Category: 1952club

Spark of Life by Erich Maria Remarque

~ winstonsdad ~ 7 Comments

Spark if Life by Erich Maria Remarque

German fiction

Original title – Der Funke Leben

Translator – James Stern

Source – Library book

I now reach the fifth and last book of this round of Simon’s and Karen’s year club. Last but not least is a powerful work from the German writer Erich Maria Remarque, He is best known for his book All Quiet on the Western Front, seen as one of the best books to capture the horror and utter madness of war. He fell victim to the Nazis when they came to power in Germany as they tried to smear his name and make out the events in All quiet fdidn’t happen and that he had fought in the war. Anyway, he left Germany and lived first in Switzerland and later in the US, where he became a citizen after Germany revoked his citizenship and banned his books. He in turn, changed the spelling of his surname from Remark to the French spelling Remarque. This book was dedicated to his sister, who had stayed in Germany and was killed for being a traitor by the Nazis Regime.

509 stared absent-mindedly at the wall. Silber, the Pole, while still lying in the barrack with bleeding intestines, had called it the Wailing Wall. He had also known most of the names by heart and in the beginning had even made bets as to which of them the spot of sun would reach first. Soon afterwards Silber had died; but on bright days the names had continued to wake to a ghostly life and then disappeared again into the dark. In summer when the sun stood higher others, scratched in lower down, became visible, and in winter the square moved higher up. But there were many more-Russian, Polish, Yiddish-which remained forever invisible because the light never reached them. The barrack had been put up so fast that the SS had not bothered to have the walls planed.

The inmates bothered even less, least of all about the inscriptions on the dark sections of the walls. These no one even attempted to decipher. Nobody was foolish enough to sacrifice a precious match simply to grow more desperate.

His fellow prisoners and how the ss came in

The book is set in the dying embers of World War II as the Allies and Russia are slowly putting a stranglehold on Germany. We join 509, he is a German political prisoner in a Concentration camp, they haven’t been lined up to be killed but just worked to the bone, he has been there for ten years. So when they get news that the war is coming to an end. There are snippets throughout the book, like the Bridge at Remagen, which had been taken, meaning they can cross into Germany. These men, the veterans of the time, started doing things that maybe a while ago would have got them killed, pushing the lines, hiding from fellow prisoners, as the feeling of the war got near, with the local towns now being regularly bombed. Can 5009 and his friends make it through the war? What will happen when the SS take over the running of the camp? There are some moment when they see one man talk about the washroom and how at another camp it had been a way to kill people and how when one soldier would come it measnmt one thing and then another soldier later on starts freeing some of his fellow prisoners this is the look at those german held in the death camps not killed but worked to they are virtually dead on the whole these are all educate menmiddle class souls broken by the camp

The roll call had already lasted more than an hour, but it still didn’t tally. It was due to the bombing. The labor gangs which worked in the copper foundry had suffered losses. One bomb had fallen into their division and a number of men had been killed and wounded. On top of this, after the first shock, the supervising SS-men had started firing on the prisoners who sought cover; they had feared they might escape. Thus a further half-dozen had perished.

After the bombing the prisoners had dragged out their dead from under the rubble and wreckage-or rather what was left of them. It was important for the roll call. Little as the life of a prisoner was valued and indifferent as the SS were to it, dead or alive the numbers at the roll call had to tally. Bureaucracy did not stop short at corpses.

This made me smile german effiency failing as madness starts to descend

I read All Quiet on the Western Front, and over the years, I’ve picked a few of his other books to read; they are still on my TBR. But when I looked up the books for this week, I saw what had happened to his sister and how it had led him to talk to some of the famous German survivors of these camps. He came up with 509, and this novel serves as a tribute to her. Unfortunately, when he published it in Germany, he initially removed the tribute to his sisters, as she was still viewed by many Germans as a traitor for what she had done. With recent events around the world, it may be worth reading this about what happens when a country turns against its own citizens with hate and lies! This is one of the reasons I love the club years is unearthign gems like this book. Have you read any of his other books besides All Quiet on the Western Front?

The Palm wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

Nigerian fiction

Source – Library book

I have been on the lookout for a second-hand version of this book on one of those lists that readers of many books keep, noting and thinking critically acclaimed or essential in a canon when they were written, and still do today. This is one such book, the debut novel by Amos Tutuola, which was considered one of the first modern African novels in English when it was published in the 1950s. Tutola was born to his father’s third wife and was from the Egba people, which is why he knows the traditional ways. AS THEY follow the Yoruba religion, and also he will have grown up with the Yoruba folktales, which this book is a retelling of. The book was described by T.S. Eliot as a creepy, crawly imagination. Another early champion of the book was Dylan Thomas (I can see this in the palm wine drinking, and also the sense of community and place was strong in Thomas’ work, like it is in Tutuola’s)

I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. In those days we did not know other money, except COWRIES, so that everything was very cheap, and my father was the richest man in our town.

My father got eight children and I was the eldest among them, all of the rest were hard workers, but I myself was an expert palm-wine drinkard. I was drinking palm-wine from morning till night and from night

till morning. By that time I could not drink ordinary water at all except palm-wine.

