Recently finished books?

[Phil D]

?? Rodolfo Walsh - Operación Masacre (++)

Journalistic investigation into the brutal murder of five civilians and the attempted murder at least six others at the hands of Argentinian state apparatus in 1956. Parts of the book were published in small news publications while the events described were still being investigated. This final edition dates from 1972, two years after the then-president was himself extrajudicially executed by an insurgent group, in part as punishment for his role in these murders, and five years before the author would be kidnapped and murdered by a later dictatorial regime.

The narrative begins by introducing the victims and the circumstances that led them to be kidnapped and to face an ad hoc firing squad in the middle of the night, as well as the survivors' flight and subsequent movements – in some cases, re-arrest and imprisonment in conditions paramount to torture. The book then goes on to describe the official investigation into the events and the actions of those involved (both directly and higher up) to cover up their deeds.

The number of people involved (at least 11 victims and innumerable perpetrators with varying degrees of involvement) and the details of the investigation are sometimes difficult to follow, but that's more the fault of the reader than the author here, since the facts are the facts and don't permit distortion for the sake of comprehensibility. The author is also clear on points where he has not been able to verify exactly what occurred, and says from the beginning that the whole story will never be known – a merit I always appreciate in any narrative that claims to be factual.

The intention in writing the book is clearly to recreate in the reader the author's indignation and anger upon learning the story. Nearly 70 years on, it still completely succeeds.

 

[tiganeasca]

?? Cyprian Ekwensi, People of the City
This is the story of Amusa Sango, crime reporter and dance-band leader, in Lagos (unnamed in the book) in the early 1950s. According to the publisher (Heinemann), Sango eventually “comes to see that what he can do for the developing country in which he lives is more important than the considerable and varied personal pleasures he can find in the hectic life of the city.” That may have been Ekwensi’s intention…or the publisher’s hope but I was never convinced that Sango ever came to see that. He thinks about bigger issues, to be sure. He has moments when he feels guilty for pursuing his smaller pleasures as well as for failing to seize opportunities to act on his better instincts. But the book ends as it began, with no discernible (to me) change in his behavior. Ekwensi paints a vivid, convincing portrait of life in the big city but I was disappointed that several hundred pages later, Sango is acting no differently than he did at the outset. Of course, the book is significant enough that NYRB Books decided to reprint it in 2020, so perhaps my disillusionment is overstated. But I leave the final word to M.A. Orthofer (of The Complete Review) who summarized his thoughts this way: “There's enough to People of the City for it to be of interest—indeed, one of the problems with the book is that there is so much scattered in it, too little of which is followed-up or presented in sufficient depth. Ekwensi's writing is uneven and often rough, but there's some impressive color to it too; even where the story sputters, the writing mostly carries it through.” I agree.

?? Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
A classic of children’s literature (published in 1908) that I never heard or read as a child and somehow never got around to reading until now. A great pity. I have no doubt whatsoever that I would have loved this as a child; one of my delights was the edition I read had absolutely wonderful illustrations. The storyline is simple: two friends, Mole and Rat—together with Badger and a small, assorted cast of others—devote their energies to saving Mr. Toad from his lack of judgment. There are a number of short adventures tucked in as well and a truly lovely, evocative paean to the English countryside runs throughout. The animals’ personalities are beautifully drawn and I cannot imagine any child (or adult, for that matter) who would not be enchanted by this gentle tale. Highly recommended.

?? Armijn Pane, Shackles +
I should open by making clear that I found the plot and the writing to be of decidedly mediocre quality. Ah, but the themes. The surface story, a fairly melodramatic love triangle, is pretty much a waste of time if read literally. The publisher’s blurb on the back cover suggests a way to approach it, though, making clear that the story “illustrates the confusion experienced by many Indonesians of the pre-independence generation as they struggled to overcome problems stemming from their tradition-bound society.” The story takes place in the 1930s when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony and the independence movement was being firmly repressed. Dr. Tono insists on keeping those customs he considers worth keeping even as the country modernizes and he likewise believes that he has earned the status of an educated, middle-class Indonesian. Despite this, he is unable to understand that his wife is a dynamic, talented woman who in turn wants the freedoms and rights that the emancipation of women will confer. But like her husband, she too has a blind spot and is unable (or unwilling) to understand that those freedoms cannot be had in the society she lives in—at least without a price she is unwilling to pay. Each demands the respect “due” to them in a society where those things are (and have long been) rigidly codified and based on community—not the individual. The doctor’s mistress has the emancipated life that the doctor’s wife wants but she has earned those freedoms at a fearful price. Taken together, the three (and their relations with each other) capture the tensions in Indonesian society in that period. The pity is that their inner thoughts and conversations are so poorly written. Shackles is said to be the first modern Indonesian psychological novel and was poorly received at first because of its nuanced depiction of prostitution and adultery. Despite its serious failings, it can still be appreciated as a significant milestone in the development of the modern Indonesian novel. It has been frequently translated and won the inaugural Indonesian Literary Prize in 1969. (If you are interested, there is an excellent, in-depth review at a website I just discovered that is quite impressive: ANZ LitLovers LitBlog.)

