Book 224: Nauru (German) – Nauru: ein Krimi vom Ende der Welt = Nauru: a thriller from the ends of the earth (Thomas FUHLBRÜGGE)

 

 

But I became quieter and quieter. Everything was happening far too fast for me. Right now I would have loved to have dragged the neat Minister out of his shitty press conference, which was still going on in the background on the TV, and thrown him into our deepest hole. It would be best to drive up with the blue light and siren on, and in front of all the cameras clap the gun to his head and play the recording to the microphones. Then to chuck the guy into the back of the police car and lock him away. Finally I would have dropped the key into the Pacific.

 

[my translation]

 

Only three nations to go but another great read! (The third smallest by population, and also by area (21 km2), and the world’s smallest republic as well). It was really hard to find a novel for Nauru though, and I couldn’t find one in English, but finally found this one in German which hasn’t been translated.

One other record Nauru has lost (some would say squandered) is that it used to be the richest country in the world. It was built on phosphate. For example, Air Nauru used to fly its hard-working 737 all around the Pacific and to rim countries, pretty cheaply (if not always reliably – the whole plane risked being bumped if the President wanted to go somewhere). I’m sure it wasn’t commercially viable. I could kick myself for not having explored Micronesia too at the time of my big trip around the South Pacific. Now there are only few, and very expensive, flights to Micronesia in general and Nauru in particular. Sadly, the island’s interior was mined out (the standard description for what remains is a ‘moonscape’), and most of the phosphate was gone before independence to make the fields of Australia and New Zealand fertile. Enough resources remained to keep the Nauruans very rich if it was invested wisely – but the cargo cult mentality prevailed and it was wasted very quickly, leaving Nauru as a shell. It is a shameful story for Australia, the UK – and Nauru. Now Nauru earns money by hosting a sad camp for seafaring asylum seekers to prevent them coming to Australia.

So, for lack of a novel by an indigenous Nauruan (as far as I can find), we have this pretty good thriller by German writer Thomas Fuhlbrügge. And again, as far as I can tell, he knows the island very well, its history and politics, and seems to cram most of it into his novel! It would be perfect travel reading, if you were going there.

Fuhlbrügge relates the story of the discovery of phosphate – that a rock from Nauru being used as a doorstop in the office of the nearly bankrupt Pacific Islands Trading Co saved it and made its fortune when Albert Ellis got it tested and found that it was almost pure phosphate. (Though Arthur Grimble, in his wonderful book A Pattern of Islands, says the rock was from the other phosphate island, Banaba/Ocean Island in Kiribati).

Nauruan policeman Stephen Hix is looking forward to a stint representing the whole Pacific region with Interpol in France, when he is called to investigate the murder of an ex-President (not suicide, as he is convinced), – and then of another one – then of his own father, when it gets personal – and personally very dangerous. In a wild ride, among other heroics he helps put down a revolt in an asylum seeker detention centre (with the help of a bulldozer) and arrests his boss, the police minister, at the airport (then loses him due to too much police celebration). At the same time there is a hostage situation at the parliament.

As with so many thrillers, the author uses a limited milieu (this time, the whole little country) as a brilliant setting. For such a tiny island (which takes 16 minutes to ride around, without needing to use the siren and flashing blue light), there is a fantastic use of locations –  the cantilever which was used to load the phosphate ships, the airport (the main/only road around the island has to be blocked when a plane needs to land), the ponds, the parliament, and the Australian asylum camp. It was great how he brings danger to familiar surroundings (it all ends in his own bedroom).

I couldn’t help smiling at the characters who were named after famous spies from history – Somerset Maugham, Francis Walsingham, Guy Burgess, and Gary Powers. ‘Ivan Grom’ is obviously modelled on the Australian ‘Backpacker Murderer’ Ivan Milat. I also loved the wry humour about Nauru, e.g. when Hix is not worried about parking in one of the three disabled spots at the airport, since Nauru had only three wheelchair uses, one of whom is his stepmother who certainly wouldn’t be flying that day…

The book is full of fun facts about Nauru, including a map and lots of colour photos (which are actually rather boring but relate to locations mentioned). The writing itself is exciting and fluent (the slaughterhouse description sounded great in German!) Typos are few and far between (Goulburn in Australia got an extra ‘e’).

I really enjoyed this thriller, and I hope it gets some translations!

