The Last Chronicle of IFFP 2012

As some of you may recall, I took part (not so long ago) in a rather audacious venture entitled the Shadow IFFP in which yours truly and a bunch of intrepid bloggers attempted to read all fifteen longlisted titles for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and second guess the opinions of the real panel - something we proved to be very bad at.  But isn't that all over, I hear you cry, past tense?  Well, not quite...

You see, I did my best to get through all of the fifteen titles, but in the end I was only able to notch up fourteen, my library, which had been amazing up to this point, failing to get my purchase request back to me on time.  Luckily, they didn't give up - and neither did I.  This post is review number fifteen; so, have I saved the best for last?

*****
What's it all about?
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (translated by Judith Landry) was shortlisted for the real prize, beaten to the award by some book I don't particularly wish to talk about now.  The story is set during the Second World War, but the plot actually has little to do with the war.  We are presented with a journal of sorts, written in Finnish, with an introduction and frequent commentaries from a navy medic, Doctor Friari.  The main writer is Sampo Karjalainen, a Finnish sailor (and amnesiac) found in Trieste after having been attacked and left for dead.

When the good doctor, a native Finn, sees the name sewn inside the sailor's coat, he realises that he must be a countryman and promptly decides to nurse him back to health - and teach him a little of the native language he appears to have forgotten.  Once back in Helsinki, Sampo sets about mastering the notoriously tricky Finnish vernacular, hopeful of recovering his memory and his past.  That depends of course on whether he has one - and whether Doctor Friari's assumption was correct..

I loved this book, but considering the subject matter that's not a huge surprise.  My background is in linguistics and intercultural communication, and the vital connection between language and culture is the cornerstone of the novel.  Poor Sampo is adrift in a strange world, bereft of his early experiences, and he clings to the language he has been told is his, desperately trying to master in the space of a few months what would normally take an adult a lifetime.

Marani is a master linguist, and his evocation of an adult learner's struggles with a new language is a delight, the bewildered seaman adrift on a sea of rounded vowels and nouns with fifteen declensions, grasping onto any recognisable sound emerging from a speaker's lips as if it were a lifebelt or a sturdy piece of flotsam.  Sampo listens and listens, enjoying the sound of the words even if he does not quite grasp the meaning, storing up vocabulary in his mind for later perusal.  However, despite his passion for the language, he can't help wondering whether Friari has made a mistake, one which will doom Sampo to failure; for as Friari himself remarks:

"A learnt language is just a mask, a form of borrowed identity; it should be approached with appropriate aloofness, and its speaker should never yield to the lure of mimicry, renouncing the sounds of his own language to imitate those of another.  Anyone who gives in to this temptation is in danger of losing their memory, their past, without receiving another in exchange." Dedalus Books, 2011 (p.52)

As much as the story is about Sampo and his struggles though, it is also about those characters who attempt to help him, unable to avoid the temptation of scribbling on the tabula rasa of his amnesiac personality.  Doctor Friari, a Finn forced to leave his homeland after the civil war, sees what he wants to see when he stumbles across poor Sampo, desperate to redeem himself and his family in the eyes of a fellow Finn.

When Sampo arrives in Helsinki, he finds himself under the wing of Pastor Olof Koskela, a charismatic, patriotic Lutheran minister, a man with a passionate knowledge of Finnish myths, determined to teach Sampo his forgotten heritage.  Where Koskela attempts to fill in linguistic and historical gaps, a nurse, Ilma Koivisto, tries to help him in a more emotional way.  Sadly, none of Sampo's benefactors are able to convince him that he really is Finnish.  The more time passes, the more doubts arise:

"I had a distinct suspicion that I was running headlong down the wrong road.  In the innermost recesses of my unconscious I was plagued by the feeling that, within my brain, another brain was beating, buried alive." p.77

This feeling of uncertainty pervades the novel until its climax; when we discover the truth, it is as shattering to the reader as it is to poor Sampo...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?

Absolutely.  New Finnish Grammar is a wonderful book, and easily finished up on my shortlist.  If you're not as interested in linguistics as I am (and that's a distinct possibility!), I can see how the constant language analysis might grate.  For me though, this book was an intelligent, thought-provoking study of the importance of language and culture to our mental well-being.  I wouldn't have minded at all if it had taken out the main prize :)

*****

And that's it!  Our trip to Helsinki means that the journey has finally come to an end, albeit a rather belated one.  I've thoroughly enjoyed my trip around the world, courtesy of the IFFP, but now it's back to the daily grind...

...of reviewing more translated fiction :)

And The (Real) Winner Is...

After months of feverish reading, heated discussion and aching thumbs (and that's just me), the good people on the panel for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize have announced their choice for the best piece of translated fiction published in the UK last year.

And what is that book, the pick of the bunch in the eyes of the esteemed panel?  Well, would you believe it...

Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld

Translated by Jeffrey M. Green

Published in the UK by Alma Books

Congratulations to all involved - no matter what we on the Shadow Panel think ;)

*****
It's been an exciting and exhausting couple of months participating in the Shadow Panel process, but I've enjoyed the time immensely.  Over the past few days, I've been thinking a little about lessons to be taken from the events of this time, and I thought I'd finish my IFFP posts by musing a little on what I've learned.

1) Reading a longlist is hard work

It really is a tough ask :)  If you're doing it as part of your job, it's probably difficult enough, but making your way through fifteen books, especially fifteen demanding and, at times, lengthy books, all while going about your normal business, can be quite a challenge.  It's no surprise that we didn't all make it through the whole set (Stu managed it, I came close, and I think Mark and Lisa wisely gave up on Parallel Stories after it failed to make the shortlist), but luckily, with seven of us sharing the load, we managed to cover each book well enough to have a consensus opinion.