?? Thanassis Valtinos, Deep Blue Almost Black
This slim volume contains two works: a group of short stories (under the name “You Will Find My Bones Under Rain”) and the title novella. (I tried and failed to finish the novella.) The dozen stories span a period from 1960 to 1991, a tumultuous period in modern Greek history (there was a military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974). Although the translation is competent (the English is occasionally stilted), the translators’ introduction helps make sense of his career and his work. Valtinos is a highly honored writer in Greece and has not only written novels, novellas, and short stories but also film scripts and has even translated classical Greek drama for the modern stage. The stories collected here are generally all strong, though a few are a bit less convincing than others. They portray illness, imprisonment, alienation, mental illness, and death. One striking story (“The Plaster Cast”) though Kafkaesque when taken literally, is far more powerful when understood as a metaphor for Greece itself, particularly considering the story’s appearance in defiance of the military dictatorship when published in 1970. The story is narrated by an injured worker whose uncommunicative doctors eventually cover his entire body in plaster, eventually covering even his eyes and his mouth. The patient's anxieties are reflected in his increasingly desperate struggle to stay tethered to reality. I also liked the title story which relates the events surrounding the construction of a small chapel as a memorial to a woman’s parents. The chapel’s construction is accompanied by stories of groans coming from a bag of disinterred bones, of people being visited by long-forgotten martyrs, and by a veritable Greek chorus of women eager to establish the cult of a new saint. A writer to read more of.

 

[tiganeasca]

?? Sembene Ousmane, God's Bits of Wood
The plot—a lengthy strike by railroad workers on the Dakar-Niger railway in the late 1940s against French colonial power—initially struck me as a story I couldn’t work up much interest in. I am extremely pleased to say that I was totally wrong. This may be the best of what I have read of this prolific author, a recounting of personalities, the day-to-day costs of a strike both psychologically and physically. Time and again, Ousmane brilliantly describes the struggle of the strikers’ families to eat, the political discussions of the strike leaders…even the behind-the-scenes plotting of the French. It is not a short work and yet I found myself sorry to turn the last page, wanting to know more about the stories of the people and of their lives. Ousmane’s writing is strong and his characterizations—particularly of the many women who play significant roles in the story—are excellent.

?? Joseph Roth, The Legend of the Holy Drinker +
I had somehow overlooked this novella, one of Roth’s last works (published posthumously in 1939, the year Roth died). There is an elegiac fable-like tone, although a mere recounting of the story sounds light and superficial: a homeless vagrant in Paris is given 200 francs by a mysterious stranger who requests that if the money is ever repaid, that it be given to the priest at the nearby church of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Almost predictably, the man spends the money unwisely. Then, by a series of fortuitous events—are they lucky breaks or are they miracles?—more money comes to him. Twice. The story is concerned quite simply with what happens each time he comes into new money. But the simplicity of the story is belied by Roth’s enormous talent as a writer. What would have been unworthy of the time it took to read in the hands of many writers is here transformed into a deeply thoughtful, dry-eyed parable.

??/?? Maria Dermoût, Yesterday +
Several years ago, I read Dermoût’s best-known work, The Ten Thousand Things. That book contained a series of interconnected stories about life in Indonesia in the early 20th century and I concluded that it was “astonishingly evocative of a time and place, wonderfully lyrical, (dismayingly) short, and a true pleasure to read.” Dermoût (1888-1962) was an “Indo”—a child of Dutch parents born and raised in Indonesia. She wrote The Ten Thousand Things when she was 67. Yesterday is her first work—also a thinly disguised memoir of growing up in a certain time and place—written when she was 63. This work also relies on nostalgia and, though I enjoyed it very much, it didn’t move me as much as The Ten Thousand Things. Still, both books are very successful at evoking her love of place. She is particularly good at observing plants and wildlife, local culture (both Dutch colonial and indigenous), and she has a knack for describing a way of life by painting exceptional portraits of people and their relationships.

