'The Book of Gaza', edited by Atef Abu Saif (Review)

I've read a couple of Comma Press' excellent literary city guides, so when I was offered the chance to review another, I was more than happy to take on the task.  However, that feeling was also tinged by other, stronger, emotions.  You see, while The Book of Rio, for example, evoked memories of nights spent watching the football, the visions attached to the city discussed today are (unfotunately) much less pleasant...

*****
The Book of Gaza (edited by Atef Abu Saif, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) contains ten stories by Palestinian writers, each of which is set in the Gaza Strip.  Like the other books in this series, The Book of Gaza has a mix of topics and settings, with stories from male and female writers presenting the reader with a privileged look inside the territory and allowing us to see the good and bad of life crammed onto a 25-mile-long strip of land.

The book contains several short, fleeting tales, and the best of these is probably Talal Abu Shawish's 'Red Lights' (tr. Alice Guthrie).  It's a story in which a grumpy taxi driver shows solidarity, and a human side, on his journey, his harsh words belying a caring interior.  Another of these vignettes is Asmaa Al Ghul's 'You and I' (tr. Alexa Firat).  A simple, elegant story of a woman's walk to and from university, it actually betrays deeper unease at what's happening in her hometown.

The other stories by female writers in the collection take a more explicit look at the life of women on the strip, and if we're talking about explicit, Najlaa Ataalah's 'The Whore of Gaza' (tr. Sarah Irving) is one which immediately comes to mind.  It introduces us to an unconventional woman at ease with her body, ruminating on money, love and sex in a society where women shouldn't really be thinking too much about at least one of these.  Is she a mistress or a whore?  A dreamer or a rationalist?  Well, that's for the reader to decide ;)

A more traditional woman is described in Nayrouz Qarmout's 'The Sea Cloak' (tr. Charis Bredin).  We start with a childhood memory which quickly turns sour as a young girl discovers that life, and gender relations, can change overnight.  Years later, she is a woman trapped in her smothering clothes (literally and metaphorically), and a trip to the coast will highlight the differences between childhood freedom and restrictive adulthood.  It's a story that's well told, reflecting issues faced by women in a patriarchal society - and it's one which has a twist in the tale...

Of course, occupation, conflict, call it what you will - the troubles in Gaza are never far away from the reader's mind.  Zaki Al 'Ela's 'Abu Jaber Goes Back to the Woods' (tr. Max Weiss) deals with this most explicitly, showing us the realities (and violence) of life inside a camp:

"Gentlemen, my boy, esteemed company.  Trust me on this.  Time and time again, they have dragged us along - on their plantations, in their factories.  We're nothing but workhorses to them, dumb as rocks.  Anyone who doesn't want to do it can go to hell; he can eat rocks or sand - him and his children.  They don't care."
'Abu Jaber Goes Back to the Woods', p.106 (Comma Press, 2014)

If you read between the lines, there are obvious wrongs on both sides in this story, but the frustrations and hardships of the Palestinians come across very strongly.  The humiliation of curfews, forced assemblies and savage beatings serve to foster the kind of resistance the presence of the soldiers is meant to stamp out.

A more hopeful look at a similar scene is Ghareeb Asqalani's 'A Flower for David' (tr. John Peate), a story in which friendship blossoms between a Palestinian worker and an Israeli engineer.  Despite the close relationship between their two families, their ties are tested by incidents that occur when the Jewish David is in the middle of his military service, and the writer wonders whether friendship can survive during an armed conflict.  Depending on your viewpoint, you might see this one as far-fetched or hopeful, but it's a ray of optimism in the middle of some pretty bleak events.

My favourite, though, is the story which kicks off the collection, Atef Abu Saif's 'A Journey in the Opposite Direction' (tr. Tom Aplin).  It's set at the southern border crossing of Rafah, where we witness thousands of people trying to get out, with a few trying to get in:

"Samir was returning to Gaza after ten years of estrangement.  'Gaza is nicer from the outside,' he said looking around him..."
'A Journey in the Opposite Direction' (p.4)

Ramzi, waiting for his brother to cross the border, encounters his old university friend Samir, and the two reminisce, aware that their lives have not gone as well as they would have liked.
 