But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert palm-wine tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine every day.

the opening and shows how much he drinks !!

The book is told by the narrator a son of a wealthy man, who said Palm wine drtnkard of the title of the book, as his wealth means he has the money to be able to afford a Palm wine tapist who are those that can tap the Palm tree and make the Palm wine for him to drink. But when this tapist falls to his death, he loses his supply of Palm wine, and the book becomes a sort of Quest novel as he hunts for a new tapist. Along the way, he meets an old man, a kind of sage, in a way that tells him things. But as the quest heads in, he faces obstacles and changes as he fights beasts and saves people, and the narrator changes. This is a richly told book that is steeped in the local folklore of his people. In a way, you feel that the places and world Tutola has described of wealthy tribal sons and their servants are long gone.

THE DESCRIPTION OF THE CURIOUS CREATURE:-

He was a beautiful “complete” gentleman, he dressed with the finest and most costly clothes, all the parts of his body were completed, he was a tall man but stout.

As this gentleman came to the market on that day, if he had been an article or animal for sale, he would be sold at least for £2000 (two thousand pounds). As this complete gentleman came to the market on that day, and at the same time that this lady saw him in the mar-ket, she did nothing more than to ask him where he was living, but this fine gentleman did not answer her or approach her at all. But when she noticed that the fine or complete gentleman did not listen to her, she left her articles and began to watch the movements of the complete gentleman about in the market and left her articles unsold.

the adventure along the way have chapter heading like this

Over the years, I have run this blog, I have tried to cover a lot of fiction from all the different countries in Africa, thus making the fiction not just African, but this is a book from the Egba people of Nigeria and uses the Yoruba folktales,, just as in the last pos,t Laxness has used Icelandic sgas. To talk about his world, well, this was written just after World War II, and he saw Tutola, who had been in the RAF. But he had struggled when he was demobbed to find work, as everyone else had, and he ended up writing this book from his folklore past. It is considered a classic of the first Books from Nigeria to come out in English and lead the way for many of the great writers from his country that followed him. The book was also the first on the Jubilee list to come from books published in the Commonwealth during the Queen’s reign. I hope to read his second novel sometime. Have you read any other books by him?

 

 

Wayward Heroes by Halldór Laxness

~ winstonsdad ~ 13 Comments

Wayward Heroes by Halldór Laxness

Icelandic fiction

Original title – Gerpla

Translator Phillip Roughton

Source – Personal copy

When I first looked at the list of books for the year of 1952,, this book was one of the first to catch my eye as I had a book set in Iceland in the last club year, and I have also covered a couple of other books from Laxness and I love the fact that his books are getting newer translations in recent years. This is the case with this book, which came out a few years ago. I bought the American copy, so I’m not sure how it was published in the UK. As I’m a massive fan of Archieplagpo books, I think they’re works of art in themselves. Anyway, this came in the later part of his writing years and was his take on the Icelandic sagas. But apart from that, he had used the saga style of telling a story to make an ancient saga, as told, reflect events that were happening at the time the book was published, not long after World War II, at the start of the Cold War. He has cleverly rebuilt the sagas to use the past as a mirror to the present

Then Jöour Klangsson rode away. It was near sunset. When Jour was gone, the boy jumped down, walked over to where his father was lying across the path, and took a closer look at his body. The blow had disfigured his face, and blood and brains oozed like porridge from the crack in his head. One of his arms jerked at the shoulder before the man went limp and died – that twitch was his last. Porgeir Hávarsson was astonished at how easily his father died, despite his having fought berserkers in Denmark and brought fire and slaughter to Ireland. He had always believed his father to be one of the greatest champions in the North. The boy stood outside for a long time before going to tell his mother. Finally, he went in. He was seven years old at the time.

The end of the first chapter

 

What he has done in his retelling of the sagas is turn them on their head and see how the violence the Vikings committed all over Europe was, at times, senseless violence that followed them around the world. So at the heart of the tale, brothers Þormóður and Þorgeir are based on actual figures in the Icelandic sagas. But what he does so well as he recounts their adventures and eventual deaths is that it is barbaric, and also tells the story comically, with a nod towards events happening in the world he knew in the 1950s. From them getting stuck and what others view as trollo like figures in the North of Greenland looking after them (I found it strange with all the recent coverage of another barbarian in Trump wanting this country) The style is like being sat at a fire for weeks at the brothers years of travel and m ishaps and violence is recounted!

PÓRELFUR, PORGEIR Hávarsson’s mother, came from Hordaland in Norway, a region harsh and forlorn, where it had long been the custom for men’s sons who had little chance to thrive to travel abroad and acquire wealth through plunder.

Some went to Russia, others to the British Isles. In Hordaland, those who never undertook a Viking raid were deemed worth-less. Yet none knew more valiant tales of the trials of the Vikings, their battles and sea-voyages, than those who never ventured from home. Among these, it was the nursemaids who had the best stocks of lore. In fair verses, they extolled the Vikings feats: the prowess, valor, and gallantry that true men display in distant lands, yet do so more rarely the closer they are to women. For the young sons of Hordaland crofters, such lore was the only provision and dowry that they received from their mothers before leaving home – and likewise, Pórelfur had little else to lavish on her son than tales of the prowess of champions of yore and paeans to kings who win the devotion of ambitious crofters’ sons with their bounteousness, rewarding stout hearts with weighty rings.

