Book 250: Gibraltar (English) – A Vision of Battlements (Anthony BURGESS)

They reached Ragged Staff, and the boat was being moored by the steps. It seemed to Ennis that there was no great distance from the gunwale to the grey stone slabs of the quay above. He was the senior rank aboard, the men were impatient to be ashore, so, going first, he tried to heave himself up. Feet on the gunwale, hands on the quay, he prepared for the pull. But then the boat lurched, without warning, away and, to his blank surprise, down he went. The cold green oozy murk belched open to welcome him. He went straight down, the fathom of his height, then another, then another, with a splash and a glug, to the stillness of the men’s surprise, blank as his own, then the calls, the cries from above, the gurgling in green water, fathom by fathom down out of the light, the oozy coffin embracing him, his heavy boots, soaked clothing, down, down.

 

This was the first novel written by Anthony Burgess (of A Clockwork Orange fame) but not the first published. And it was out of print for ages. The copy I bought second-hand was the original 1965 edition (though Burgess wrote it in 1949). When you buy second-hand books you sometimes find surprises inside… in this case, a Pan Am boarding pass for Washington, D.C. to London with a colour postcard-like picture of Mexico. (I feel that the sad decline of boarding places is another sign of The End Of Civilisation As We Know It).

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory which basically consists just of the fortress rock at the northern entrance to the Mediterranean (one of the ancient Greeks’ Pillars of Hercules). It was named Jebel Tariq (The Mountain of Tariq) in Arabic after the Umayyad military commander who captured it in the 700s CE. This is where the name ‘Gibraltar’ comes from. Its history goes back a long way before that – most poignantly, it may have been the last refuge of the Neanderthals, long after Homo Sapiens had overrun Europe. The English captured it in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain ceded it in perpetuity in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. That doesn’t mean that Spain, is happy about having this British stone in its shoe, despite Spain having its own two colony cities in Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) that Morocco isn’t happy about either. But the Brits, especially the Royal Navy, would consider it too strategically important to give up, and it is very unlikely the inhabitants would vote to join Spain.

The story is set right at the end of the Second World War. Everyone is waiting to be demobbed and get home as soon as possible, and Burgess captures this no-man’s-land brilliantly. Since so much no longer has a point, there’s a big breakdown of discipline, deference, and rank. It’s often very funny.

The hapless Richard Ennis (who is no doubt a self-deprecatory send-up of Burgess himself) has ended up in Gibraltar (like the author did). Apparently he had been a misfit as a soldier. Like Burgess, he is a composer, but if this is his calling he is hardly staring success in the face there either. He tries to interest his comrades in Culture but they’re really only interested in eating, drinking, womanising and getting home from the war. His wife Laurel waiting at home for his return, which should happen at any time, but that doesn’t stop his eyes wandering. Sadly this early anti-hero keeps falling into the same traps. (The novel is sneakily structured along the lines of The Aenid!)

Maybe the funniest bit of all is where Ennis tries to stop a riot and his well-intentioned words get misinterpreted. There is a visit to a Spain we wouldn’t recognise today – here it is like something out of Hogarth.

It’s not the funniest, nor the most acerbic, send-up from WWII, and nor does it compare with Burgess’ later work, though it does already show his wit and literary references, but it grew on me and I did end up enjoying it. It might have an existential waiting-for-Godot feeling, but also a light-heartedness that is a very different world from that of A Clockwork Orange. What a shame it doesn’t get read any more.

 

Burgess, Anthony (1917 – 1993), A Vision of Battlements, NY, Ballantine, 1965, ISBN 345-03196-2-125

 

 

Book 244: Isle of Man (English) – Aunt Bessie Assumes (Diana XARISSA)

Bessie nodded slowly, her brain struggling to keep up with everything that was happening. “I suppose I didn’t really think about it,” she said after a moment. “I mean, I didn’t really think about it being murder. I just assumed he had a heart attack or something.”

Doona patted her hand gently. “Murder is hard to imagine.”

Bessie shook her head. “I might have made lunch for a murderer?”

“You made her lunch?” Doona choked back a laugh when she saw the look on Bessie’s face. “I mean, that was really nice of you, but why?”

“It was lunch time,” Bessie said weakly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

I have to admit I was (and still am) confused by the status of this island in the Irish Sea. Apparently it’s not part of the United Kingdom, nor of Great Britain, nor of England, Scotland or Wales but is a “self-governing British crown dependency”, yet it is under Charles III. It has one of the oldest legislatures in the world. (Unfortunately the Manx language is not looking nearly so healthy, but you will learn a few words from this novel). The UK looks after its foreign and defence affairs. Manxmen can get either a Manx or a UK passport. It was never part of the EU, and yet was included in Brexit negotiations, nor of the Commonwealth of Nations. Go figure… The flag looks like a Mercedes symbol made out of three bodyless legs.

This one is described on the cover as “An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery”. (By the way, inside the book it is spelt “cosy”). Now I have to admit in the past I’ve had a thing with the concept of “cozy mysteries”. For a long time I had a problem with writers making light of murder, which is always an awful thing, for the sake of their protagonist having a bit of fun and mental exercise. I even went through a phase of refusing to read Agatha Christie, though I subsequently repented and read (and loved) every one of her mysteries. Which isn’t to say that I would have written off all “cozy mysteries” – after all, I’ve always loved the wonderful Sherlock Holmes stories, and in many of them there’s no crime (or murder) at all. I got over it. Still, just a little disquiet lingers.

