I’ve had a few books arrive in recent days and it’s a good while since I shared pictures of new arrivals first too the two none translations
the man who walked away by Maud Casey
From Bloomsbury the story of Albert a man who wanders around Europe like a vagrant and gets run out of towns his past is revealed in snippets .I like walking and wandering myself so this sounds great .
so The path does not die by Pede Hollist
From Jacaranda books ,well I please Kelly who I have known via twitter has sent me this book I ve never read a book from Sierra Leone ,the writer was shortlisted for the Caine prize .The book is the story of Fina and her wanting to fit in by having a female circumcision like her friends but her father stops it and her life heads on a different path .
The portrait by Willem Jan Otten
from Sctibe A painter is given the job of painting a dead boy but who was the boy an intriguing book from a prize winning Dutch writer
Indigo by Clemens J. Setz
From serpents tail some children become infectious to adults so are sent away years later the teacher decides to find out what happened to them from a rising experimental writer in Germany
The sermon on the fall of Rome by Jérôme Ferrari I review his last book Where I left my soul this is meant to be better described as a Corsican 100 years solitude it won the Prix Goncourt
Month: August 2014
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His years of pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His years of pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
Japanese Fiction
Original title 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年
Shikisai o motanai Tazaki Tsukuru to, Kare no Junrei no Toshi
Translator Philip Gabriel
Source – Personnel copy
“Fragments came floating into his mind like bits of wood drifting down a stream, and he fished them out and fitted them together.”
Elizabeth Gray Vining an american writer who taught the Japanese Emperor .Source
As I posted yesterday the first chance I got after it had come out I couldn’t resist getting the new Haruki Murakami novel ,especially as all I had read about this book made me sure it would be one of his I would really enjoy and I did .As my mum who visited last week remind me I have never been one to wait and mull over the pleasures in life ,no I always ate my pack lunches on school trips early ,ate snack at the cinema before the film had start and now I’m similar with books I really want to read so at Half one this morning I finally closed the cover of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of Pilgrimage with a big smile of satisfaction on my face .Now I usually in this opening section mention about the writer as I have reviewed Murakami four times before I feel the need to skip this just mention his books now only need his surname to sell the on the cover and he is one of the few writers in translation that transcends place and nationality like Proust, Tolstoy ,Camus and Hesse for example where people seem less nervous in trying them out as writers
Something must have happened ,something had taken place while he was away to make them create this distance .Something inapproaite ,and offensive .But what it was – what it could pssibly be – he had no clue
He returns the first summer after college and things have change
Any way on to the book the story is that of Tskuru Tazaki ,he is a 36-year-old salary man ,his job which he loves is visiting and designing stations for the railway system ,which is great for Tsukuru because for as long as he can remember he has always loved train stations .He is single live in a small kondo he inherited and on the whole is and average man just getting through his life .Anyway he meets a women called Sara ,she like him and wants to know more about him and his life anyway we hear the story of the five, so to speak ,this is the story of Tsukuru two boys Akamatsu (red pine ) and Oumi (blue sea ) and two girls Shirane (White root ) and Kurono (Black field ) and of course from the title we know that Tsukuru name isn’t connected to a colour no his means to build which given his job seems very apt .Anyway the five of them are best friends at high school until one day they all say they don’t want to talk or hear from Tsukuru again .This leads Tsukuru to his current lonely life and the move to Tokyo where he can be invisible .Sara listen and sees how this one event set of the following years of his life and his current place in the world and persuades Tsukuru to go back and find this four friends and what had happened to make them cut off all communication all those years ago ! A journey that see him go back to his home town and even to Finland .As he uncovers the past and the lives his former friends have had since the split .
“What exactly do you do in the civil engineering department ? The student asked him .
“I build stations ” Tsukuru replied .
“Station ?”
“Railroad stations .Not tv station or anything .”
“But why railroad stations ?”
“The world needs them ,that’s why “, Tsukuru said ,as it were obvious
Tsukuru had always loved station he sketch and looked at them as a student .