The openiong of the third chapter capture that saga style well, as far as I know !

Now I haven’t read the Icelandic sagas, I felt this might help with the style of the book, which has a specific flow that feels remarkably like it is trying to be in the style of the sagas with a modern twist and comic in style, which is hard to pull off. Still, he does in parts, and thus the novel could be told by firelight. At times, this makes it hard to follow as every detail of people is built as the prose slowly builds at times and is also maybe a little hard to follow as A reader, I had start this monthgo and if it wasn’t for the fact I had pick it up now for this week I would maybe waited a while to get back to it. But it is also easy to see how the brother’s adventures could be a mirror of all that is going on at the time the book was written, and also now. A lot of the book is around the brother sailing and taking over different places, but also in a way, this has a modern twist to the time, just as the Cold War is beginning, and those lines around Europe are being changed, and violence and people taking over places is still happening. Have you ever read any books by Halldór Laxness?

 

 

An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans

~ winstonsdad ~ 9 Comments

An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans

Dutch Literature

Original title – Het behouden huis

Translator -David Colmer

Source – Personal Copy

Well, it is back to Simon and Karen’s twice-yearly book club, where everyone is asked to read a book from a particular year. This time around, the year is 1952, as ever, I have taken that as the year the book was published in its original language, and I had to look hard to find some gems. This is the first book and is a Dutch classic. I first came across Willem Frederik Hermans when he was included on a list of the best Dutch novels ever compiled by NRC in 2007. At that time, some of the books on the list weren’t available, and over time, I have read a few from this list, but this is the first time I have got to Hermans. I decided he would be a writer, I leave for a rainy day, if that makes sense. He is considered one of the greatest post-war writers in his country.I decided it was time to read him as this is one of the earliest books from him as a writer, and before the two books that made the best Dutch novels (if this is the third best of his books, I can’t wait to read the other two at a later date). Do you have writers you have put on the back burner?

“Me from Spain when civil war,” he said. “Me Communist. Captured by French. In camp. Then escape. On ship. Turkey. Russia.”

Having got this far, he began to talk faster, using more and more Spanish words. It seemed that Russia had not lived up to expectations. That was why, for the first time since leaving the German sphere of influence, I said, “Me no Communist!”

He laughed.

“Merde! Tout ça, merde!”

“Comrade! Give me a cigarette!” Talking had only made me thirstier. He didn’t even have a canteen.

He broke his last cigarette in half and lay down,

leaning on one elbow.

“What you do?” he asked, making it clear that he wanted to know what I had done long ago, before the war.

The partisan had been all over during the war !

The book is told by a Dutch Partisan who is heading back after fighting; he had just killed five Germans on the Eastern Front in the tail end of the Second World War. So when he happens across a near-perfect villa after being sent there, he finds the house is clear of booby traps and then decides to take of his uniform and have his first bath in a very long time and puts on some clothes he finds in the house. So when a troop of Germans are sent to secure the house, they think he is the owner of the house. Later on, the actual owner of the house appears, and the partisan thinks he is actually a local who has come to clean the windows. Then there is a single room with a locked door leading to a bedroom, where someone is obviously on the other side. SO, what happens when the real owner and his wife have paper, and who is in the locked room? I leave these threads for you to discover by reading the book.

The house itself wasn’t that big, but all of its parts were. The windows were single sheets of reflective glass; the portal was as high as two floors; a balcony stretched across the entire façade.

There was a sloping, dark green lawn with a large plane tree in the middle that had been pollarded so many times it now looked like a gallows with room for an entire family. The front door, made of glass and wrought iron, was well ajar.

The house is almost a character itself in the book

I loved this book, it is one of those miniature epics of a book that is less than a hundred pages long, but to the reader it feels like a hell of a lot more than that !. It has an authentic thriller style to the writing, a sense of violence and death happening at every turn, which keeps you gripped as a reader. It is also about regret, as the story seems to be someone looking back on the events. There is a certain feel of being a little too used to the killing and bloodshed of war, if that makes sense. It is also a book that is very tightly written; there isn’t a wasted scene or passage in this book. It is so neatly written. Have you read Hermans? There is also a fascinating afterword by Cees Nooteboom about the book, Hermans, and Dutch literature. He said this on my blog about Dutch literature and mentioned Hermans in an interview he did for the blog 14 years ago. “The Dutch are a rather special tribe, like the English, but smaller.On the other hand, Holland is not an island. It has taken the world a long time to recognise that there are some interesting writers out there, like Hermans, Mulisch, Claus, Mortier, van Dis, Grunberg, and many others. And of course, it does not help that we know much more about English writers than English readers know about Dutch literature. A small language can be a prison. Translation is liberation,” Cees Nooteboom . I love the last word of that quote