?? Sarat Chandra Chatterji*, Devdas and other stories
One of the joys of reading is discovering writers who are new to us whose work we quickly discover we enjoy enormously. Although the works of many Bengali authors have especially resonated with me for many years, I had never heard of Sarat Chandra Chatterji. I happened to find a copy of a selection of his works in a used bookstore and was intrigued by the contents: excerpts from his two most famous novels and a selection of short stories. Devdas, probably his best-known work, is a love story about childhood sweethearts. Devdas refuses to marry Parvati when she proposes to him because he is unable to overcome his parents’ objections. They go their separate ways but the self-destructive Devdas spends the rest of his (often dissipated) life, regretting his decision. He develops a relationship with another woman but is unable to forget Parvati and continues making poor choices, eventually returning one last time to see her in as heart-breaking a final scene as I can recall. The story has been the subject of nearly two dozen film versions throughout India (beginning in 1928 as a silent film and continuing up through 2019) and is said to be the most filmed non-epic story in Indian history. Given the uniformly high quality of his writing in the two novels contained here as well as the several stories, I can only wonder how sad it is that his name is so little known in the West.

*It is worth noting that his last name sometimes appears as Chatterji (the Anglicized version) and sometimes as Chattopadhyay (the Sanskritized version). In addition, sometimes the first name is given as a single name--Saratchandra--and sometimes as two names.

 

[dc007777]

?? Sembene Ousmane, God's Bits of Wood
The plot—a lengthy strike by railroad workers on the Dakar-Niger railway in the late 1940s against French colonial power—initially struck me as a story I couldn’t work up much interest in. I am extremely pleased to say that I was totally wrong. This may be the best of what I have read of this prolific author, a recounting of personalities, the day-to-day costs of a strike both psychologically and physically. Time and again, Ousmane brilliantly describes the struggle of the strikers’ families to eat, the political discussions of the strike leaders…even the behind-the-scenes plotting of the French. It is not a short work and yet I found myself sorry to turn the last page, wanting to know more about the stories of the people and of their lives. Ousmane’s writing is strong and his characterizations—particularly of the many women who play significant roles in the story—are excellent.

I just pieced together that he is also a famous director. I'm jealous of artists who excel in multiple mediums!

 

[kpjayan]

?? Sarat Chandra Chatterji*, Devdas and other stories
One of the joys of reading is discovering writers who are new to us whose work we quickly discover we enjoy enormously. Although the works of many Bengali authors have especially resonated with me for many years, I had never heard of Sarat Chandra Chatterji. I happened to find a copy of a selection of his works in a used bookstore and was intrigued by the contents: excerpts from his two most famous novels and a selection of short stories. Devdas, probably his best-known work, is a love story about childhood sweethearts. Devdas refuses to marry Parvati when she proposes to him because he is unable to overcome his parents’ objections. They go their separate ways but the self-destructive Devdas spends the rest of his (often dissipated) life, regretting his decision. He develops a relationship with another woman but is unable to forget Parvati and continues making poor choices, eventually returning one last time to see her in as heart-breaking a final scene as I can recall. The story has been the subject of nearly two dozen film versions throughout India (beginning in 1928 as a silent film and continuing up through 2019) and is said to be the most filmed non-epic story in Indian history. Given the uniformly high quality of his writing in the two novels contained here as well as the several stories, I can only wonder how sad it is that his name is so little known in the West.

*It is worth noting that his last name sometimes appears as Chatterji (the Anglicized version) and sometimes as Chattopadhyay (the Sanskritized version). In addition, sometimes the first name is given as a single name--Saratchandra--and sometimes as two names.

Apart from the epics ( Ramayana and Mahabharata), this story arguably, had the maximum film adaptation for an Indian text. The word 'devdas' has now become synonymous to the 'self-destructive, alcohol addict, loser in the indian context. Haven't seen many book that has influenced the indian psyche as much as this has done.

 

[kpjayan]

?? Martin Wickramasinghe - Kaliyugaya : Part 2 of the Uprooted Trilogy. The story shift to Colombo, focusing on themes and conflicts like urban-rural , rich-middle class, caste-class-religion, modern/western influence-traditional values. Or more about the post colonial Sri Lanka and it's journey into a modern state, through the life of a family. Nothing remarkable about the style, language ( translation ) or structure, though.

?? Gaston Leroux - Phantom of the Opera : Usually, I read the book and watch the movie adaptation. This case, reading the book after I've already watched 2 different movie versions.

?? Mark de Silva - Points of Attack : I'm interested in the views of the modern philosophers - especially the 21st century thinkers on the new world order and haven't come across any serious writings ( Suggestions welcome). Mark de Silva covers a vast variety of topics in short essays of a page or two. While by themselves they are interesting, I found a general lack of depth or the serious intellectual deliberations on any of these. Left me disappointed, largely.

