity, giving people my opinions and feelings, and I don't think they're amazingly clear from what I've written above.  The truth is that when I first read Talking to Ourselves, I thought it was an excellent, thought-provoking book with three distinct voices, a novel I enjoyed immensely.  But I didn't love it.  So I had to find out why...

The reason, which I suspected on the first reading but confirmed after rereading, is all to do with subjectivity (i.e. my preferences as a reader).  You see, as mentioned above, the key to the book is Elena and the way in which her experiences as a carer have ground her down, leaving her open for the relationship she enters into with the good doctor.  However, the moment she sleeps with him, she loses my good will, and this prevents me from enjoying the novel completely.

Why does this affect my enjoyment so much?  Well, it's just the way I am.  Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, to name just two examples, are other books where I feel that the writer is expecting me to sympathise with a woman who betrays her husband, and while in each case I can see what drove her to infidelity, I can never quite bring myself to sympathise or empathise with her actions.  Most readers will be able to enjoy Elena's thoughts despite this, but for me her actions cast a very long shadow over her words.

I also thought it would be interesting to imagine what would happen if the characters in the book were (to use an in-vogue expression) 'gender-flipped'.  Let's imagine a story where a terminally-ill woman takes her daughter on one last trip, while the husband stays at home and throws himself into a sadomasochistic affair with his wife's doctor.  I really can't see that one winning over many readers, but with the roles reversed there's an expectation that the decision is more justified - or is this just me?

In truth, Talking to Ourselves is a wonderful book, cleverly constructed and well translated (Neuman told me that he occasionally looked back and tweaked his original after seeing what Caistor and Garcia were making of his text!), even if it's missing the warmth and life of Traveller of the Century.  In its tone, it reminded me more of his first novel, Bariloche, and I wonder if his big, break-out work in English is the exception in terms of style rather than the norm.  With another work out later this year from Pushkin (a collection of short stories), the picture may become a little clearer :)

So, objectivity's gone out of the window then, but that's unsurprising - it's clear that for someone who spends hours each day sitting in front of a computer monitor, subjectivity is a much more common state of mind.  You see, the truth is that while I may occasionally delude myself into thinking I'm communicating with my digital readers, in my rare moments of lucidity and honesty, I realise that what I'm really doing is talking to myself - and that's a very scary thought...

'Bariloche' by Andrés Neuman (Review)

As you may have noticed, I've read a lot of tricky books in my time (many this year alone), so why is today's book, a 150-page first novel, one of the most difficult I've ever read?  Well, there's a simple answer to that - there's a lot that's lost in translation...

*****
Bariloche is the first novel of Argentine-Spanish writer Andrés Neuman, he of Traveller of the Century fame.  It's a much shorter and simpler book than his IFFP-shortlisted work though, and is centred on the life of Demetrio Roja, a rubbish collector in Buenos Aires.  Every day, he goes to the depot where he and his work partner cruise the empty streets of the Argentine capital, removing unsightly rubbish before the rest of the city starts its day.

However, back home, we see a different side of Demetrio.  In a stark, semi-vacant apartment, he sits and occupies himself with jigsaw puzzles.  Not just any puzzle will do; they all have pictures showing the lake, forests and mountains of Bariloche, a small rural town on the other side of Argentina.  You see, Demetrio is not a native of the big city, and in his lonely apartment, he pines for the home of his youth - and a woman he once knew:

"Era lindísima y mayor que yo.  Se vestía como los hombres del lugar, escondiendo el cuerpo lo más que podía.  No vivía lejos, pero para mí ese trecho de tierra y a veces de barro era toda una ceremonia, una distancia que no podía recorrerse así nomás."
p.32 (Anagrama, 2009)

"She was very beautiful, and out of my reach.  She dressed like the local men, covering her body as best she could.  She didn't live far away, but for me this stretch of land and, at times, mud was a complete ritual, a distance which I could never cross." (my poor translation...)

As you may have guessed, Demetrio is not a very happy man...

Bariloche consists of sixty-five short chapters, several lasting less than a page, while the penultimate chapter, the longest in the book, only runs for six pages.  Initially, these scenes of urban life are merely snap-shots of Demetrio's daily routine, but as the novel progresses, we are treated to more glimpses of his life before his arrival in Buenos Aires, in particular, of a relationship he has which ends abruptly.