This is far from being a gloomy story, though - it's beautiful, wistful and poetic, combining a sense of regret for the past with a desire to make the most of the present

"Time passed, and when time passes we do not notice the thick dust that its wheels throw up because we are too preoccupied with our many pains and joys." (p.12)

As the two men are joined by another couple of faces from the past, their bad day at the border becomes a chance to celebrate youth and enjoy what little there is to be glad about.  Despite the troubles and hardship around them, it's a story with the one thing that can rarely be taken away completely - hope...

*****
In addition to contributing a story, Atef Abu Saif edited the book and also provides the introduction.  It's a great addition to the stories, and it includes a brief overview of the history of writing in Gaza:

"For nearly a century, Palestinian literature has honestly expressed the crisis of the Palestinian people.  It has been the faithful scribe of their history, events and tragedies, of the details of their displacement and refugeedom.  Literature has been the living voice of the Palestinian struggle, in the face of being uprooted, displaced and occupied." (p.ix)

The importance of writing also comes through in an article he contributed to Slate, one in which he describes the terrible scenes in Gaza and implores the outside world not to see the Palestinian victims as mere numbers, but as people, individuals...

...and this is the real importance of The Book of Gaza.  While it's a great collection, with several excellent stories, what it's really about is turning abstract casualties into real people.  Let's hope that the book reaches a wider audience and manages to fulfil that vitally important task.

'The Book of Rio', Toni Marques & Katie Slade (eds.) (Review)

The World Cup is about to end (disappointingly) for Brazil, but with the Olympics taking place in Rio in 2016, it's not like the eyes of the world will be leaving the country for long any time soon.  Realising this, Comma Press (still on a high from Hassan Blasim's IFFP victory) have taken it upon themselves to introduce Anglophone readers to the city with the big statue.  How?  Through literature, of course ;)

*****
The Book of Rio (edited by Toni Marques and Katie Slade, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is another of Comma Press' excellent city guides, short-story collections helping readers to familiarise themselves with foreign shores.  This one contains ten short stories by Brazilian authors, each of which looks at life in Rio from a slightly different angle.  From Copacabana to the favela shanty towns, there's something for everyone here (even if football is conspicuous by its absence!).

Cesar Cardoso's 'Spare Me, Copacabana' (translated by Ana Fletcher) is the first story of the collection, a monologue from a party girl, which tells of her (and Copacabana's) faded glory.  The idea of women trading favours for pleasure (and more) also comes up in Patrícia Melo's 'I Love You' (tr. Daniel Hahn).  This one is a short, nicely-written story in which an escort gets caught up in a domestic squabble, all the time checking on how her friends are getting on at a nightclub.  The wonders of the smartphone age :)

Things get a lot more serious on the pleasure front in 'Song of Songs' by Nei Lopes (tr. Amanda Hopkinson), a story which takes the reader into the world of carnevale.  Lopes introduces us to a man running one of the many carnival organisations, showing us the grit and politics behind the glamour.  This is a tale about business, sex and money - and keeping it all in the family in the worst possible way...

Of course, it's not all fun down Rio way, and several stories look at those less fortunate inhabitants of the city.  In Luiz Ruffato's 'Lucky was Sandra' (tr. Jethro Soutar), a girl dreams of escape from the suburbs, determined to make a go of her life.  However, what goes up, must come down, and it's not long before Sandra ends up back in her old neighbourhood - whether she's better or worse off is hard to say.  Another sob story is João Gilberto Noll's 'Something Urgently' (tr. Sophie Lewis), where a boy from a criminal family is old before his time, doomed to a life on the margins of society.