 

Fuhlbrügge, Thomas (1974 – ), Nauru: ein Krimi vom Ende der Welt, Norderstedt, Books on Demand, 2nd. edn. 2018, ISBN 9783744890304

Book 223: Palau (English) – A Greater Treasure (Susan KLOULECHAD)

The Captain stood on the beach, watching the longboats return to the shore. Behind them, his ship was a magnificent sight against the rising moon. The sails fitted perfectly and he nearly commended the islanders for their workmanship, but there was no longer any friendship. He thought only for a moment about the effort involved in weaving the large sails from dried leaves. Each had been carefully dyed in dark red, golden yellow, and black, then intricately woven into diamond patterns. Looking towards the mountain, his mood shifted.

 

I said last time that my San Marino book, Androceo, was the newest I had read. That’s not strictly true; this one is even newer! Of all the countries in the world, Palau proved the hardest to find a novel to read. I searched for years, and in the end was ready to admit that one from there didn’t exist. I had already read one book from there – a glossy scuba diving guide, Palau by Nancy Barbour (Full Court Press, 1990) – but although it has a country introduction and nice mythological excerpts (and gorgeous pictures – and not many guides suggest visiting the local jail), it didn’t count as a novel. In desperation I wrote to Susan Kloulechad, who had saved Ann Morgan’s project, and who rescued mine too. Susan is married to a Palauan and lives part of the time in Canada, part in Palau. Very generously she let me read one of her unpublished manuscripts (a different one from the one Ann read). At the time of writing, A Greater Treasure unfortunately hasn’t been published yet. This being the case, I thought it would be unfair to critique a work that, when it is finally (I hope) published, may end up different from what I read (like doing a road test of a prototype car). Maybe Susan will take up some of my suggestions, maybe she will do some re-writing, maybe the publisher’s editor will ask for some changes, or all of the above. So here I’ll just talk about the story.

It’s a young adult adventure novel set in an island country which may be very like Palau. A mysterious stranger, the captain, strides into a tavern in Pewter Bay (presumably somewhere in the Americas, presumably in the 1800s) and announces that he’s after a crew (not a lazy one this time!) to sail to “an island of sparkling diamonds, gems and gold” that he has heard of but has never been reached before. 

Marina is a professor at Pewter University. The captain seeks her out as the sort of Darwin to his Fitzroy, and she agrees to go on the adventure. She develops an ever-closer relationship with the captain which is not to end well. They do find the mysterious, utopian island and set out to colonise it – but it is already inhabited. Marina quickly learns the local language (which Susan tells me is actually Palauan) and she earns more trust from the locals than the rest of the crew do. (She is also more of a conservationist than the rest of them are). They show her a cave in a mountain with a huge diamond inside, which they can use to control the winds. Unfortunately, she shows it in turn to the captain, who avariciously undergoes a Sméagol/Gollum transformation, steals it (killing his local guide), and sets out to sail off with it (leaving distraught Marina behind). But Nature gangs up on him and gets its revenge (having some fun along the way).

In all it was an enjoyable adventure novel with a bit of mythology/fantasy thrown in. She does some lovely descriptions of nature (and appears to particularly be fond of coconut crabs!) along with the amusing mythological escapades. I wish Susan luck with her writing career and am so grateful for her helping me to tick off the land of the green umbrella-like Rock Islands and the stingless jellyfish lake!

 

 

Book 218: Northern Marianas (English) – The Master Blaster (P.F. KLUGE)

Then they took us to the A-bomb strips, the main attraction. We sped down unexpected highways, left over from the war. The Americans noticed Tinian was shaped like Manhattan and the thoroughfares they built were named after similarly located Manhattan streets. So we were on Broadway, cutting through cattle fields, past Japanese buildings and temples, bullet pocked. Then we turned and we were bouncing along a dirt track, tunneling through thickets of brushy saplings that covered the sky and slapped at the windows; it smelled green but it was a hot green, like everything was being cooked as it grew. You were fried in the sun, poached in the shade. But at last we felt a hard final bump and we drove out onto North Field, which the guide told us had once been the largest air base in the world, four 8,500-foot runways. We were on one of them now, riding where B-29s had taxied and taken off. The place was deserted. It was like one of those end-of-the-world movies: planes and tents, Quonset huts and hangars and fuel tanks all gone, only the airstrips remained, like footprints of another time, another race even.

Let’s stay in Micronesia for a while and hop across to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. (The Southern Marianas are basically Guam, which is still under the US – as was the CNMI for a long time – but has had a very different history). Sadly, they are best known for their use by the US military, most notoriously when the bombers which dropped the first A-bombs on Japan took off from Tinian island. Although the islands became self-governing, even more than with the other Micronesian members of the former UN Trust Territory, their dependence on the US has not ceased.