This is one of a long series of Aunt Bessie mysteries by the Manx author Diana Xarissa (entitled Aunt Bessie [+ action verb]). According to the blurb,

“Aunt Bessie assumes that she’ll have the beach all to herself on a cold, wet, and windy March morning just after sunrise, then she stumbles (almost literally) over a dead body. Elizabeth (Bessie) Cubbon, aged somewhere between free bus pass (60) and telegram from the Queen (100), has lived her entire adult life in a small cottage on Laxey beach. For most of those years, she’s been in the habit of taking a brisk morning walk along the beach. Dead men have never been part of the scenery before. Aunt Bessie assumes that the dead man died of natural causes, then the police find the knife in his chest.”

Despite offering (I suppose) traditional hospitality to the victim’s widow, she doesn’t like or trust her very much, and in fact the whole family proves to be very suspicious – no doubt one (or more) of them is the culprit.

Then a second murder takes place (while Bessie is there) at the Laxey Wheel, the strange Industrial Revolution device on the cover, “the largest working waterwheel in the world”. Bessie herself seems likely to be the next victim.

The style is gossipy and some might feel too much time is spent on extraneous everyday details (such as the long discussion about the merits of the new Indian restaurant), although I didn’t. Perhaps there was a bit too much happening right at the end.

There was a lot of “small island laissez-faire”, things not being done totally by the book; would that even be possible in a place where everyone knows everyone (and everyone’s business)? The interactions between the police and the civilians (in the shape of Aunt Bessie) seemed to be a bit too close – considering she discovered the body and could have been a suspect – and she does have an agent in place, in the shape of her friend Doona Moore, who works in the police station. One of the police spends the investigation staying at Bessie’s house. I have to admit I suspected one of the police investigators might have been the culprit. Likewise, the chemist does not always follow the law, and when Bessie ends up in hospital, she manages to get herself discharged from hospital suspiciously early when it threatens to hold up the plot, despite saying “Everything hurts!” both before and afterwards. She is feisty and clear about her priorities:

“You probably should stay until the inspectors get here,” Hugh [policeman] told her. “Sorry, I need to get out of the rain and have a cup of tea,” Bessie said stoutly. “The inspectors can find me there whenever they want to chat.”

I wasn’t expecting much given the “cozy mystery” title and the unknown (to me) author, but it proved to be a very enjoyable story.

 

Xarissa, Diana, Aunt Bessie Assumes: an Isle of Man cozy mystery, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014, ISBN 978-1499366020

Book 241: Svalbard (English) – Dark Matter: a ghost story (Michelle PAVER)

Hugo, the keen glaciologist, asked Mr Eriksson to head into the fjord to get nearer the glacier, and we craned our necks at fissured walls of ice and caverns of mysterious blue. From deep within came weird creaks and groans, as if a giant were hammering to get out. Then came a noise like a rifle shot, and a huge segment of ice crashed into the sea, sending up spouts of water, and a wave that rocked the ship. Shattered ice turned the sea a milky pale-green. The hammering went on. Now I know why people believe that Spitsbergen was haunted.

I have to admit that ghost stories are not what I normally read. Perhaps the closest I’ve gotten in Tirelessreader so far was my zombie story from Haiti. But I always intended this to get me reading outside my ‘comfort zone’…

Svalbard (also known as Spitzbergen) is part of the Kingdom of Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. It has the most northerly permanent population on Earth.

This is the story of a small 1937 scientific expedition to Svalbard. The main protagonist, 28-year-old Jack Miller, is poor and from a lower social class than his companions. This gives him somewhat of an inferiority complex. He hero-worships the expedition leader, Gus, and craves his approbation. In fact, class is a major theme of the book.

“I suppose what Gus was trying to say is that here in the Arctic, class doesn’t matter. I think he’s wrong about that, class always matters. But maybe up here it doesn’t matter so much.”

The young scientists are to base themselves at an isolated uninhabited site called Gruhuken but which had the remains of defunct whaling and mining activities. We come to learn that these had also left another unpleasant legacy. (Perhaps the name of the place should have given them some warning, since ‘gru’ means ‘horror’ in Norwegian – no doubt related to the ‘grue’ in ‘gruesome’).

While they stay there, the midnight sun turns into endless night. When he is left alone by his companions (Gus had become ill and needed to be evacuated), Jack’s mental state clearly deteriorates and the horror increases. Whether the one is linked to the other is up to us to judge – since nothing concrete happens to him to cause this, maybe it was just a case of cabin fever? Jack’s terror centres on a ‘bear post’ outside the leftover hut.

Dark matter seems to have become deeply entwined with Svalbard! Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (whose ‘dust’ is dark matter) also visits the islands. As Jack says,

In one of my periodicals, there’s a paper by someone who’s worked out that what we know of the universe is only a tiny percentage of what actually exists. He says what’s left can’t be seen or detected, but it’s there; he calls it ‘dark matter’. [This might be a reference to the Swiss Fritz Zwicky in 1933]. Of course, no one believes him; but I find the idea unsettling. Or rather, not the idea itself, that’s merely an odd notion about outer space. What I don’t like is the feeling I sometimes get that other things might exist around us, of which we know nothing.