Crime is also evident (from a distance) in Sérgio Sant'Anna's 'Strangers' (tr. Julia Sanches).  One of my favourites from this collection, the story has two strangers inspecting an apartment at the same time - and noticing some suspicious holes in the walls.  This one has it all, bullets from the favelas, sex in the afternoon and the joys of an uncertain, dangerous life.  A reflection on life in Rio?

Like many developing cities, Rio is changing at a rapid pace, but this brings uncertainty and danger for the workers bringing this change.  Domingos Pellegrini's 'The Biggest Bridge in the World' (tr. Jon S. Vincent) details the experience of an electrician on a major project, a... well, read the title ;)  It's a gig that's certainly well-paid, but money's not everything:

"Let's see some hustle, boys, let's see some hustle, because we only have three weeks.  Let's see some hustle because we only have two weeks.  One of the guys who worked with me, Arnold, fell asleep on his face on the seventh day, with his mouth right next to the end of a high tension cable.  He left the bridge and went straight to the hospital and never came back."
'The Biggest Bridge in the World', p.27 (Comma Press, 2014)

A real bridge of sighs, this grand project shows the price of progress (and might remind readers of certain projects which were implemented for the World Cup...).

Of course, traditions are important too, especially in an impersonal modern society.  While João Ximenes Braga's 'The Woman who Slept with a Horse' (tr. Zoë Perry) is thankfully free of bestiality, it does detail the struggles of an unhappy career woman looking for meaning in life:

"Andréa wanted to be everywhere, because she never wanted to be anywhere.  She especially did not want to be at home.  If she actually thought about it, she would realise that she didn't even want to be in her own body." (p.87)

Modern life being rubbish, Andréa attempts to spice things up by hooking up with a man involved in a native religion - but is she in over her head?

This malaise is also evident elsewhere.  In Marcelo Moutinho's 'Decembers' (tr. Kimberly M. Hastings), a man sees his grandfather through different eyes at three points in time, leaving him wistful for the past he never knew.  Finally, 'Places, in the Middle of Everything' by Elvira Vigna (tr. Lucy Greaves) gives us a melancholy piece to finish off with.  It's a story about a woman, her lover, a lot of rain and very little hope.  In fact, it's the perfect story to reflect the mood of the country after the events of the 8th of July...

The Book of Rio is a great collection, but (of course) it's a mere glimpse of what the city (and Brazilian literature in general) has to offer.  My only quibble with the book is that it's a tad on the short side, with most pieces being fairly brief.  Still, that's a minor concern, and the book is well worth checking out, leaving the reader with lots of names for future reference.

And if you like the sound of this kind of trip, you should definitely check out Comma Press' website.  You see, while today's post has concentrated on a Brazilian metropolis, there are plenty more literary holiday destinations for the discerning reader to discover in their series of city- and country-based collections.  So, where do you want to go today? ;)

'The Iraqi Christ' by Hassan Blasim (Review)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Shi Cheng - Short Stories from Urban China' (Review)

Comma Press is a small publisher that concentrates on short-story collections, and as some of those are translated into English from other languages, I've reviewed a few over the past year.  However, today's collection is a little different.  Whereas the ones I've read so far have been single-author works, this post will look at a book which takes us on a more varied literary journey...

*****
Shi Cheng - Short Stories from Urban China (review copy from the publisher) is a recent anthology from Comma Press, which... well, it does pretty much what it says on the cover.  It contains ten different stories, each by a different writer and each concentrating on one Chinese city (Shi Cheng is Mandarin for 'ten cities').  The stories are arranged a little unusually in that they literally take us on a journey through urban China - we start off in Hong Kong, move onto cities like Xi'an and Nanjing, move up the coast through Shanghai and Beijing, before finishing off in the cold northern city of Harbin (and no train ticket required!).

The habitual reader of translated fiction probably has certain expectations about works translated from Chinese, thinking that they are likely to be controversial works on banned topics (e.g. Ma Jian's Beijing Coma) or stories about the hardship poor peasants face (e.g. Yan Lianke's Dream of Ding Village).  Shi Cheng, however, is a very different book.  It avoids any real explicit political message (although there are plenty of implicit stabs at Chinese politics) and concentrates on the way the average Chinese citizen lives their life in the big cities.  Strangely enough, it makes for a refreshing change.

