Tag: TRANSLATIONS

The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector

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The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector

Brazilan fiction

Original title – A Cidade Sitiada

Translator – Johnny Lorenz

Source – Personal copy

I’ve read three Lispector books and have reviewed two of them over the years. I’m not in a rush to read all her books; most of them are on my TBR. So when this one was a book, I could read it for this week’s 1949 club. I picked it up; she wrote it not long after she got married, in Europe, in Bern, where Lispector struggled with the city and the change from the cities in Brazil. Also, she suffered from depression and isolation at this time and struggled to write this book. She later said it was the hardest book she had ever written. The style is different from the other books by her I have read.

The late night would find them motionless in the dark. Stable and weightless. There they were, invisible, breathing. Waiting with brief intelligence. Below, in the sleeping township, a rooster was flying and perching on the ledge of a window. The hens were watching. Beyond the railroad a rat ready to flee.

Then the dapple-gray stomped its foot. Nobody had a mouth to speak with but one would give a small signal that would sound off from space to space in the darkness. They were peering out. Those animals that had one eye for seeing on each side—nothing was seen straight on, and that was the night of Sao Geraldo, the flanks of a horse quivering in a quick contraction. In the first silences a mare would open wide her eyes as if surrounded by eternity. The most restless colt was still raising its mane in a deaf neigh. Finally silence would reign.

The horses and the small place that Sao Geraldo started as !

The book follows two characters: Lucrécia Neves, a girl in her twenties who loves horses but is at an age when people think she should settle down. The book follows her and the men in her life: three men pursuing her, Felipe, a soldier; Perseu, a quiet student and a sensitive soul. Then she finally settles down with Doctor Matheus. Because each of the three men is a different kind of man. The book shows how they try to get her attention. Lucrécia is not a beauty, but she has these three men, each in their own way, drawn to her. This may be her working through her own love. Life, as I said, has two characters. The second character is São Gerardo, which, when the book opens, is a small township with horses wandering around, and as the book moves on, it becomes a boom city. This is how the book works: the two affect each other; as the city grows, we see how it almost hollows out Lucrécia’s soul. As the modern world creeps in on them.  She has many struggles living in Europe; I feel the city becomes a trap for her.

Soon she was veering off a bit, dreaming of walking alone with a dog and being seen on the hill: like the postcard of a city. Lucrécia Neves needed countless things: a checkered skirt and a little hat of the same material; for a long time now shed been needing to feel how others would see her in a checkered skirt and hat, a belt right on her hips and a flower in the belt: dressed like that shed look at the township and it would be transformed. With a dog. That’s how you composed a vision.

The girl didn’t have any imagination but a watchful reality of things that was making her almost sleepwalk; she was needing things in order for them to exist.

She is an odd character in many ways !

I must admit I often struggle with the imagery in her novels. I will go back when I have read them all and reread them. But for me, this is a woman dying on the inside after maybe making the wrong choice in a man.  This came not long after her own marriage; is she reflecting on her own life? Then there is the place: São Gerardo; like many places in this century, a small township, a rural place almost becoming a city; there is imagery of the horse once running wild, now gone. She hated the clean style of the Swiss cities compared to the wildness of her home. This book falls between the other two I have read from the debut’s stream of consciousness; it is a harsh, stark book about a place growing, and, as it does, a woman’s insides falling out of a woman who becomes empty really . Whereas the later book has a more internal narrator’s voice. Have you read Lispector ? Do you have a favourite book by her? Have you read this book did you struggle with it ?

 

Lili is crying by Hélène Bessette

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Lili is crying by Hélène Bessette

French fiction

Original title – Lili pleure

Translator – Kate Briggs

Source – Personal copy

I wish Fitzcarraldo would add the classic list to their subscription service as I keep missing ones that grab my eye. I am not someone that keeps up with publisher list as much as i did ten years agowhen I would knoiw which books were coming out hiere and there but no in the last few years life has got in the way I still pre order a certain number of books and have subscitpiuons with publishers I like such as Fitzcarraldo I may not read every book but I know the quality of there editors and trust them.  So Helene Bessette is one of those French writers that, in some ways, slip under the radar in the English-speaking world. She was caught in a fight between French publishers when her first book came out, and she was championed and signed by Gallimard, where Raymond Queneau loved her writing.  This book came out in 1953

— Hell damnation, cruelty, lies, deceit, betrayal, tears, sever-ances, assassination, calumny, perfidy, misery and death, says the shepherd.

He is driving his sheep down the stony footpath that edges the garden beneath the ruined towet set high on the parched, barren hillside, bleached white in the Provençale sun.

– Hell damnation, cruelty, lies, deceit, betrayal, tears, sever-ances, assassination, calumny, perfidy, misery and death.

The mistral is up.

Pale blades of wheat sweep the length of the dusty track. The serried sheep press forward and behind them, the shepherd.

Invisible rain, warm and soft, sinks into the dust.

And the mistral to carry it away.

The open tower a silhouette against the low cloud hanging through it.

A wind swirls. A block of wall crumbles.

The opening page and this made me think of Beckett

This book is a heart-wrenching tale of the lengths a mother will go to stop her daughter from finding happiness with her lover, and instead devote her life to her, as she had always wanted. But it is how we get this; it is like the prose has been edited by Samuel Beckett. It is a book of sharp statements of Lilli, a woman broken by her mother’s actions. Charlotte, the mother, runs a school, and there is something of Jean Brodie around her the way in the book she makes her daughter think and act with a combination of praise and scorn classic controlling behaviour.  It is a story of a fragile girl’s heart breaking as the romance she is trying to have is broken.  A chorus of those surrounding the two is also woven into the story.

Hello!

With my zip-up bag.

Hello, Maman.

– Here is my daughter, returned to me, says the mother Charlotte.

My lost daughter.

My found daughter.

My daughter who runs away with her zip-up bag.

Here is my deceiving daughter.

My cheating daughter.

Who has no qualms about telling me silly stories and lies.

— She left me, says the mother Charlotte.

She’d left me.

She was gone.

And what in heaven’s name did I do to deserve being abandoned by my own daughter?

Did I merit such punishment?

If only my arms could stretch up to the blue sky and shake those clouds.

For Iloved her so much (my daughter).

She has let me down.

I have been disappointed in love. And what a love!

I still love her, naturally, Ilove her just as much as I ever did.

Only now there’s a fresh scent of disappointment to add to the burden of that love.

She was everything to me.

My life, I lived it through her.