Jack obviously believes in the supernatural…

Once or twice, I felt that there were anachronisms – for example I don’t think people in the 1930s knew the correct scientific explanation for the aurora borealis (northern lights), that’s only been confirmed fairly recently.

Each chapter ends with a lovely illustration – these weren’t attributed, so perhaps are from the author’s photos?

If I found the plot sometimes predictable, along with what I suspect might be common in horror writing (suggesting rather than saying that something is happening – for example, the Norwegian ship captain warns them off going to Gruhuken, but won’t say why), and as I said horror is not my preferred genre, this was still a good read, and it has received very good reviews.

Michelle Paver was born in Malawi (then Nyasaland) and now lives in Britain. She lived in Norway and visited Svalbard.

Paver, Michelle (1960 – ), Dark Matter, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion, 2011 (originally published 2010), ISBN 978-1-4091-2118-3

Book 235: Tatarstan (English) – Zuleikha = Зулейха открывает глаза (Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes) (Guzel YAKHINA)

He is striding through the taiga. Spruces float past him, their broad boughs pillowed in snow and bent toward the ground, resting against snowdrifts. Bushes swell like steep white boulders, and golden trunks of pine trees flash with a coating of thick hoarfrost. He goes down to the familiar clearing, where the giant skeleton of a lightning-charred birch tree stands in the corner, and he crosses a frozen stream where mounds of rocks are frosted with drifted snow. The camp is already close and the faint, bittersweet smell of smoke touches his nostrils.

The Republic of Tatarstan is one of the constituent republics of the Russian Federation. After conquest by the Mongols, it became an independent khanate. So it is one of the Muslim ‘countries’ in Europe, although, being surrounded by Russia, and with almost as many Russian inhabitants as Tatars now, it would seem to have zero chance of becoming independent again. Putin has pretty much stripped it of any of the autonomy it regained after the end of the Soviet Union. (Its capital is Kazan – as a little bit of trivia, St Basil’s in Moscow’s Red Square was built to celebrate its capture by the Russians in 1552). One good thing is that Kazan’s Kremlin has been beautifully restored, it was very decrepit when I visited in 1992. The Tatar language is fairly closely related to Turkish.

Not long after the Russian Revolution, timid Zuleikha is suffering a hard life, made worse by a husband, Murtaza, who is 30 years older, and a nasty acid-tongued mother-in-law who she thinks of as the ‘Vampire Hag’. When the Bolsheviks come, Murtaza is shot. Zuleikha is accused of being a kulak (any peasants slightly richer than the others were persecuted by the Communists as exploiters), and expropriated under commandant Ignatiov (the young cadre who had killed Murtaza). Their lives and fates are to be intertwined from then on, and neither is truly in control of their fate or trusted from above.

Like so many other ‘class enemies’, Zuleikha is put on a prison train heading east. It is not easy for Ignatov (who is charged with looking after the transport, and doesn’t want his charges to die – at least not too many of them) to find food for the train (it interesting to see the logistical problems from his side, something we don’t usually see in accounts of the deportations by the Soviet Russians and the Nazi Germans, of which there are so many, such as our Lithuanian book).

One of the transportees, Gorelov, is an ex-criminal, and a master sucker-up.

When they finally arrive on the Angara River in the far north of Siberia, Ignatov is charged with setting up a gulag, with effectively no help from the authorities. He rescues Zuleikha from drowning from a sinking barge.

Kuznets (the local potentate) doesn’t come to resupply camp as promised.

Life is very tough in this bleak landscape, and camp life forces her to break her cultural and religious rules. There is no privacy for her, even when giving birth.

It’s a long novel, and sometimes drags on a little, but the descriptions of the snowy wilderness and the mental torture of all the characters is amazing. If you enjoyed Doctor Zhivago, for example, I’m sure you will like this one.

Meek she may be, but Zuleikha is a survivor.

The author, who based the story on her grandmother’s experiences, is reported to have opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine of 24th February, 2022. It would make a great movie, in fact according to the Wikipedia article she originally wrote it as a screenplay. Here’s hoping that it does, and we humans can finally banish the cruelty of the callous from our hearts.

Yakhina, Guzel (1977 – ), Zuleikha, translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden, London, Oneworld, 2019, ISBN 978-1-78607-684-7

Book 226: Vatican City (English) – The Shoes of the Fisherman (Morris WEST)

I have an advantage, of course, in that no one quite knows which way I shall jump – I don’t even know myself. I am the first Slav ever to sit on the Chair of Peter, the first non-Italian for four-and-a-half centuries. The Curia will be wary of me. They may have been inspired to elect me but already they must be wondering what kind of Tartar they have caught. Already they will be asking themselves how I shall reshuffle their appointments and spheres of influence. How can they know how much I am afraid and doubtful of myself? I hope some of them will remember to pray for me.

Hooray, here we are at last at the final country of our odyssey, which took me a decade and which I finished on the last day of 2021 (there are still quite a few territories and other places to go though, so please don’t go away!) We’ve travelled from the country with the largest population (China) to the one with the smallest. You might wonder if it has any inhabitants, apart from the Pope, but it does have some.