While the scenes in the mountains are sunny and filled with languid happiness, the chapters in the capital mostly happen in the dark, in the midst of the refuse of the big city.  There's an obvious contrast between the purity and innocence of Demetrio's youth and his life in Buenos Aires, and this contrast isn't limited to his physical surroundings - life in BA also seems to have corrupted his morals.  His young love was innocent, if forbidden:

"Nos besamos in ese momento y después no importó nada aparte de sus manos y las mías." (p.61)

"We kissed at that moment, and afterwards nothing mattered except her hands and mine."

Back in the big city, however, Demetrio's female affairs are less simple, as he is sleeping with the one woman he really should have left well alone...

The two strands, past and present, intertwine to create a fuller picture of a man whose life is going nowhere.  Trapped in memories, many of them pasted onto cardboard and carefully cut into small pieces, Demetrio is stuck in a rut he's unlikely to climb out of any time soon.  Work is simply a chore, and his love life is a dead end waiting to smother him alive.  Still, in his mind (and on his kitchen table), he'll always have Bariloche...

*****
The observant among you (i.e. those who have actually read the post carefully) will have realised by now that it wasn't the book that was difficult but the fact that I was reading it in the original Spanish.  Sadly, Traveller of the Century is, at this point, the only one of Neuman's books to have appeared in English, and having read it twice and loved it - and having caught up with the writer at the Melbourne Writers Festival -, I was keen to try another one.

How?  Well, I have studied Spanish before (two years at GCSE level while doing my A-Levels), and the similarity with French, another of my languages, helps a lot.  In essence though, it was me and my hazy memory of the language (with a little help from Google Translate) against an authentic literary text - I staggered through twelve rounds, but I got a hell of a beating ;)

If I'm being honest, it would be hard for anyone to take my review at face value as I did struggle with the book at times.  The first few days saw me read about seven pages at a time, with constant stops to look words up, and I really thought I had bitten off more than I could chew...  However, I slowly got the hang of things, and my long-term memory kicked in, allowing me to double that by the end of my two weeks of reading.  While there were still words I didn't know, I opted for fluency over complete comprehension where possible, especially if I sensed that not knowing a certain word was unlikely to affect the flow of the story.

I did get a lot out of Bariloche, especially when contrasting it with Traveller of the Century, as it allowed me to compare the two books and draw out some parallels with, perhaps seeds of, the later, longer novel.  Demetrio's illicit affair has shades of Hans' relationship with Sophie, and an old homeless man the rubbish collector befriends may well be a literary ancestor of the Organ Grinder.  The care taken when describing the streets of Buenos Aires (and the beauty of Bariloche) is also repeated in Neuman's later description of Wandernburg.  Finally, the picture of Demetrio poring over his jigsaw puzzles in a grotty bachelor pad evokes images of Hans sitting in his room at the inn, dictionary in hand, working away at his translations (which, in turn, is uncannily close to the image of Tony turning frequently from book to i-Pad in a desperate attempt to make sense of it all...).

What it lacks though, is the sparkling conversation and warmth that pervades Traveller of the Century.  One of the features of the latter book is the way in which it exudes life and laughter, with Hans and Sophie knowing full well that they won't be able to enjoy themselves forever, but giving it their best shot anyway.  In contrast, Demetrio is taciturn and isolated, a man who's lost even before he's started the game.  Mind you, it's just as well that the writer skimped on the dialogue in Bariloche; whenever the characters did start talking, I really struggled to understand a word of what they were saying...

For a native (or skilled) reader of Spanish, this is a book to be knocked off in a couple of days - it took me about two weeks ;)  Still, it was definitely worth the effort, and I did enjoy it, even if it never reached the heights of Traveller of the Century.  One thing is for sure though; with Pushkin Press' translation of Neuman's Hablar solos only about six months away, I think I'll just wait for the translation next time :)

Tony at the Melbourne Writers Festival (Part Three)

As I mentioned a while back (and as regular readers would no doubt have already guessed), my main reason for attending the Melbourne Writers Festival for the first time this year was to see the session entitled Traveller of the Century, in which Argentine-Spanish writer Andrés Neuman discussed his award-winning novel.  A word of warning before we start: don't rely on me to be too objective with this one.  Most of the following was written whilst wearing rose-tinted spectacles ;)

*****
As with the Laurent Binet session, the interviewer was Radio National's Michael Cathcart, and the show was once again planned to be aired on radio.  Thankfully, it wasn't live this time...  We were back at ACMI, this time in a more intimate studio, and around seventy to eighty people were crammed into the rows of sofa-type seats (not great on my back, unfortunately).