If I had to scrutinise our shortlist with hindsight, I'd probably say that if more of us had managed to read New Finnish Grammar before the deadline, it may have been included in our six, probably at the expense of Parallel Stories (which benefited from my fairly positive review and Stu's glowing one!).  On the whole though, I think we managed the strain quite well and came up with a list to be proud of :)

Of course, all this is just the mental strain.  Let's not talk about the bodily agonies I suffered from holding up Parallel Stories for hours on end...

2) There's no accounting for taste

Without wanting to criticise the judges of the IFFP, we in the Shadow Panel were frankly amazed at some of the decisions made for the shortlist, concerning both the books that made the cut and those that didn't.  Alice and Blooms of Darkness*** were two inclusions that had many of us scratching our weary heads, and we were a little disappointed that Next World Novella was passed over for the other German novel.  The biggest shock though was the omission of Scenes From Village Life, a book which was not so much pencilled into our shortlist as scorched with a flamethrower.

So how did this happen?  Why were we so wrong?  Was there a sense of rationalisation present in the real process that was missing from our more shadowy discussions?  If I were cynical (alright, more cynical than I already am), I might suggest that there was a spot reserved for a female writer on the shortlist - and, as regular readers will know, I'm very glad that it didn't go to a certain Korean author...  The same goes for a World-War-Two novel, with Blooms of Darkness getting the nod over The Emperor of Lies, and...

...but let's stop there.  I'd better leave the conspiracy theories to Eco and his character, Simonini.  I'm happy to believe that these simply were the panel's favourite books.

No, I am, really...

3) Shared reading is fun
Blogging can be a lonely business, particularly when you're mining the literary fiction end of the literature seam.  You hack around day after day, casting envious glances at the gaggle of bloggers chipping happily away at their YA or chick-lit part of the mine, wishing that someone would come and talk to you as you hammer away at a difficult 600-page chunk of translated fiction.  You're quite happy with what you're doing - it's just that you wish it wasn't quite so quiet at your end of the shaft...

...which is where events like the Shadow Panel are very welcome.  I'm not saying that it's something I'd like to do more than once or twice a year - I don't think the nerves would take it -, but it does make a welcome change to be able to discuss the books I'm reading in detail as I'm leafing through them.  Whether on Twitter or via e-mail, I've had great fun weighing up the merits and drawbacks of the fifteen books from the longlist with my fellow panellists; it's been two months well spent :)  For anyone wanting to look back (in anger, or otherwise) at the reviews we wrote, please follow the link to the page on Mark's blog where he has collected all of them - hours of reading pleasure!

So, before I sign off for the 2012 (Shadow) Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, I'd just like to say a big thank you to my colleagues for making this such a fun venture to be a part of.  To Stu, Lisa, Gary, Mark, Rob and Simon - it's been a pleasure, and I'd love to do it all again some time...

...just not any time soon ;)

*****
*** This post was largely written before the announcement of the winner - I deliberately decided not to change my views after the event...

And The Winner Is...

After what seems like years of reading, deliberating and pontificating, the time has finally come for the announcement of that most esteemed honour, the winner of the Shadow Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2012 - the real winner will be announced tomorrow, in case you're interested ;)

So, I'll leave you in the capable hands of Chairman Stu to hear about this year's journey - cue the tape...

*****

"A quick word from me, Stu, the Chair of this year's Shadow IFFP. I want to thank all my fellow Judges for making this such a successful first year for the Shadow IFFP. We all undertook the journey of judging the 2012 Shadow IFFP eight weeks ago. This journey first took us to Asia - 1980’s Tokyo (or is it?), a mother's disappearance in Seoul, and a chilling look at the AIDS crisis in rural China. Then we read two Hebrew novels: the first set in the present, introducing us to an old man and a village; the other in World War Two, showing us a young Jewish man on the run, hiding in a most unexpected place.

Next, it was off to Germany, and two books dealing with death. In the first, a husband is shocked at discovering his wife’s view of him after her death; in the other a women called Alice has friends and lovers alike die around her. At this point, we relaxed for a while in Hungary, soaking in a little of the country's rich history - and its hidden sexual underground - until deciding to head north to make the acquaintance of an eccentric Icelandic autodidact with an interest in sea creatures and the occult.

We then journeyed further into Scandinavia, meeting a professor stuck in a mid-life crisis, who is witness to a murder, and a roguish leader of a Jewish community in a Second-World-War ghetto, before two Italian novels introduced us to a villain of the top order in 19th-century Europe, and a shipwrecked man with a forgotten heritage. Skipping forward to 1980s Paris, we learned about a group of friends facing the AIDS crisis head on, while a trip back in time courtesy of a Basque writer took us to Colonial Africa and a man heading into an army camp gone rogue.

This journey hasn’t been the easiest for us as judges, as most of the books dealt with death and the darker side of human life. However, they show the wealth of literary talent around the world and the wonderful work modern translators carry out. We as judges have discovered a lot about each other, digesting and discussing the books and slowly trimming our list down to our winner... and it is with great pleasure that we announce that winner:

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón
Translated by Victoria Cribb
Published in the UK by Telegram Books

We all liked - and some of us loved - this book; nobody really had a bad word to say about it. All of us felt entranced by the writing and by Sjón's voice. Through Jonas' eyes, the writer captured 17th-century Iceland so well, and this was helped by Victoria Cribb's translation which, through its usage of archaic vocabulary and grammatical forms, gave it the feel of a book that had just been unearthed, not written. From the Mouth of the Whale is a worthy first winner of the Shadow Independent Foreign Fiction Prize."

*****

So there you have it - a great choice, if I say so myself! Let's see what the real panel comes up with tomorrow...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Fifteen

We've been in Europe for a while now on our Independent Foreign Fiction Prize magical mystery tour, so it's time to head to more humid climes.  It's off to the Congo we go, dropping in on some rather shady characters in the deep dark jungle, and taking a disapproving look at their colonial antics.  Machetes at the ready - we're going off-road with this one...