Now I enjoyed Murakami last book but said at the tim e that it felt too Murakami almost as thou he was throwing every trait and trick of his writing into the pot .This has a number of his usual traits but is a lot more straightforward ,the book is really a retelling of a quest novel in the modern age ,Tsukuru is on a quest for the answer to what made his friends so suddenly drop him all those years ago .The other part of the title his years of pilgrimage refers to a piece of music by Franz Liszt Années de pèlerinage that one of the girls used to play on the piano ,this tune also is a recurring motif through out the book as we see it crop up in different versions as Tsukuru discovers his past .Another Murakami theme is given a slightly different twist here and that is the love triangle which here becomes a love pentagon ,as there are three boys in the group and two girls and Tsukuru says he has had erotic dreams about both girls in the past and was attracted to them both for different reasons when they were friends .A return to form for me this book sold a million in its first week in Japan and is very much a book for his target market in Japan the middle-aged Salary worker even the length means it easily can be read on the commutes to work that many salary workers have to make on trains which of course is the last theme of the book ,I’ve heard Murakami talk in the past about his love of trains and railways .I was reminded of Betjamin and his love of Victorian stations and the way that seeped into his poetry ,in this book .
Have you read this or do you intend too ?
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ooh I’ve got it and it has stickers in it Murakami love
I decide to go and but the new hardback of the latest Haruki Murakami novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage ,was delighted to find the mentioned stickers are in this edition ,I’m debating leaving them as they are or using them to decorate the outside of my new laptop when I manage to save up for it later in the year as I think they’d look rather dashing on it myself
I love extra Murakami bits I have the diary from a few years ago and the app they did as well also seen the film of one of the books
Do you collect extra bits connected to writers ?
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Escape by Dominique Manotti
Escape by Dominique Manotti
French crime fiction
Orginal title – l’Evasion
Translators – Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz
Source – Review copy
Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.
Charles Baudelaire source
Now for the second book for Women in translation month ,I’m choosing a crime novel for it is one of the few areas of translated fiction you do actually find a few more female writers available and Dominque Manotti is a perfect choice ,she has won the international dagger prize in the past .She was born in Paris ,was a union and political activist in the sixties and since a professor of 19th century economic history in paris .She has published ten novels in France ,her books have also won book prizes in France .
“We part company here ” He places a canvas bag at Filippo’s feet .I’ve put everything I could find in the cars in there for you .Clothes, two sandwiches ,and some money “.Carlo pauses ,Filippo says nothin .” My escape will be in the news ,I think .And they’ll be looking for you ,because you broke out with me .You’ll have to keep a low profile for a while ,until things settle down ”
But did he take Carlo’s advice in the long-term ?
Escape is the story of two men really one living and one now dead they are Carlo the dead leader of the Italian red brigade and Filippo who had escaped with Carlo from prison in Italy ,they were cell mates .Now Filippo has heard his former cell mate who had gone back to get further involved in his red brigade activities after he had escaped has died .On the other had Filippo had travelled north sneaked through the mountain passes between France and Italy ,were he eventually ends up with the help of political refugees and activists in France in Paris where he gets a job as a security guard at night .He decides to remember all that Carlo had told him whilst doing his job at night and try to make sense of why his friend had died .The writings are quite good and with some pushing from his landlady he is advised to make it a fiction book .But what happened to Carlo and his friend want Filippo to help them find out .
L’univers des livres ,review by Jeanne Champaud
A few days ago ,the publisher of Escape ,the novel by Filippo Zuliani that will be appearing in bookshops this week ,gave me a copy of the proofs saying ,”Read these .I think you’ll be surprised ” I was .And I’m prepared to bet that I won’t be the only one ,and that we’ll be hearing about this novel when the literary prize season is upon us this autumn .
Well it had more of an impact than that !!
Now this book takes the old escape story and adds a few twists and turns too it .Of course the politics loom large at times ,with Manotti history of activism you feel what she writes about the inner working and way the red brigade operates rings true .I was reminded at times of Schlinks novel the weekend which of course follows friends through the aftermath of the RAF .The story of the two former cell mates is one of paths we take in life one takes the high road to Paris and the other the low road to Milan so to speak .The book also touches that field of fiction /true life crime that has grown over the years ,I was reminded of the Italian writer Massimo Carlotto who of course in his own book the Fugitive recounts his own escape from an Italian prison .The book is well translated has a fast paces I read it in two sittings and was drawn into Filippo’s world and his history with Carlo .