One common topic is the importance of education in China, something we all hear about but can't quite grasp.  In Cao Kou's But What About the Red Indians? (translated by Rachel Henson), the main character in the narrator's story is a young man whose failure to succeed in the highly-competitive university exams is partly responsible for a shocking event later in life.  The protagonist in Ho Sin Tung's Square Moon (translated by Petula Parris-Huang) takes an art history major at university, instead of following the path of an artist, simply because there are better job prospects at the end of the course.

The stories also have a common focus on the urban divide, and many subtly criticise modern China's superficial consumer society.  Wheels are Round by Xu Zechen (translated by Eric Abrahamsen) looks at a group of illegal workers in Beijing, migrants from the countryside who try to scrape together a few Yuan on the black market.  The criticism is more scathing though in Han Dong's This Moron is Dead (translated by Nicky Harman), where a vagrant's corpse on the streets of Nanjing is greeted with both indifference and scorn...

A third important area is relationships, and if Shi Cheng is anything to go by, true love is a rare quality in China.  Infidelity abounds, and several of the stories use cheating as the focus of the plot.  Zhang Zhihao's Dear Wisdom Tooth (translated by Josh Stenberg) consists of a conversation between a married couple who are about to split up, where the man's embedded wisdom tooth serves as a metaphor for their marriage, but Ding Liying's Family Secrets (translated by Nicky Harman) is a much more chilling tale of the effects of infidelity.  As for Jie Chen's Kangkang's Gonna Kill that Fucker Zhao Yilu (translated by Josh Stenberg), well, I think I'll just leave that one to your imagination ;)

One of my favourite stories though does have a more political edge to it.  Diao Dou's Squatting (translated by Brendan O'Kane) is a clever allegory of how well-meaning reformers can be co-opted into supporting the status quo.  Starting with some concerned, well-meaning citizens and descending into farce through some Kafkaesque regulations, it is a bizarre tale with a cunning twist at the end.  It is definitely the story that has stayed with me the longest :)

Shi Cheng is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the average urban-dwelling Chinese, and the book is visually delightful as well, with a handy map to follow our route and a transport map of each city introducing its story.  And if, like me, you enjoy this one, Comma Press has a few more books you might be interested in.  You see, as well as this trip around China, you might want to wander around the Middle East (Madinah), or take a leisurely journey through Europe (Decapolis).  Forget your local travel agency - this is the way to see the world in comfort ;)

Long Days, Short Sentences

Earlier this week, I published my wrap-up post for this year's German Literature Month.  However, Lizzy (for a variety of reasons) decided to extend the event for a further week - leaving me with just enough time to sneak in another review :)

Unusually though, I actually read this one in English.  I'm rather hesitant to read German-language books in translation, but after receiving a surprise package from the nice people at Comma Press, I decided to make an exception...

*****
Maike Wetzel's Long Days (translated by Lyn Marven) is a short collection of nine stories, primarily focused on turning points in life.  The stories mainly concern young people (teenagers, adolescents, young adults) dealing with important, life-changing events.  Time slows down from the usual frenetic pace, allowing the narrator (and the reader) to analyse matters in minute detail.

Some of the main characters are growing up against the backdrop of difficult circumstances.  In Sleep, a young girl gradually becomes aware of the custody battle raging between her mentally-ill mother and her grandmother, realising that she is a pawn in a game which started long before her birth.  Shadows shows us the effect a girl's battle with anorexia has on the rest of her family, primarily her younger, impressionable sister.  While both these stories end without disaster, the reader would find it difficult to be optimistic about the protagonists' futures...

Even when the characters are a little older, life doesn't become any easier.  The drama student in Frosted Glass struggles to cope with her move to the big city, especially after the recent loss of her father.  In Enlightenment, the main character is more of an observer, studying the theory of biology at school and on a field trip to the gynaecologist's, while fully aware of the practical applications of the subject from what is happening around her in the classroom.