*****

What's it all about?

Bernardo Atxaga's Seven Houses in France (translated by Margaret Jull Costa) transports the reader to the Congo in 1903, the height of the European conquest of Africa.  The small garrison town of Yangambi, manned by experienced, cynical officers (and a back-up of native soldiers), is awaiting the arrival of an addition to the ranks, a fresh young soldier from Europe.  We arrive in Yangambi with the new officer, the mysterious Chrysostome Liège, a silent young man who immediately rubs his new comrades up the wrong way...

You see, the hard-bitten residents of Yangambi like to blow off steam by drinking, hunting, swearing and grabbing local women to sleep with, and Chrysostome is unwilling to join the other officers in these less-than-noble pursuits.  The Captain of the garrison, frustrated poet Lalande Biran, accepts the new recruit, if only because of his formidable skill with a rifle.  Others, however, particularly Lieutenant Van Thiegel, are less impressed with Chrysostome, waiting only to discover a weakness before planning an attack on the innocent youngster.

Seven Houses in France is a critical look at the European colonial 'adventures' in Africa in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, and Atxaga doesn't paint a very pretty picture of life far away from Western civilisation and scrutiny.  While the locals are not treated as badly as in other stories I've read, the behaviour of the soldiers is intolerable by modern standards.  The local men are used as slave labour, with an armed soldier ready to cut down anyone who attempts to slip away into the jungle, and the women are fair game to help the officers satisfy their sexual urges.  What happens in the jungle, stays in the jungle...

And why are they there at all?  The reality is that it is all about money, exploiting the riches found in the unknown African interior for the amusement of the wealthy of Europe.  Lalande and his crew hack down thousands of mahogany trees, destined to be turned into expensive furniture in stately homes.  They hunt and slaughter elephants and cheetahs to satisfy the demand for ivory and fur.  In this way, the soldiers hope to become rich too - the title of the book refers to the properties Lalande's wife Christine hopes to attain from her husband's stay in the Congo.

Such wealth comes at a price, however, and it is one most of the soldiers will pay.  Marooned far from home, with only a thin veneer of imported pomp separating them from the unknown terrors lurking across the river, few are able to avoid the slide into alcoholism and paranoia, falling prey to disease caught either from the ubiquitous mosquitoes or the women the officers share.  Comparisons with Heart of Darkness are, inevitably, unavoidable, and Atxaga's men (especially Van Thiegel) appear just as crazed as the infamous Kurtz, the central character of Conrad's tale.

In fact, it is (just about) possible to feel a little sympathy for some of the characters.  Lalande is perhaps not sympathetic by today's standards, but he does try to keep his men in check.  There is also the sneaking suspicion that the seven houses his wife claims to desire are merely a pretext for keeping her husband imprisoned in the jungle, leaving her free to pursue her own affairs on the French Riviera.  In the end, it is very hard to see anyone leaving the jungle unscathed...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
I went into this one fully expecting to say yes.  I came out of it thinking that it hadn't lived up to expectations.  Don't get me wrong, it's a very interesting book, enjoyable in style (although probably not in content), but it just didn't do it for me.  The tone seemed to be caught half-way between a Heart of Darkness-esque tension and a Boys' Own cheery excitement, and I was never quite sure which was meant to dominate.

I was also a little confused by the treatment of Chrysostome, who may or may not have been the centre of the story.  For much of the novel, he is an enigma, seen from the outside, and the reader has no real access to his thoughts and history, such as we have for the other characters.  Suddenly, towards the end of the novel, the writer tells us all about him - and then lets him go off on his own moody way again...  The sudden info dump spoiled the effect of the mysterious outsider, the catalyst for the events which followed, and left me a little disappointed.

The rest of the Shadow Panel appear to disagree with my thoughts, rating it very highly.  However, it's not one I'll be supporting when we make our final decision...

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
Apart from the ideas I discussed above, I have a sneaking suspicion that the topic of colonial-era Africa is not one which people particularly like to read about.  Heart of Darkness is a work which is frequently condemned, and many of the reviews and comments I've seen on Seven Houses in France have also been very negative.  The majority of this dislike is concentrated on the characters, particularly their horrific behaviour - and it's extremely challenging to make a case against that!  It seems to me that novels about the Holocaust are much more likely to be praised than those set in European-controlled Africa - although perhaps this is because these books focus more on the oppressors than the oppressed.  Comments, as always, are welcome...

*****
That's just about it for our journey.  There is one more stop, but (unfortunately) I haven't quite been able to make it there yet.  Here's hoping I get the chance to brush up on a minor European language before the winner is announced ;)

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Fourteen

After my two-part odyssey around the world of Péter Nádas' Parallel Stories, you'd think that the next review for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize would be a lighter, more carefree affair.  Alas, we're back to the heavy stuff, the third-largest of this year's entrants, with a subject matter to match.  Take the strain...

*****
What's it all about?
Steve Sem-Sandberg's The Emperor of Lies (translated by Sarah Death) is a chunky novel, running to well over 600 pages, taking place during the Holocaust.  The book is set in the Polish city of Łódź and revolves, initially at least, around Chaim Rumkowski, the de facto leader of the city's Jews.  Rumkowski, or the Chairman, is a crafty businessman who has somehow risen to civic leadership at a time when this leadership is vital.  The occupying forces have divided the city, segregating the Jewish population in a ghetto and forcing them to work for the German war effort.

Knowing that the Germans have no time for people who are not useful, the Chairman decides that the best way through these troubled times is to create an unparallelled industrial zone in the ghetto, a collection of factories which will ensure the continued survival of his people.  As the war progresses though, and times get tough even for the Germans, the Chairman will have to make some very difficult decisions.  The question the reader is faced with is just as tricky: is Rumkowski really protecting the best interests of the ghetto, or is he just saving his own skin?