??/ ?? Aubrey Menen - The Ramayana : Irish born writer, whose father is an Indian, who spent his last days of life in Kerala. This is his 'version' of the Ramayana, claiming the original Ramayana of Valmiki, has undergone changes , modification to fit the narrative of the 'Brahminical order' over the centuries. Instead of following the chronological sequence in full, he picks up the story at multiple instances and link them together, adding fables and tales of his own ( as told by Valmiki himself to Rama). Underwhelming , to say the least, despite his command over the language and some well integrated tales. I am still curious to learn about his sources, from where he built his version.

?? Perumal Murugan - Fire Bird : The latest book in translation of Perumal Murugan, being in a few nominations ( including Man Booker International ) and awards. A story of eternal displacement and adjustment , perennial search for a place of content and peace. After the division of the property of the joint family of farmers, the youngest of the four sibling Muthu, given a raw deal and a subsequent loss feud with his eldest brother and family, forced to leave the place in search of a new land for farming and cultivation. The cast , ethnic and regional undercurrent play subtly in the narrative. Simple, decent read, pretty moving at places. Surely, not his masterpiece.

Looks like, I've had an average/poor reading cycle in the past few weeks. But 'Magic mountain' is going along pretty well.

 

[SpaceCadet]

Hello everyone. It’s been a while since I last reported on my readings. I wish I could be more active on this forum, but life is life and as long as it’s keeping me away from my dear books, I only can manage a few pages here and there.

My ‘breakfast with Shakespeare’ project is still going smoothly. I have read three more plays ; Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. Generally speaking, although I felt there were too many deaths occurring and/or bringing the conclusion about, I really enjoyed reading those three tragedies. Othello for its exploration of trust and mistrust as well as envy and jalousy ; Macbeth for (among other themes) its exploration of the destructive power of belief ; and King Lear for its exploration of old age, parent-children relationships, and delegation of power ; all felt quite modern and did stimulate many reflexions in me.

Novel-wise, I started the year by reading some of Santa’s presents ; Maikan and Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal), two (highly praised) novels written by Michel Jean, an Innu-Canadian journalist whose take on First Nations people experiences seemed quite interesting. Michel Jean writes in French but I think one of his books (Kukum) has been translated into English. Being connected through some of the characters, Maikan, Kukum and Tiohtiá:ke form a sort of trilogy but each book can be read individually.

Starting in around 1936 and taking place in the Province of Québec, Maikan tells the story of Marie, Valérie and Charles, three native kids who are more or less forcefully taken away from their family and community to be sent to a distant place, at a resident school where they are to be ‘educated’. A secondary thread is developed, which takes place 70 years later and allows us, through searches led by a lawyer, to know what became of these kids.

Taking place in recent times, Tiohtiá:ke introduces us to a different generation of indigenous people and looks into the lives of those individuals who, for various reasons, have left their communities and ended up living on the streets of Montréal.

Simple, thin, and accessible to any reader, read back to back, those stories succeed at uncovering some sort of sociohistorical continuum from which one can start to understand what, in recent history, the people of the First Nations have been and are still enduring and experiencing. Although both novels seem to have been thoughtfully designed, I did not see any particular literary quality in them. If only it had been for just that. But unfortunately, the prose is so bad that my patience was pushed to its limit. As it does not read like Québécois French, regional language, or whatever, I searched the web but found no explanation which left me with the obvious conclusion : it is bad French. Syntax, grammar, and orthograph obviously needed a thorough revision, but neither of his publishers (Libre Expression and Stanké for the Canadian market; Dépaysage, Points and Seuil for the French market) thought of making the necessary corrections. Shame!

 

[alik-vit]

Francis Ponge, "Diary of pine forest" (in Rus.). Slim volume of exercises in style. Description of a pine forest as coherent whole and sum of trees. Short, but boring read. I guess, very language-specific art too.