From the very start, Neuman showed himself to be erudite, witty and fluent in English, able to keep the conversation rolling along in a way that Binet perhaps couldn't quite master earlier in the day.  After a brief discussion of the writer's roots (having left Argentina before high school, he said: "I feel half Latin-American and half European."), Cathcart quickly brought the discussion around to the book itself, one which revolves on the idea of identity, both personal and national.

Cathcart mentioned the setting for the story, the shifting town of Wandernburg, and Neuman explained how this invented place was following in the footsteps of such great writers as Calvino, Borges and García Marquez, all of whom used imaginary towns as the settings for their philosophical experiments.  Wandernburg's location, on the border of two powerful neighbours in a time of constant regional conflicts, means that the town frequently changes hands, forcing its inhabitants to master the art of swapping allegiances at the drop of a hat.  This is important when the focus of the novel moves on to the idea of the nation state and national characteristics, as the idea of 'typical Germans' makes no sense when there is no real Germany to shape the people.

A topic which appeared early in the conversation, reappearing towards the end, was the sex in the novel, which (as Cathcart rightly pointed out) only comes after a 300-page flirtation.  Neuman explained how readers today are unlikely to be shocked by sex scenes, and the way he decided to get around the readers' jadedness was to lull them into a false sense of security.  He did this by making the 'courtship' resemble something from Austen, before suddenly allowing Hans and Sophie to give in to their more physical instincts (in a rather un-Austenesque manner...).

Sophie is one of the more interesting characters in the book, and when Cathcart mentioned 'the beautiful Sophie', Neuman interrupted, asking why he thought she was beautiful - it's never really explicitly stated in the novel.  While most readers (yours truly included!) would have an image of a beautiful young woman in mind, the writer never describes her as such, instead allowing her intelligence and charisma to persuade the reader that she is beautiful.  In fact, in the scene where she is shown naked for the first time, Neuman goes out of his way to show the reader that she is not a flawless goddess, but a normal woman...

Another point Cathcart (who I suspect really loved this book) noted was that there were a couple of striking parallels in the novel, which Neuman was happy to agree with.  While Rudi Wilderhaus (Sophie's fiancé) is Hans' rival in love, Professor Mietter, the dogmatic centre of the literary salon, is just as much a rival, but an intellectual one.  And as we're mentioning the literary salon at the Gottlieb residence, what are the gatherings at the cave with the organ grinder and friends if not another kind of salon?

One of the most fascinating stories came from Neuman himself though when he revealed that the basis for the whole story lies with... Franz the dog!  As the audience looked on expectantly, the writer explained how the inspiration for the novel came from Franz Schubert's Winterreise, a song cycle with lyrics provided by poet Wilhelm Müller.  In the last of the twenty-four songs, the traveller comes across an organ grinder playing alone, with only dogs for an audience, and the traveller decides to throw in his lot with the old man.  And there you have a large part of what makes up Traveller of the Century...

I could go on all day, but I'll just mention one last area of interest.  Neuman has a background in translation himself, and he was naturally very enthusiastic about the process of having his work appear in the English language.  He worked hard with the two translators (Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia) and credits them with the success of the English-language version saying: "What you're reading is the translators' prose." and "It's an original creation, based on the original."  For anyone familiar with the discussion about BBC Radio's recent Front Row programme on literary translation, those are heartening comments indeed :)

*****
At the top of the review, I warned you all that my objectivity was ever-so-slightly compromised today, and there's a very good reason for that.  Not only have I now read the book twice (and loved it both times), I've also been in contact with Andrés on Twitter, and before the festival, we agreed to try to catch up when I came to his event.

I thought we might just snatch five minutes to chat, or perhaps sit down for a while over coffee; instead, once Andrés' signing duties had been fulfilled, I went with him and his lovely wife to a café and chatted for a couple of hours (which simply flew by!) about life, books and travel.  While I, naturally, was very interested in his work, he and his wife also praised my blog scribblings...  I'm happy when anybody deigns to take a look at my posts, so to have two such intelligent and erudite people appreciate what I do...

...well, let's just say that for this post, objectivity has flown out of the window :)

Darling, you've got to let me know...

While most of the books which made it onto the shortlist of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize are relatively slender works, several of the longlisted titles (not least the bookshelf-threatening Parallel Stories) were longer, injury-inducing tomes.  Sadly for those of you with physical frailties, next year may have more of the same - that is, if today's book is anything to go by ( I was lucky enough to get a review e-copy from the publisher though!).  Fans of translated fiction should start exercising those arm and neck muscles...