I feel this captured the manipulative and Brodie-like nature of the mother Charlotte

When a writer was championed by Queneau, you know it isn’t going to be a writer that is challenging to the reader; this book is it: she cut everything she could get away with, so all that remains on the page is pure emotion, bile, dark humour, and a twisted relationship.  I was reminded of how, like Jean Brodie, the mother struck me that mix of praise and disdain Brodie had with her girls, the way she manipulated them. It is a story we’ve seen many times before: the domineering mother controlling their child is a classic storyline, really. WHat gives this legs is the style of the book it is hard not to think of eckett the clipped and brutal at times of the prose is very luike him this would make a great stage show it is so powerful and it is all in the way she controlled the tone and style of the vpices in the prose and how wonderful it has been brought to us in English by Kate Briggs. Although Barbara’s work was missed, both Bray and Wright were French-translated writers, and both were in similar circles to Bessette, particularly Barbara Wright, who translated Queneau around this time as well. The sad fact is Bessette died in poverty and largely forgotten, even in France.  We are lucky there are 13 novels she wrote out there for us to hopefully discover when translated into English! This book means I have 10 books left before I hit 200 French novels under review on the blog! Also a great pick for Woman in Translation month; I’ve not seen anyone mention the book much on social media.

Cathedrals by Claudia Piñeiro

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Cathedrals by Claudia Piñeiro

Argentine Fiction

Original title- Catedrales

Translator – Frances Riddle

Source – Subscription book

I start this year’s Women in Translation Month with a writer who, over the last couple of decades I’ve been around blogging and talking about books, shows how a writer’s whole view in the reading public’s eye can change. Piñeiro is a writer I first came across when I was on the Bitter Lemon Press small-crime-in-translation list.  Whether it was Bitter Lemon being seen as a crime publisher.  They do mostly Detective fiction in translation.  Bitter Lemon Press released Piñeiro in 2009, and a few years later I bought All Yours by her.  So when Elena Knows earned a long listing and a shortlist for the International Booker, I said at the time that Charco Press had repositioned her as a writer more toward psychological fiction. For me, See is up there with the great psychological writers like Patrica  Highsmith.  For me, in particular, the Roman Durs of Georges Simenon come to mind.

I asked Ángela to show me the books he’d ordered.

She told me that only one of them was here; she’d sold the other one after so many days had gone by. She showed me the one we still had: The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

‘Do you remember what the other one was?’

‘Yeah, of course, Cathedral, by Carver, she replied.

Hearing that title made my stomach lurch, just like it had that afternoon when a customer came in smelling exactly like my father, If the boy shows up here again, let me know, please, 1 practically begged her.

‘Is there something I should know?’ Ángela asked,

startled.

‘Nothing important. He’s the son of someone I know

and they can’t find him.’

‘Alright, don’t worry, I’ll let you know, Lía?

Just as Mateo gets to her shop the mention of the Carver story

The book Cathedrals now resembles one of those puzzles you must assemble to see the full picture. It follows the fallout of a death in a family. The book comprises six chapters and an Epilogue. It traces the events in a family after someone kills and dismembers AnaSardá at seventeen.  The author reveals why this vicious killing occurred and what caused it. The book opens in Barcelona, with Ana’s sister Lia, who had to escape what happened and left her home in Argentina and escaped to Barcelona and is running a book shop in the great Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela only keeping touch via the occasional but the past catches up with theer when her other sister appears in her bookshop and is searching for her soon that had gone missing on a tour of Europe Cathedrals and they think Lia knows what has happened to Mateo their son.  He has grown up in a family broken by the violent death of his aunt.  He was pushed into the trip by his grandfather to see the cathedrals of Europe.  A statue struck Marcella, and the memory of Ana’s death haunts her.  Thus, the book continues with three more tales from people connected to the death.  Each tale drops a little crumb more.

Thirty years ago, the body of my aunt Ana, the youngest of the three Sardá sisters, was found burned and cut into pieces in a dump. Ana was only seventeen. Lía, nineteen.My mother, twenty-three; the same age I am now.

Lía looked to be agile and hard working. Seeing her climb up and down the steep ladder to get the book a customer had asked for, suggesting other titles, laughing in the middle of her conversation, I saw that some of her gestures were identical to my grandfather’s, and that was encouraging. When I got back to the hostel, I inspected my face in the bathroom mirror. I was looking for some similarity to Lía. I looked again at the photo of her on the internet. Maybe the hair colour, maybe the almond eyes. Even though mine are blue, like Ana’s. Any time someone says it, I get the mental image of her eyes in a head that was cut off from the body it belonged to.My mother’s eyes are blue, but different, colder, more transparent. But everyone has always told me I was the spitting image of my father. It would be a relief to find some proof that I’m not, or, at least, that I’m not only that.

Mateo talking about his mother and dead Aunt

I mentioned at the start of this post that I felt Piñerio is more than a crime writer.  I mentioned Georges Simenon as a writer I felt she was like.  Piñerio has mentioned him in interviews as a writer she liked, especially his Roman Durs.  This book also, at its heart, is a question around the Catholic religion and how it can make people into monsters, as the book slowly shows how Argentina viewed women within society and their roles within families. The book also references the short story of Raymond Carver of the same title. I read this as well, and I can see why it is mentioned: a blind man gets a sighted man to draw a cathedral for him.  The sighted man then goes a little over the top as they both see this cathedral drawn.  But it is the sense of blind faith and how we see things and how we view the world in a way that both stories share.  The ghost of a dead girl: how each sister had taken her own path after that death; one ran away and hated god. The other was drawn into religion even more. A story that lasts if you like tales that slowly burn, slowly unwind, that have how we view Morality, the church and family; this could have easily been set in de Valera Ireland. Have you read this or any other books by her? I have a few others to read !

 

The Assault by Harry Mulisch

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The Assault by Harry Mulisch

Dutch ficition

Original title – De Aanslag

Translator – Claire Nicolas White

Source – Personal copy

In the last year, I found two old books by Harry Mulisch. A writer who has been on my list of writers to get to at some point. I tried to read his best-known book a few years ago when Iris on Books did a read-along of Discovery of Heaven, but I just couldn’t get into it at the time. That book was also in 2007 named as the best dutch book of all time. So it is a book I want to read at some point. But in the years in between I had found three other books by him and felt it was time to read him. He was one of what the Dutch call the big three post war writers in Holland . This book was his best known until he wrote Discovery of Heaven, as it was made into a very successful film.