Wetzel's creations are far from all being victims though; in fact, there are several stories in the collection which verge on creepy.  Witnesses, the first story (possibly my favourite), has a young woman telling her partner about the time she found a dead body.  Rather than simply relating the story though, details are added throughout several retellings, each time both adding to the whole picture and subtracting from the narrator's reliability.

When it comes to creepy though, Poor Knights takes the cake (or fried breakfast snack, as is the case).  At the start of the story, the reader is given the impression that two friends are talking about someone they once knew, wondering what she might be doing now.  By the end of the story, Wetzel has sketched out a picture of two sisters who turn up on their aunt's doorstep and simply refuse to leave...

The writer's style is very simple, with many of the stories consisting of sequences of simple sentences, statements of fact which somehow manage to obscure the truth rather than reveal it.  On the whole, the stories also consist of fairly short, loosely-connected paragraphs, brief snapshots from which the reader must assemble a bigger picture.  There is a sense of unease running through the collection, leaving you with the feeling that while life generally goes on, it would be best not to rely too much on anything - or anyone.

In fact, Long Days is a book built on pessimism.  There is a constant sense of foreboding, and lives are lived under permanent clouds.  In the final story of the collection, Other People's Windows, Wetzel writes a love story where a man and a woman get together.  So why does it feel anything but happy?  Perhaps it's sentences like these:

"At heart everything was very simple, they were floating on a steady stream.  They would be each other's assurance, trust each other, entwine like the ivy which envelops a house.  That's how their love would grow, dense and green, until no light could penetrate.  One or both of them would reach for the secateurs, and in the end all that would be left would be a pile of branches on the ground." p.109 (Comma Press, 2008)

It's not exactly "happy-ever-after" material, is it...

Long Days isn't quite the book you need if you're a little down in the dumps, but it is another good Comma Press offering.  Not all of the stories were of the same standard - the two I haven't mentioned, Two Voices and Overgrown, didn't really grab me -, but on the whole, reading Long Days is an enjoyable way to spend the evening.

Although I'm not sure that 'enjoyable' is quite the right word here...

Books and Dreams

From the first of November, things will be going all Germanic around these parts with the start of German Literature Month.  However, before that all starts, I just have time to bring you one last taste of Iceland, and a wonderful one it is too :)

*****
Gyrðir Elíasson's Stone Tree, translated by Victoria Cribb, is another short story collection that the wonderful Comma Press were kind enough to send me a copy of.  Unlike the others I've reviewed though, Stone Tree's offerings are more akin to flash fiction - the 116 pages contain 25 different stories.  These vignettes work superbly though, describing slices of life, glimpses of a moment in time like a photograph, or a video lasting but a few brief seconds.

Not a lot happens in some of the stories, but the reader is still intrigued as to why events unfold (and are set up) as they are.  For example, in A House of Two Stories, two men living on different floors in the same house translate different books by the same author - and that's it.  Elíasson's skill lies in sketching this out in a few hundred words in such a way that the reader feels that there is something more to the story than this and is engaged enough to wonder what exactly that could be.

The literary theme is one that runs through the collection (a comforting one for bibliophiles like myself!), but the stories can often contain subtle warnings about the danger of becoming obsessed with literature.  In Book After Book, a story which may hit too close to home for many readers, a man wanders about his house aimlessly, picking up some of the many books he possesses.  Some are in the fridge, some are crammed into boxes, others share the bathroom cabinet with prescription medicine...  While he is certainly not lacking for reading material, the man's world is eerily flat and empty.  Perhaps it's no coincidence that I took sixty books to the local charity shop the day after reading this story...