The Emperor of Lies is based on a true story, and there is no denying that the Swedish author has done his homework.  However, I had a lot of trouble getting into this book, and I wasn't the only one.  Lisa explained in her post why she was unable to get through more than the first fifty pages, and I agree with her in many ways.

For me though, the problems mainly lay in other areas.  One was the fragmented, report-laden style of the start of the book, seemingly designed with the intention of putting the discerning reader off.  Some of Sem-Sandberg's writing is wonderful, but you have to wait a long, long time before you find any examples.  While many readers may appreciate the historical accuracy and the inclusion of posters and memos, they just worked as roadblocks for me.

The main issue I had with the first half of the book though was probably due to a misconception I had, albeit one encouraged by the title of the novel and the blurb.  I went into The Emperor of Lies believing that the book would sink or swim depending on the character of the Chairman and the credibility of his moral dilemma, and if this had been the case, the book would have been a disaster.  The man was evil, no doubt about it, and by the half-way stage of the book, I was seriously considering flinging it aside (which, as you probably know, would have been a first for me in my blogging career!).

Once the focus shifted from the vile Rumkowski, however, widening to include the other inhabitants of the ghetto (and the German officers controlling the city), the book actually became a lot more interesting.  The writing was better, the relationships became more detailed and nuanced, and I found myself actually becoming interested in the story.  The original title of the book is De fattiga i Łódź (The Tired in Łódź according to Google Translate), and that seems a more accurate summary of the situation.  If you take the book as an overview of the whole history of the ghetto, it is much more interesting - if only Sem-Sandberg (and the publishers!) hadn't got quite so obsessed with the figure of the Chairman...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
Not really.  It wasn't one which came up at all in the Shadow Panel's discussions for the shortlist, and I don't think anyone was upset when it failed to make the cut for the real prize.  Personally speaking, the second half of this book would have put it mid-table on my list, just outside the top six, but respectable enough.  As a whole though, I wasn't impressed.  It was too long, repetitive, slightly unfocused and perhaps unsure of whether it wanted to be fiction or biography.

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
From the make-up of the final six books, I would say that the judges' focus is on short, elegantly-written novels, and The Emperor of Lies certainly doesn't fit into that category.  Besides, while we on the Shadow Panel weren't overly impressed with Aharon Appelfeld's Blooms of Darkness, the real panellists obviously were, and... is it too cynical of me to suggest that there was one spot reserved for a Holocaust book on the shortlist?

*****
We're getting closer to the end of our journey now, but next time we have a significant detour to make.  You see, the writer wants us to go with him on a journey into the unknown - into the heart of darkness you might say.  Now, where did I put those malaria tablets...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Twelve-A

Yesterday’s post focused on what Péter Nádas was trying to say in his epic novel Parallel Stories (translated by Imre Goldstein)– today’s will look a little more at how he said it, and try to work out how successful this book really is.  I hope you're in for the long haul...

*****

There's a lot to discuss when thinking about the writer's use of language in Parallel Stories.  The language used in the book is, as you would expect, wide-ranging, and with Nádas’ mother tongue of Hungarian differing so much from English, the translation has attempted to keep as much of the original flavour as possible.  The word order can be confusing, reflecting the choices the writer made in the more flexible original language, and the choice of vocabulary attempts to show the tone of the Hungarian words used.

Parallel Stories is notable for its long, elaborate descriptions, almost Proustian in its attention to detail.  Where Proust describes inanimate objects in great detail though, Nádas saves most of his descriptive talents for action, especially of the sexual kind.  His extended portrayal of Ágost and Gyöngyvér’s sex session (and it is sex, not lovemaking) is probably the most obvious example of this, drawing the reader in and telling them things they would probably rather not know about the external and internal anatomy of the lithe young things.

However, this attention to detail is also evident in the way the writer deals with dialogue.  There is a plethora of lengthy conversations in the novel, and Nádas’ approach here is less Proustian than Jamesian.  Like Henry James, Nádas performs the feat of having his characters exchange bland, trivial remarks, which appear loaded only because we are told of the physical and psychological state of the speakers.  The psychological processes are stripped bare, and it is the emotions we are witness to, rather than the words we hear, which are important.

As if this is not difficult enough for the reader, there are more traps in store.  Nádas has decided to dispense with quotation marks, probably because they make life simpler for anyone trying to follow his dialogue.  This omission, coupled with a tendency to jump between direct and indirect speech, often in the same conversation, can make it tricky to work out who said what.  When you realise that the writer also often avoids giving the name of the characters involved until the chapters are well underway, you can imagine how confusing things can become.  Now, imagine, if you will, passages where the action shifts from character to character, place to place, time to time at the drop of a hat, sometimes in mid-sentence…

There are times when Nádas’ relentless prose is a joy, a flow of words washing over the reader.  Below is an example I picked out, virtually at random:

“Continually, without letup, relentlessly, I thought of only one thing, that I had never seen such beauty and never would again if I left her even for a moment.  Her eyes, the color of her eyes or her glance, I don’t know what, but it paralyzed me.  Her scent probably had a part in this, but I could reach only the edge of it because she took it with her, though sometimes she left thick clouds of it behind.  Her eyes were not blue but not green either.  As if I were looking down into the depths of unfamiliar waters.  I did not understand the angry darkness, but the color of the water was throwing sparks at me.  No human can have eyes of this color.  There is no water of this color, no material of any kind.”  p.456

However, at other times, pages of dull, trite, pointless dialogue sludge up the story, brief moments of time stretched out over dozens of pages.  It’s this constant battle that makes reading Parallel Stories such a chore at times.  Just when you start to feel that you’re making progress, along comes another twenty-page roadblock, stopping you dead in your tracks.  Perhaps this effort though, the constant struggle to negotiate the writer’s linguistic choices, is precisely what makes it the book it is…

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?