As her husband had done before her, she drew back from the freezing silence. Nothing stirred. There was the garden, and beyond it the barren, snow-covered lots. Anton too stood motionless. Everything was still-and yet time went by. It was as if everything grew radiant with the passage of time, like pebbles at the bottom of a brook. Peter had disappeared, a corpse lay in front of the door, and all about them the armed men remained motionless. Anton had the feeling that by doing something which was within his power but which he could not quite think of, he could undo everything and return to the way they had been before, sitting around the table playing a game. It was as if he had forgotten a name remembered a hundred times before and now on the tip of his tongue, but the harder he tried to recall it, the more elusive it became. Or it was like the time when he had suddenly realised that he was breathing in and out continuously and must make sure to keep doing it or else suffocate- and at that moment he almost did suffocate.

On that fateful night his parents died

The book centres on Anton Steenwijk. When his whole family is killed, he is the sole survivor.  This is a repercussion when a Pro-Nazi collaborator, Fake Ploeg, was found dead. His parents and siblings were among 29 people killed by the Nazis that night after one of their neighbours moved the dead man’s body in front of Anton’s parents’ house. The book is told over the next thirty-plus years, starting with the events of that evening. To Anton getting to live with his relatives after the deaths..We see how he copes with those event. Anton doesn’t want to face those events of the night, and it is many years before he returns to his old home in Haarlem.  The events of that night have a memorial to what happened. But over the years, as he ends up as a medic, he is an anesthesiologist doing well at school.  But it is in his home life you can see the damage of the night when he has two marriages and kids .  It isn’t until his kids have kids of their own that he finally faces his own ghost and past.

He finished the gymnasium as a fair to middling student and went on to medical school. By then a lot had been published about the Occupation, but he didn’t bother to read any of it, or any of the novels and stories about those days.

Nor did he go to the State Institute for War Information, where he might have found out all that was known about the death of Fake Ploeg, and exactly how Peter had met his death. The family of which he had been a member had been exterminated once and for all; it was enough to be aware of this. All he knew was that the assault had never been brought to trial, for in that case he would have been questioned.

He does well at school after all this happend

I really liked this book.  I enjoyed books that take slices of people’s lives; it’s like looking at the rings of a tree: the good years and bad years. Here, there is also how people confronted the past in Holland after the war, where the population was divided so much by those that resisted the Nazis and those that collaborated.  But over the years, we get crumbs of the events of that evening, and Anton’s own memories of that night slowly piece together. This is a thriller in a way, a book that shows how time and memory can twist and turn over time, and how one person’s memory of a night may differ from the whole course of events that night. I hope to root out the film of this at some point; it is a book that would make a great film. Have you read this book or any other books by Harry Mulisch?

Dying in Toronto by Daša Drndič

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Dying in Toronto or  Our Lady of Czestochowa is still shedding tears by Daša Drndič

Croatian Memoir

Original title – Marija Częstohowska još uvijek roni suze ili Umiranje u Torontu

Translator – Celia Hawkesworth

Source – Review copy

I have long been a fan of Drdric’s books and of her as a person after meeting her many years ago. I was so pleased that we are getting some more of her work in English; she was a writer who arrived maybe too late to us in English, with her book Trieste being the one that finally brought her to the English-speaking world.  This book follows a couple of years she lived in Exile in Canada. The longer title refers to an Icon in the city of Czestochowa that is said to look down on the Balkans; it is venerated by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. This book is set during the Serb/Croat war years.

TV NEWS ITEM

A Canadian, M. B., has patented a white wine ice-cream on a little stick from a vine, covered in chocolate. White wine ice-cream on a little stick from a vine, covered in chocolate, has become a mega hit. In some restaurants, that ice-cream is now licked on a massive scale. Glasses are used for water.

This news item made me smile some of them were funny others captures moments in time

The book follows Dasa and her daughter as they end up in Toronto.  The book is a clever mix of social observation as an outsider in Canada and of how the country first views itself as part of the New World, with insights only someone from outside the country can make.  How Dasa and he daughter settle.  The cost of exile: that longing for home in a foreign place.  Then a mix of news items as we follow her over the course of a year, first making connections, finding connections to home: paper groups of fellow exiles, news from home, to food.  Being in this new city with its own way of life, she is a great observer of people and how the country tries to help them blend in. Then a scattering of news items from near and far, rather like what Uwe Johnson did in his diaries using a clip from the New York Times every day.

Then, bookshops. The World’s Biggest Bookstore has seventeen miles of shelves and more than a million volumes, classified in fifty sections. There are smaller bookshops that are huge, there are children’s bookshops, technical, medical, art bookshops. Everything here is huge (perhaps because of the huge consumption). There are huge jars of mayonnaise (two litres), boxes of ice-cream (five), baking powder (a kilo-gram), pizzas (the size of Turkish cheese pie tins), children’s strollers (for six babies), and some people (men and women) are gigantic, with waists measuring three metres. Both fruit and vegetables are huge, but they’re bought infrequently, because they’re expensive. All this food lasts a long time and doesn’t spoil, it’s well preserved, so you only need to buy fresh supplies once or twice a month.

I love the sound of the worlds biggest bookshop

 

I will now share my take on the book and how I connected with it. I have never lived in Exile exactly, but I did live in Germany from 1992-1994 not exile, but I could connect with the loss of things you love, from food to the newspaper.  I used German papers for the English football scores, and I have always bought papers at the weekend.  But during this time, I was also working at the Jugendwerkstatt, which is how I ended up in Germany.  I worked with Dalibor, a Bosnian Croat refugee in exile.  We worked well; he spoke English better than my German and Croat.  We worked on making an air pipeline and talked about being away from family in a new place.  Then I worked in a factory and again fell in with someone from the Balkans, this time Avni.  He was a man who had worked in Kosovo on their TV football show, and we loved chatting about English footballers. He also talked about football in Kosovo.  So Dasa’s insights hit home.  I was reminded of another book I read a number of years ago, Globetrotting, that saw the Serbian in Banff observing Canada and the area from a Balkan perspective.  This was one of two books she wrote whilst there, the other being Canzone di guerra, I think this is a book that captures being an exile so well from the many ways it happens to effect you lose of place of those little things you know lose of community and then being an outsider in a totlay new place and al l this with a daughter that is becoming a teen at the same time  I have now reviewed both books here. I do hope we get to see the other books from Dasa that are still to be translated at some point!!

Happy Blogannivesary 17 years of Winstonsdad

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It seems to come around quicker every year as I pass another year of blogging, and it has been 17 years since the first blog post. In that time, as of today, 21st June, on the blog there is –

2587 posts over the last 17 years means 152 posts a year, or a post every 2.5 days, over the last 17 years

I have written 1,521,156 words over the last 17 years

1572 books reviewed, which is an average of 92 books reviewed a year I aim to hit 200 by the time the blog turns 21

From 136 countries, I slowly like adding a country every once in a while for me, the aim isn’t to read a book from every country it is depth in every country over time, so it will be much the same as I am currenttly doing where so far this year I’ve read 51 books from 22 countries 45 of those books were in translation this year so far .