Readers may get a mention, but one of the central ideas of Stone Tree is the writer, a solitary figure seeking time alone in an attempt (usually a vain one) to squeeze some words out onto the page.  In several of the stories (e.g. The Summerbook, The Flight to Halmstad), this search for necessary tranquillity comes at the cost of relationships, with marriages slowly disintegrating in the absence of human contact.  In others though (e.g. The Writing Room, The Bus), the writer's solitude allows him to connect with something outside his usual world, his dreams bleeding uncannily into his waking existence.

If this all sounds a little dull and arty, rest assured that Elíasson is not without a dry, laconic sense of humour.  There are many gems scattered throughout his stories, such as:

"On the little table beside the bed an ancient coffee maker boiled and bubbled, producing a strange, black viscous fluid that we decided by tacit agreement to refer to simply as coffee, although in reality it was something altogether different."
p.48, The Writing Room (Comma Press, 2008)

Or, perhaps you would prefer the writer's attempt to describe beautiful scenery:

"It was past midday when their car pulled up beside the houses of Saksun.  The sky was overcast but no rain was falling here and the mountains were free from fog.  Saksun is an extraordinary, romantic place.  It would have been the perfect setting if Keats, Shelley and Byron had ever needed a retirement home."
p.81, Watershed

Scattered jokes like these help to prevent the stories falling into a humdrum, predictable pattern - and also keep the reader on their toes :)

With such short, mystery-laden pieces of prose, it will come as little surprise that Elíasson is also a poet, and in an interview published back when Iceland was the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, he admits his tendency towards 'anorexic prose', an influence of his poetic writing.  This poetic side comes out in a comment a character makes in his story The Carpentry Woodshop, after the death of his sister:

"Later, when things were almost back to normal, Dad said that I should have carried on and joined him in the carpentry business.  I answered that two carpenters in the family were enough, and that I would take up woodwork again if he could build a stairway to heaven.  He said he couldn't do that.  I said in that case I would weave one out of words."
p.78, The Carpentry Woodshop

Of course, even the most poetic and lyrical of writers is nothing in a foreign language without the help of a good translator, and Victoria Cribb is one of the best.  I have praised her work before (she is the translator into English of Sjón's work), and even if Elíasson has a very different style - dare I say it, a little less flamboyant... -, it still comes across well in the foreign language.  I'm not sure if Cribb has translated any other Icelandic authors, but I'm almost inclined to seek them out and read them just on her name alone :)

*****
All in all then, Stone Tree is a wonderful collection of stories, a fitting end to this stage of my journey around Icelandic literature.  Before I finish up though, I just want to look at one more story, one which I came back to time after time.  Chain Reaction is just three pages long, yet it is full of hidden meanings, a puzzle which the reader longs to crack.  It's another of the stories which centre on a writer at a retreat, where the protagonist, hearing the sound of chains in the attic, leaves the house and goes for a walk, ending up sitting by a pool.

So far, so prosaic.  However, it's the detail which fascinates me so much in this story.  The writer flees immediately he hears the sound of chains - does he have a guilty conscience?  In leaving the house, he locks himself out, the keys are still inside - is there a deeper significance to this?  The book he (inevitably) takes with him is a biography of Houdini...  As he approaches the pool, he compares a cave to the one where Merlin was stranded after losing his powers - an allegory for writer's block?  The name of an old girlfriend pops into his head, and a light immediately comes on in a building in the distance.  And I haven't even mentioned his dream yet...

You cannot help but admire the way Elíasson almost casually throws all these elements together in fewer words than it has taken me to review his book.  Despite the brevity of the tales, these are not stories that you speed through; with all the dense imagery, the reader needs to slow down and take heed of what is happening.  Rob, of Rob Around Books, a noted fan of the short story, wrote earlier this year about the way he always reads a short story twice, recommencing immediately after finishing the first read.  At the time I was, to put it mildly, a little dubious about this - however, this is pretty much what I did for the majority of the stories in Stone Tree.  And it works. 