That is a very difficult question to answer.  When confronted with a work like Parallel Stories, it seems almost absurd that it could be on the same footing as some of the other contenders – shouldn’t there be weight categories?  Alas, that is not the case, so we are forced to compare books that are as different as apples and monoliths.  If we were basing our decision purely on ambition, there would be no contest: Parallel Stories would win every prize going and be mentioned in the same breath as Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdus as one of the most impressive works of literature of the modern era.  Instead though we’re basing our decision more on the success of the novel, and I’m not sure the decision here is quite so clear-cut.

There’s an argument for saying that Parallel Stories is both over- and under-written.  There are whole sections where you cannot wait for the endless prose to end, for something, anything to happen, for the writer’s attention to be diverted from breasts, penises, lips or whatever body part he is currently focusing on.  On the other hand, after well over a thousand pages of small type on very large pages (I’ve heard that the book actually runs to more than 1500 pages in other versions), the intrepid soul who has conquered Mount Nádas gets to the summit and thinks… Have I missed something?  Wasn’t there supposed to be a story in there somewhere?

I also have some issues with the translation, mainly personal ones.  I’m not a big fan of American translations, preferring to have only one filter, not two, between myself and the writer, and Parallel Stories, set as it is throughout the second half of the twentieth century, is full of foreign, awkward words and expressions.  The unique style of the original is undoubtedly to blame for much of this, but when my very-English mind stumbles upon words such as ‘Daddio’, my mental red pen comes out and (in a triumph of mixed metaphors) chalks up another black mark.

So my answer then is no, not quite.  The real panel has, as you will know, agreed with me; the Shadow Panel, or at least our chairman, has disagreed.  It will be interesting to see what we all think of Parallel Stories when we come to discuss it.  Assuming, of course, that any of the other members have managed to get to the end of it…

Why did it miss the shortlist?

For the reasons outlined above, plus one undeniable truth.  I honestly don’t think the judges fancied ploughing through it again…

*****

OK, I'm off for a sleep to recover.  There'll be more IFFP fun when I've restored my strength :)

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Twelve

If there’s one book which stands out on the longlist of the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, it’s Péter Nádas’ epic novel Parallel Stories (translated by Imre Goldstein).  A monster of a book, eighteen years in the writing (and four in the translating), it runs to 1133 pages, and the hardback copy I obtained from my local library weighs a ton.  It’s a book with themes heavy enough to match its bulk, a story of a country and its inability to face its recent past.  The question is though, (ignoring its size) is it any good?

*****

What’s it all about? 

Parallel Stories is a book which is extraordinarily difficult to pin down.  There are two major strands, revolving around events in the small German town of Pfeilen and various places in Hungary, particularly Budapest.  The main characters come from two families – the German Döhrings and the Hungarian Lippay Lehrs.  Within each half of the story though, there are several different timelines and viewpoints, meaning the reader has to pay a lot of attention and remember a vast array of names, many of them extremely unfamiliar.

The novel start with a suspicious death in Berlin, but we are soon torn away to Budapest in 1961.  Right from the beginning, we never stop jumping from time to time, place to place, part-way through chapters, even mid-sentence.  At times it is difficult to make out (or even believe in) a coherent plot of any kind.  The reader experiences vague connections, echoes, parallels between events, and while it is tempting to draw conclusions from the information we’re presented with, it’s hard to imagine that we are really meant to be any the wiser by the end of the book about any underlying grand plan.

We’re not even really sure who the central characters are supposed to be.  The dust cover of my version focuses on André, Hans and Ágost, three Hungarians who, having lived abroad, felt like exiles in their native Budapest.  Having read the book though, I’m not all that convinced by what seems a very convenient (and arbitrary choice).  For me, the key characters are Döhring, the young German student whose discovery of a body begins the book, and Kristóf, the youngest member of the Hungarian family and the one whose path we most often cross.

One reason why these two characters stand out, apart from the relatively-extended appearance time they have, are the obvious parallels between them.  Both are psychology students, introverted and struggling to make sense of the world, despite (or perhaps because of) their insights into the human psyche.  Both have confused sexuality, yearning for the unavailable or forbidden.  Both spend time on bland, yet tension-ridden, conversations with a person they’re intrigued with.  There’s a lot they have in common…

And the parallels don’t stop there – in fact, as you may have guessed, the novel is packed with them.  The word is ubiquitous, to the point of being overused.  Nádas carefully constructs parallels between anything he can think of, from the two countries and families, to the actions his characters take.  Lesbian mothers, children snatched and later returned, names adopted and discarded – wherever there’s an action, there seems to be an equal and similar action somewhere else among the many, many pages Parallel Stories has to offer the reader…

Of course, the problem is keeping all that straight without having to take copious notes (something I started doing half-way through the book…).  As well as being incredibly long, the book doesn’t exactly make it easy for the reader to keep up with events.  Characters pop up briefly, disappear for what seems like enough time for glaciers to cover Europe again, then reappear in another place entirely.  As a child.  You think I’m joking?  The detective Kienast, whom the unsuspecting reader would have taken as a major character at the start of the novel, promptly vanishes, not to be seen until close to the end of the book.  However, another Kienast, a child who may or may not be the same person, does get a mention a little earlier – about 600 pages in…

Regardless of whether there is any real overarching structure to the book, there are several themes that crop up repeatedly.  The one that probably gets the most attention, and may put many people off the book, is the prominent position sex has in Parallel Stories.  I don’t think I’ve read a work of literature which has such lengthy, detailed descriptions of sexual acts, smells, positions and fantasies, passages which test the stamina of the reader just as much as that of the participants.  For the most part, Nádas is a tease, spreading anticipation and memories of sex over several pages, preferring anticipation to the actual consummation (and when you think again of the size of the book, that may come as no surprise!).

