Tag: Archipelago books

People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi

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People from Oetimu by Feix Nesi

Indonesian fiction

Original title – Orang-Orang Oetimu

Translator – Lara Norgaard

Source – Personal copy

I moved to Asia and the third book I have reviewed from Indonesia. This time, it is published by one of my favourite publishers, Archieplago Books. Their books are just lovely. So, when I saw this a while ago, it was one I had to buy from them. Felix Nesi is from West Timor. The book looks back at the dark history of his part of Indonesia, and he has conducted research on this period, particularly focusing on slavery in the past. He is also a writer from the Iowa Writing Programme. He also has a bookshop, library and runs a book festival. I always love it when writers give back to their community by encouraging reading and writing.

The armed men kept their distance as they walked behind her, fortifying their courage with the few fragments of prayers to their ancestors they’d managed to memorize. Women and children hesitantly trailed behind the men, curious and afraid. Since the stranger lurched forward without so much as a glance to her surroundings, more and more town residents joined the crowd. Some men were still unsure of themselves and would rebuke the others for getting too close, wary of the possibility that the creature might radiate witchcraft. When the throngs reached a storefront – one of the few thatched buildings in town that proudly displayed its slogan, “Stay Steadfast and Prosper” – the appalling woman collapsed to the ground. The moment her bottom hit the rough, broken pavement, she started to cry intense, loud sobs; she reached both arms to the sky and then punched her bloated stomach. It was the first time Laura had cried since her mother and father were killed, and it had been a very long time since she’d made any sound at all. Nothing could hold back her thundering wail.

The violence is hard to read at time

The book moves between periods of time from the Jaopanese invasion of the island the independence movement against Portugal in the seventies. But the book opens with a locals in village gathering in  the local police station to watch the 1998 World cup . The locals are all wanting the Brazilians to win against the french. This is a game I remember watching back in the day this is something I love connecting with a book over and event. Then we see how the independence movement was handed over from the Portuguese government. The book drifts through he years This shows both the brutal time of the seventies, but then also sees how the Japanese treated the locals back in the forties. It is a book that is dark and captures the brutal history of his homeland, but also contains a glimpse of human life, especially in the story of the 90s, which revolves around football. Additionally, there is a sense of uneasy nature to the locals and their world. It captures the brutal nature of the country’s history over the years through the story of one village and its locals.

That said, it’s not as though every officer took such delight in beating people up. There were other soldiers stationed on the southern edge of town; they also wore uniforms and went into the center of Otimu to buy cigarettes and razors at Prosperity General Store. These men were muscular and always seemed to be smiling, since they had slightly buck teeth (as was often the case with people from Java). If they passed by the mototaxi stop, they’d share a pack of cigarettes with the boys and ask if anyone knew of girls they could sleep with. Other than Neeta, that is, since she was a little crazy. She had a very big mouth and was famously good at sucking cock, but she also got a kick out of gossiping about how small Javanese soldiers’ dicks were compared to those of the Timorese militia, which made the men uncomfortable. Since the moto-taxi stop was right in front of Oetimu High School, the boys promised that the soldiers would be the first to know if there was ever a young girl who decided to become a prostitute.

The military and how it effects the locals

I feel this captured the brutal world of Timor, a country which, iunntile maybe the last twenty years, had seen so much violence from the Japanese invasion to the cruel end of the Portuguese rule and the first government of the country, and then the wanting of East Timor to be its own country. It connects the timelines well through the characters we meet in the book, but also it use the folk history of the place to weave into the brutal tales. I think this is a nod to people Marquez and the other Indonesian writer I have read Eka Kurniawan. It captures the post-colonial struggle in Timor, a place that was torn apart during this time. IT faces the past and doesn’t dwell on the violent aspects. Have you read any books from Indonesia?

January by Sara Gallardo

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January by Sara Gallardo

Argentine fiction

Original title – Enero

Translators -Frances Riddle and Maureen Shaughnessy

Source – personal copy

I have long been a fan the American publisher Archipelago books there books are works of art the titles they choose are always interesting like this one which go even the wave of Argentine female writers we have had the last few years. It was about time someone published an earlier female writer from Argentina. Because this debut novel from the writer Sara Gallardo is required reading in some schools in Argentine the writer was from an Upper-class family that had farming interest one could imagine one of the farms or farmworkers the family had was the inspiration for the main character intro book which in a way is a vary forward thinking book for one that came out in 1958. But it also fits in with other books around the world by female writers of the time.

She carries the package in front of her on the sheepskin where it crinkles with every step the horse takes. She passes countless hoof prints on the road that the wind erases like a huge hand wiping them away. The ears of the dapple-gray horse twitch at the sound of an automobile that kicks up a trail of dust as an arm waves out the win-dow. Luisa, Nefer thinks, on her way to buy cigarettes… and she watches as her horse’s hooves speed up in agitation along the road.

She dismounts when she reaches the gate: held shut by a rough branch that has been rubbed smooth by wire. She pulls it open and sidesteps the mud churned up in the night by the cows from the milking yard. In the yellow-green field the lapwings shriek and flutter and the pond gleams in the sun, prickly with reeds.

Her world around her.