Kim Hyesoon, "Autobiography of Death". Actually, I was very suspicious towards her poems. It seems, all around are agree about her status as a poet of grotesque, and I'm not fan of grotesque in poetry. But this collection was extremely good. It's structured around the time between person's death and departure of his or her soul from this world into another, one poem per one day. Last long poem is devoted to migraine, which is more than my topic. She is highly original voice, free from conventional narrative's schemes

 

[Leseratte]

?? Cyprian Ekwensi, People of the City
This is the story of Amusa Sango, crime reporter and dance-band leader, in Lagos (unnamed in the book) in the early 1950s. According to the publisher (Heinemann), Sango eventually “comes to see that what he can do for the developing country in which he lives is more important than the considerable and varied personal pleasures he can find in the hectic life of the city.” That may have been Ekwensi’s intention…or the publisher’s hope but I was never convinced that Sango ever came to see that. He thinks about bigger issues, to be sure. He has moments when he feels guilty for pursuing his smaller pleasures as well as for failing to seize opportunities to act on his better instincts. But the book ends as it began, with no discernible (to me) change in his behavior. Ekwensi paints a vivid, convincing portrait of life in the big city but I was disappointed that several hundred pages later, Sango is acting no differently than he did at the outset. Of course, the book is significant enough that NYRB Books decided to reprint it in 2020, so perhaps my disillusionment is overstated. But I leave the final word to M.A. Orthofer (of The Complete Review) who summarized his thoughts this way: “There's enough to People of the City for it to be of interest—indeed, one of the problems with the book is that there is so much scattered in it, too little of which is followed-up or presented in sufficient depth. Ekwensi's writing is uneven and often rough, but there's some impressive color to it too; even where the story sputters, the writing mostly carries it through.” I agree.

?? Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
A classic of children’s literature (published in 1908) that I never heard or read as a child and somehow never got around to reading until now. A great pity. I have no doubt whatsoever that I would have loved this as a child; one of my delights was the edition I read had absolutely wonderful illustrations. The storyline is simple: two friends, Mole and Rat—together with Badger and a small, assorted cast of others—devote their energies to saving Mr. Toad from his lack of judgment. There are a number of short adventures tucked in as well and a truly lovely, evocative paean to the English countryside runs throughout. The animals’ personalities are beautifully drawn and I cannot imagine any child (or adult, for that matter) who would not be enchanted by this gentle tale. Highly recommended.

?? Armijn Pane, Shackles +
I should open by making clear that I found the plot and the writing to be of decidedly mediocre quality. Ah, but the themes. The surface story, a fairly melodramatic love triangle, is pretty much a waste of time if read literally. The publisher’s blurb on the back cover suggests a way to approach it, though, making clear that the story “illustrates the confusion experienced by many Indonesians of the pre-independence generation as they struggled to overcome problems stemming from their tradition-bound society.” The story takes place in the 1930s when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony and the independence movement was being firmly repressed. Dr. Tono insists on keeping those customs he considers worth keeping even as the country modernizes and he likewise believes that he has earned the status of an educated, middle-class Indonesian. Despite this, he is unable to understand that his wife is a dynamic, talented woman who in turn wants the freedoms and rights that the emancipation of women will confer. But like her husband, she too has a blind spot and is unable (or unwilling) to understand that those freedoms cannot be had in the society she lives in—at least without a price she is unwilling to pay. Each demands the respect “due” to them in a society where those things are (and have long been) rigidly codified and based on community—not the individual. The doctor’s mistress has the emancipated life that the doctor’s wife wants but she has earned those freedoms at a fearful price. Taken together, the three (and their relations with each other) capture the tensions in Indonesian society in that period. The pity is that their inner thoughts and conversations are so poorly written. Shackles is said to be the first modern Indonesian psychological novel and was poorly received at first because of its nuanced depiction of prostitution and adultery. Despite its serious failings, it can still be appreciated as a significant milestone in the development of the modern Indonesian novel. It has been frequently translated and won the inaugural Indonesian Literary Prize in 1969. (If you are interested, there is an excellent, in-depth review at a website I just discovered that is quite impressive: ANZ LitLovers LitBlog.)

?? Thanassis Valtinos, Deep Blue Almost Black
This slim volume contains two works: a group of short stories (under the name “You Will Find My Bones Under Rain”) and the title novella. (I tried and failed to finish the novella.) The dozen stories span a period from 1960 to 1991, a tumultuous period in modern Greek history (there was a military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974). Although the translation is competent (the English is occasionally stilted), the translators’ introduction helps make sense of his career and his work. Valtinos is a highly honored writer in Greece and has not only written novels, novellas, and short stories but also film scripts and has even translated classical Greek drama for the modern stage. The stories collected here are generally all strong, though a few are a bit less convincing than others. They portray illness, imprisonment, alienation, mental illness, and death. One striking story (“The Plaster Cast”) though Kafkaesque when taken literally, is far more powerful when understood as a metaphor for Greece itself, particularly considering the story’s appearance in defiance of the military dictatorship when published in 1970. The story is narrated by an injured worker whose uncommunicative doctors eventually cover his entire body in plaster, eventually covering even his eyes and his mouth. The patient's anxieties are reflected in his increasingly desperate struggle to stay tethered to reality. I also liked the title story which relates the events surrounding the construction of a small chapel as a memorial to a woman’s parents. The chapel’s construction is accompanied by stories of groans coming from a bag of disinterred bones, of people being visited by long-forgotten martyrs, and by a veritable Greek chorus of women eager to establish the cult of a new saint. A writer to read more of.