*****
Andrés Neuman's Traveller of the Century (Pushkin Press), translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, is another wonderful example of fiction in translation.  The novel, running to around 600 pages, introduces us to Hans, a young translator who spends the night in a town somewhere in central Germany.  Originally planning to stay in Wandernburg for only one night, Hans somehow allows his departure to be delayed time and time again, seemingly unable to leave the strange, slightly-confusing town.

The longer he stays, the more people he comes to know, and the harder it is to motivate himself to leave.  Through his new friend Álvaro, a Spanish expatriate, he is invited to attend a literary salon, and it is here that he meets the hostess, Sophie Gottlieb, a lover of poetry and a beauty of marriageable age.  A perfect match, you might think: were it not for the handsome Rudi von Wilderhouse - Sophie's fiancé...

While the relationship between Hans and Sophie is at the heart of Traveller of the Century, there is a lot more to it than that.  Besides the added intrigue of the hunt for a sexual predator lurking in the streets of Wandernburg, an important chunk of the novel is spent at the Gottlieb's literary salon each Friday, where Hans and Álvaro take on the formidable intellect of Professor Mietter.  In the midst of a small group of selected citizens, our friends debate topics of literature and philosophy, war and peace, government and commerce, in a way which seems strangely modern and familiar.  For those whose eyes glaze over at the mention of philosophy though, there is always the mute, passionate subtext of Hans' and Sophie's attraction to be diverted by.

One of the more intriguing characters is the city itself, as it is not named Wandernburg for nothing.  In the introduction, it is described as having no fixed boundaries, shifting between Saxony and Prussia (both politically and physically!), but there is much more to the city's elusive nature.  When Hans walks around the city streets, he invariably finds himself lost, shops, inns and streets popping up where least expected.  Try as he might, the young translator is unable to take the same route twice -which must be a metaphor of some sort, surely? ;)

The name Kafka is never far from the reader's mind during the first pages of the novel, but the connection with the Latin American magical realism movement is the overriding feeling you have the longer the story goes on.  However you want to describe it, the fact is that Hans feels a strange sort of attraction to the town:

"I don't know what it is about this city,... it's as if it won't let me leave." p.78

If it all seems a bit too high-brow though, rest assured that the novel is very readable and often funny.  From the Thompson-Twins-inspired father-and-son detective duo of Lieutenant Gluck and Lieutenant Gluck ("Dad...", "Call me Lieutenant.") , to the cameo appearance of two businessmen in a bar (showing the author's love of football...), Neuman cleverly breaks up the deeper passages with some lighter moments.  When Hans and Álvaro are drinking (which they, and many others, frequently do), Hans quips in Wildean fashion:

"What time is it? What! said Álavaro astonished.  Do you mean to tell me you don't wear a watch?  The fact is, I don't see any point in watches, said Hans, they never give me the time I want." p.119

In the end though, we always return to Hans and Sophie, star-crossed lovers caught in an impossible situation.  The literary salon discusses Goethe's Young Werther at one point, a parallel which is not lost on the reader (although in the hands of a Latin writer, events are always likely to end up differently...).  The admirable Sophie, a wonderfully drawn-out character, is torn between her higher and base instincts, her duties and desires.  This is even foreshadowed in her name: while her father's family name is Gottlieb, indicating love of God, her mother's maiden name was Bodenlieb, a slightly more earthy kind of desire...

As the year passes by, Hans becomes increasingly attached to Sophie, despite being unlikely to ever win her.  The traveller has become rooted to the spot, a situation which both pleases and repels him.  In the end, he has a decision to make, and (unlike in the song) his lady love is not going to make the decision for him.  It's up to Hans to decide - should he stay or should he go...

*****

All in all, an excellent book, and one which could easily jostle for position with all the fine translated fiction I've been reading recently.  However, there is one more angle I'd like to look at, and that is the focus on translation.  Hans is a literary translator, converting poetry from several European languages into new German versions, and Caistor and Garcia, the translators of Traveller of the Century, must have had a lot of fun with the poems Hans had to work with.  I thought it was an excellent translation, a smooth fluent read, and it was extremely entertaining to see the process of translation rendered within a novel.  Perhaps a passage from the text best describes the effect a good translation can have on a work of art:

"But if it is well done, if the job of interpretation gives the right result, the text may even be improved, or at least become another poem as worthy as its predecessor.  And I would go further - I think it is the translator's duty to offer the reader an authentic poem in his own language precisely in order to remain faithful to the poetic nature of the original." p.351

And so say all of us :)