The book flows 16 year old Nefer who lives in a small farming community in the countryside. She is pregnant, but we are never quite told how and why this happened it is eluded to that it was after the rape and the community she is in is a powerful Catholic community the book explains how this young girl deals with the pregnancy and is trying to find a way to explain to herself the events that lead to the pregnancy she looks at a certain boy and says it be ok isa he was the father. But he wasn’t the father. As she searches for the answer to what happened to her how did she end up like this. She is also wrestling with how to avoid anyone seeing the changes in her , whilst trying to work out the next move for her and what happens next but we have a feeling this is maybe a catch-22 situation and no matter what happens her life is fatally changed by this one event.

She kicks and takes off at a gallop, steering toward the thick grass that will absorb the footfalls. She doesn’t want to think about the end of her journey, about the old lady she’s never seen but with whom all her hope now lies. Her eyes pick out objects one at a time, attributing an exaggerated importance to each. Thistle, she thinks, thistle, par-tridge, dung, anthill, heat; and then she hears – one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four – as the hooves hit the ground. Slowly, sweat begins to appear behind the horse’s ears and runs in dark strands down his neck where the reins chafe against his coat, churning up dirty foam. Little voices, little voices speak to Nefer, but she continues her journey, indifferent to them. Cow, she thinks, a Holstein, and another and another. That one’s overheated. Lapwings. Two lapwings and their chick. Those piercing shrieks!

She follows leads to find a woman who may help her get rid of the baby for her

One of the first books from Archipelago was a new-to-English classic book, Wonder by Hugo Claus, one of my all-time favourite books. They have a real eye for a book that stands the test of time even though it is over 60 years old. It captures the world of NEFER SO WELL. it is like so many great writers around this time that were capturing female lives so well. Like Francoise Sagan and another WORK I felt really connected to this is ‘A test of Honey” by Shelagh Delany, which in a way mirrors events in this bookman unwanted pregnancy but due to the race of the baby, this is because of a rape. But both were written in 1958 and show women all around the world dealing with the same topics of birth this is the years after World War Two and pre-the pill when women want more for their lives but sometimes didn’t have control of the pill in later years. I loved the way we observe Nefer coping with what on the outside seems nothing but a downward spiral of her life after was raped and how she hasn’t an obvious out of the sad situation. Have you a favourite book that is a rediscovery like this book or others that have come out in recent years

WINSTONS SCORE – -A solid look at a hopeless situation for the main character Nefer.

Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap

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Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap

Austrian fiction

Original title – Engel Des Vergessens

Translator – Tess Lewis

Source – Personal Copy

I start this Woman in Translation month off with a book from the Austrian writer Maja Haderlap. She was born into a family from a part of Austria where hr family where historically Slovenian and they were the only people to Stand up to Hitler in Austria this book is a family history of one such family living there and how this standing up to the nazis has effect the ethnic Slovenians that live there. It was a prize-winning book when it came out in German winning one of the biggest book prizes the Ingeborg Bachmann prize. Her own grandmother was in a concentration camp and her father was tortured by Nazis and was in the Partisans during the WAR. he hated the way even post war he and other ethnic Slovenians had been treated post-war.

GRANDMOTHER has her own understanding with nature She believes the fields and forests must be propitiated, not adorned with verses. A poem means nothing to nature, she says, we must always be humble before it. In the attic, she has gathered willow branches that she pulls from the palm bundles blessed in church every year on Palm Sunday. She makes small crosses from the willow branches, crosses we bring out to the fields in spring and stick in the ploughed earth to keep the potato fields fertile and the wheat plentiful. When a thunderstorm is brewing, she places pieces of willow on glowing embers and carries them through the house in a cast iron skillet. The bitter smoke is meant to clear the air and appease the atmospheric forces. You must carry your belief in God in your heart, Grandmother says, it’s not enough to put it on show in church. You can’t rely on the Church, according to her, the Church cannot be trusted.

I loved her grandmother she just jumped of the page

It is hard not to see this as part of this novel as auto fiction as the little girl the main narrator of the book who is growing up in post-war 60s and 70S Austria is about the age the writer would have been at the time. The grandmother and Mother are linked back to the dark day of the war years and the suffering these pheasant Slovene farmers had suffered for standing up and still do it shows how the shadow of the dark past is still there in everyday life . The way the Austrians talk around the ETHNIC Slovenians. But it is also a book about growing up on a farm and the connection a young girl can have to the creatures around her from a cow she loved that lost a calf to the horses. Her father is a man we see smoking but a man that has been broken by what happened to him in the war. The past and the inner conflicts that cause within the family the grandmother’s hours during the war Father’s sorrow and grief add to that a  mother who is often missing in the little girl’s eyes. This is a young girl; trying to make her way and seeing how her family had suffered and still are the way others talk about them as a group this is a picturesque forest and farming area but behind the natural beauty, there is some real evil still there.

When I arrive, Father is usually sitting at the end of the kitchen table with a bottle of beer in his hand. And presides near the stove on which she keeps her children’s dinner warm. As soon as I enter the kitchen, I start to examine her face and hands for scars. She was able to hide behind the stove, And says, but her little brother, who was in her arms, was shot.
On the front of the house is a marble plaque with the names of the children, the parents, and grandparents, engraved and gold-plated.
Father says he could never live in a house where he’d be reminded of the dead every day, several times a day, every time he went in or out.

