Book 246: Punjab (English) – Saintly Sinner = Pavitra Paapi (Nanak Singh)

The day went by, and night enveloped the world in its dark blanket. As time passed, the storms raging inside Kedar gathered strength. He could no longer see anything inside the room. His mind was spinning out of control, like a twig adrift in a whirlpool. Caught in the vortex of a swift and powerful current, he drifted for hours until he reached a place that is beyond the pale of intelligence or reason, where the overpowering torrents choke the human spirit before contemptuously tossing it aside as unconscious or half dead, where the boundaries between man and beast begin to merge, where the distinctions between friends and strangers, between truth and fiction begin to evaporate.

 

We haven’t been to Asia for quite a while; since I was reading in population order, and the countries and even territories are very populous, I got through them quite a while ago. Since Punjab is one of the most populous places that isn’t independent but that many would like to be (and simply because I love literature from the Subcontinent so much), this is an excuse to have a trip back to Asia.

Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan in the bloody split and independence in 1947. (Punjab suffered perhaps more bloodshed and dislocation from this than any other part of India, since the arbitrary boundaries drawn suddenly left millions of people on the ‘wrong side’ according to their religion. Read Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins for this amazing story). Now it forms a state in both countries, with a Muslim majority in Pakistan, and a Sikh majority and large Hindu minority in India. The Punjabi language, again one of the most spoken in the world, is also split in its written form: Arabic script in Pakistan, Gurmukhi script in India (a Sikh script related to Hindi, etc.) Since India is a majority Hindu nation, and there seems less room for other religions under BJP rule, many Sikhs would like to create their own homeland in Punjab (which they would call Khalistan).

In 1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered a military operation to oust militants from the Sikhs’ holiest site, the Golden Temple, in Amritsar. Two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in revenge. The Indian government has recently been accused by Canada and the US of having assassinated and of wanting to assassinate (respectively) Sikh separatists living in their countries. An organisation called Sikhs for Justice (banned in India) has been holding unofficial referendums for independence among the Sikh emigré communities, e.g. in the UK, Canada, Australia and this month in the USA.

Anyway enough background, on to my Punjabi book. It took quite a while to find a suitable one – there are lots in English, but they all seemed to be written by Punjabis living in the UK, Australia, etc.! Many thanks to my friend Raj for suggesting the poet, songwriter and ‘father of the Punjabi novel’, Nanak Singh. A popular Hindi film was made of Saintly Sinner.

The story takes place in the 1930s (that is, in the British Raj, before Partition). I guess you could say it’s a story about dharma, the need to try to do your duty (which may be impossible when your duties clash). The hero (Kedar) is always trying to do the right thing, but gets drawn deeper and deeper into a morass of lies and deception. Yet there is no ‘original sin’ he commits that would make us feel he deserves his sad fate. It’s just the way life turns out. In a way it’s as tragic as Romeo and Juliet.

It starts when Kedar gets a job with a watchmaker, inadvertently replacing Panna Lal who then disappears for the span of the story, leaving his abandoned family in a deep debt that they didn’t know about. Kedar is a good person and feels bad about what had happened, and he takes responsibility for this family. He comes to be loved and trusted by them, and the feeling is mutual – he especially comes to romantically love the eldest sister, Veena, though it’s hard for him to act on this since he has effectively become her brother. (She calls him Bharaji, which I think is ‘brother’ with an honorific -ji ending). Although he wishes it was himself, when Veena is promised to someone else in marriage he honourably accepts responsibility for raising her dowry for the greedy in-laws (since the family can’t afford it themselves), though he can’t afford it either. Veena herself is still too young to sort out her feelings, she has to suddenly see her relationship with Kedar in a totally different light but doesn’t have time to work out what to do, even if she was allowed to decide her own fate. She seems too dazed or powerless to care which of the prospects she would really want to be married to. All this leaves Kedar too in a despairing mood.