This adventure story follows the experience of four outsiders who arrive together on the same plane. George Griffin is a cynical travel writer on a junket who was expecting to get in and away quickly. The academic Stephanie Warner has just separated from her husband. Mel Brodie is a repellent old entrepreneur – a loudmouth, entitled, fugitive financier, real estate shyster, on-the-run realtor. He has his eye out for the main chance here too. Khan comes from Bangladesh to escape poverty in ‘America’ where he suffers the abuse of foreign labour. The story is told in turn with the point of view of each (sadly not of any of the Micronesians).

The final character is the Master Blaster of the title – he is not the pilot of Enola Gay, but a blogger who revels in revealing the ugly side of local life and aims to keep those in power honest, though his identity is itself a mystery to everyone (it is revealed about 2/3 of the way through) and has naturally made a lot of enemies. He knows his truth-telling may be useless, but he feels compelled to do it anyway. As he says, offering his job to one of the newcomers, “At the end… I think what happens in this place is important. Hardly anyone cares, of course. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.” The local politicians and businessmen; the American government and visitors; the guest workers; even the ordinary locals, who understandably turn their favouritism into personal advantage – all are at the mercy of his keyboard. (And where in another one of those island countries where everyone is related and everyone knows each other). One by one those who arrived on same plane have to leave – except perhaps one of them.

The second-hand copy I bought was withdrawn from a US library where it had apparently only been read once. This novel deserves far better than that. It is funny and the dialogues are very good, and yet again I learned an enormous amount about this place and what makes it tick.

Kluge, P.F., The Master Blaster, NY, The Overlook Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59020-322-4

Book 217: Marshall Islands (English) – Melal (Robert BARCLAY)

Not long after Rujen Keju had clipped his Kwajalein Missile Range ID badge to the collar of his overalls, slung his boots over his shoulder, and left his home for the pier, his two sons, Jebro and Nuke, were up and headed in the same direction. Jebro carried a large gray duffel bag. Nuke had a small one-strap backpack. Each held a one-gallon jug of water. Around them, red morning light caught lingering smoke from the dump and the air seemed charmed with a magic pastel glow. Hinges squeaked. Water splashed. Bodies coughed and spat. Calico cats moved low and quick past helter-skelter cemeteries where snoozing mongrel dogs lay by concrete crosses that bore, in English, the names and dates of the dead.

Considering how hard it is to find any novel to read from the Marshalls (or just about anywhere in the Pacific), I was pleasantly surprised that this is such a great book.

It follows a Marshallese family, father and two sons, having a bad day. A really bad day. If you think you’ve had some bad ones…

As with our Hawai’ian novel, we’re exploring the devastating consequences of American colonialism, especially military and nuclear, on a small island country, which is still trying to deal with the consequences of the nuclear bomb and missile tests, nuclear (and consumer) waste, and permanently losing a large amount of their little land to the US military. (Maybe they should be re-named the Martial Islands?)

On this not very good Good Friday in 1981, the two boys, Jebro and Nuke (named after the bomb) decide to go to their ancestral island to visit their grandfather’s grave. A fairly banal exercise of a basic human right, you would think. But Tar-Woj has been taken by the Americans, and Marshallese are forbidden to visit, so the boys have to sneak in.

Of course, the Marshalls are famous as the site of the world’s first atom bomb test, on Bikini Atoll, and the little country has no doubt suffered more from the nuclear cycle than anywhere else on earth. Kwajalein is maybe the world’s largest coral atoll. What a perfect target to throw ICBMs at from California. One of its islets, Kwajalein proper, was cleared of locals for the airport and the missile base staff who live in affluent American suburbia. The Marshallese from all the other islets were concentrated into even more minuscule Ebeye (Meļaļ) islet, though many work menial jobs on Kwaj on day passes, and the greater opportunities there have attracted people from other parts of the Marshalls, so it is one of the most devastatingly overcrowded places on earth. Ebeye is ugly and impoverished, but for the Marshallese it is as close to ‘civilisation’ (American living) as they can get. In the ‘Slum of the Pacific’ they suffer from suicide, sickness, unemployment, boredom, bad imported food, lack of water, a shockingly contaminated lagoon, and a broken sewerage system – and apartheid. (Apparently not much has improved since the ’80s; one could add rising sea levels from global warming).

The Marshalls (along with the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau) signed a “Compact of Free Association” with the US when they became independent (or semi-independent). It will be interesting to see what continuing support and expectations the US will have after the Compact expires in 2023.