I was so touched by her father and the ghost of the past here

This is one of those books that walk the line between Memoir and fiction yes it is easy to see them as her family but they are any family in those villages in the Carthinia region of Austria that were Ethnically Slovenian. This is also a universal story from the Marsh Arabs in Iraq to the Kosovian Albanians. I was reminded so much of a good friend I had working in a factory in Germany he was an Albanian from Kosovo who at the time was part of Serbias and like the girl they were classed as some sort of second-class citizens because of who they were and this is the same here the scar of the war is running deep in the locals and what they had done in standing up and the way they as a people are discussed is still the same as in the war the shadow of those acts are still there even twenty years after.I can see why this win a couple of prizes it shines a torch on a subject that few people other than those growing hip there and maybe those in Austria know about. The child narrator mixes growing up under this shadow but also the beauty of the land and the animals around them on the farm. Heidi mixed with a classic slice of war history. Have you read this book or any books on a similar theme ?

Tranquility by Attila Bartis

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Tranquility by Attila Bartis

Hungarian fiction

Original title – A nyugalom

Translator – Irme Goldstein

Source – Personal copy

I have had this on my shelves since it won the best-translated book prize in 2008. It is a book I got and then just kept pushing back sometimes I find myself worrying that books are above me well not above me but the way IO process and talk about the books this is less than it was years ago as now I don’t really care what other people think as I feel now I have carved my own niche in the blogging world. So when this was mentioned in the recent Mookse podcast and there was a new book coming out after 14 years I thought I might pull this book down from the shelves. So when I saw Attila Bartis had been compared to Thomas Bernhard on the back cover I thought why had to wait Sio long in the time it had sat on the shelves it had also been made into a film he had written another novel the one that is coming out later this year he is also a photograph and playwright. Have you ever had books you think are above you then get to and think why did I wait so long.

There was no need for an obituary because for a decade and a half, she had had no acquaintances, and I didn’t want anybody, except Eszter, to come to the cemetery. I hate death notices; there were about thirty of them in Mother’s desk drawer. They forgot to remove her name from a few mailing lists and the mailman brought one even the year before last, which she kept reading for days,”Poor little Winkler, how cleverly he portrayedHarpagon; isn’t life just awful, even to great actors like him, and there are no exceptions? Terrible. Simply terrible. Don’t forget Son, today Winkler, tomorrow you. In this, there are no exceptions.”

A sign if how long his mother had been his Burden most of his adult life.

It is hard not to compare this to Bernard as Andor our main character in their book. He lives in a cramped apartment at the constant beck and call of his mother Rebecca a former stage actress who has now become a shut in living the world via her children this is Andor’s other problem he has a sister Judit who had managed to escape her mother and is a hugely successful musician on the Violin and had managed to escape Hu nary and lived in exile. Leaving Andor in her shadow as he tries to live his life. the book is formed of vignettes almost that jump in time the book opens as he is burying his mother/ He the recounts their lives together and how when he finally found a girl how hard to was for him to try and introduce her to his Mother and how Mother was going to react to ESTER this is a story full l of dark humour and characters ion the edge a woman stuck in a house for to extended living on her glamorous past. A man trapped between his mother and lover adds to a cleverly timed and darkly comic work.

The barmaid has grown used to my sitting in the corner for hours, often without ordering anything. Occasionally she’d empty the ashtray, and once she brought me some peanuts.

“What’s up, the wife kicked you out?” she asked.

“I have no wife,” I said.

“But you look exactly as if she did,” she said and went back behind the counter.

Andor I had a real picture of him here I’ve seen many a loner like him in the pub over the years.

I get the Bernhard comparison Andor is a writer and has a level of bile in his life that is similar to Bernard’s characters. He is also a writer which is another nod to Bernhard’s characters. But for me, I kept thinking of Andor as a sort of Hungarian Ronnie Barkers Timothy for people to young or not familiar with this character from the sitcom Sorry in the UK he lived with an overbearing mother who at every turn tried to scupper Timothy Devolping as a person, especially in his love life. This is the same with Andor and his mother it is a very stifling relationship for him he isn’t trapped in the flat but trapped in a vicious cycle of being her son and carer. This is a compelling read I hate putting it down I just want to read on every time I was dropped into his world. I can’t wait for the next book and I tell you it will take less than 14 years to read and be on the blog. Have you read this or have a favourite Hungarian writer?

Winstons score – +A if you love Bernhard and Sorry you will love this book !!

 

Autumn Rounds by Jacques Poulin

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Autumn Rounds by Jacques Poulin

Quebec fiction

Original title – La tournée d’automne

Translator – Sell Fischman

Source – personal copy

I read a book by Jacques Poulin mister Blue 5 years ago and loved it’s subtle tone and nature, but then forgot to get any other books by him. But it wasn’t to mention on the Moose and the Gripes podcast of him I remembered how much I had enjoyed that book it was a quiet book and quiet books for me are maybe great for autumn and I had brought this earlier this year and decided it would be a great start to autumn. Poulin is known for the intimate quiet nature of his writing he studied psychology and does seem to have a great view of human nature and how people deal with life.

In the Clarendon Bar, the driver got in the habit of sitting at the same table in a corner. First he’d check to see if Marie was there, then he’d order something light – a glass of wine, a beer, sometimes a Hot Chocolate sipping it slowly as he listened to Melodie and the band.

