“I know I had to guide my pupils past tenuous abstractions to the higher chemistry in which the man about to die seeks to divorce soul from body. He a“I know I had to guide my pupils past tenuous abstractions to the higher chemistry in which the man about to die seeks to divorce soul from body. He adducted proof upon proof of the immortality of the soul, but beneath all those ratiocinations yawned the chasm of death, the absence of soul.”
"The Following Story" centers around Herman Mussert, a former classics teacher, who wakes up in a Lisbon hotel room, despite having gone to sleep in his Amsterdam apartment the previous night. This surreal experience prompts a journey through his memories, “drinking its fill of time”. His affair with Maria Zeinstra, a married woman, is a focal point of his memories. This relationship, though passionate, is fraught with complications and moral ambiguities. Mussert is tormented by his actions and their implications, as his love for Maria is not just a source of joy but also of guilt and sorrow. “Love is in the one who loves, not in the one who is loved”. The affair’s eventual dissolution leaves Mussert in a state of emotional desolation, highlighting his inability to reconcile his desires with the realities of his situation.
The narrative shifts, and Mussert finds himself on a ship traveling along the Amazon River, a setting that is both physically and symbolically remote . The trip is presented as a memory and as a dreamlike experience, blending past and present, reality and imagination. Mussert encounters other passengers under a “common destiny”, who seem to exist in a liminal space, blurring the boundaries between life and death, reality and illusion. His interactions with these characters and his continued introspection led him to a deeper understanding of his own life and the stories that have defined him. Mussert’s reflections on his former lover, his students, and his own failings are tinged with a sense of inevitability and fatalism. His journey is not linear but cyclical ( a story within a story) , spiraling inward as he seeks meaning in the fragmented episodes of his life; an inexorable, perpetual change into perpetually the same. The blending of his life realities and dreamlike elements underscores the fluidity of time and memory - “the liquid I”.
“I had a thousand lives and I took only one…”.
Nooteboom, through a dialogue with the past, constructs a narrative of philosophical depth, blending reality with metaphysics. Mussert is thrust into a realm where the boundaries between past and present, life and death, become porous. This narrative device evokes a sense of disorientation, a surreal framework that propels Mussert through a journey of moral introspection. Mussert’s waking reality spun with the surreal clarity of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa’s bedroom, becomes a threshold to a deeper, more disconcerting reality. Mussert’s surroundings are eerily familiar yet disturbingly altered, a mirror to his internal disarray. The narrative oscillates between moments of lucidity and abstraction. This interplay of clarity and ambiguity serves to mirror Mussert’s own existential quest. The novella is replete with allusions to classical mythology, literature, and philosophy, intoned with Mussert’s reflections on his past love affair, his scholarly pursuits, and his ultimate confrontation with death. The themes of transformation and metamorphosis, central to Ovid's work, mirror Mussert's own journey as he grapples with his past and present.
“But the point is not immortality, …What is the point, then? The point is that we capable of thinking about immortality. That is what set us apart.”
In the end, what sets "The Following Story" apart is its seamless blend of the everyday with the extraordinary, that shifts effortlessly from the mundane to the profound, capturing the essence of human experience with a disarming clarity.
“None of us will ever know what the other saw when he was telling you his story, but whatever face you show, recognizable or absolutely not, expected or unexpected, it must have something to do with fulfillment.”
Brilliant!
4.9/5
PS. It’s been suggested that the two chapters in the novel cover the last two seconds of Mussert's life, one second of memory, and one second of the passing from life into death (.i.e. the action in the novel takes place when the narrator is neither alive nor dead but somewhere in-between): “The normally measurable dimensions of time and space become stretched and malleable in the strange and endless moment between living and dying.”
“Talking about American Wars, then, increasingly becomes like talking about Schrödinger’s cat. Outside the close black boxes of our military involvem “Talking about American Wars, then, increasingly becomes like talking about Schrödinger’s cat. Outside the close black boxes of our military involvement overseas, the American public remains blissfully at peace until an American dies, and it turns out we were at war all along.”
In the hidden corners of our collective consciousness, where the cacophony of ideologies and the clamor of competing narratives linger, Phil Klay navigates the treacherous terrain of an age ensnared in an endless, invisible war. Uncertain Ground is a mosaic of essays—a patchwork quilt stitched from the fabric of war, citizenship, and the human spirit. Klay's words, like bullets fired from an M16, hit their mark: Short sentences – bursts of punctuated erudition. No room for sentimentality; only the “reality”, stark, unyielding, approaching the sacred in its terror…
“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole”. Derek Walcott
1. The Invisible War “America’s military adventures around the world,” Klay writes, “take place ‘at such a low ebb that most Americans can pretend it isn’t happening.’” We sip our lattes, scroll through newsfeeds, and sip again, blissfully ignorant of the distant battlegrounds where lives decay like old maps. Pollical obfuscations and doublespeak rhetorics distort our views, cocooning our partisan self. When our own fall, we raise our heads, momentarily…Their blood stains the margins of our indifference. How can we understand our humanity, in relations to the killing done in our name? Have we failed as a nation to treat out wars as a collective responsibility rather than a special mission of a self-selected few?