Stone Tree is a great book.  Elíasson is an excellent writer.  This (as far as I am aware) is his only work in English.  More, please :)

There's No Place Like Home

While my recent literary travels have mainly taken me to Iceland, today we're visiting another northern European country by the sea.  Poland may not be quite as chilly as Iceland, but as you can tell by the title of today's book, Paweł Huelle's Cold Sea Stories, it has its fair share of less temperate days.  This book is the latest in Comma Press' series of European short story collections, an excellent selection of stories, mostly based in and around the author's home town of Gdańsk - however, when you look beneath the surface, there's a lot more connecting them than that...

*****
Cold Sea Stories (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) is full of personal touches from the writer's life.  In The Bicycle Express, we follow a young student and his friend as they ride around Gdańsk delivering newspapers with the latest news from striking workers - among them, a certain Lech Wałęsa...  One of the shorter tales, Depka and Rzepka, is about a young boy charged with a trip to some fishermen to obtain some fish for Christmas, something which was almost impossible to do in the city's shops.  Both of these stories, as the writer admits, are highly autobiographical, memories adapted for this collection.

Many of the stories though are a little more abstract than this.  In fact, several contain elements of that much-used expression 'magical realism', allowing Huelle to soar above the constraints of the cold north to explore his themes.  Two stories with several parallels are Doctor Cheng and Ukiel, both of which deal with men returning to their home town after decades abroad, looking for an answer to the sadness in their lives and failing to find it in the dull, little-changed place they left behind.  Having lost partners, they are searching for something to keep them going - in different ways, the two stories give glimpses of something worth waiting for...

However, the host of returning travellers in Cold Sea Stories seem largely doomed to disappointment.  While the political system may have changed, the pessimistic view pervading many of the stories is that everything else has stayed the same.  On arriving in Poland, many of the characters find that they have little connection to their country of birth, and soon regret their decision to return.  An example from Doctor Cheng:

"Only on the plane did it dawn on him that the decision to make this journey, taken a good fifteen months ago, was a reckless one.  Nothing really drew him to the country where he had spent the first twenty years of his life and which had no positive associations for him." p.93
(Comma Press, 2012)

Despite this, the protagonists are unable to escape a sense of nostalgia which pulls them back to their homeland.  In several of the stories, the central character is stopped dead in their tracks by a sudden association, a memory or (more often) by a smell, a fragrance of flowers.  Most of the stories contain frustrating elements of missing something from the past but being unable to retrieve it.  In Abulafia, a boy laments the loss of a language, one he had never learnt:

"And a month later his mother, [died] from pneumonia.  She took her greatest secret with her; the language she had never passed on to him, which would always bring him the scent of haymaking, clover, a wind from the sea and clouds." p.122

Perhaps the most memorable stories in the collection are the two that bookend it.  The first, Mimesis, at 41 pages the longest of the stories, is set in a deserted village towards the end of the Second World War and explores the relationship between a freed prisoner of war and a young mute woman left behind when the Germans took the rest of the village people.  First Summer, the last of the stories, then returns to the same town in more recent times and looks at what has become of the setting for the first story.  There are other connections between the two stories than the town though - and I'll leave you to find them out for yourself ;)

I read Cold Sea Stories twice, and I got a lot more out of it the second time.  There are connections between the stories which only became apparent on a rereading, and I'm sure that there's still a lot that I haven't managed to tease out.  Luckily, the publisher has come to the reader's aid a little here, as there is a brief Q & A between the translator and writer included at the end of the book, giving brief details as to the creation and meaning of each of the stories.  I was recently discussing this need for supplementary information (introductions, cultural explanations) in works of translated fiction with some other bloggers, and this is a good example of the kind of information which adds value (and interest!) to a book.

In the end though, it's all about the stories, and when you have a collection of good ones, you can't go far wrong.  There's nothing particularly earth-shattering about them - no great surprises or shocking twists - , but then a good story doesn't really need that; we all have stories to tell, no matter how mundane.