In this small dark room, where the ceiling fans weren’t able to drive away the blue cigarette smoke, Melodie was a different person; here, she didn’t;t try to make people laugh. It was moving to see how much sincerity she put into her interpretations of blues, especially the repertoire of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. If it weren’t for her accent, you’d have thought that she’d been born in the Deep South

His growing love for the Troop and the music mentioned is a perfect soundtrack to this novella

This is a quiet book that follows a man who is a driver of a bookmobile (we’d say a mobile library, I remember there was one used to go around Northumberland). He sets out a number of times each year to go around a number of small rural villages and towns in Quebec along the course of the St Lawrence river with the bookmobile collecting the books back in and lending out new books. So whilst he is just about to set out on his autumn round as it is called he sees a travelling troop of French entertainers acrobats one of this modern circus he is captivated by one of the troops a young woman that gives him a chill as he sees a lot of Katherine Hepburn. He falls in love with her and the trop how relaxed and fun they are he starts to Talk to Marie the Hepburn woman they connect and he tells her what he does about his van and the route he takes and the cat and just his life so when they decide to join him the two grow closers as they navigate the hinterlands of Quebec handing out books as this slow-burning romance unfold around the small village and books they are reading they connect.

The driver had finished reading the new books, both adult and children’s and he’d managed to find room for them on the shelves. That meant he didn’t have to transport them in boxes that he’d have had to stow in the cab behind the seats. The space was already taken up by two rather massive wooden chests:one contained all the tools for the truck, the other, manuscripts turned down by publishers, whose authors had entrusted them to the bookmobile in the hope of finding readers anyway- which did happen now and then.

He has shipped three boxes of books to the municipal library in Baie-Comeu, the town he would reach mid-tour, and once there, he would restock his shelves

The bookmobile was stocked ready to go I had a look at the library at Baie-comeu after reading this passage(do you do that check-up places on google ?)

I love this book as I struggle with confidence my life seems to step forward to steps back at the moment this was a perfect book I am really struggling to get into a lot of books I had read 200 pages of an Estonian epic which I had actually like but then just wasn’t able to face 300 plus pages at the moment then I look at this and knew and was right there is a time for quiet books and this is the time autumn is nearly here I am able to read a novella like this I was reminded how much I loved these sort of books and writers those that don’t have fireworks but are slow burning and thoughtful books. For another writer like this, I would be Patrick Modiano. Poulin draws us into the world of the driver his bookmobile and his blossoming romance over one autumn around the edges of Quebec as a romance slowly blossoms as the season turns. I will be getting the other Poulin books that Archipelago have in print as he is a writer I am growing to love. I’d love to know your favourite quiet writers in translation maybe other short books I could get to try at the moment.

Winstons score – A a subtle romance amongst the books on a bookmobile as a romance

Archipelago books Fortnight May 9 -23 2022

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I ordered a few books from the US publisher Archipelago I tend to try and get a few every year as I like the look of the books but also love some of there writers they do a lot of books in translation a mix of classic and modern writers from all around the world. They were the US publishers of Karl One Knausgaard they have books on there site that have been translated from 32 languages which is impressive. I have reviewed a number of there books over the years I have a small collection of them I have brought over the time I have been blogging I first got into them when I was looking for books for the original around the world in 52 books in January 2010 I reviewed wonder by Hugo Claus which is still my favourite book from them Have read 12 years later.I have also enjoyed the books they have brought out by Scholastique Mukasonga which they have brought out I have read two by her and have another on the tar to read Why Archipelago?  well it is just that over the years and that is 12 and counting. I have always enjoyed the books from them I have read. Plus I also have a number which is maybe to may for my liking ion the pile unread which gave me the idea of a reading fortnight I did mention it online a few times but never quite sure who reads me these days if anyone. I am doing this for a publisher I love and have enjoyed buying their books over the years. I have 26 of there books I found a couple after the pictures )on my shelves I think I may have a couple elsewhere but that was all I found to take the pictures with of those in the picture I have read

 

I am currently read the Halldór Laxness Wayward heroes as there is a new translations of one of his books due out in a few months like this one also translated by Philip Roughton. He is a writer I have reviewed once on the blog so I decide it was time to get this one read and with coming up with the idea of a reading fortnight I will review then. I also am reading Autumn rounds by the Quebecian writer Jacques Pulling he is a writer I want to read everything from after I read his book Mister Blue which I reviewed here about Jim and his cat his books do appeal so I got this this week and will get the other books to read maybe in other Archipelago books fortnight. I will also review that in this fortnight I will then maybe tackle another of the thick books I have from them or it may be Kin by Miljenko jergovic which has been on my radar since it came out but I just haven’t order it yet ( not that yet I will get this book it is near the top of the books I want to get) I will let you know which big book I choose as it be great to chat about it or any of their books even ones I haven’t read there is lots I would like to read do you have a favourite books from there back list ?

There was a recent Moose and gripes podcast about the publisher here

Here is there Website which is very good and has lots about the books and also has different quotes daily

 

 

Distant light by Antonio Moresco

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Distant Light by Antonio Moresco

Italian fiction

Original title – La lucina

Translator – Richard Dixon

Source – – personal copy

Today’s writer gives us all Hope the Italian modernist writer Antonio Moresco had written for years. As his work was rejected this later in his life was shown when he published his letters over the years. So he was in his mid-forties when his debut novel came out he is often compared to the American writer’s Don Delillo and Thomas Pynchon. The Italian writer Roberto Saviano described him as a Literary heritage. This book came out in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Impac prize in 2018. He has published thirteen novels and other works including work around a 44 day Camino walk he did, which appealed to me lets hope that gets picked up some time!