Kedar has been deceiving the family that Panna Lal hadn’t in fact lost his job but had been sent away for business, and was still writing them letters via himself, Kedar (who actually wrote them himself). For me it was a bit hard to believe that all this time the family didn’t ask for their father’s address, from either Kedar or the watchmaker. 

The translation from Punjabi looks fluent and the tale is easy and pleasurable to read. The story is a little melodramatic and elements seem a little unbelievable, but it’s very touching and a great story. It’s heartbreaking following two good people trying to do the right thing but being constantly unfairly battered on the seas of fate. It’s a bit Sophoclean in that you feel that people trying their best shouldn’t be put in tragically impossible scenarios. But (sometimes) that’s life.

 

Nanak Singh (1897 – 1971), Saintly Sinner, translated by Navdeep Suri [his grandson], New Delhi, Amit Bhatia for A’N’B Publishers, 2003, ISBN 9788175390294

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 188: Cape Verde (English) – Chiquinho: a novel of Cabo Verde (Baltazar LOPES)

I started seeing my island as a vast laboratory of human experience. People who refuse to be crushed by despair, who possess a crucial will to resist, regardless of the outcome of their efforts. Above all of this, there was the constant presence of escapism into the spaces of dream, distance, unknown destinations always offered up by the restless blue curve of the ocean. Moral resistance. What other name could describe the faith of my people, always planting seed, and replanting again, endlessly? The struggle against the Lunário’s forecasts, against earthworms that ruin the corn, against the absence of rain every October, against the harmattan and all bad weather. The sailor Chico Zepa’s struggle against the destiny that prevented him from taking a boat to São Vicente and from there escaping on any convenient steamer to those distant lands that would steal him away for good from the hoe. Nhô João Joana’s tattooed arms. On his right arm, a long-haired woman with a warm, seductive gaze, offering him the delights of never-ending love. And my grandfather, who died so young aboard the whaling ship that was taking him back to Cabo Verde. Mamãe-Velha must have loved him very much, this grandfather with his sparkling eyes, his dark skin, and his black, silky hair that now only a mermaid could caress in endless hours of almost unnerving love. How much he would have liked to come above the waters, back to the deck of his ship, to hunt whales, fight against the treacherous Sargasso seaweed, and defeat, with the force of his youthful courage, storms, cyclones, and uncontrollable winds! 

 

Well, we’re getting towards the pointy end of this project! Mostly, all we have left to cover are the European micro-states, and several island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific – and two (former Portuguese colonies) in Africa. Today, we’re in Cabo Verde.

For us in Australia, this group of islands off the west coast of Africa is almost totally unknown. I knew little myself, apart from the haunting morna “Sodade” (”Longing”) sung by Cesária Évora. It is much better known by Europeans, who have flocked to its beaches in recent years. So for me, this is just the kind of novel that fits my current project perfectly. I learned so much about life and history in the Cape Verde Islands. In following the career of the eponymous hero before he (like so many of his compatriots) is forced to emigrate, Young Chiquinho is torn between his longing for adventure and his ‘sodade’ for his homeland, especially the island of Sao Nicolau made famous by the above-mentioned song. He becomes a writer and gets involved in politics in the early stirrings of the movement for independence from Portugal, establishing a Grémio (Society) influenced by South Africa’s ANC.

I was fascinated by the apparently close relationship of the locals with mythology and folklore, and history – Charlemagne is not forgotten here, nor the Paraguayan war, nor the Chanson de Roland epic. The many shipwrecked sailors can look forward to meeting mermaids. Life in the beautiful islands seems incredibly tough, both for the sailors and the disregarded farmers, even between the recurrent severe droughts and locust plagues. It was heartbreaking when as a teacher Chiquinho sees his students dying one by one. It is hard to blame them for leaving for the supposed paradise of the US where the islands’ intelligentsia ends up buried in mind-numbing factories.

I would have liked to learn more about the close relationship between the independence movements of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, and what happened between them after they gained freedom in 1975 but this is outside the timescale of the book. There were also a lot of names to remember – too many for me. But apart from that minor quibble, I found this a really enjoyable and enlightening novel.