 

The most read countries over  the last 17 years

  1. France 187 books
  2. Germany 126 books
  3. Italy 72 books
  4. Spain 71 Books
  5. Japan 66 books
  6. Argentina 58 books
  7. Austria 51  books
  8. England 43  Books
  9. Netherlands 37 books
  10. US 37 books

A top ten I can see over the next decade: Korea maybe coming into the top ten. The next ten countries after that are a number of Latin American countries, with over 150 Latin American books over the years.

Blog Highlights ]

Going to both the Old IFFP prize ceremony and the London Book Fair.  Getting asked to talk to the Swedish translators.  Having the blog mentioned on a book cover a few times. Doing the shadow panel, of course. Being part of the blogging community, I have still tried to comment more this last year or so. I never quite got over the loss of Google Reader for keeping up with blogs, as I still see a bright future for blogging among passion bloggers like me, where it is about reading and sharing my reading journey, not trying to be anything other than the everyman of world lit!

The coming years

I am always flirting with the idea of Vlogging but can’t see it happening. If anything, I am now going to work on the quality of the pictures on the blog for posts; try to tie the blog in with my Instagram feed more over time.  For me, this is a hobby, and I won’t be trying to make money from it. I don’t have a Ko-fi or Patreon account, or a wishlist of books I’d like for myself; this is a passion, not a way to make a little bit of money.  I pay for my WordPress these days, but I don’t mind as it means I don’t have to worry about running out of space for the blog. I aim to hit 2000 books by the time the blog turns 21 in four years’ time. I would love to maybe join in a podcast or such once in a while. I also see the trend of my review posts getting longer over time; they have slowly grown since I started the blog. I also do hope to get back to London in the near future. I also hope to meet more of my fellow bloggers over time. Here is to the next 17 years of blogging fun

On a personal note, I’d like to thank everyone for the comments, the books sent for me to read, the invites, and the chances I have been given over the last 17 years; it has made all this worth every minute.

Night Train by Xu Zechen

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Night Train by Xu Zechen

Chinese fiction

Original title – 《夜火车》Night Train

Translator – Jeremy Tiang

Source – Review copy

One of the publishers i first learnt about when I started this blog was Two lines press they are based in US they started in 2013 which is a few years after I started this blog and they are a press I have got books from when I found them as they have mainly published in the US but they are now publishing some of the books in the Uk as well which is great I was lucky to have been sent a few ttitles they have brought out in the Uk this is the first one I decided to read as it appealed .I am always searching for a Chinese novel that captures modern China, the China of huge megacities and a country that in some ways is very tech-savvy. Now this isn’t that book but Xu Zechen is a highly regarded writer and has been writing for twenty years. This book was his third novel, published in 2008; he is also the editor of the People Literature magazine and was on a list of the best writers under 41 a few years ago.

Having puked, Munian feels perfectly sober again.

Xiaoyi is an open book: Jin Xiaoyi, male, Han Chinese, thirty-five, unmarried, four previous live-in girlfriends though the good times never lasted long. Hasn’t had sex in more than a year and he’s pretty much forgotten what it feels like. Painter, mostly in oils. Taught at an art institute in Nanjing, where he staged a performance piece that irretrievably upset his bosses; a year ago, he voluntarily accepted a job teaching third-rate students in this small town. He stands by his performance piece, it was very meaningful, very humanist. He’d felt unattractive women were discriminated against at the university, so he rented the student rec center and threw a party. At the door, he charged the pretty girls while the less attractive ones got a blooming rose and free admission. For one night the tables were turned. Unfortunately, that’s not how the school saw it. He was told hed mortified the less-beautiful female comrades, and the party was shut down early.

A neighbour i did wonder if this artist was based on someone ?

The book is about Munian, a man from a poor family, who has worked as a gardener at the university and, over time, has studied and worked to the point where he can become a graduate and then pursue postgraduate studies. But he has set his mind on travelling out of his small city by train and, in particular, a night train. The night train is a Motif through out the book it is almost as thou they lead to.  Brighter Future, or do they? But when his father refuses to give him the money for this short trip, he comes up with a plan, and this is the point that pivots the novel. He then pretends he is on the run from killing someone; he goes and tells his father. He knows his father has some money that could be used for the trip his father had previously said no to, but when faced with the possibility that his son could be arrested, he gives him the money. But the pivot happens when he returns, and his father told the police what he said he did . What happens when you say you killed someone and you didn’t? It has a domino effect on his life and his studies; his life pivots from this one idea. It shows how one event can change a life, the perception of that person by others, and maybe even lead to the thought that he said he did?

On Friday, Munian gets off work early and goes to the library. Nothing to do with classical literature this time, just trains. During work, he mentioned the freight train launch to Fossil Xu, who didn’t seem surprised. “This ought to have happened long ago,” he said. “If this town had been connected to a rail line ten years ago, the whole place would be completely different. Trains are what allow economies to grow and talent to flow.” Munian has never really thought about this-to him, trains are just a manifestation of his wanderlust. “Think about it,” said Fossil Xu. “You have to see the overall picture.”This made sense to Munian, so here he is in the library.

I say trains and tain trips are a recurring them in the book

I enjoyed the way the story pivoted on that one moment, but what I found interesting was that, yes, Munian suffered for it, yet he still had a job through one of his professors. It captures a life in Limbo what happens when people lose trust. Added to this is the mix of characters we get, from the chaotic people in his dorm. There is a sense of them all being caught in a trap of studies, their world of studying; hence, when he has the train to escape this, it appeals even for a few days. Then to those he meets as he starts to fall through the cracks in society. It captures a man trying to get ahead in his life, caught by a single lie and the knock-on effect of that, but also captures the hamster wheel of studying; maybe the train is the only escape in this world a train to the day!  Do you have a favourite Modern Chinese novel ?

 

 

Monique Esacapes by Édouard Louis

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Monique Escapes by Édouard Louis

French Auto fiction

Original title – Monique s’évade

Translator John Lambert

Source –  Personal Copy

I think one of the writers whose books I have enjoyed, if that is the right word. But connected to him is Edouard Louis, whose books about his life are shocking yet also show how life can move on over time. I have read three of the five books translated into English so far, so when I was in Macclesfield last weekend, I happened to see this book on the shelf in Waterstones. I decided to get it because another thing about Louis’s books so far is that they are slim novellas that can easily be read in an evening. This is what I did with this book. I will hold my hand up, and this book had me crying it is a very long time since i did that. I’m not sure.  If the visit to Macclesfield, where my mother’s ashes are scattered, had raked up some memories about my relationship with my mum and my strained relationship with my stepfather.