This is also something of a homecoming, since the writer I’ve chosen was an Australian who was for a long time the Vatican correspondent of The Daily Mail (London.) I feel West is one of Australia’s best writers, though sadly neglected nowadays – I couldn’t find anything of his to buy in any Sydney bookshops (he has become print-on-demand). Thank God for our library’s stack collection.

Initially, for the Vatican I had chosen Windswept House by Malachi Martin, an Irish priest who lived in the city state. I gave it 50 of its 646 pages before abandoning it, the only novel I’ve given up on in this quest. It was frankly awful. It’s not too hard to find other conspiracy/corruption/occult novels involving the Catholic Church, such as Dan Brown’s much better Angels and Demons, but I felt I needed something perhaps more intellectual (while still very readable) and understanding, something from the inside the Church – in short, something more ‘mature’. Hence West’s novel (he was a practicing Catholic).

Of course, the Catholic Church, immutable as we tend to think it is, has changed enormously since 1963, as has the papacy. But looking back from today’s vantage point, in some ways West seems amazingly prophetic. His new pope, Kiril I, is young and the first Slavic pope (though a Ukrainian, not a Pole) and in some ways is very reminiscent of the later Pope John Paul II – he had suffered persecution during Communist rule of his country, has his eyes open to how the institution and the world really work, is not afraid of carefully engaging in politics, is determined to make the Church more relevant to modern life and to win or bring back acolytes, and intends to travel the world to do it. There is also a foreshadowing of the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI. And now that we have the first Jesuit pope, it was also prescient of West to bring a prominent Jesuit character into the mix. The brilliant theologian Jean Télemond (apparently modelled on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) tries to modernise and open out theology, which causes him to suffer the sanction of a judgement of ‘error’ from the conservative Holy Office (an obvious waste of talent and of opportunity to expand the Church).

Pope Kiril himself feels inadequate and not up to the demands of the job (I’m sure not the first). But he is courageous and conscientious (in order to see and understand real life, he roams the streets of Rome at night, like Harun al-Rashid.)

We follow the story through the eyes of George Faber, like West a journalist. He has a fraught custody battle with Corrado Calitri (rising star of Christian Democratic Party, a future Italian PM) over his lover/Calitri’s separated wife. Faber is persuaded to act as an intermediary between the US and the USSR to maintain a Cold War channel of communications to try to avoid a nuclear war, although West draws a curtain over the actual interaction between Faber and Soviet leader Kamenev (who had tortured Kiril earlier in his life – perhaps Kiril has too much knowledge of the world for someone who had spent so much of his life in a prison within a prison?) In any case, for the sake of both men’s better interests Kiril and Kamenev realise that they need each other.

Lastly there is a depressed and disillusioned widow who Kiril rescues and who finds purpose in helping the needy.

There is a taste of the increasing number of medical and other scientific discoveries that the Vatican (and society generally) try to deal with morally – in this case, a doctor who uses a drug to kill deformed babies.

This is a tale of tortured souls (from the Pope down) wrestling with Catholic theology and laws and how to live as a good person in modern society. Obviously, the Catholic Church is still struggling to make itself relevant (not least in Italy) but it has survived and is still trying.

There is a profound, insider’s view of how the Holy See really works, and how the Church (and Catholics more generally) may have felt about the world in the time of the Cold War and the almost contemporaneous Vatican II attempt to drag the Church kicking and screaming into the modern world. These are issues that it is still grappling with. It’s a long time since I’ve read one of West’s novels, and from memory the others were better. The plot could have been more exciting, and I felt like a lot of the issues were left hanging at the end… However it was a big bestseller at the time, and there’s still a lot to think about here. I’ll have to read the other two books in the Vatican Trilogy to find out if the answers are there. It was still an excellent read. And that goes for the rest of my decade-long world reading marathon as well. Thank you so much for following along!

West, Morris (1916 – 1999), The Shoes of the Fisherman, London/Melbourne/Toronto, Heinemann, 1963

The Vatican Trilogy consists of The Shoes of the Fisherman; The Clowns of God; and Lazarus.

Book 221: Liechtenstein (German) – Die dunkle Muse = The Dark Muse (Armin ÖHRI)

The Professor looked at her innocently, almost as if asking for pardon, as he showed the blood-smeared knife and said: “Forgive me for disturbing you, my dear madam. But would you be so kind as to notify the police? I have just murdered your neighbour.”

[my translation]

Here is a historical thriller set in Berlin 1865 (when it was in Prussia) with a scary professor of philosophy as the prime suspect from the beginning (so the quote is not a spoiler). Well, we saw him commit the murder (of prostitute Lene Kulm), case closed, right? Not so fast! But the kernel of the story is the court case. It might seem like an open-and-shut case, but bit by bit all the evidence falls apart. And is there such a thing as the perfect crime? Will the Prof be convicted in the end?

I thought that Kriminalkommissar Gideon Horlitz, was going to be the chief protagonist/solver, but it turned out to be the law student and police artist Julius Bentheim – an intriguing choice. We also find out about his private life, including his relationship with his girlfriend and her difficult, conservative pastor father. (Bentheim has starred in three later books in the series so far: Der Bund der Okkulisten, Die Dame im Schatten and Das schwarze Herz).