At times though, the sex is graphic, leaving nothing – absolutely nothing – to the imagination.  I’ve read that this idea of hedonism was a reaction to the lack of freedom Hungarians had, a way of reclaiming their identity and independence, and it’s an idea which does make sense.  There’s a pervading sense of sexual liberation and freedom of choice in sexual identity, one particularly evident in Kristóf, what with his pursuit of the entrancing Klára and his nocturnal adventures in Budapest’s gay underworld.  The forty-page session enjoyed by Ágost and his girlfriend, Gyöngyvér, is surely pushing this idea to the limit though…

Another interesting idea is the focus on mental illness and schizophrenia.  This takes us back to Döhring and Kristóf, both of whom appear to have some sort of issue, unable to cope with the parallel desires they experience.  This may also be a metaphor for the whole book, as Budapest itself is a schizophrenic city, and not just in the divided, geographical sense.  Nádas repeatedly mentions the split between the normal folk on the street and the Hungarian aristocracy, and the Lippay Lehrs, with both noble origins and communist leanings, are particularly torn between these two opposing poles.  The country as a whole, however, could also be seen as schizophrenic, needing to pretend that everything is alright, ignoring the political realities and the ever-present brutality in order to stay sane…

In the end though, it’s probably pointless to dig too deeply into all of this madness.  If it took Nádas as much time to write Parallel Stories as it takes to raise a child, there’s little chance that I’m going to unlock its secrets in one insignificant review.  It’s a book which takes a lot of reading, but it does reward the reader, even if the first half is rather slow going.  A more thorough knowledge of Hungary and its recent history would probably make things a little clearer, but one thing is for sure – this is not a book for the faint-hearted!

*****

Oh dear!  Nádas' love of elaboration is obviously catching - I'm only half-way there...  Join me tomorrow for the second half of my Parallel Stories review, in which I discuss its linguistic qualities and whether it was good enough for the shortlist :)

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Eleven

It seems as if we've been on our Independent Foreign Fiction Prize journey for a good while now, but there's many a book to review yet before we sleep.  Today we're returning to Germany for a little book all about a certain woman.  Her name?  Well...

*****
Alice by Judith Hermann (translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo, I read the original German version)
What's it all about?
Alice is a novel (of sorts) consisting of five loosely-connected stories set at five different points in the life of Alice, a young(ish) German woman.  The five stories are given the names of five different men - and with good reason.  Where many writers would have chosen to explore Alice's character through her relationships with the gentlemen in question though, Hermann has a slightly different take on proceedings.  You see, in each of the sections, the man whose name graces it is destined to die...

This book then is about how Alice copes with the loss of these men - ex-boyfriends, family friends, relatives, partners.  As Stu quipped, there's very much a feeling of the Angela Lansburys about poor Alice, with death stalking any man she becomes acquainted with.  To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one friend may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose five looks like downright negligence...

Many of my fellow shadow panellists have taken this approach in their reviews of Alice, and about half-way through the collection I could see why.  By the middle of the third story, it all seemed a little familiar: another bedside, another man about to shuffle off this mortal coil, another final visit for Alice to make...  As I moved onto the fourth of the stories, one dealing with the death of an uncle (before Alice had even been born), I was mentally resigning myself to writing a politely-negative review.

However, by the end of the last story, it had all come together.  While the first three stories did blend into each other a little, the fourth represented a turning point in the novel.  For the first time, Alice appeared to be pro-active, taking control of her life and actively seeking out information about her dead uncle.  When it came to the final part, it felt as if this is what the book had been building to; a series of lesser upsets helping Alice to cope with a final, major loss.

It also helped that the final chapter brought together the loose ends, repeat performances from some of the minor characters from the first four stories assisting in connecting the different stages of Alice's life.  The simple, elegant, descriptive language of the book is a metaphor for the clear thinking Alice becomes capable of in the final section.  While she seems a little lost and directionless earlier in the book, searching for a meaning to it all in the face of some pretty traumatic experiences, by the final story she appears to have recognised that life is actually about living, about noticing the things around you.  The extended description of her lazy morning at the swimming pool, the frequent mentions of flowers, the light, the smells...

There's something very Japanese about Alice, the subdued, implicit nature of the book making it hard to really understand, or sympathise with, the title character.  I can understand why many of the people I've spoken to about the book don't really like it, but I'm probably a little more invested than most given the time I spent in Germany - there's a lot here that's very familiar.  I've heard that this is not Hermann's best work; however, there's enough here for me to give her other books a try.  And that can't be a bad recommendation :)

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
No.  On my list, it's currently about seventh (of twelve), and I can't see it staying there until the end of my longlist reading.  It never quite manages to achieve what it sets out to do, despite its elegance and poignancy.  It's one I'll probably read again at some point (and it persuaded me to buy one of her earlier books), but I was honestly surprised to see it make the shortlist.  As for my fellow shadow panellists - their reaction was somewhat stronger ;)

Will it go all the way?
Not if the opinions of my fellow panellists have anything to do with it!  While most of the books on the longlist have had both their supporters and detractors, Alice has probably been the one book that the crew has universally found dull.  We were all dumbstruck that Scenes from Village Life didn't make the cut and disappointed that Next World Novella is no longer in the running.  I was very pleased that Please Look After Mother didn't get through, but I have a strong feeling that Alice is the token female, German, short story entry, knocking off three categories in one short book.  It will not win.

Probably ;)

*****
Another one polished off, only four more to go.  Next time, we're staying in Europe, and it's going to be huge.  I mean *huge*.  No, I mean ***HUGE***!

You know what's coming...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Ten (Shortlist Reactions)

Well, the cut has finally been made, and nine of the contenders have pulled up (or fallen...) at the final fence.  However, there are six books still striding on in the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize stakes ;)  The official panel (i.e. not us!) has read, reread, perused and deliberated, and the following list is the fruit of those mental (and, in the cases of 1Q84 and Parallel Stories, possibly physical) labours.  Without further ado (links are to my reviews)...