Have you read any book by Dominique Manotti ?
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The notebook by Agota Kristof
The Notebook by Agota Kristof
Hungarian fiction
Original title – Le grand Cahier
Translator – Alan Sheridan
Source – Personnel copy
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
Source Nelson Mandela
Well I’m back after a couple of weeks and have decide to start with one of those books we al have read and the second we put it down would happily read it again a real breath taking novel .Agota Kristof is a writer a bit like this blog that covered Europe in her life itself .She came from Hungary ,but escaped just to become an exile in the 1950’s in Switzerland .She start to write in french at the age of 51 after studying french ,this book came out in 1986 originally .It won the Austrian lit prize as I say a write like this blog that in her life spent time all round Europe .The notebook (or grand notebook in french although that means slightly more in the french ) was the first of what became a trilogy of novels the other two are called The proof and The third lie .
We call her grandmother
People call her the witch ,She calls us “sons of bitch ” .Grandmother is small thin .She has a black shawl on her head .Her clothes are dark grey ,she wear old army shoes ,When it’s fine ,she walks barefoot .Her face is covered in wrinkles ,brown spots and warts with hair growing out of them .She has no teeth left ,at least none that can be seen
Their first impression of the grandmother isn’t great .
The notebook is the story of two children Twin brothers ,who just before the outbreak of world war two are left in a small village with the Grandmother .Now this book is their account of this time from the war to the Soviets taking over after the war .We see the world through their eyes but also the cruellness of this world .The grandmother isn’t bother about them and takes the money their parents send for herself .Now this village has a wonderful collection of oddball character a cobbler that helps them out because he hates the Witch as their grandmother is known within the village ,A sad girl with a horrific harelip ,who just wants to be loved but finds it in all the wrong places especially in one eye-opening scene in the book ,An officer that very cruely treats the twins .The booys quickly learn that to get what they want and to survive the shifting worlkd they are caught in as we see what we may assume is Hungary (we aren’t actually told ) but could be anyone of half-dozen countries that are caught first by the Germans and then as the war is ending the Soviets overrun the country and bring the communist system in .
We put on dirty ,torn clothes ,take off our shoes ,dirty our faces and hands .We go out into the street ,we stop and wait .
When a foreign officer comes by ,we raise our right hands to salute him and hold out our left hands.usually the officer walks on without seeing us ,without looking at us .
They beg from the Armies in the village as they pass by as they get so little from their grandmother .
Now the beauty of this book is the voice of the two brothers ,it just comes across as such a real childlike voice ,it is hard to capture how children speak and think probably for me Andres Neuman recently caught it well in talking to ourselves ,like that book this is about how the kids see their world ,we as the reader naturally fill in the blanks between Kristof words .She shows the brutal nature of war through a child’s eyes so time and place even at times which army it is are missed just that the war is happening .Kristof also capture in the Harelipped girls story a broken person scrapping by in the world as the boys try to get to know her by first learning this girl’s horrific way of finding love .This is the second book by CB editions I have read this year and they are a publisher I will be looking closer at the back catalogue to find if they have anymore gems their . My first entry for women in translation month
Have you read this book ?
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Happy Sunday I’m back Winston’s lasting legacy
Well as many of you know I took a break and a few days after my poor boy ,had to be put to sleep its been a really hard week and more since and I’m still finding it tough .But I need to get back to the blog and the books in Translation I love ,keeping this going will be a legacy to all he meant to me and all I love in my life .So he lives on in the blog name and its avatar .Anyway I have been busy trying to get a few books read for Women in Translation month .But I feel I had want to do all female writers this month but with a backlog of books in the twenties I need to be covering everything I’ve read recently and add the translations from female writers throughout the month .Any I want to thank everyone for the kind words in comments and on twitter it meant a lot and tomorrow I will be back with the first of many reviews !!