 

LOPES, Baltazar (1907 – 1989), Chiquinho: a novel of Cabo Verde, translated from Portuguese by Isabel P.B. Fêo Rodrigues and Carlos A. Almeida with Anna M. Klobucka, Dartmouth, Mass., Tagus, 2019, ISBN 978-1-933227-85-6

(originally published in Portuguese 1947)

Book 167: Hawai’i (English) – House of Many Gods (Kiana DAVENPORT)

Lightning season came, the air so electric the fillings in their teeth hummed. Everything they touched just sparked. There were flash floods, the seas gave off a yellow glow. For days, lightning zigzagged up the valley. It hit a wild pig that rolled into their yard completely roasted. One night, herringbones of ions, lightning striking everywhere. no one saw Ava leave the house. But they heard her awful scream, and found Ben standing over her, his hair electrified a gaseous blue.

Some books prove hard to find a single good quote (which doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily bad). Not this one – it was hard to choose!

It is set in Hawai’i and Russia – at first blush it is hard to imagine two lands more different, but the parallels soon become obvious – destruction by respective militaries, horrible consequences of the nuclear cycle, and poverty. (Even so, while both this part of Hawai’i and Russia are poor and polluted I can’t help thinking Hawai’i must be a much nicer place to live, for its climate and natural beauty if nothing else.)

Both suffer environmental degradation and nuclear pollution and sickness from rampant militaries. The beautiful island (home to some of the world’s most unique and endangered creatures) is used for target practice.

Sadly Hawai’i is no longer among the ranks of independent countries. It was deceitfully taken over by a kleptocracy of greedy American businessmen, and handed over to the USA (few Americans seem to be aware of this shameful episode in their history). Since then, the Hawai’ians’ tradition of aloha was taken advantage of by the US military and the Polynesians have been overrun by immigrants and tourists, so that they are only a small minority in their own country now.

The story is set mainly on the poverty-stricken Wai’anae coast of O’ahu. Ana was abandoned when she was a child by her mother Anahola and feels extremely resentful because of this. She meets Nikolai, a Russian who makes films about ecological catastrophes in his home country and in the Pacific, and they come to share common feelings. Having let him go, she heads to Russia to try to track him down.

Meanwhile her mother has thrown herself into the horrible trauma of working in ER departments, and tries fruitlessly to reconnect with her daughter, dying of cancer.

One thing I’d take issue with – having lived through the time of Chernobyl and its aftermath, I don’t remember individual Russians being blamed for it in the West. We saw them as being victims of the system. And another thing – Kazakhstan is not in Russia.

If I can have a little personal rant against American “spell checkers” on behalf of so many non-English writers: Here both the Hawai’ian and Russian languages have fallen victim. In the Polynesian (and Scandinavian) languages ‘i’ means “in”, in the Slavic languages it means “and”. In Polynesian, “a” is a possessive (”of”). Of course, such words shouldn’t be capitalised in the middle of a sentence. But smarty-pants programs like Word assume that they are English words and capitalise them. So despite typing correctly, you have to go back and correct them. Several phrases in both Hawai’ian and Russian have fallen foul of this in this book. Down with cultural imperialism!

This is an amazing novel. Much of the writing is very sensual but there is a lot of volcanic anger seething beneath the surface and often erupting. One that I can’t recommend too highly.

Davenport, Kiana, House of Many Gods, NY, Ballantine, 2006, ISBN 978-0-345-48151-1

Book 157: Namibia (English) – Born of the Sun (Joseph DIESCHO)

“Do you have any questions?”

There are no questions. The men are hungry for more information about what they will soon experience, but how do you ask questions about what you don’t know, have never experienced and do not have the foggiest idea about? In any case, you simply do not ask your mother what she will cook tomorrow, you wait graciously for the food, eat it, and then ask your questions. The future will have its own rules. You do not ask today what you will do to the bridge tomorrow – you will either cross it, or burn it, when you get to it.