The day after her escape, at eleven in the morning. I’d just woken up. I drank a couple of coffees and called her:

‘How are you today?

She looked like she was out of breath, as if she’d been running.

I’m still tired, but I’m okay. I slept a lot. I’m glad I left?

That reassured me; I’d started to worry again that she’d regret her escape and go back.

That had worried Didier too: ‘Now that she’s got the hardest part behind her, she needs to hang in there and not go back to that man. It takes so much energy to escape and break free that often, right when you’ve almost made it, you give up and go back.’

The hardest was leaving him, and it’s now a day later !

The book opens, and Edouard is on a writer’s residency in Athens when he gets a call from his mum. His mum has basically repeated the mistake of her past relationship with Edouard’s father and fallen in with a man who is a drinker but now is starting to abuse her and control her. She left her home to move in with the guy. Edouard knows this, so the book follows how, at a distance, he helps his mum get herself together, and he then helps her plan a way out of this situation. He connects to his sister, it turns out she didn’t like his book about their father, and they hadn’t spoken for years, but when he rang, they joined to help their mother.  We saw him return to Paris later in the book, and how it had empowered his mother; she was still friends with the man, but now on her own terms. The most touching section was when he invited his mother to see the staging of his book in Germany. His mother had never flown and was so proud of her son this evening.

The day of the performance and our trip approaches. She talks about it a lot and as we talk I become fully aware of all the dimensions of our imminent departure for Ger-many: my mother has never crossed a border in her life, she’s never seen a country other than her own, apart from one afternoon on a boat off the coast of England with her school, just a few kilometres from the port town in the north of France where she grew up, she’s never walked down a street and heard a language other than her own, she’s never been in contact with another culture, another civilisation, she’s fifty-seven years old and she’s never taken a plane in her life, she’s never seen the sky from the inside and the earth from the sky, she’s never slept in a hotel room, she’s never been to the theatre, except to see a few school plays when she was around ten or twelve, she’s never seen a real performance directed by a real director, of course, she’s never seen a show in which she’s the main protagonist, she’s never been invited to travel by an institution the way artists or politicians can be.

His mother did so many firsts on the trip with Édouard.

I think Louis is maybe one of the best writers at capturing the horror life can bring. Whether in the past his relationship with his Father or in this case the horror of the repetition of the past in his mother’s life. He shows how people can escape violence, and over the course of the book, we see Louis’ mother grow in confidence. This was the first time in her whole life she had lived by herself. The freedom to just do nothing and live her life on her terms shows a woman growing. As I say, I connected with this book on a personal level. The things I  should have said to my mother when she was alive about her world that haunts me still. If you liked his other books or books from the likes of Annie Ernaux, this is a male writer who voices his life like hers. Have you read anything by Édouard Louis ?

 

April showers of books the catch up

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  1. Surgical ward 9 by Peyami Safa
  2. They by Helle Helle 
  3. Every Day I read by Hwang Bo-Reum
  4. Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichirō Tanizaki
  5. The Thief and the dog by Naguib Mahfouz
  6. Betty by Georges Simenon 
  7. One Hand Clapping by Anthony Burgess 

I slowed down last month. Had a number of days off but managed 7 reviews, two new publishers with Thousand Horsemne Press, and the classic Surgical Ward 9, which captured a young man’s life in hospital as he struggled with Bone cancer. Then, after a long gap, the second book by Helle Helle came from Akoya. In fact, this also saw a hospital as part of the story. This time, it is a daughter looking after a sick mother. Then a book about Reading from Korea, a mad old man again in the hospital for part of the book.  A man goes out for revenge after he is released from prison, tries to get revenge on those that put him there, from a Nobel winner in Naguib Mahfouz, then a twisty dark tale from Georges Simenon for Club 1961 and then a lesser-known book from Anthony Burgess about a couple winning a lot of money on a quiz show with really hard literature questions.

Books of the month

iI I picked two books this month, both dealing with ill health. The first is from the point of view of a young man in a hospital falling for a slightly older girl who captures his eye as he struggles with his condition. Then a daughter has her life turned upside down when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the life they had is flipped on its head. Told in HELLE helle sparse style, it’s like the Lego does what it needs to, you know what it is and needs no more than she has written.

Non-book events

Well it was Record store day another early start and a bag full of recordss but a while after two records really stand out the first is a full live show by Adrianne lenker fragile voice is at its most vunerable in this album then a record I hadn’t planned to get until the actual day Tanita Tikaram acoustic is just great her voice is still as erie and unusal as it was thirty plus year ago. We had a day in York last weekend, after Amanda had surgery this month, we needed a day out together. Yesterday we started watching the Apple series Widows Bay, a comedy-horror series with a slice of Stephen King, set on an island where the islanders think they are cursed in New England.

Month Ahead

I have seen on Instagram that there is an African reading month next month, and I will read a couple of books for this month, then I have long Admired how Simon at stuck in a book manages to review a Book a day every May, I have tried to do this a few times and failed so as my own challenge I have 14 days off this month including today I would like to publish 15-20 reviews next month I have a number of read and unreviewed books on the to be reviewed pile and a number of short books at hand to read. It is an idea for the month; it may help me get back to a blogging routine which disappeared last month. I am of the mind these days that I like the idea of doing something if I do it well and good, but it is the trying that often makes the thing worthwhile. What are your plans for Next Month?

 

The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre

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The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre

Italian fiction

Original title – Il Duca

Translator – Antonella Lettieri

Source – Subscription book

When the Booker longlist came out, I was pleased to see this on it, as I have been a fan of Foundry Press since it first appeared a couple of years ago and have a subscription with them, so I had this book on my TBR.  Matteo Mmelchiorre is a director of the library and museum Cstelfranco Vento, which is where the book is set in Northern Italy.  He studies the Middle Ages. He has also written about the region’s mountains and forests.  It is good to see how this book has been inspired by the world he lives in and the history he is interested in.

There were perhaps ten crows. Clattering. Cawing. Careening. Blind with fury. They were whirling in a frantic fray, striking each other again and again. Then, all of a sudden, they scattered, darting in opposite directions and, in the newly cleared sky, only a knot of wings remained, an entangled tussle which twisted and swirled and eventu-ally, as if struck by shot, plummeted through the air.