Official Shortlist for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld (Translated by Jeffrey M. Green)

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Richard Dixon)

Alice by Judith Hermann (Margaret Bettauer Dembo)

New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (Judith Landry)

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Victoria Cribb)

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (Cindy Carter)

Of course, another small group of people has been reading the same collection of books, and yesterday we on the Shadow Panel announced our own shortlist!  The Shadow Panel consists of our esteemed chair, Stu, along with Rob, Mark, Gary, Simon, Lisa and me :)  I know you're just itching to compare the two lists, so..

Shadow Panel Shortlist for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Richard Dixon)

Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas (Imre Goldstein)

Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz (Nicholas de Lange)

Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (Anthea Bell)

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Victoria Cribb)

I have to say that I much prefer our list...  When I saw the first (leaked) reports, apart from the two Italian books, only the nationalities were mentioned, so I assumed the German book was Next World Novella and the Israeli book was Scenes from Village Life.  Once I actually saw the full list, I was astonished that it was in fact Alice and Blooms of Darkness that got the nod.  The two books I mentioned are huge losses, and the cutting of the Oz book, in particular is a major surprise - at least for us...

For all the Shadow Panel's reviews, please have a look at the special page on Mark's blog, which has all the various thoughts we have posted so far.  Now though, it's time to polish off a few more books and a few more reviews, and to gather my thoughts for when the business of choosing a winner arrives.  Fun times ahead :)

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Nine (Shortlist Time!)

We're now very close to the day when the field is finally thinned out in the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.  Of the fifteen proud steeds who cantered onto the longlist, only six will clear the final fence separating them from the shortlist, ready to gallop for all they're worth over the final furlong, hoping to cross the line with their noses in front.  Whether this metaphor has the writers or the translators as jockeys, I'm not quite sure - I'll let you decide :)

Anyway, so far I've managed to get through twelve of the fifteen longlisted titles (including the monstrous Parallel Stories and 1Q84), posted reviews on ten and read several opinions on all of them, so I'm fairly confident in my opinions.  Which will in no way match up with those of the real jury, or even those of my fellow shadow panellists...

Today I'll be announcing two shortlists: one made up of the books I think deserve to make the cut; the other composed of the titles I suspect the real judges will opt for.  Each of the lists will consist of five of the twelve I've read, plus one of the three I haven't (based mainly on what other people have said about them).  So, without further ado...

Tony's Preferred Shortlist

Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

Hate - A Romance by Tristan Garcia

Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz

Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón

Tony's Predicted Shortlist

Hate - A Romance by Tristan Garcia

New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani

Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke

As you can see, three of the books appear on both lists, so expect those to be the ones that miss the cut ;)  Was I right?  Well, we'll soon find out...  My next post will have the real shortlist, and (as if that wasn't exciting enough) I'll also be comparing it to the six chosen by our collective Shadow Panel!  The finish post is in sight...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Eight

Today's stop on our Independent Foreign Fiction Prize tour is in Paris, where we'll spend a few hours (and decades) in the company of some interesting - at times infuriating - people.  Allons-y...

*****
Hate: A Romance by Tristan Garcia (translated by Marion Duvert and Lorin Stein)
What's it all about?
Hate is set in Paris at the end of the twentieth century, stretching into the start of the twenty-first, and revolves around four people, very different but each important in the era described.  Gay culture has taken over both the nightlife and the cultural literary scene of the French capital, and Dominique (Doumé) Rossi is one of its chroniclers, a journalist with an eye for the Zeitgeist.  Another keeping a close eye on things is academic and cultural philosopher Jean-Michel Leibowitz (Leibo), who later starts an affair with one of his students, the narrator of the book, Elizabeth (Liz) Lavallois.

It takes the introduction of a fourth character, however, to light the touch paper and put a bomb under the whole story, and that is the indecipherable, incoherent, undeconstructable William (Willy) Miller.  Willy comes to Paris without any real hope or plans, but his open personality and good looks help him to make an impression on the gay scene, eventually leading to him getting together with Dominique.  The shy young man from the provinces grows into a spokesperson for a generation, and his relationship with Rossi raises his profile even further.

This romance occurs just when a shockwave is resounding throughout western society.  A new, incurable illness is cutting a swathe through the youth of the eighties, and it appears to be almost exclusively targeting homosexuals.  As Rossi, scared by the deaths of many of his contemporaries, champions a safe-sex crusade, Willy (by now separated from Dominique) has very different ideas: for him it's time to enjoy life and stand up against the fear-mongering older generation.  This pits the former lovers against each other in a very public battle: from romance, comes hate...

*****
After reading several reviews and chatting to other bloggers about this book, I was actually dreading reading it.  I had shelved my original plan to buy a French copy and reserved an English-language version from the library instead.  Then I sat down to read it... and I loved it.  I read it over two days, but I actually finished it well within twenty-four hours, rushing back to it whenever I had the opportunity.

There's nothing amazing about the actual writing (there's an awful lot of dialogue and narrative moving the action along), but it is a fascinating story, cleverly written and full of references to world and national events of the eighties and nineties.  Anyone who has had to suffer through literary theory classes will recognise a lot of the names mentioned as Garcia namechecks just about anyone who's anyone in the French cultural scene.  Derrida?  Yep.  Foucault?  Best mates.  Bourdieu?  Idiot.  Et cetera, et cetera...

A lot of the focus is on the way a cultural minority was able to subvert mainstream society and marginalise the majority.  Through Leibo, his pop philosopher, Garcia expounds on la pensée unique, the common thought, where society follows ideas blindly.  Leibo irritatedly says:

"You can't pretend that stuff is somehow 'progressive' just because some minority latches onto it, or because it's somehow of the people, or because it's popular."  p.71

It's a little ironic because part of me thinks that he could very well have been talking about the stir caused by the book he appears in ;)

Instead though it's Willy he's talking about, infuriating, ubiquitous, seemingly indestrucible and very much larger than life.  From his obscure origins, Willy rises to the top of Paris' gay subculture, eventually eclipsing his former lover and attempting to destroy him.  He is dumb, but profound, an idiot able to silence intellectuals with a withering burst of invented psychobabble.  Beautiful, narcissistic, self-absorbed and utterly selfish at times, gregarious and funny at others, Willy is a symbol, an icon of the commercialised, packaged society.