"There is always a story to be told... even if a person spends his whole life sitting in one room staring out of the same window all the time." p.158 (Franz Carl Weber)

Warm Words and Cold Hearts

I'm not sure if this happens to anyone else, but whenever I read a good book by a writer from another country, I immediately want to read more, not just from that particular author, but also from his compatriots.  The point to this long, and rather overcomplicated, opening sentence is that after enjoying Sjón's work I was on the lookout for more Icelandic fiction - which brings me to today's review :)

Twice in a Lifetime is a collection of short stories by Icelandic writer Ágúst Borgþór Sverrisson, one I noticed on the website of Comma Press and requested a review copy of.  It's a slender volume, comprising ten stories running to just over 120 pages, set in Iceland over the past few decades, and it's a book you could run through very quickly indeed.  It's probably best though to space the stories out, and that is how I approached the book.

Many of the stories feature modern men, some behaving very badly.  In Exchange of Guilt, a man whose happy existence is based on his brother's misfortune takes advantage of his luck to iron out a problem which his own behaviour has caused.  Of course, when you try to cheat fate, there's always the chance that fate will try to cheat you back. Another unlikeable character is the protagonist in The German Teacher's Wife , an arrogant young student who looks down on his girlfriend but uses her to finance his studies abroad - until the money suddenly runs out...

However, not all of Sverrisson's main men are like that.  In A Sweet Shop in the West End, a man in his thirties tries to connect with his step-son, reminded of his own relationship with his mother's partner.  While this part of his life seems to work, his beautiful wife, at first so loving, appears to be taking advantage of his good nature.  In The First Day of the Fourth Week, a contemporary story of post-GFC Iceland, a man made redundant tries to fill his day, unable to cope with the unexpected feeling of unemployment, waiting for something, anything, to turn up...

These two stories reminded me a little of some in Clemens Meyer's collection, All the Lights, and while Meyer's characters are, on the whole, a little more working class and down on their luck than Sverrisson's, there is a strong resemblance in the ground the two writers tread.  The stories deal with real life, nothing too exotic or flamboyant; in fact, were it not for the occasional reference to geothermal energy and Kronur, you could have trouble placing the stories geographically.

One element which ties the stories together is a sense of retrospection, many of them being specifically dated.  Quite apart from Lunch Break, 1976 (the shortest of the stories, one in which a stressed-out office worker comes home and has a rant about a sheep's head left in a saucepan...), several of the stories have the year clearly stated, as if the writer wants to impress the importance of the time from the start of the very first page.  While there is no explicit sense of nostalgia, the reader gets the sense that we are meant to be looking for something in the past, something which has perhaps been lost.

On top of this preoccupation with the past, several of the stories focus on problematic relationships, marriages that have run their course.  In addition to the stories mentioned above, After the Summer House, the longest of the stories in the collection, focuses squarely on a marriage in crisis.  It takes place over a few years in which a couple visit their friends in the country during the summer holidays.  On the first visit, their friends' marriage seems to be strained; on the second, they have built their dream summer house and appear to be much happier.  But is everything really OK?  And how does this reflect on the protagonist's own relationship?

This story was probably my favourite of the ten.  It deals with the way relationships change and what people have to do to keep them fresh, and make sure they continue to work.  The protagonist here is a man who prefers to live in his own world, lost in old magazines and music, and he doesn't realise that this is probably not the best thing for his continued happiness.  I think I'll move on before it all gets a bit too close to home...

Before I wrap up though, I should mention the translators - particularly important as there are three of them!  Most of the stories are translated by the team of Maria Helga Guðmundsdóttir and Anna Benassi, but The First Day of the Fourth Week (which appeared in a previous Comma Press collection) is translated by Vera Júlíusdóttir.  The stories are easy to read, but the style sometimes switches between being slightly formal and more colloquial - an aspect which I suspect is more down to the writer than the translators :)

Twice in a Lifetime is well worth a read, and I'm hoping to have another look through it soon as I suspect there are still more secrets there to be uncovered.  As for Iceland, well, I'm definitely hoping to make a (literary) return trip in the near future.  Any suggestions will be gratefully received :)