I loved the historical ambience (which I hope was accurate) and the story was intriguing and well-paced. It was fascinating to see how crime investigations proceeded in that epoch with the scanty tools that they had (even photography, which his friend Albrecht Krosick has to handle, was in its infancy and problematic), and how the legal system functioned. Yet another fantastic book nearly at the end of reading through the world’s nations!  Öhri won the EU Prize for Literature with this one.

ÖHRI, Armin (1978 – ), Die dunkle Muse, Meßkirch, Gmeiner, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8392-1295-0

Book 220: Monaco (English) – Zubrick’s Rock (Robert ERINGER)

 

 

Barry Zubrick looked again at the letter signed by Pierre Chantelot from the Bureau d’Etranger, then around his cluttered office: investment newsletters and financial magazines were piled high; a whole library of books, mostly economics, with a strong dose of conspiracy theory; trophies and award certificates from strangely-named fringe groups. What a pain in the dokus it would be to move everything – and to where? Northern Europe was out of the question; frail Barry caught a cold just thinking about Switzerland and Germany and Belgium. The choices in southern Europe had pitfalls. Barry demanded total efficiency in the amenities around him – telephone, fax, mail, computer services – so he had long ago ruled out Portugal, Spain and Italy. No, it looked to him like he would have to leave Europe altogether. The upside was it would then be even harder for his enemies to find him – and Barry liked to imagine he had many more enemies than he actually had. South Africa was a possibility; Uruguay, another option. He looked out his window again. The azure Mediterranean was so peaceful – an idyllic setting for himself. Damn Gary Lincoln!

 

Barry Zubrick is a multimillionaire enjoying his reclusive tax exile in Monte Carlo – a shady man in a sunny place – when the police revoke his residency permit. Not for him the easy way of finding another country – he decides to take over Monaco. ‘“I like it here,” said Barry. “I want to stay. And I’ve always wanted my own country. This one will do – and it serves them right for trying to throw me out!”’ Being both paranoid and prudent, he decides to do it ‘legally’. Because the Prince’s Grimaldi family took over the principality more than 700 years ago from the Spinolas, with a deception (and the novel starts with François Grimaldi’s real – or at least legendary – trick entry into Monaco and takeover). So all Zubrick has to do is find the legitimate Spinola heir and install him as his stalking horse. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that turns out to be a cheap dentist living in the US who is a drunkard, gambler and broke. (Does this sound a bit like the film The Great Race, which still cracks me up no matter how many times I watch it?) Now all he needs is a bunch of mercenaries and an ex-CIA officer, and the fax fanatic is ready for his madcap coup. But France might throw a spanner in the works… (No one seems to worry about Italy though – am I nitpicking?)

It takes a while for the humour to kick in but there is lots of fun to be had. Barry takes his case for legitimacy from Monaco’s school texts. Everyone, without exception, is motivated only by money. Living across the street in Beausoleil, France, and paying 30% income tax, would cost him three million dollars a year, he calculates (”his brain was the only agile muscle in his body”).

Unfortunately the author’s French can be a bit dodgy sometimes: Americaine, Morte (using the feminine form for a male), and Arrêté! (instead of Arrêtez!). Eringer lived in Monaco and apparently has been a bit of a spy himself.

On the whole it was an enjoyable page-turner (I read it in a day – sadly as long as I spent in the Principality myself), and a lot of fun.

 

Eringer, Robert (1954 – ), Zubrick’s Rock, Washington, D.C., National Press, 1995, ISBN 1-882605-21-7

 

 

Book 197: Iceland (English) – Independent People = Sjálfstætt fólk (Halldór LAXNESS)

“Size isn’t everything by any means,” he said aloud to the dog, as if suspecting her of entertaining high ideas. “Take my word for it, freedom is of more account than the height of a roof beam. I ought to know; mine cost me eighteen years’ slavery. The man who lives on his own is an independent man. He is his own master. If I can keep my sheep alive through the winter and can pay what has been stipulated from year to year – then I pay what has been stipulated; and I have kept my sheep alive. No, it is freedom that we are all after, Titla. He who pays his way is king. He who keeps his sheep alive through the winter lives in a palace.”

Here we are in one of the twenty smallest states (by population) in the world, yet I knew I would never have any trouble finding something worth reading from Iceland. Considering the number of books being written in, and translated into, Icelandic, I get the impression that most of the people must be working on its literature. (Most of the others must also be doing something else remarkable, or multi-tasking, along with many of the authors!) Talk about punching above your weight! Icelandic creativity seems as remarkable as that of ancient Athens or Renaissance Florence in its lack of proportionality to population size. I can’t help wondering if for example the Maldives (our previous country) were suddenly moved to a far northern latitude where it is bleak and dark most of the year, if their literary output wouldn’t similarly explode?

Bjartur is a poor crofter (but also a poet), obsessed with independence. He introduces his world view with the quote above. He is even more obsessed with being independent than Mr Biswas was in our Trinidad novel, and he infects his family with the same obsession. However, this freedom comes with a high price – his life of poverty and lack of ambition. He refuses to improve himself (to take charity, or join the other farmers’ successful co-op – that would involve, well, co-operating with others). In the end, he is prepared to say, ‘To hell with the lot of them!’ (i.e. the rest of the world). His obsession damages the rest of his family. His wife Rosa becomes unhappy as soon as she is married.