This is one that I picked up in the Windhoek. Namibia was colonised by the Germans (as South West Africa), then ruled by South Africa (supposedly on behalf of its people) who tried to impose their own apartheid system. It finally gained independence after a long guerrilla struggle and international sanctions pressure.

Muronga is a (perhaps too perfect?) young man who grows up in an isolated village with little knowledge of the world, and that coming through German Catholic missionaries. The book portrays Catholicism very negatively, which (as author himself remarks in a note) “is more accurate for an earlier period in history than for the time frame in which this novel is placed.” It seems like more of a send-up, with threats to “un-baptise” those who are not good… The natives can’t even remember or pronounce the baptismal names they’ve been given.

When South Africa took over, it made the people pay taxes for the first time. This meant that their young men had to go to work in the horrid conditions of apartheid South Africa’s mines. Their recruitment process was reminiscent of slave processing and they were separated from their family and friends for years, maybe forever. Eventually Muronga comes to fight for the miners’ rights against the exploitation. Yet somehow he still seemed to me rather naive at the end.

Born of the Sun was an uncomfortable read – apart from the horrible conditions and racism suffered by the ‘Blacks’, they themselves came across against ‘Whites’ who are all portrayed as bad (and lumped together as ’the white man’).

Because of the simplicity of the writing, treatment of the issues and the plot, I felt like this first novel by a native Namibian was really a children’s book, although a friend of the author that I spoke with assured me that he didn’t intend it to be. But we need to be reminded of this cruel time in history.

Joseph DIESCHO (1955 – ) with Celeste WALLIN, Born of the Sun, Windhoek, Gamsberg Macmillan, 2002, ISBN 99916-0-386-7 (first published in US 1988)

Book 147: Moldova (English) – The Good Life Elsewhere (Vladimir LORCHENKOV)

[Serafim’s father] told his son, “Never give your all to this land. Think about how to get yourself out of here.”

So Serafim came up with a plan: Italy. He’d go to Italy. To a country where the streets are always clean, the people are kind and pleasant, where without having to kill yourself you’d make in a month what you couldn’t earn in three years of working the land in Moldova. Where the earth smells fresh, like pasta seasoning, where the sea is salty, warm and radiant, like the sweat of a woman you’re lying on top of…

There seems to be a bit of a pattern in all the books I’ve read about Moldova (both of them!) – the Moldovans playing foreigners at (for the Moldovans) an unusual sport. (The other one was Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawks, where he challenges the Moldovan football team to tennis);.and depression and apparent loathing for their own country. Of course, you can’t judge a country or its literature on the basis of two books (one written by a foreigner), but here there doesn’t seem to be much choice…

So what to do if you’re in grinding poverty in a country which may not exist at all (let’s not even mention Transnistria here!), where even the president has no greater ambition than to be an immigrant assistant pizzeria cook (which reminded me of Petronius’ story of the Asian king who made himself a slave in ancient Rome so that he might eventually become a Roman citizen).

Well, if you are inventive, ignorant, hopeful, and more than slightly crazy, like Serafim, you form a plan for you and your fellow villagers to emigrate to Italy by forming a curling team to supposedly take part in the European championship (after learning what curling is, and how to play it, of course).

As in the quote above, Serafim has a completely unrealistic, utopian vision of Italy. It reminded me of the dean in the story told by the Good Soldier Švejk who didn’t believe that Australia existed. Serafim teaches himself Italian (or was it Chinese? The textbook was missing its title page!), the villagers teach themselves curling (a game that is perhaps a symbol of the journey’s obstacles) and off they go on an increasingly madcap adventure.

I loved the magical realist elements (the flying tractor, then the pedal-powered submarine made from the tractor – complete with deck chairs!)

Of course, the way into Italy isn’t easy; like so many other would-be immigrants they are duped by people smugglers. It is hard enough for them to get into Romania (most Moldovans speak Romanian – the country is basically the part of Romania that was annexed by the USSR during World War II), let alone Italy.