But as soon as the tangle hit the ground, right in the courtyard of the house, I discerned a buzzard instead: open beak, frightful eyes, low wings. The buzzard was pinning a young black crow to the ground, trapping it with its talons, and the crow was flapping its wings, and twisting its head, and wriggling, searching for some prospect of salvation.

The opening of the book and the Buzzard and Crow

The book, he said in the Booker interview, had many inspirations, but the fight he saw between a crow and a buzzard was one of them. I have seen a similar thing in the peaks near her birds of prey, where crows have tackled them. Maybe the scene itself is in part of the book, the buzzard, a solitary bird, a regal bird, and the crow live in groups, a common bird scavening its way. The book follows the duke, who is actually a count, a man stuck in his villa like his family has been for centuries.  What happens when he finds the big man from the village is taking his timber?  That is the kernel of the book, like the birds’ two classes coming together, and it is about the duke, an odd man, quirky solo figure, the last of a line of his family, in a way, maybe a sign of years of inbreeding, then the community around him suffers due to him having the land.  Then there are little pieces about the nature and the natural world they are in. This is the old feudal world of the past, and a village wanting to move into the modern world.

So, by calling me The Duke, the villagers were either implying that I was as eccentric as my grandfather, though inevitably of a quite different sort of eccentricity, or they were mocking the decline of my lineage. A decline which, after all, was most evident, and by virtue of which they could finally enjoy the sight of a Cimamonte with no servants and no tenants and with scratched-up hands and hardened nails.

In any case, I did not care what the village said or thought about me. I was certain that I was already living out the best fate I could possibly desire. Nothing important ever happened during the course my days. Nothing complex ever perplexed my gaze. No exception to my routine. No decision blocking my way. I lived in the best condition to which a man of my nature could aspire – the perfect, ideal condition.

But now, on an afternoon like any other, Nelso Tabióna had come to rap on my windowpane to tell me that, up in the Mountain, in my woods, I had been had.

The duke is actually a count aqqnd the nature is here in the passage I picked

For me, this is a clever book; if it had an NYRB cover, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a rediscovered classic, given the scope and twists of the story. But for me, the one book I thought of a lot was actually Gormenghast. Both books are set in remote settings, and both deal with a crumbling royal family. Both tackle modern subjects, but also set the books in an unknown time frame. Nature is big in both as well. I think I may be the only person who thinks this. There is a mention of ECO in reviews and 19th-century classics. The Foundry, in a recent Instagram post, pointed readers to Trollope and Hardy, whom the writer said inspired him. Of course, The Leopard is another book that has been mentioned as it also deals with a family line crumbling. The writer has also mentioned another Italian book, Deliver us by Luigi Meneghelli, as his bible while writing this book, a book set in a village that explores the writer’s relationship with the land.  This is maybe the most unusual book on the longlist. It is a modern book that reads like a classic novel, with some contemporary ideas about nature and society. It took the translator a while to get the duke’s voice right, she said, as it is very hard to capture the exact Italian nature of his voice. Have you read this book?

 

 

The Witch by Marie Ndiaye

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The Witch by Marie Ndiaye

French fiction

Original title – La Sorcière

Translator  – Jordan Stump

Source – Review copy

I was pleased to see Marie Ndiaye’s name on the longlist when it came out, as I have reviewed three of her other books over the years. She won the Prix Goncourt for her book Three Strong Women in 2009, but it was published 13 years earlier, in 1996.  I’m pleased to see her older books have been coming out. I have a few of hers to catch up on, but this is a book that shows how good a writer she was before the Goncourt win, a book about small-town life with a clever twist.  This is one of two books on the longlist with a witch theme.  This is set in a version of the near past where magic is still alive but hidden.

When we first came to this little city, two years before, I made the mistake of telling Isabelle about my powers, optimistically thinking I might try to initiate her, since after all nothing forbade passing the gift on to women who weren’t my daughters, and because Isabelle seemed a person of some importance who, I thought at the time, 1 wanted on my side. She reigned uncontested over our little sub-division, her authority not founded in any store of objective virtues, for Isabelle was neither pretty nor intelligent, nor hardworking nor thoughtful, nor even subtly and perversely magnetic, but rather (that authority imposed as a historical fact, duly imparted from neighbor to neighbor.

Isabelle and her husband were the first to build here; from that arrival on the still-virgin land at the gates of the city she’d drawn the need to serve in some sense as the memory of us all, we who were appearing from all over the region, and even the country. It was from Isabelle that we learned what had to be known of this or that neighbor’s ways to keep from upsetting the general entente of the neighbor-hood, and should anyone attempt to break off with Isabelle so she wouldn’t come barging in several afternoons a week she made it clear that she would turn the entire subdivision against them with her unscrupulous gift for gossip.

Her powers were small but she told the town gossip

This is a book about family secrets and small towns. It happens that the witch’s nature in the book adds a clever twist. It is about being a mother and a wife in a loveless marriage.  At the heart iof the story is the split between the parents, Lucie and Pierot.  He is very controlling of Lucie. They have twin daughters, Maud and Lise, who are just at the cusp of becoming Teens.  Their mother, Lucie, is from a line of witches, and at this age the girls must discover whether they possess the clairvoyant powers passed down through the family’s female line. Will they bleed tears of blood, a sign you have the power, and will they have it more than their mother, who can only see things in the present moment, not inj the future?  What happens when their powers initially seemed like their mothers’ but over time grow, and the tears come? What happens is a story about secrets, the family’s past, other family members, as their gifts grow over time , and a mother trying to keep it all together. As real life and the surreal world of magic blend into one.

My father opened his big arms wide, and Maud and Lise, delighted by this display, rushed gigglingly toward him. I was surprised to see the gray streaks I knew so well dyed a bluish black that contrasted with his brown hair.

And on top of that he was tanner, thinner, he now had a certain dandyish, youthful elegance, but when, with overplayed enthusiasm, he ordered Maud and Lise to gallop through the rooms—and they launched off with a sound of furious hoofbeatsI saw that he seemed worried and jittery. He grabbed me by the shoulder and, in the tone he probably used to talk business in his Rue de Rivoli of-fice, he beseeched me to return, as quickly as possible, the 120,000 francs hed recently given me on the occasion of his promotion. Then he dropped onto his new couch, red leather, sueded, and added, avoiding my eye:

They Lucie parents as they discover more about the girls powers

I love Ndiaye’s writing style. She has twisty sentences that draw you in as a reader. This is a tale that blends the everyday with the fantastic in a small-town setting. A mother who struggles when her daughters have more power than she does is both a common tale of mothers wanting daughters nearby and a story about daughters having the chance to go further than their mother has because of their powers. It sees what happens when the daughter’s eyes are opened to the full scale of the powers and how it can change their lives, and what about their selfish Father in all this?  I was pleased when this arrived it was the last book I needed when it arrived and the one I most want to read when the short list came out as I am a fan of Ndiaye this is a book from a writer growing not a polished as the other books I have read but they are twenty years older this was her early on in her writing career and great to see a book that mix the everyday and a pinch of magirc realism all that and a tale of a family at a crossroads due to the twins powers and what it means for their mothe Lucie and them themselves!