One of the most memorable scenes was where Bjartur went looking for a ‘lost’ sheep in a snowstorm, without knowing that his desperate wife had already fed it to him.

The innocent girl Asta was one of the most memorable characters. He adopts her as his daughter and she seems to be the only person he really has feelings for, so when she predictably goes off seeking her own happiness – her own independence – he is devastated.

This is a wonderful book in its description of stubborn characters and harsh nature. It is hard to love, or even respect, Bjartur for his pigheadedness (should that be sheepheadedness?) but he is certainly a character, who despite his lowly station is as heroic in his way as one of the characters from the sagas. Laxness won the 1955 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Laxness, Halldór (1902 – 1998), Independent People, translated from Icelandic by J.A. Thompson, London, Vintage, 2008, ISBN 9780099527121

(First published in Icelandic 1934-5)

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Book 186: Luxembourg (German) – Neubrasilien (Guy HELMINGER)

“I’d also like to stay here and have a chance”, she said, “but if not, I’ll raise my children in Trpezi. In any case I won’t let myself fritter my whole life away, just because one country maybe doesn’t want to have me. And now go to the pub and drink a Schnaps, as is right and proper for a prospective father.” With these last words, her right arm shot out in the direction of the door, and her face hardened, as if the autumn winds had found the way into the room and made her freeze.

What has New Brazil got to do with Luxembourg? Well, there is still an actual place called Grevels Nei-brasilien in the country. (’Nei’ in Letzeburgesch, and ‘neu’ in standard German, mean ‘new’). In this partially historical and partially contemporary novel, in the 1820s a group of Luxemburgers (including the plucky Josette) heard about a land of opportunity for immigrants in South America and set off in a caravan to take ship there, but they didn’t even get to sea before Brazil (which was under its emperor Dom Pedro) had changed its mind and slammed its doors shut. Plus ça change… For the novel focuses equally on the experience of a group of modern Montenegrin immigrants, especially Tina and her mother, who have fled the strife in former Yugoslavia to Luxembourg just before the turn of the 21st century for the equally nebulous promise of a better life there. In any case, there’s no way back to the past for anyone. The parallels are obvious enough without being laboured, but we do need to be reminded that many of us living in lands that are today prosperous beacons trying to keep refugees out were once in the same boat (pun unintended).

So Neubrasilien was was a very enjoyable read. It comes to a nice symmetrical ending. Someone translate it to English, please!

Helminger, Guy (1963 – ), Neubrasilien, Frankfurt/M., Eichhorn, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8218-6132-6

Book 184: Montenegro (English) – The Son (Andrej NIKOLAIDIS)

 

Everything would have been different if I’d been able to control my repulsion, I realised.

The sun was still visible through the lowered blinds. It had lost all its force and now, unable to burn, it extended all the way to the pebbly beach of Valdanos and on as far as Kruće and Utjeha; bays sardined with bathers determined to absorb every last carcinogenic ray before going back to their accommodation. There they would douse their burnt skin with imitations of expensive perfumes, don their most revealing attire and dash off to discos and terraces with turbofolk music, full of confidence that tonight they would go down on another body with third-degree burns; possessing and then forgetting another human being almost identical to themselves. 

 

 

This novel was translated from Montenegrin, one of the world’s newest languages, although in fact it is still virtually indistinguishable from the other varieties of what we used to call Serbo-Croation (Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian). When I visited in 2014, in all the bookshops I visited trying to find a translated novel I could read (Montenegro was one of the several countries in Eastern Europe where I was unsuccessful), the native literature seemed to be fairly equally divided between Roman and Cyrillic scripts.
‘The Son’ won its author the European Prize for Literature in 2011. Its ‘hero’, a hibernating writer, is the most cynical, misanthropic character I’ve ever come across. (In fact if he had been named he may have become a famous character like Tartuffe…) He self-exiles himself from the boorish, sunburnt tourist masses outside.
In the background the coast of Montenegro is burning in wildfires, just as the almost the whole eastern seaboard of Australia was burning the day I read the novel.
His great-uncle’s olive grove has burnt down three times in a decade, leaving him depressed. He goes wandering around the southern town of Ulcinj, where a tragic and perverse parade of misfits, some already known and some new, encounters him.
He killed older brother with a climbing dare. He is alienated from his father, despite living nearby; he endlessly hates him and finally murders him, for having always forgiven him! He is so selfish that he keeps his mother’s death unannounced, so no one else can turn up at her funeral. Not a nice guy.
On the other hand, there is the daughter who loved her father despite him having pimped her (and his entire family).
The anonymous narrator is totally impossible to identify with. Maybe if it hadn’t been so unremittingly black… but it is very well written. I just suggest you don’t read it if you’re feeling depressed or suicidal!

 

NIKOLAIDIS, Andrej, The Son, translated from Montenegrin by Will Firth, London, Istros, 2013, ISBN 9781908236128

Book 171: Estonia – The Czar’s Madman = Keisri Hull (Jaan KROSS)

So, back to the first question: should I support him in his madness or in his sanity?

            That would seem to depend on whether he is, in fact, mad or sane. I can’t tell – I don’t even know what I consider him to be. Is it possible to recover from such a state, in such circumstances? I believe (while being aware of my deep ignorance, I still have to voice an opinion) – I believe that such a recovery may well be rare but not impossible.