Downloaded two versions (with and without ilustrations) of The Wind in the Willows.

 

[tiganeasca]

Downloaded two versions (with and without ilustrations) of The Wind in the Willows.

I really do hope you enjoy it as much as I did; I'm only sorry I missed it as a child.

 

[Verkhovensky]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Until August 3-

Better than Melancholy Whores. A solid novella that can be read in one sitting. Doesn't seem unfinished at all.

 

[Hamishe22]

As part of my quest to read every Nobel laureate, I read two memoirs by Winston Churchill, My Early Life (1930) and the abridged version of The Second World War.

Churchill, to me, is one of the most baffling choices for the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's not that I regret reading the books. My Early Life is a witty and funny memoir, with self-deprecating humor and fascinating descriptions of the people and the times. It's certainly a fine read. However, it's not something special. The Second World War had no literary merits, which is not a criticism, as the book clearly didn't strive for it either. For a student of International Relations it was valuable to see the international system through the eyes of one of the main statesmen who shaped it, and as someone who is interested in history I enjoyed reading about WWII from the perspective of one of the main leaders in that war. At the end of the day, Churchill, whether we like him or not, was one of the most influential figures in world history. But beyond its value for history and political science buffs, I don't see any literary value in the book. Unlike My Early Life, the prose is very matter of fact and the book avoids literary flourishes. I feel like if the Nobel committee wanted to award an autobiographer, there are many more deserving people who have written memoirs of much higher literary quality. Provided most examples I can think of are after Churchill's prize in 1953, but it feels very strange that there are so few memoirists as winners and one of them is Winston Churchill. (Is there anyone other than Churchill who won solely for memoirs?)

 

[Leseratte]

As part of my quest to read every Nobel laureate, I read two memoirs by Winston Churchill, My Early Life (1930) and the abridged version of The Second World War.

Churchill, to me, is one of the most baffling choices for the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's not that I regret reading the books. My Early Life is a witty and funny memoir, with self-deprecating humor and fascinating descriptions of the people and the times. It's certainly a fine read. However, it's not something special. The Second World War had no literary merits, which is not a criticism, as the book clearly didn't strive for it either. For a student of International Relations it was valuable to see the international system through the eyes of one of the main statesmen who shaped it, and as someone who is interested in history I enjoyed reading about WWII from the perspective of one of the main leaders in that war. At the end of the day, Churchill, whether we like him or not, was one of the most influential figures in world history. But beyond its value for history and political science buffs, I don't see any literary value in the book. Unlike My Early Life, the prose is very matter of fact and the book avoids literary flourishes. I feel like if the Nobel committee wanted to award an autobiographer, there are many more deserving people who have written memoirs of much higher literary quality. Provided most examples I can think of are after Churchill's prize in 1953, but it feels very strange that there are so few memoirists as winners and one of them is Winston Churchill. (Is there anyone other than Churchill who won solely for memoirs?)

I suspect they wanted to award Churchill. As they couldn't give him the peace award, the literature prize would have to do. A sciences award would probably have been still more strange.

 

[Phil D]

(Is there anyone other than Churchill who won solely for memoirs?)

I think it would be fair to say Annie Ernaux won solely for her memoirs, especially if we take the early novels as autobiographical.

 

[Verkhovensky]

As they couldn't give him the peace award

I mean, they gave it to many not that peaceful guys during the years

 

[Hamishe22]

I mean, they gave it to many not that peaceful guys during the years

Off topic, but this is the contradiction at heart of the Nobel Peace Prize. Usually people who make peace are the same people who were fighting the war. So if the award remained loyal to its mission statement, about 75% of laureates should have been war criminals and monsters from history. It's no coincidence that people who fit the prize's mission statement the most are the most controversial laureates (Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, etc). So I guess that's why the Nobel Prize is not truly a peace prize anymore and more of a generic human rights prize, basically a more famous version of the Sakharov prize.

That said, I don't think they could have awarded Churchill anyway. The dude never sued for peace in his entire life. He was itching to start WWIII right away.