The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje

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The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje

Dutch Fiction

Original title – De herinnerde soldaat

Translator – David Mckay

Source – Personal Copy

I have long been a fan of Dutch literature; for a small country, it has a unique voice in much of its literature. Cees Nooteboom said this when I asked him about Dutch literature.

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 recognize 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

This is a perfect example as it is a book that came out on a small regional publisher and had almost slipped under the radar until an NRC review and further coverage gave the book legs, so to speak, and it won a number of awards in Holland. Then also a number of prizes in the US, including the Republic of Consciousness Prize, which it won this week. Anjet had written a number of novels before this had such success, and her next book has already been lined up for Translation.

On the train he sits opposite her on the hard wooden bench, their knees not quite touching, and the locomotive labors noisily across the quiet green Flemish countryside with a din that drowns out anything they might say to each other and even his thoughts, and he looks outside, it’s a dizzyingly beautiful world, all those colors and spreading waves of grass and floating white cities of cloud, and if this was around him all that time, unfathom-able and infinitely vast, how is it possible there existed a life such as his, imprisoned within the asylum’s cramped walls, as if in one mighty sweep he’s been erased, that’s how he feels, and he tries not to think about it, he must not under any circumstances have another attack like the one on the platform, and he knows she is thinking about the same thing, because from time to time he catches her looking distrustfully in his direction.

that last line as they head home caught me !

The book is really a two-hander story.  It stars Asylum, as they have a man in 1922, a number of years after the war has ended, who still has no memory of who he is, and no one has come forward to claim him. So they put his picture in the newspaper, hoping to find his family.  There are a number of women who come and go who view Noon Merckem as the man, who is called after the time and place he was found. But no one claims him, then Juliennecomes and says he is her husband, Amand, a photographer with kids. She takes him home and this is where the story begins he is in a room in the studio sleeping as they get to know each pother but this room is used as the studio and has a war scene in the room so as he sleeps every night and relives the horror he has seen you do wonder why Julieene is letting this Amand has no memories of there life and as s=they try to connect you do wonder if he is Amand or what happened. He agrees to pose with widows as their lost loves as part of the photograph business ..As they grow close, is this the real Amand that Julienne is painting to him or a new version of the man? The two of them try to find Amand again and, over time, grow closer, but is it all it seems?

And he sits down and lights the gaslight, and the world leaps back into place, chillingly real, as if it had been lurking by the wayside, and his panic does not die down, he no longer dares to go back to sleep and lies waiting in silence until first light, in the distance he hears a train pass, another, another, and a faraway church bell strikes five, the first cart in the street, hooves on the paving blocks, and then more carts and footsteps and voices, and the half-light of early morning creeps comfortingly across the backyard and into the studio. And when the church bell strikes half past five he gets dressed, but the house is still deep in sleep, and six o’clock, and still no one is up, and at quarter past six the church bells ring in the distance for early Mass, a familiar sound, and she, the children, Felice, everyone sleeps on, not until seven does he hear the steps creak and a door open, and then the toilet flushing, and when he recognizes her voice and Rose’s he goes upstairs, and on the stairs he runs into Gus coming down with the coal scuttle, and Amand says good morning and offers to carry the coal for him, but Gus squeezes past without a word.

At home with the family amd the Studio

I was so pleased when this made the Booker longlist. It had been a personal Christmas gift I had brought with Money I was given at Christmas, and it was high on my list to get this year. It is a book a bout war, which I always enjoy. The aftermath of World War I has been covered by other writers like Pat Barker and Rebecca West, both of whom deal with the Trauma and mental aftermath of War. None deal directly with anaemia, though, and this was inspired in part by actual events.  There were people photographed in the papers and claimed by people, particularly the case of the Frenchman, Anthelme Mangin, who had two people fighting over him. This story inspired two novels. For me, the way the family was photographed was interesting as images can be altered and changed, and is this story a life being retouched or a life being altered? Is he Amand, is he the Amand he was, or the one his wife has invented? The book makes you wonder what is real, what is made up, and how far people will go.

We are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

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We are Geen and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Argentinian fiction

Original title – Las niñas del naranjal

Translator – Robin Myers

Source – Personal copy

I have read the two other books to have come out in English from this writer, and I was.  A fan of Slum Virgins, which was her Debut book.  But this had been on my radar, not least because both the UK and US editions of the book have very eye-catching cover art, so I would have got to see that she is part of this wonderful crop of strong female voices from Latin America.  I often say that, over the 16-plus years I have been around the blogosphere, the nature of Latin American fiction has shifted from very Male-heavy to fairly even these days.  Gabriella is a creative writing teacher, so she will no doubt be setting forth the next generation of great Argentine writers for us all to read.  This book, like the other book, features a woman in a male world, this time living as a man in the New World.  Antonio is writing back to her home and the priory where her aunt, the Prioress of the Basque Priory, lives.

…that is a story I will tell you in time, dear aunt. Let me tell you now about the fragrances of the forest, which are strong as the spirits soldiers drink, as village rotgut, and about the other flowers, mammoth and fleshy and carnivorous, nearly beasts, for bere in the jungle the animals bloom and the plants bite, and I believe I have even seen them walking, I swear this to you, and leaping, for vines do leap; all things seethe bere, whereas the forest rustles, as well you know; I remember your attention to the presence of the fox, with its faint rustle of leaves in your forest, and to the bear, with its beavy rustle of trunks and branches; the forest rustles, but not the jungle, the jungle seethes, full of eyes; life surges inside it as lava surges in volcanoes, as if the lava were trees and birds and musbrooms and monkeys and coatis and coconuts and snakes and ferns and caimans and tigers and trumpet trees and fish and vipers and palms and rivers and fronds, and all other things within it were amalgams of these primary ones.