Timo has been released from prison into house arrest but is still in danger from police informers. He is generally considered to be insane (if you criticise the tsar, not to mention if you are a noble who marries a peasant woman, ipso facto you are mad), and it was his madness that got him out of prison. He has written a dangerous critical memorandum to the then Tsar (Alexander I) – posing a dilemma for the narrator, the brother of his wife (Eeva), who has discovered it in its hiding place and has to decide what to do (most of all, whether he really is mad, or just pretending to be for his protection). And what is the secret link between Timo and the tsar?

The narrator, Jakob, keeps an equally dangerous secret diary over the decades, which is this novel, supposedly found long after the events.

The characters in the novel are great, especially the enigmatic Timo, who has the enormous courage, morality, brainpower and luck – in short, ‘character’ – needed by the dissident. He is ‘guarded’ by the clever, beautiful Eeva (who is nevertheless not a comfortable fit in her newfound nobility), then also by the much less sympathetic Peter Mannteufel (whose surname aptly means “man devil” in German).

Kross is one of Estonia’s best writers, who was himself imprisoned by the Russians (under the USSR), and this novel, written during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, carries clever criticism of Russian authoritarianism, though it is far more than that. He, and his novel (one of the best historical novels I’ve read, though you might like to brush up on your Russian history of the period before starting – it’s based on a true story), deserve a much wider audience abroad.

Kross, Jaan (1920 – 2007), The Czar’s Madman, translated by Anselm Hollo, London, Harvill Press, 2003, ISBN 9781860465796

(first published in Estonian 1978 as Keisri Hull)

Book 164: Kosovo (English) – My Cat Yugoslavia (Pajtim STATOVCI)

I looked at the village as though I weren’t really there at all, as though everything around me was nothing but a dream, a mirage blown in on the wind. I sighed and breathed in the heavy, dusty air – I couldn’t bring myself to believe that I had come here, that I was standing on this sand after all these years, how familiar the sound of the earth was as I placed my foot on ints surface. It was a soft sound, the same sound as waves and leaves caressing the earth. The mind always tends to forget these things, I thought, but he body never forgets.

Bekim is the son of a refugee from Yugoslavia’s 1980s civil war. He grows up in Finland, portrayed as a country uncomfortable with those who are different. As an outsider, ethnically, religiously and sexually, he is lonely and alienated from society, his only friend his (beautifully described) boa constrictor. Then things get slightly weird and science fictional when in a gay bar he meets – a (very cool but annoying) talking cat.

The second (maybe that should be first) story is that of his mother, living in Kosovo, in an arranged marriage with an irascible man. (The cat doesn’t treat Bekim much better).

There is a second, more conventional cat, a stray that he rescues in Prishtinë on a visit. It wasn’t quite clear to me which cat was referred to by the title.

Most of the Albanian words (the chief language of Kosovo) that occur are unfortunately not translated.

Much of the writing is very good, especially his animal descriptions. Statovci is obviously a brilliant young writer, though some facets of his first novel felt unresolved or unclear to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if his second isn’t amazing.

Statovci, Pajtim (1990 – ), My Cat Yugoslavia, translated from Finnish by David Hackston, London, Pushkin Press, 2017, 2018, ISBN 978-1-78227-360-8

Originally published in Finland as Kissani Jugoslavia, 2014

Book 161: Latvia (English) – High Tide = Paisums (Inga ĀBELE)

She keeps the bike down in the courtyard, locked up with an iron chain to a maple tree. Dragging it up and down the stairs would be suicide. The bike opens up an entirely different Riga to her; it glides easily and lightly, relaxing the hectic streets, smoothing the nervous lines in the city’s face. The bike reminds her of an old coal iron or the first pair of skis in the world – broad, substantial things that would let life could [sic] coast along without change. The stores, cafés, people, even the sky and the trees, even the river is wide open – all because Ieva herself is open. Her thumb poised, ready to ring the bell. Her lips ready to smile, her heart ready to answer.

In the beginning of the story, God appears to Ieva (’Eve’) in a dream, and tells her that if she agrees to live her life backwards, she’ll be able to restore her lover to life. As she travels back towards childhood and he travels forward towards old age, they will meet for twenty minutes.

So the tale is told mostly in reverse order, over three decades from the time of the Soviet Union into independent Latvia, and all is revealed towards the end. Actually Ieva and the other characters lead mostly boring lives and none of them seemed very sympathetic to me, but the story became intriguing (if not always easy to follow) because of the reverse order.

Ieva meets the prisoner Andrejs (working outside the jail) and falls in love with him. (The regime seems very liberal for the USSR – she is also able to spend the night with him in prison). This is despite the fact (as we learn later) that the man he had killed was her former lover, Aksels.

Ābele’s writing is extremely lyrical, especially when describing nature; you can tell that she is a poet.

I read a review panning Kaija Straumanis’ translation. I can’t read Latvian so am in no position to judge, but it mostly read very nicely to me.

When I finished, I was torn between a need to re-read it (now that I knew what was going on) and a need not to, yet, as it was just too depressing. Maybe when Ieva also reaches her beginning again, she can make wiser life choices next time.