 

[tiganeasca]

?? Rene Maran, Batouala
The first black writer to win the Prix Goncourt (for this very book) in 1921. Maran was raised in Martinique in the Caribbean but his family relocated to Gabon when he was seven years old (his father was in the colonial service). He attended boarding school in France and then joined the French colonial service in French Equatorial Africa, spending some twenty-plus years there. The story takes place in what is today the Central African Republic among the Banda people, the largest ethnic group in the region. Batouala is the name of the local chief and the plot centers around daily life and the appearance of a younger man determined to have sex with Batouala’s first wife (of nine). Wikipedia’s description is apt: “a series of sketches that show the life of the Bandas including food and celebrations and describes how they live in a continuous cycle with nature, as the white man tries to take control over nature.” My greatest difficulty with the book—which is well-written, thoughtful, and thought-provoking—is that it too often seemed didactic, almost like an anthropological study. Maran’s language is distinctly literary and often it inserted an artificial distance between Maran and his story. That said, the story is very well told, educational (I mean that in a positive way), and perhaps unsurprisingly critical of colonialist abuses by the French (though that not the focus of the book). It is worth noting that Maran's book is not at all a call for revolt. It is more in the nature of an attempt to call attention to the excesses of French rule in the hope (expectation?) that once the abuses were recognized, reasonable men would want them stopped. Finally, the book was reviewed for a Toronto newspaper by Ernest Hemingway who had this to say: "You smell the smells of the village, you eat its food, you see the white man as the black man sees him, and after you have lived in the village you die there. That is all there is to the story, but when you have read it, you have been Batouala, and that means that it is a great novel.”

?? Endo Shusaku, Stained Glass Elegies [Stories]
Endo has long been a favorite of mine and I am remiss in taking so long to get to these stories, most (but not all) of which focus on his perennial theme of the place of Christianity in Japan. Endo wrestles with how its foreign-ness persists and yet how he, personally, chose to become baptized and a practicing Christian. Many of these stories are placed in a medical context, often of someone with a chronic or terminal illness and their isolation in a hospital room. I found most of these stories verged on the depressing, sometimes detracting from what I suspect was Endo’s intent. And yet, all are very well-written, nuanced, and give the impression of a deeply thoughtful man struggling to explain his choice to embrace Christianity to himself. Perhaps most impressive of the stories was Unzen in which a man from Tokyo visits the site where Christians were tortured and killed during the 17th century. The story appears to have been a study for Endo featuring Kichijiro, who is the main character of Endo's most famous and highly regarded novel, Silence.

?? Taban lo Liyong, Fixions +
Ah the pleasures of experimentation—for authors anyway. This collection of nine stories by a Ugandan writer was first published in 1969 by the Heinemann African Writers Series. I found the quality of the work unusually uneven, though much—if not all of it—is at least partly reliant on oral storytelling traditions. There was one story I stopped reading because I found it so impossible to parse or understand that continuing seemed pointless (“Sages and Wages,” a mere 9 pages). Several stories were well-done recountings of what seem to traditional stories or myths (such as “Stare Decisis Deo” or “Ododo pa Apwoyo Gin ki Lyech” and “The Old Man of Usumbura and his Misery,” the latter of which is particularly notable I think for its reliance on oral storytelling formulas; I particularly enjoyed the latter two). Several others I found odd but perhaps they are so heavily dependent on knowledge of local customs and worldview that my Western mind is simply incapable of truly understanding or appreciating what the author was getting at. (In my defense, I subsequently read a fascinating article about the author's intentional use of the absurd. So I don't really know.) Definitely worth the investigation and the time if you find it…and indeed, I would love to hear others’ reaction to it.

?? Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar +
I recall reading here that Jayan was not a great fan of this short work (about 120 pages) notwithstanding its generally quite positive reviews. I’m with Jayan and need to take his recommendations even more seriously than I previously have. I cannot pass up the chance to note that, prominently emblazoned on the cover of my paperback is this extraordinary thought: “One of the finest literary works you will ever encounter.” Ever? Uh, no. Even ignoring the fact that it’s not a particularly “literary” work, I cannot help but think that that reviewer (the Chief Literary Critic for The Irish Times) needs to read more books. Or perhaps any books. Her comment is beyond hyperbole and in the range of science fiction. Ghachar Ghochar is an easy read; enjoyable and pleasant but nothing more than that. I think Jayan nailed it in comparing it to television-like soap opera. The story follows a family (father, mother, son, daughter, uncle) as they go from poor to rich and what happens to them: how they deal with their change in fortune individually, as a family, and how it affects their relationships, mostly within the family itself. The book is pleasant, even perceptive and thoughtful…but that’s it. I fear the highly positive reception it has received says more about the expectations of the reading audience than it does about the quality of the book.

