Book 205: St Lucia (English) – Death by Fire (Anderson REYNOLDS)

The year was 1938, the month was October, and it was the hurricane season. Prophets of doom riding horse-drawn carts with attached bells traversed the main roads passing through farming villages and all the streets of the towns lining the island’s coast, shouting their warning of an upcoming hurricane. The people should stock their houses with food, hammers, nails, candles and kerosine [sic] lamps. And those whose houses were suspect should consider seeking refuge in Roman Catholic Churches, then the largest and sturdiest buildings on the island.

In more eloquent voices, at every hour of the day, the radio repeated, in both English and Kwéyòl, the message of impending disaster. The warning cries of the prophets of doom and the eloquent voices on the radio were largely unnecessary. Even the tiniest creatures of the land could sense the danger. Nature had telecast its own mischief. For two days, dark, heavy clouds had blanketed the sun. The land had entered a perpetual predawn. The air was chilly, and, though rain was yet to fall, damp. The people could even smell the rain. 

 

Choosing a book for St Lucia was both easy and hard. It should be easy because the small Caribbean island country is blessed with one of the giants of world literature – Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. (Apparently this novel’s title comes from one of his poems). But he is a poet, and I needed a novel. The other top writers also seemed to be only poets. Finally I found Anderson Reynolds and chose Death by Fire. And yes, the St Lucians can write great novels too!

This beautiful island has repeatedly suffered tragedies, according to this novel, because the gods of the land were upset that the Carib Indians permitted the French colonialists to move the capital from Soufrière to Castries (then called Carènage!) That sounds like the ‘justification’ of a terrorist/warmonger/persecutor/religious bigot for killing innocent people, in ‘revenge’ for what their ancestors supposedly did a long time ago. But apart from that caveat, this is a fantastic novel!

It is an historical novel which jumps back and forward through time and between characters (in a much more successful way than most such attempts), with a bit of mythological history thrown in.

Reynolds, who knows what he is talking about, manages a deep analysis of the country’s problems through a few totally natural conversations.

The story-line follows two women. Unlucky Felina is left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend, and transfers her hatred at her fate to their son Robert

Beautiful Christine is also unlucky but is more resilient. She is a descendant of indentured Indian labourers on her mother’s side and a ‘Black/White’ mix on her father’s. Felina and Christine come from different worlds but their sons Robert and Trevor become great friends. Robert’s ‘devilment’ gets his friend Trevor into trouble (since Robert gives him the attention he never got from his mother). They end up committing a horrible crime. It all ends in the conflagration of the title.

I learnt a huge amount about St Lucian life and history from this one. The relations between the various ethnicities seemed very sad – everyone thinking they were better than everyone else. The Indian indentured servants (who were often, as here, tricked into coming out) and their descendants live lives little different from the (freed) slaves but still look down on them. The ‘Blacks’ in turn despise the Indians.

The novel is simply written but engrossing. I enjoyed it very much.

 

 

Reynolds, Anderson, Death by Fire, Vieux Fort/NY/London, Jako, 2001, 2018, ISBN 978-09704432-1-2

 

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 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 163: Gambia (English) – The African (William CONTON)

It is perhaps a pity that the British, with their traditional reserve, were the most successful of African imperial powers. For reserve shown toward a once-subject people is at once interpreted as prejudice. Two pairs of eyes meet across a ship’s lounge or smoking room: a copy of The Times is promptly interposed across the line of vision by the Briton, and the African sucks his teeth and curses him in his heart. In fact, of course, the Briton would have made exactly the same gesture if his eyes had met almost any other strange ones. And so gestures create attitudes, and attitudes in turn give colour to gestures, and the waters are soon poisoned almost beyond cleansing.

In the fictional country of Songhai (the name of a famous medieval West African state which, unlike Ghana and Mali, wasn’t claimed by a modern one), Kisimi goes to school, becoming teacher Miss Schwartz’s live-in servant.

He then wins a scholarship to study in England. On a walking tour of Lakes District, he meets an Afrikaner girl from South Africa, Greta (who is engaged to the racist Frederik). Their relationship does not end well and he returns home, becoming a leader fighting for its independence. But he hasn’t forgotten Greta and ends up going to South Africa, planning revenge on Frederik for what happened to her.

Kisimi himself does not always come across as perfect, but who is? His marriage is arranged and happy, yet he immediately wants a second wife. His conversion to Islam comes across as strategic, and he makes other compromises for political purposes. As leader, he evades his own police to cross border (twice). He didn’t particularly grab me.

There are some mistakes, or at least modifications of facts – South Africa here speaks a language called ‘Bantu’, and its legislative capital is ‘Johnstown’.

This is a readable although perhaps dated novel, I would think particularly interesting for students of African literature at the time the countries were gaining independence.

Conton, William (1925 – 2003), The African, African Writers Series, London/Ibadan/Nairobi/Lusaka, Heinemann, 1960, 1978, ISBN 0 435 90012 9