ĀBELE, Inga (1972 – ), High Tide, translated from Latvian by Kaija Straumanis, NY, Open Letter, 2013, ISBN 978-1-934824-80-1 (first published in Latvian 2008)

Book 160: Slovenia (English) – Alamut (Vladimir BARTOL)

            “I come from al-Ghazali, Your Excellency, with this letter.”

            He held the letter out toward the old man, while calmly drawing the sharpened writing instrument out of it. He did this so naturally that none of those present was aware of the action.

            The vizier unsealed the envelope and unfolded the letter.

            ”What is my learned friend up to in Baghdad?” he asked.

            Ibn Tahir suddenly leaned forward and shoved the dagger into his throat beneath the chin. The vizier was so startled that for the first few moments he didn’t feel any pain. He just opened his eyes up wide. Then he scanned the only line of the letter one more time and grasped everything.

My Slovenian novel, which has apparently been a bestseller in many languages (seemingly not in English, though it should be) really has as little as is imaginable to do with Slovenia (which is by the way my favourite country in Europe at the moment). It is totally removed in both time and place, like my preceding Macedonian novel. It is derived from one of the more fascinating tales from Marco Polo’s generally prosaic Travels, that of the Old Man of the Mountain, but the Ismaili stronghold in modern Iran actually existed.

Bartol takes three young friends, sworn to friendship, who each choose different paths in life. One becomes a vizier, one (Omar Khayyam) a poet, and the third, the subject of the story, Hasan, becomes what we would now see as the head of a terrorist organisation. Hasan becomes so cynical that he can not believe in anything at all – his ultimate motto is “Nothing is true, everything is permitted;” he reveals it only to his most trusted confidantes, and basically applies it to no one but himself. Everyone else is treated more or less as a child, as his tool. Hasan (known to his followers as Sayyiduna ‘Our Lord’), sets out to deceive and exploit them, by creating a fairy tale and making it seem real to them. He reproduces in reality at his castle (Alamut) the Muslim paradise, and rewards his most trustworthy followers with a single night there (after drugging them with opium), so that they can be used as assassins (a word which derives from hashishim ‘opium-eaters’) against his enemies. Despite some close calls, as far as we learn from the novel his plan is successful. Yet its eternal vulnerability is obvious, throughout symbolised by the lift he uses, which his trusted eunuchs could easily use to kill him. (As generally with terrorist organisations, the success at murdering enemies was matched by abject failure at conquering them – and Alamut was to fall to the Mongols in 1256). Bartol wrote a long time before the age of Al-Qaida, but his sophisticated insight into the mindset of a terrorist warlord and what are now suicide bombers is more relevant now than ever before. Alamut can be read merely as a popular novel, but there is so much food for thought that its worth is far deeper than that.

Vladimir BARTOL (1903 – 1967), Alamut, translated from Slovenian by Michael Biggins, Berkeley, CA, North Atlantic Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-55643-681-9

Book 159: (Northern) Macedonia (English) – Spectator (Zarko KUJUNDZISKI)

He waited for the light in the hall to go off and then he took the bundle of keys out of his pocket. He sighed, relieved, when the long grey metal key entered completely in the lock. He unlocked the lock gently and pushed the door without making a sound. He closed the door. The eyehole lit up again, and the outer gate banged, which indicated that somebody had entered the building. Gertie Finsches waited for the things to become visible contours in the dark. Only then did he lean the suitcase against the umbrella holder and enter on tiptoes into the next room. In his hands he was holding something wrapped in decorative paper for wrapping presents.

I’ve been really lucky with my choices for this project so far. But despite the blurb on the cover (”The BEST selling debut novel in contemporary Macedonian literature”) and five pages of glowing reviews inside, Spectator, which I picked up when I visited Macedonia in 2014, didn’t grab me. As always, I’m happy to blame myself…

Although billed as a novel, it is effectively a chain of short stories, almost all of them in separated pairs. Normally I would expect a novel to have more unity in theme and plot. It was hard for me to detect a common note in the stories, unless it was voyeurism or watching others (spectating?). There seemed to be little depth to the stories, which seemed to go nowhere – as you might perhaps expect if they recount only what can be seen on the surface.

I was also disappointed because Spectator told me nothing about Northern Macedonia – the stories take place in Germany, Italy, Russia, France, England, Czechia, and Slovenia. I’m always hoping to learn more about the country I’m reading.

As always with a work translated from a language I don’t know, there must be a caveat about the unknown quality of the translation. Some words seem to make no sense – what is a car-tower? (If it is a multistorey parking station, it makes no sense in this context). Likewise, “For how long are we going to we know, with him not aware that he didn’t know?” seems devoid of sense. There are some apparent typos – “A Boeing 732-300 took off from Tegel” – presumably it should have been a 737-300.

But some of the writing just seemed to me to be bad. (’”Say one more thing and I will strangle you, get it?” This was a threat.’)

So – for me, I felt that Spectator had little depth, despite lots of minute detail, and I didn’t find the quality of writing impressive. But you might think otherwise.

Kujundziski, Zarko (КУЈУНЏИСКИ, Жарко) (1980 – ), Spectator, translated from Macedonian by Nikolche Mickoski, Skopje, Antolog, 2011, ISBN 978-608-4507-11-6