 

[kpjayan]

?? Endo Shusaku, Stained Glass Elegies [Stories]
Endo has long been a favorite of mine and I am remiss in taking so long to get to these stories, most (but not all) of which focus on his perennial theme of the place of Christianity in Japan. Endo wrestles with how its foreign-ness persists and yet how he, personally, chose to become baptized and a practicing Christian. Many of these stories are placed in a medical context, often of someone with a chronic or terminal illness and their isolation in a hospital room. I found most of these stories verged on the depressing, sometimes detracting from what I suspect was Endo’s intent. And yet, all are very well-written, nuanced, and give the impression of a deeply thoughtful man struggling to explain his choice to embrace Christianity to himself. Perhaps most impressive of the stories was Unzen in which a man from Tokyo visits the site where Christians were tortured and killed during the 17th century. The story appears to have been a study for Endo featuring Kichijiro, who is the main character of Endo's most famous and highly regarded novel, Silence.

?? Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar +
I recall reading here that Jayan was not a great fan of this short work (about 120 pages) notwithstanding its generally quite positive reviews. I’m with Jayan and need to take his recommendations even more seriously than I previously have. I cannot pass up the chance to note that, prominently emblazoned on the cover of my paperback is this extraordinary thought: “One of the finest literary works you will ever encounter.” Ever? Uh, no. Even ignoring the fact that it’s not a particularly “literary” work, I cannot help but think that that reviewer (the Chief Literary Critic for The Irish Times) needs to read more books. Or perhaps any books. Her comment is beyond hyperbole and in the range of science fiction. Ghachar Ghochar is an easy read; enjoyable and pleasant but nothing more than that. I think Jayan nailed it in comparing it to television-like soap opera. The story follows a family (father, mother, son, daughter, uncle) as they go from poor to rich and what happens to them: how they deal with their change in fortune individually, as a family, and how it affects their relationships, mostly within the family itself. The book is pleasant, even perceptive and thoughtful…but that’s it. I fear the highly positive reception it has received says more about the expectations of the reading audience than it does about the quality of the book.

I have read about 4 books of Endo, and this and 'Scandal' weren't in the top of my list. I haven't read 'Silence' , will do it soon.

Regarding Vivek Shanbagh, the new book Sakina's Kiss, I thought is a much better one, even though the style and language aren't top notch. It does faithfully reflect the current urban middle-class sentiments of the changing India, fairly well. And that does not alter my views on Gachar Gochar, I still think it is a poor book.

 

[tiganeasca]

I have read about 4 books of Endo, and this and 'Scandal' weren't in the top of my list. I haven't read 'Silence' , will do it soon.

Regarding Vivek Shanbagh, the new book Sakina's Kiss, I thought is a much better one, even though the style and language aren't top notch. It does faithfully reflect the current urban middle-class sentiments of the changing India, fairly well. And that does not alter my views on Gachar Gochar, I still think it is a poor book.

I read Silence first, in a Japanese lit course when I was in grad school. It impressed me no end. I've not re-read it since. But despite all his unevenness, I've always found something that convinces me he is worth the time...though he seems to often have trouble putting his finger on it--which may be why he revisits the topic so often--his wrestling with the place of Christianity in Japan is a struggle worth witnessing.

Glad to hear about Sakina's Kiss. My views of Ghachar Ghochar notwithstanding, I think he is a talented writer and I'll be curious to see the new book. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[alik-vit]

Anne Carson, "Antigonick".

As I said during our wirtual meeting, I don't like it and (what is much more important) I don't understand rationality behind this project. It's abridged and vulgarized version of Sophokles's "Antigone". The ancient tragedy is unique art form, which catch the moment of transition from object-oriented thinking to concept-oriented one, from thing to metaphor. Carson knows it, of course, but she dismisses all these features of original piece and just retells the plot. But plot as plot without its language and historical context is nothing here. What we have as result is very close to all these projects like "this and that for dummies".
NB: I did read paperback edition. The hardcover is piece of art with independent artistic merits, it includes illustrations and faximile-like text.

Anne Carson, "Norma Jeane Baker of Troy".

It's much much much better. Here we have not retelling, but variation of another ancient tragedy, "Helen" by Euripides. Carson merges two iconic images of beauty: Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe. And after it she merges this double image of protagonist with image of adviser/witness/raisonneur - Truman Capote. The result is original, stimulating and cunning. The problem (for me) is her refuse to mine the meaning or problems, which she puts on the display. I think it's her position, but here and in other works she just tickles, not mines her topics. Of course, it's postmodern approach, in some way, but ... I fill some kind of ... dissatisfaction, maybe. She does something cool, she writes something funny or original and ..... end of the book. There is this feeling of shallowness.