” Whar light could that be ?Who’s been switching it on ?” I wonder as I wal along the cobbeld streets of this small village where no one is left, “A light filtering from some isolated cottage in the woods ?” The light of some remaining streetlamp in another village abandonded like this one, but obviously still connected to the pwer suppl, swithched on automatically, always at the same time,

All that can be heard is the sound of my fotosteps echoing in the streets, I glimpse a flight of uneven stone steps, the broken door of a stable, ruined slate roofs collapsed and overgrown with creepers, from which emerge the topsof fig or bay trees growing amoung the rubble, two stone troughs full of water, streets doors of bright peeling paint

The light is seen by the narrator he questions what it is ?

Distant light is a strange book there is another worldliness to the book. The narrator lives in a village in a heavy forest area. When one night he sees a light in the distance where no light should be he starts to wonder where the light is so he looks at the map and starts to record it and next day he sets off to find what is happening heading out he discovers a small child near to where the light was the night before., But this is where the story takes a twist the child seems to live alone ion an abandoned village running the house he lives in doing everything the child even tells the narrator they go to school at night then he makes a discovery at night with the child and the other children in the school.  This is told with the sense of the forest and nature just looming in the background as though the world the narrator knows is disappearing and nature is filling the gap.

it is night now. Several dyas have gone by since I went there. I look at this little light, knowing now where it comes from, sitting behind this low stone balustrade, while the clear moonless sky is filled with stars, and not very far away can be heard the cries of nioght animals and birds of prey and the occasional gaunts of wild boars= moving about in the thick undergrowth.

“And perhaps” I marvel, “perhaps thst boy can also see the light from my house up there, at night, on other side of the gorge, in the middle of all thisdarkness as far as the eye can see, of all the darkness of the world, in the same way that I can see his. i forgot to ask him if he can see it… ”

This is later in the book when he has answered where the light is and who is behind it !

This reminds me at times of Dina  Buzzati’s Tartar steppe there is something about our narrator and the sort of bleak and lonely world is akin. There is also a feeling of otherworldliness with the child and what happens is the narrator in this or another world? what has happened there is a sense of post-disaster post-apocalyptic view with the way Nature is creeping in this again made me think of the lyrics to the Talking heads song Nothing but flowers, where the world is turning back to nature, hear paths are disappearing behind moss and plants. So as we never get any names this is a world of the unknown and we float between life and death in this distant light where is that the present or the past or ? . This is one of those books that you read and go what happened so then read it over which I did still think the book is an unusual not strong story more a sense of feeling and questions and maybe not the answers it is as thou he leaves them for the reader to answer. This was the first book to be translated into English.

Map drawn by a spy by Guillermo Cabrera Infante

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Map drawn by a spy by Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Cuban memoir

Original title – Mapa dibujado por un espía

Translator – Mark Fried

Source – Personal copy

I have long been a fan of Infante’s work it started when I read three trapped tigers fairly early on in the blog.I also review a view of dawn in the tropics both of these books showed different sides to the man as a writer and this shows another side. This follows a time after Infante had spent time in Brussels as a cultural attache  for three years from 1962 as he had fallen out of favor in the year before his posting with the Castro Regime, a piece about Cuban nightlife his brother had written (Three trapped tigers strikes me as a lament to the scene that died in the early Castro years). This starts when he returns to Havana for his mothers funeral.

He climbed the stairs and in the vestibule a sign suprised him:

Chapel C

Zoila Infante

Seeing her name in black and white, the reality of this mothers death hit home. Another flight of steps took him to chapel C and soon he was in the anteroom, which was filled with friends and acquaintances. He saw his father, smaller, shrunken astonshingly aged, emerging from the sweltering chapel and walking toward him.

“Come, so you can see her , the poor woman.”

“No, no.”

“come on you must. She’s laid out in there”

“No, no. I don’t want to, I don’t wamt to see her”

He returns and I think of the description of his father and the changes over three years is also for the country he has returned too.

‘The book follows the time he returns for his mothers funeral he intends to stay a week. He should known it might have been trouble when he had booked his flight there and back via Prague.  But then is told he can’t board his return flight and has to spend time in a Cuba that has much change in the three years he has been gone. His going was brought on by the early indications of what he found on his return and that is the cutting down of voices that only in little bits query the Castro regime. This is shown when he finds some of his editor friends have lost jobs and the way people are following new rules. As he sees the changes in the world around him as he meets a lot of his old friends this is the style of the book meeting events everyday life but this is what he sees changing the way his friends that remained or there almost Kafka worries of the world around them and what the regime is doing. This is a glimpse of Cuba in those early post-Castro years.

Titon spoke in a low voice, but freely nd frankly, without apparent concern for the waiters coming and goings. He described the situation the perscution of Homosexuals, the cultural coulcil’s imposed orthodxy, problems at the university. About the university he went on atsome length and recounted his personal experience : he  and two others from the film isitute attended one of the trials the student federation was holding of supposed counterrevolutionaries on campus. At the “trial” there were two accused, a boy and a girl. The jury was the audience.