Writing to the Aunt about the world she is in the New World

The book is a mix of these letters home.  Narrative it tells the tale of Antonio in her adventures in the New World or Cayalina as she was known has seen it all the violence of the old world hanging death of native culture as the conquestordors move opn the the country as they are trying to conquer the New world and this is how He Antoino has ended up with a ragtag bunch around him two Two Gurani girls he saved from a life of slavery a couple of monkeys hand horse in this Jugle where the world becomes a mix of dreams and nightmares as she recounts the vents she had seen to get where she had been with her jounrey to the new world from singing on a ship to the various other jobs he had along the way ad s the book goes on the Jungle itself is almost a character as the bunch try to escape can the find a place this is a book that has a lot of layers for such a short book.

He hears the rattle. A snake. He’s lucky to have his sword within reach. A bit blunted but better than nothing. He stands, armed, and stamps the earth with his feet. He listens. Silence, save the growls of the dog slowly calming. The horses wander back. He wants to keep writing. He needs to leave the girls somewhere safe. The tree. He wraps them in his cape. Michi is so weak that he supports her head by pulling the cloth taut.

He puts the monkeys in, too, binding them to his back, and climbs. He lays them down in a nest-like gathering of boughs and ties the cape to the strongest branch. He sits with them.

An African once told him tales of enormous serpents. One had swallowed an elephant. It looked like a hat, said the man. His troops wouldn’t need an enormous one to devour them. Any old serpent could gobble the girls and the monkeys for breakfast.

In the jungle it is alive at times

I think this is a book that maybe could have done with being a little longer.  There are a lot of ideas, the church, religion, the new world, woman in a man’s world, so many, it is like it has been stuffed into a box and is fit to burst.  I feel that maybe means the book suffers at times; it is a great book.  I still like SLum virgin best of her books, but that may just be me being a reader who finds books set near my own time much easier to connect with.  The main character is based on a real figure from the time, a woman who lived as a man in the New World.  I kept going back to the Filmsof Werner Herzog set in the New World and imagining if Klaus Kinski’s character Aguiree had been had been a trans character in the Jungle, it would be like this book a man tinged by the violence of the world they are in another film that cmae to mind around the two girls was Apocalypto the shere violence that is seen at times.  I believe the writer herself has highlighted Studio Ghibli as an influence on her writing.  I just felt it would have been a better five-hundred-page book than the 200 it is, and I rarely think that it is a book jam-packed with ideas and history, and a character at the heart of the book that should have been better known as a trailblazer for their time.  Have you read this or any of her other books ?

The Deserters by Mathias Enard

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The Deserters Mathias Enard

French fiction

Original title – Déserter

Translator – Charlotte Mandell

Source – Subscription edition

One of the benefits of having a Fitzcarradlo subscription in recent years has been knowing I may have a couple of books that make the International Booker longlist and are in with a chance at least.  They publish so many great books in Translation.  So when this made the longlist, I was happy as I hadn’t got round to finishing his last novel after reviewing a number of his books.  It was nice to step back into his world, which is uniquely his. Enard has a writing style that is all his own. His books all vary.  Still, they are all well-written in various styles,s and this is an odd little gem.  It turns out this book was being written as the Ukrainian war started, and that led to the second narrative in the book, which follows a deserter from the war.

Angel, my holy guardian, protector of my body and soul, forgive me for all the sins committed on this day and deliver me from the works of the enemy, despite the warmth of the prayer the night remains a beast fed on anguish, a beast with breath of blood, cities in ruins full of mothers brandishing the mutilated corpses of their children faced with scruffy hyenas that will torture them, then leave them naked, dirty, their nipples torn with teeth under the eyes of their brothers raped in turn with trun-cheons, terror stretched over the country, plague, hatred, and darkness, this darkness that always envelops you and urges you towards cowardice and treason. Flight and desertion. How much time is there left to walk? The border is a few days from here, beyond the mountains that will soon become hills of red earth, planted with olive trees. It will be difficult to hide. Many villages, towns, farmers, soldiers, you know the region, you are home here,

no one will help a deserter,

you’ll reach the house in the mountain tomorrow, the cabin, the hovel, you’ll take refuge there for a little while,

There is a poetic touch to the Deserters story

As i said the book has two story lines they are seperate maybe at some point you could say the characters in each book have been in the same place the first story uses a point in history to look back in time that is 9/11 and instead of being inj America it follows an event that is happeniong on that day on a boat in Berlin there is a conferecnce i=on a Mathmatematician Paul Heudeber, One of the think I found is was this a real person it wasn’t but a mix of various figures that had walked a similar path and that was breinbg looked up for being against the  Nazis   Still, with his mind, he was in Buchenwald and opted to head to the east after the war.  We are learning about his life alongside his daughter, who is trying to find out more about her father: he was a mathematician and a poet. She didn’t know himmeanwhile the other story follows an unnamed man that has ruin off from war a deserrter as he finds a woman and a donkey in a hinterland of scrubland the beauty oif this mis the lack of place and time was it a event that has happened ort is going to happen as I say there isn’t much that runs in between the stories just the aftermath of war in different times and places and how it lays bare peoples lifes.

I have to go back over what happened over twenty years ago, on 11 September 2001, near Potsdam on the Havel, on board the cruise boat, a little river liner christened with the fine pompous name Beethoven.

Summer seemed to be wavering. The willows were still green, the days still warm, but a freezing fog would rise from the river before dawn and immense clouds seemed to be gliding over us, from the distant Baltic.

Our floating hotel had left Köpenick east of Berlin very early in the morning, on Monday. Maja was always alert, spry. She would go up to the top deck to walk, a stroll between showers, deck chairs and deck games. The green domes and golden spire of the Berlin cathedral captivated her, from afar, when we arrived. She was imagining, she said, all the little gilt angels leaving their stone prison to fly off into a cloud of acanthus leaves blown by the sun.

The water of the Spree was sometimes a dull, dark blue, sometimes a glowing green. During the preceding weeks, all of Germany had been rocked by storms; their aftermaths swelled the Havel and the Spree, which usually were quite low at summer’s end

We navigated through the swirling water.

the conference on the boat

I am a huge fan of Enarrd.  This book is an odd tale.  It is easy to see, with a panel of judges that includes two Mathematicians, that a book featuring a fictional Mathematician would make the longlist.  But the second narrative inspired by the Ukraine war shows the horror of war on the mind, the need to escape war, the way it affects not just the Soldier but also the woman and her donkey.  People may dislike the lack of detail in the story; in fact, they may think it is l lazyStill, forr me it is a brilliant touch of not placing that narrative in a place or time and thus making the story work now, in fact, with the Iran war, how many men and women are wandering out of the scrublands of Iran, lebabanon or the Gulf states it is weird how a book is maybe more relevant than when the longlist was announced a clever mix of family, war, the horrors of war lose and all this brought together by one of the best living writers Enard. Do you have a favourite book by Enard?