The story reminded me of so many episodes from mythology and history – the Moldovan assault on Italy was like a take on Hades’ rape of Persephone; the randy teenagers were reminiscent of the Children’s Crusade; the story of Tudor’s stolen bike comes to an ending like The Life of Brian… 

This is a laughing-through-tears book. Surely it is the funniest book about so many immigrants’ cargo cult mentality about the richer countries (countries like Italy, Greece, Sweden and Ireland, whose peoples also emigrated en masse in times when they were poorer).

As so often, especially with a comedy, I can’t help wondering how much was lost in the translation, but Ross Ufberg’s adaptation reads beautifully. I think it would make a fantastic film as well as a very funny book.

Lorchenkov, Vladimir (1979 – ), The Good Life Elsewhere, translated by Ross Ufberg, Russia?, New Vessel Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-939931-01-6

(first published in Russian 2008 as Vse tam budem)

Book 144: Panama (Spanish) – Roberto por el buen camino = Roberto Down the Right Track (Rose Marie Tapia R.)

There was once a peasant’s donkey which fell into a well. The animal cried for hours, while the peasant tried to somehow rescue it. Then, the man decided that the donkey was already old; what’s more, the well was dry and needed to be covered somehow, so he decided not to get the donkey out. He invited all his neighbours to come and help him. Each grabbed a shovel and they began to throw earth into the well, one shovelful after the other.

The donkey realised what was happening and cried. Then, to everyone’s surprise, it calmed down after a few shovelfuls of earth. In the midst of its misfortune it had seen a glimmer of hope.

When the peasant, finally, looked down at the bottom of the well, he was surprised to see that with every shovelful that fell onto his back, the donkey shook itself and stepped up on the earth which was accumulating under its feet.

It was in this way that, very soon, to their great surprise they all saw the donkey getting higher and higher, until it made it to the mouth of the well. When there were only a few centimetres left, the little animal gave a graceful leap and trotted off towards the grass, to the admiration of the peasants, who thus received an unexpected master class.

[my translation]

That little story was actually my favourite part of this short novel! (My insincere apologies for sharing it here). For someone billed as Panama’s best-selling author, I found this book a bit disappointing. It’s the story of how the gangs recruit youths, and how Roberto (renamed from Tuti), with the help of the mother of one of his victims, escapes them and finds redemption. Which is great, of course. And I’m as much a sucker for a happy ending story as anyone. So what’s not to like? I suppose it came across as a little too goody-goody with a maybe too obvious preachy undertone.

Basically, the gangs take the under-aged because if they kill someone they only get a slap on the wrist from the law.

The story starts dramatically enough with a robbery, including a murder. Since the legal response is too weak, one of the victims’ parents goes with a bunch of assassins to wreak revenge on one of the perpetrators, but pauses when she sees he’s only a boy. The rest of the story consists of the rescue of Tuti/Roberto from his life of crime.

It reminded me of the Bible’s story of the Prodigal Son which – I’m sorry – has always troubled me. I get the message of forgiving those who have wronged you and giving them a chance for a new start, but why should they be favoured over those who have never sinned in the first place?

As a suggestion for helping those living in poverty, I think Luis Carlos’ idea of getting poor mothers sterilised will horrify many readers. I suppose that’s one way of stopping children getting into gangs, if they’re not even born…

Basically, I felt that the scenario was unrealistic (for example, that the gangs didn’t fight back), and I doubt that the legal situation would even permit what happened in the story.

The author is one of the best-selling authors of Panama. From this novella, I can’t really see why. It’s really a children’s book, with simple themes and language and healthy morality, and in that role would no doubt work well. I did enjoy the fact that the Spanish was easy to read!

TAPIA RODRIGUEZ, Rose Marie (1945 – ), Roberto por el buen camino, Mazon Edition (self-published), 2004, ISBN 978-9962-00-801-9Translated into English

Book 142: Kuwait (English) – The Bamboo Stalk (Saud Alsandousi)

If only my parents could have given me a single, clear identity, instead of making me grope my way alone through life in search of one. Then I would have just one name that would make me turn when someone called me. I would have just one native country. I would learn its national anthem. Its trees and streets would shape my memories and in the end I could lie at rest in its soil. I would have one religion I could believe in instead of having to set myself up as the prophet of a religion that was mine alone.