This remind me of Kafka the way the world of his friends had changed in the three years he had been gone.

This is a flipside for me to three trapped tigers the atmosphere of three trapped tigers I said when I read it had a feel of jazz and the night. This has a different feel there is real tension in the world he sees his friends are changed it is as though he as returned and they have all been replaced with Kafka characters. The world he sees is one of rules and freedoms being cut and the uncertainty that brings to everyday life especially in his creative circle where simple things can be taken the wrong way. What was a brief week for his mother funeral turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare as he has to spend four months more in the New Cuba? I have two more books by Infante on my shelves and can’t wait to add them to the blog.

In red by Magdalena Tulli

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In red by Magdalena Tulli

Polish fiction

Original title –  W czerwieni

Translator – Bill Johnson

Source – personal copy

One of the publishers over the years I have discovered is Archipelago. I have reviewed a number of their books over the years and have brought a lot as they are so pretty in their design. Magdalena Tulli is one of the writers from them I hadn’t tried and this short novella seemed a great intro. Magdalena Tulli is a writer and translator she has been five times on the prize list for the Nike prize in Poland (the polish Booker Prize), this book was one of the books to make that prize list.

Left to prey to foreign forces, stitchings filled with stories that previously no one had ever heard or wanted to hear. In the house of pleasure, in the downstairs parlor, at night officers in jackets unbuttoned in contravention of the regulations fell madly in love, sang. andlaughed; during the day the other ranks were let in through a side door and took the creaking stairs to the second floor. They thronged the poorly lit corridor, wreather in cigarette smoke, grasping metal tokens in their sweaty palms.

The town is change by Germans , this passage remind me of the Brel song Next where a soldier loses his virginity.

This book follows a small town in Poland Stitchings a town where time stands still even thou the world moves on around them.We follow the town over the period pre world war one to pre world war two. This story tells little tales of the multitudes from the workers in the main factory their Loom and son and the two other big factories in the town. German invaders the officer and the ranks their impact on the town both during the war and afterwards. The creation of Poland is proclaimed after the war to the citizens of the town. A young woman who has to decide between the two most eligible bachelors in the town. This is an odd world like that of say Dylan Thomas llareggub full of dark characters that are touched with a bit of magic realism but also the dark realism of that period of history.

Every morning the unemployed demoblized soldiers, a snarl of anger frozen on their faces, would read the newspapers, in which there was not a single piece of good news for them. They lit one roll-up cigarette from the previous one, and blew the acrid smoke up towards the ceiling. They paced from wall to wall in their basements, irritable and gruff

The men left after the war have little hope in stitchings .

I liked this book it is in the spirit of the likes of Calvino and Saramago that fine line between realism and magic realism. Stitchings is a surreal mix of dark characters that like fireflies in the night appear for a second then disappear as death hovers over the town itself. We meet folks then they die it is a strange place. But I felt in a way it is an attempt to capture the madness the encapsulated Mittel Europa in those first forty years of the twentieth century. Where lives burnt brightly at times and lives were short at times. I enjoyed Johnson translation he managed to keep the feel of this being magically real at times. The spirit of how a town is shaped by war and death is what Tulli tries to show here and that is what works it is about the place rather than the people in way.

Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin

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Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin

Quebec fiction

Original title –  le Vieux Chagrin

Translator – Shelia Fischman

Source – Personal copy

Well, I have read a number of books recently but this one has jumped straight to the top I read it in one sitting on Friday. Jacques Poulin is considered one of the best writers of his generation of French Canadian writers, he has won numerous writing prizes during his career and has published fourteen books. I have to say I love the cat on the cover of this book from Archipelago books.

Dear Marika,

Welcome, Old Mr blue and I hope your visit here will be a pleasent one, as much as out inhospitable shores allow. Try not to let the cold and the damp bother you much. Walk on the beach and the sandbar as much as you want: that’s an excellent way to shake off your worries, as I’ve often discovered myself.

I have lived alon for a long time and solitude is propitous for my work, but it warns my heart to know that you’re at the other end of  the bay. Now that you’re there, everything seems possible, even the wildest, most secret dreams, the ones we never talk about, those that lurk beneath the surface of ourselves, I cannot help thinking that your presence is kind of invitation to begin everything again, to start from scratch.

Thought I don’t yet know your face, you already live in my heart.

Jim writes a note to the unkown woman owner of the book his one human connection.

This is a tale of a writer, Jim he is trying to write a great love story. this is hard for a man that lives by himself in an isolated part of Quebec in his cottage. Jim has withdrawn from life, he was a professor teaching Hemingway to his students, but something we never told what made him end up trying to write about love. He admits he has never been in love and to add to this he finds some footprints on the beach near the house and follows them into a cave and in this cave on a rock shelf above the tideline he finds a copy of 1001 Arabian nights, the book has a name on it Marika.He then starts writing notes to this imaginary woman. Then we find out there is a refuge for woman near by and a spirit soul of a woman Jim calls La Petite appears at the house and talks with Jim at times, this is where we find out about Jim’s past. The only real thing we meet is his Cat Mister Blue and he is maybe the one thing that Jim really loves, as we see when he panics when the cat disappears and Jim Panics.