So to this great adventure story. We follow the brothers’ dangerous voyage to and from their ancestral island (coming back, American hoons sink their boat), and the shenanigans on Kwaj island, where the father works in the sewerage plant (the church embarrassment scene is masterful, and the incident of the poached dolphin provides a fascinating and thought-provoking insight into the opposing views of the islanders and the Americans, or the West generally).

There is a beautifully portrayed relationship between the brothers. The older Jebro is knowledgeable, intelligent, and mature compared with more impetuous Nuke.

Unusually, the ‘true’ story is interspersed with mythological sections – I don’t know how much of these are based on traditional stories.

Author Robert Barclay lived on Kwajalein for many years and obviously came to understand and sympathise with the Marshallese and their problems.

Another important, and very readable, book which deserves a much wider audience. It’s a great mix of adventure and sociology, a combination of the gritty realism of the American wasteland of nuclear contamination and addictive consumerism, and Marshallese mythology. Highly recommended.

Barclay, Robert, Meļaļ, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8248-2391-8

Book 211: Federated States of Micronesia (English) – Under the Northern Cross: a story in the Micronesian oral tradition (Ralph B. CHUMBLEY)

The oarsmen put their paddles into the crystal-clear, blue-green water of the lagoon and began rowing toward the village on shore. In the water below the hull, Keso could see several sand sharks leisurely gliding along the white sandy bottom. The sharks patrolled between two very large, florescent-yellow brain corals that had grown to be at least two-meters across. Purple, stony coral sea fans and orange-and-white anemone – each with its own clown fish – stood out as accents against the myriad schools of colorful reef fish that abounded in Ant’s lagoon. There was an abundance in the lagoon at Ant thought Keso, and, he was glad that he had chosen this lagoon as their re-provisioning stop.

One of the worst neglects in history as taught in the West is ignoring the amazing peopling of the Pacific and Indian Oceans by the Austronesians (the Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians and – in the wider ethnographical sense – Indonesians). They managed to discover and colonise virtually every speck of land between Easter Island and Madagascar, more than halfway around the world. Most of the most amazing longest distance voyages (such as central Polynesia to New Zealand, Hawai’i and Easter Island – which have been called the moon shots of their time) were done by the Polynesians, but these navigational skills were largely lost under diktats from European missionaries and colonial authorities forbidding voyaging as ‘too dangerous’. But their skill in navigating using natural phenomena (the stars, direction of currents, winds, clouds, birds, etc.) was miraculously preserved into our own times in Micronesia, to be re-discovered by people like the New Zealand solo sailor David Lewis. The Polynesians are slowly re-learning these skills from their distant cousins, but inter-island voyaging never ceased along the shorter distances in Micronesia.

This young adult novel is set mainly on the island of Pohnpei, at the time it was ruled by a dynasty called the Saudeleurs (who built the incredible ‘Venice-like’ city of Nan Madol), 700-1150 CE. They mysteriously disappeared, but this story posits an answer as to why. It follows the fortunes of two princes with opposite characters, one of whom is dogged by bad luck. King Rehntu has procrastinated too long in deciding who should inherit – the legitimate son (the weak and scholarly Katau) or the more capable, stronger adopted son Dareek. The centrepiece of the tale is a trading voyage to the Northern Marianas. (The return voyage not described at all – as happens so often in travel accounts – you would think that as much is likely to happen on the return as on the outward leg!) I would have thought that Dareek (from an atoll) would be amazed by the high islands.

There were some anachronisms. Would the islanders know about Asia or the Marianas Trench? Or about Venice, and the Biblical loaves and fishes? I was left wondering about the Northern Cross of the title (also the name of the voyaging canoe); there is of course a Southern Cross, but not as far as I know a Northern Cross (unless it figures among the Micronesian constellations). This isn’t explained.

The book is well-researched, and I loved the fascinating insights into the culture (such as food preparation, navigation, fishing, and ship naming ceremonies).

I appreciated that there was a good vocabulary. But on page 236, ama is glossed as ‘outrigger’, while in the vocabulary it means ‘spars connecting the outrigger to the main hull of a canoe’.

This novel, published by Amazon, did have a few typos – even on the cover. But on the whole I enjoyed it a lot.

The author was a government contract worker on Pohnpei.

Chumbley, Ralph B., Under the Northern Cross: a story in the Micronesian oral tradition, Middletown, DE, Amazon, 2020, ISBN 978-1-0770-6585-7