Unique as Willy is though, I couldn't help thinking of a character from another novel, another rebel without a cause, a plan or a pot to piss in.  He's a very similar character to Dean Moriarty, Kerouac's archetypal slacker from his novel On the Road.  Moriarty was the symbol of his age, just as Willy is a representative of his, but where we leave the selfish Moriarty at the end of Kerouac's novel, having only seen a part of his story, here we get to witness the whole narrative arc, the rise and inevitable fall.

One difference between the two though is that Willy eventually finds a mission in his conflict with Dominique.  More than a fight between exes, this is a clash of generations, a rebellion by the youth against their fathers.  While Rossi wants to prevent those who have followed him from making the same mistakes he and his friends did, Willy rejects his advice, insisting that he is only trying to validate himself and make his experiences seem special.  Everyone fucks up.  Nothing is learned.  Get out of our way.  Everyone's going to die anyway, so a condom won't save you...

Just as the reader might start to tire of the petty power games, however, the story turns, and we are confronted with something more important, something upsetting.  We begin to see the effects of the bareback, free-love agenda Willy espoused, in the shape of people facing an agonising death.  After the fun and games, Garcia confronts us with the true cost of Willy's selfish actions...

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?

At the start of writing this review, I was thinking possibly, but having looked back at what I've written... How can I fail to say yes?  There are flaws, the major one being the narrator, Liz.  She is a weak, contrived character, there solely to connect the three men and move the story along.  It would probably have been difficult to improve her role without radically restructuring the way the novel is set up, but it's still a black mark against an otherwise excellent book.  I've already mentioned that the writing isn't anything special, but Hate isn't about that, it's about the ideas and the story - and they are excellent.  There's so much more I could have written about, and the book is only 272-pages long...

Yep, I'd put it in.

Will it make the shortlist?
It's a possibility.  I'm sure the panellists will enjoy the meta-textual aspects (unless it all gets a little too claustrophobic and close to home).  However, I'm also aware that not everyone has liked this book, and it's a novel that may be looking for the right reader.  I was one, but you can never tell whether the IFFP people will be...

*****
Well, that went on for longer than I'd expected ;)

Not many more to go now - I'll see you next time for another stop on our journey towards the announcement of the winner.  In fact, by the time my next review is posted, we will already know which of the books have made it onto the shortlist.  Exciting times are ahead...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Seven

Today's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize review is of the second of the two Israeli books on the longlist.  However, this one is not set in modern-day Israel, but rather in eastern Europe, during a very familiar period of world history.  A warning before we set off - today's story is not one for claustrophobes...

*****
Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld (translated by Jeffrey M. Green)
What's it all about?
The setting is a small Ukrainian town during the Second World War, a place where the many Jewish inhabitants are preparing for the worst.  As the German occupying troops slowly begin to empty the town of Jews, parents attempt to smuggle their children into the mountains, where, hidden with peasant families, they will be relatively safe.

This is to be Hugo's fate too; however, unable to find a trustworthy companion for her son, Hugo's mother decides instead to put the life of her eleven-year-old in the hands of her good friend Mariana - a woman who happens to be a prostitute.  Instead of hiding out in the mountains then, our young friend spends the closing days of World War Two hidden in a cupboard at the local brothel.  Will he be discovered by the Germans?  More importantly, will he escape from the experience with his morals intact...

The majority of Blooms of Darkness is spent with Hugo, either in his cupboard or in Mariana's room, and this lends the book the claustrophobic atmosphere I mentioned at the start of the post.  Hugo initially sees Mariana as a sort of ersatz mother, but the longer he stays, the more the relationship changes, the unreal isolation corrupting their feelings for each other.

This relationship between Hugo and Mariana will probably cause problems for many readers of Blooms of Darkness, and rightly so.  It's thoroughly plausible, and the more we learn about Mariana (her alcoholism, her terrible childhood) and the terrifying environment the two of them are existing in, the more we understand why and how things turn out the way they do.  Mariana, although physically a woman, is just as immature as Hugo.  However, it's still disturbing, and were the genders to be reversed, there would probably be a lot of very angry readers.

 

My main issue with the book is very different though.  In short, it's incredibly dull.  I know it's not the done thing to criticise anything connected to the holocaust, but this really has little to recommend it.  It's a doughy mish-mash of various ideas and stories (the tart with a heart, the cupboard of The Diary of Anne Frank, a doomed attempt to flee, reminiscent of Tess of the D'Urbervilles) which left me wondering what it was really all about.

In short then, not one I'd recommend.  There are a million books out there describing the atrocities of the wars in Europe, and while Blooms of Darkness does take the reader into a relatively under-described region, there's nothing in the novel which makes it stand out amongst its peers and competitors.

Does it deserve to make the shortlist?

Erm, sorry, not this one.  It's not terrible, but I've read too many better books recently.  The translation isn't bad, and any limitations in the language are probably due to the original style.  There are some moving moments towards the end of the book, but it would be very hard not to have any in a book with this setting.  There just isn't enough there for me.

Will it make the shortlist?

Probably not.  There will be people who like this, for the setting, the unfolding relationship between Hugo and Mariana and the melodramatic end.  I can't see the judges elevating this above many of the other longlisted titles though; it's too average.

Then again, I said pretty much the same about Please Look After Mother...

*****

That's all for today :)  Join me for the next leg of the journey, when we'll be hitting Paris - Vive la différence!