I waited all week for Marika to come and visit. But in vain. Ten times a day I leaned out of the attic window , hoping to see the women I’d invited,  the womanwho was creating such a strange turmoil in me, on whom I was counting to bring my story back to life.

When she doesn’t come he starts to panic, is she real or just a fragment of jims past that has reappeared!

This is a gentle book about solitude Jim imagines so much it is hard to see what apart from Mister Blue is real in his world at times the Writer’s Block as he is trying to write a love story. Love is there in this world imagined love the notes to this woman Marika are playful and flirty, La petite a parental love in a way and Mister Blue the love we have for our pets. A view of a man that obviously has a secret in his past but like his hero, hemingway Jim is a man’s man so he doesn’t dwell on it but the sense is of a forgotten past at times. A book for lovers of subtle stories of being alone and the tricks it can play on one’s mind.

Cockroaches by Scholastique Mukasonga

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Cockroaches by Scholastique Mukasonga

Rwandan Memoir

Original title –  Inyenzi ou les cafards

Translator – Jordan stump

Source – Personal copy

Mukasonga grew up in rwanda as part of the smaller Tutsi tribe, she luckily left and went to live in France before the 94 genocide that in its wake killed 27 of her family member that were unable to escape. This is the first of a triolgy of autobiographical works the other two being Barefoot woman and L’lguifou . her first novel which followed these three books Out lady of the Nile won one of the biggest French language African Lit prizes the Ahmadou Kourouma prize and also a number of french book prizes.

The first Pogroms against the tutsi broke out on All saints ‘ day , 1959. The machinery of the genocide had been all set into motion. it would never stop.until the final soultion it would never stop

Needless to say , the anti-tutsi violence didn’t spare Butare province.I was three years old and that first images of terror were etched into my memory.i remember

The stark reality of the world she grew up in from her first memory .Also note the day the catholic church had a part in this in a small way !!

 

The book follows Her life from the early 1950’s her childhood and is told in vignettes through the years. Far from being an ideal childhood , as is the case with genocide the undercurrent of the problems have been there since the start of her life when even as a three-year old she saw violence . The thing we also see is her fathers drive to have his kids learn ,which as we see later on is a reason that Scholastique herself managed to get away from her homeland.We see the first stepping up as the family have to move of their good land on to poor land the echoes here are so much to the Jews being moved in Nazis era. They are moved as the Hutus wave machetes , this also remind me of those horrific picture of people having limbs hacked of by these machetes and having to struggle on with their lives. This is an insight into her family the opening lines touched me where she mentioned family members “For all those of Nyamata who are named in this book and the many more who are not ,

for the few who have the sorrow of surviving.

For a long time I had no news of my parents , my brother, my sisters who’d stayed behind in Nyamata. Writing them was out of the question. Letters from Burundi were considered suspicous and could cause their addresses serious trouble. I kept an ear out for rumors and news from Rwanda. I urgently questioned anyone who’d dared to go there. Not until Andre was in Senegal could he get a letter through to our parents to them of our new lives. Evidently mail from West Africa wasn’t thought to be dangerous

I was reminded of my old Bosnian friend that was unable to speak to his mother , I’d feel so grateful at times .

 

Some books are testaments to a time and need to be read to understand a time and the history. I was reminded of the opening of world at war where we follow a camera through the village of Ordour-Sur-Glane the french village where the was a brutal massacre and the village was left as ut was destroyed at the end of the war as a testament . this book about the Tutsi genocide is another work that needs to be read. Those horrific scenes on the news at the time are long gone but as this book shows the wounds are still there not just the physical ones the mental ones this is a prelude to the violence but also like the build up to the world war two the undercurrents to this conflict can be seen in the early years of Scholastique life . The conflict grew after independence with the events of april , may and june 94 being the  explosive and brutal end that saw maybe a million people killed in two months . So this book need s sit along the works of writers Like Elie Wisel or Primo Levi as those touched and saw the violence in their time. So this is the story of one of those cockroaches as the Hutu called the Tutsi in that time .

 

A general theory of Oblivion by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

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A general theory of Oblivion by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Angolan fiction

Original title – Teoria Geral do Esquecimento

Translator – Daniel Hahn

Source – copy from translator

I was lucky that Daniel saw I was after this when it was mentioned on the longlist for the Man booker international prize. He said he had a spare copy of the us edition (extra bonus as it is an archipelago books copy so very pretty as well ) . I had looked for this on ,my library system just before the man booker but they hadn’t a copy as the book of chameleon by Jose Eduardo Agualusa an earlier book by him had won the prize and also been one I had really enjoyed. Jose Eduardo Agualusa  is not just a writer,  he has a radio show dedicate to African song and poetry and also publish books from around the Portuguese speaking world .

Ludo opened the box. Inside, looking fearfully at her, she found a little white newborn puppy.

“He’s a male. A German shepherd ” Orlando explained. “They grow quickly. This one’s an albino, rather unusual. He shouldn’t get too much sun. What are you going to call him ?”

Ludo didn’t hesitate

“Phantom!”

“Phantom?”

Orlando shrugged his bony shoulders

“Very well. Then Phantom he shall be ”

Ludo gets her dog. Now the strange thing is my Mum has a dog his name is also Phantom he is a greyhound thou I love the way books and real life cross sometimes.