Josephine is a Filipina who comes to Kuwait to work as a maid. (The majority of the population are non-Kuwait-born). In the shadow of the looming Iraqi invasion, she falls in love with Rashid. But under pressure from his family, he has to send her home with their baby, José (the narrator). 

José grows up with a culturally split identity, and goes back to Kuwait to see if he can fit in to a society biased against him. The novel is also split between his life in the Philippines and in Kuwait. Can he be at home anywhere? (One of the most devastating moments is when, despite having a Kuwaiti passport, the immigration officer takes one look at his Filipino face and sends him to the foreigners’ queue). He had never met his father, and Kuwaiti culture is actually strange to him and is something he has to learn the hard way, but he is desperate to fit in and be accepted. His return, which he believed was expected, throws his Kuwaiti family into confusion and conflict. He is reluctantly allowed to live with them but with the servants as if he were a dirty secret. But their hostility is neither universal nor unambiguous. (He is defended, and mentored, by his half-sister Khawla).

Kuwait is a small and claustrophobic place, and you have to be careful what you say, because you can’t really escape from the Arab society’s judgement. His Kuwaiti family would no doubt have been kinder to him if they were not afraid of losing their reputation in their own society.

The Bamboo Stalk is a devastating insight into what it’s like to be one of the ‘guest workers’ from poorer Asian countries in one of the rich Gulf countries where they form the majority of the population and are depended on to keep the economy running, but cannot find acceptance as full members of the community, have little security and are there as if on sufferance. It seems that in the modern world, identity has never been so important, but never so fraught.

While the writing, at least in translation, doesn’t come across as extraordinary, the novel covers a wide range of extremely important themes in a not oversimplified way.

ALSANOUSI, Saud (1981 – ), The Bamboo Stalk, translated from Arabic by Jonathan Wright, Doha, Hamad bin Khalifa University Press, 2016, ISBN 9789927101793

First published in Arabic 2012

Book 131: Norway (Norwegian) – Sult = Hunger (Knut HAMSUN)

.

God, what you can think up! I thought, dangerously; To run round such sopping wet streets on dark nights like a crazy person! The hunger gnawed at me unbearably and gave me no respite. Again and again I swallowed my saliva, hoping in this way to assuage it somewhat; and it seemed to help.

[my translation]

You might have noticed a theme (or an anti-theme) here – no Nordic Noir thrillers. Although we all know from all those best-sellers that Scandinavia is a place where the sun never shines and there is an unstoppable crime wave of warped murders, I wanted to be perverse and see another side.

Norway is now one of the richest countries in the world, but this is a tale of a descent into grinding poverty. The protagonist is a bourgeois journalist, normally happy to survive with not much, who has fallen on hard times but is reluctant to admit that to himself – and yes he is hungry. We follow the deterioration in his circumstances as he leaves accommodation with unpaid rent (always intending to pay it); calls in favours;

tries all his friends and acquaintances for money; is taken to jail for night and offered meal ticket – which, though he hadn’t eaten for three days, he refused from pride; starts to try to slake his hunger by chewing wood chips, then by putting a stone in his mouth; gets sick; is still too proud to accept when some kind people offer him freebies; undergoes several ‘stays of execution’; suffers accidents and becomes irrational; and so it goes…  He becomes obsessed with an apparently made-up woman with a made-up name, Ylajali. For me, one of the most affecting scenes was where when he does get a steak, he can only vomit it up.

Through it all he does his best to keep up appearances (with his dress sense, and trying to be generous to beggars and friends even though he can’t afford it), but he is living in a fool’s paradise. He keeps kidding himself that he will be able to repay favours, and has the best of intentions to do so. Pride is the greatest expense! It is so heartbreaking.

Despite its depressing theme, there was something that made me love this book, and in any case the writing is wonderful. Hamsun deservedly won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Hamsun, Knut (1859 – 1952), Sult, ISBN 9781499546910