A general theory of Oblivion follows one woman story but not just that the story of her home and homeland post freedom Ludo a woman decides on the eve of Angola becoming a free country to brick herself away from the outside world into her apartment. What follows is a collection of her life and what she glimpses from behind the walls . As she faces life through her collection of books her albino German shepherd dog, also her memories of a man who might have been the one Orlando and the radio the only link to the world apart from the glimpse and chance encounter she has over a number of year like a burglar that she encounters. The book is a wonderful mix of life and dramas real and imagine worlds and how someone avoids madness just in more than thirty years apart from the real world.

The days slide by as if they were liquid. I have no more notebooks to write in. I have no more pens either. I write on the walls, with pieces of charcoal, brief lines.

I save on food, on water, and on adjectives.

I think about Orlando. I hated him, at first. Then I began to see his appeal. He could be very seductive. One man and two women under the same roof- a dangerous combination.

A  short piece this captures almost her being on the edge of madness in her words as she remembers the past and Orlando .

From what I have read I think this novel is actually based on the real life person . Her notebooks Diaries and poems that where all collected after she died after spending 28 years cut off from the world. It seems Jose was given access to this body of work initially to write a radio play. That is odd as I felt when I finished this book  the small pieces that make this book up are almost like turning a radio dial through the years that Ludo had spent apart but also like gems in the dirt of african history waiting to be unearthed. I can see the mix of styles in this book can put the reader off but to me they drew me in as we see Ludo and her world and how her world starts to slowly fall apart from the lose of her dog, to having to burn her books and then the end. But what we also see through these piece is a glimpse of the past and present in Angola using both the real world and a mythical world.  This book shows why we maybe should be trying to get more books out of the Lusophone world!

Have you read any of the other books By Jose ?

A new site for archipelago book

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Well it’s always nice when a publisher you like makes a real effort to improve the user experience on their site and with the new just launched site from non profit publisher Archipelago books they have spent time it seems make it a great user experience I ve a few of their books under review I advice you to take a whirl round the new site here

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The Eleven by Pierre Michon

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The Elven by Pierre Michon

French Fiction

Translators Jody Gadding and Elizabeth Deshays

Original title Les Onze

Source  Review Copy

Pierre Michon is one of the most highly regarded writers in France raised by his mother ,he studied literature at Clermount -Ferrand ,he then decide to join a travelling theatre company travelling .He entered the world of Literature at the age of 37 with the book small Lives ,a collection of interlocking stories looking at eight lives  also published by Archipelago .This book the eleven is his twelfth novel  and even thou it is a short book at just 97 pages it is one that Michon spent fifteen years working on .It won the French Grand prix prize from the French academy .

We know he was born in Combleux in 1730.
It is just upriver from Orléans with its visible church towers, and
it bathes gently on both branches of the Loire. Overhead of course
are those French Poussinian skies, which he rarely painted, and from
one steeple to the next following the levee the length of the river,
those islands, willows, rushes where as a child, one would have loved
to hide, and the sudden flights of birds. The Loire carried boats at that
time: and it is because of the boats, and what carried them, that the
creator of The Eleven was born on the shores of the Loire.

Corentin  early life and origins described

So the Eleven the title is taken from a painting a fictional painting that was supposed to have been painted during the height of the French revolution .The Artist Corentin is brought in to compile a painting the one of the title the eleven ,this  title refers to the eleven members of the  committee of .WE see how this painting was made from a number of angles ,we learn of the artist ,how he came to do the painting his thoughts whilst he is painting the paint ,the people in the painting .First Corentin this guy is a man who rose through the society he lives in, due to his talent as a painter .He rises  from his humble beginnings in Limousin region a rural area of France  .The committee well to mention a couple of names -Robespierre and Saint – Just two names that even I had heard of in regards the French revolution  .The struggle of Corentin in how he is to portray these men on the canvas with his feeling for them and how they want to be shown on the canvas .He is also comission to paint before this the mistress of louis XIV . So we see where his conflict comes from

Can you see them, Sir? All eleven of them, from left to right: Billaud,
Carnot, Prieur, Prieur, Couthon, Robespierre, Collot, Barère, Lindet,
Saint-Just, Saint-André. Unchanging and erect. The Commissioners.
The Great Committee of the Great Terror. Four point thirty by three
meters, a bit less than three.

The painting described and who starred in it

Corentin is maybe a representation of a number of artist that probably painted during the French revolution and how they maybe struggled at times with the art and the subjects they were painting   .Well as you see this is one of those French books that is very French(that sounds wrong ,I  mean in a publishing context ) I  can hardly see a British publisher taking a chance on a slim book about a fictional painting and painter  that has very little happen in it yet so much this is one of those books that makes you think .I was reminded at times of the Robles novel I read last year ,as this book has the same feel of themes on top of themes a web of ideas ,The eleven is rereader a book that I ‘m sure you get more from after every time you read it .The main theme is of course the connection between art and politics ,well the power of politics and politicians.I mean how often do we see the dictators round the world surrounded by images of themselves painting sculptures  .Also how often has art been used to capture a moment in time , I mean some of the most famous paintings from France  that I remember are paintings that fall in that category The raft of the Medusa being one of them also Delacroix liberty leading the people an image also from the French revolution  .We see the turmoil of the artist doing these paintings of these figures who hold the power but have let the power get to them .

Have you a favourite novel on art ?

Link to the publishers site .