2. The Commander in Chief’s Whisper “No wonder our troops were having difficulty articulating why they were fighting,” Klay observes. “Their commander in chief couldn’t even bring himself to admit that we were still at war.” The nebulous enemy morphs into the familiar: America itself. Survival becomes the central mission, and the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS fade into the background. “It’s not the Taliban trying to kill you,” Klay asserts, “it’s America.”
3. The Monasticism of Military Life Klay’s monastic devotion to truth-telling mirrors the soldier’s discipline. “Like a novice monk,I was given new clothing, new standards of dress, a new haircut, as well as a distinct role within a broader community.” The barracks become cloisters, the rifle a rosary. Amidst the discord of war, rituals emerge—the folding of uniforms, the whispered prayers before patrols. The mundane becomes sacred; the sacred, mundane.
4. The Militarization of Culture Klay dissects the militarization of culture, the easy access to military-grade weapons, and the paradox of a commander in chief who couldn’t admit that we were still at war. His words resonate with the clarity of a bugle call, urging us to confront our complicity in perpetuating the cycle of violence. “We’ve ended two wars,” President Obama declared, his words ricocheting off armored Humvees. “News to those on active duty,” Klay retorts. The culture absorbs the war machine—the camouflage seeping into our lexicon, the drone pilots commuting from cubicles. We wield military-grade weapons like talismans, and the line blurs: soldier, civilian, patriot, insurgent.
5. The Citizenship of the Dispossessed Klay’s lens widens, focusing not only on the battlefield but also on the quiet sacrifices—the interpreters who bridged languages, the immigrants who pledged allegiance and bore arms; these unsung heroes, caught in the crossfire of geopolitical machinations, deported veterans—those who bled for a country that later discarded them. Their citizenship revoked, they wander the borderlands, ghosts in uniform. “What is Americanness?” Klay asks. “Is it the oath sworn or the blood spilled?” The answer eludes us, slipping through the cracks of bureaucracy. “We are the warriors, but they—the civilians—are the witnesses.” Their eyes bear witness to our deeds—the rubble of bombed cities, the wailing of children. They ask questions we dare not voice: “Why?” and “For what?” The silence of civilians is a requiem—an elegy for innocence lost.
6. The Echoes of Absence “In the silence between gunshots, we hear the ghosts of those who never returned.” Their names etched on marble, their stories whispered by the wind. The fallen are not mere statistics; they are the missing notes in our national anthem. We mourn them, but do we truly remember? The empty chairs at family dinners—their absence echoes louder than any battle cry. Does suffering provide a stage for an acquired experience that we could benefit? Faith becomes a place to register a sense of doubt.
7. The Lexicon of War “War has its own language,” Klay muses. “IEDs, FOBs, KIA, PTSD.” Acronyms that carve themselves into our neural pathways. We speak them fluently, like a native tongue. But what of the untranslatable? The wordless scream of a comrade bleeding out, the taste of sand in your mouth as you crawl through a dust-choked alley. These are the syllables that haunt us.
8. The Aftermath of Valor “Medals pinned to our chests,” Klay observes, “we return home—heroes or hollow men?” The ticker tape parades fade, replaced by the quiet applause of strangers. The Purple Heart gleams, but the scars beneath remain unseen. “Valor,is not a currency that buys peace.” It’s a debt we carry, a ledger of sacrifice. Klay grapples with the moral risks of soldiering, the fragility of faith, and the dissonance between force and desired ends. Like a modern-day oracle, he challenges us to reckon with our own culpability.
9. The Art of Killing The most important element is the shared commitment to the task: “We train for precision,” Klay reflects. “The center mass, the headshot.” But war is chaos—an abstract canvas splattered with blood. “The enemy, is not a silhouette on a range.” The trigger pull—the moment of creation and destruction fused. The artist becomes the executioner, and the canvas is stained forever. As Hanna Arendt points out “The reason why were never able to foretell with certainty the outcome and the end of any action is simply that action has no end…”
“ It starts with the oath they swear to support and defend the constitution, an oath made not to a flag, or to a piece of ground , or to an ethnically distinct people, but to a set of principles established in our founding documents. An oath that demands a commitment to democracy, to liberty, to the rule of law, and to the self-evident equality of all men. The Marines I know fought, and some died, for these principles.”
The air grows thin and the weight of life presses upon the soul. An extra-ordinary breath, a silent specter, seeping through the cracks, suffocating hThe air grows thin and the weight of life presses upon the soul. An extra-ordinary breath, a silent specter, seeping through the cracks, suffocating hope. The oxygen mask, a fragile lifeline, an object of both salvation and despair. The world outside fades, leaving only the flicker of memories. The world awaits, suspended between exhale and inhale, between memory and oblivion. Jason Griffin’s illustrations mirror the stark poetic prose, each stroke etching the ache of isolation, frustration and hope. “Oxygen Mask” is a requiem of our fractured times, a whispered promise that even when the air grows thin, we persist.
Set against the backdrop of a torrential downpour, this seemingly innocent novella delves into the depths of emotion with a poetic finesse. W. S. MaugSet against the backdrop of a torrential downpour, this seemingly innocent novella delves into the depths of emotion with a poetic finesse. W. S. Maugham immerses us in a world where every droplet tells a story, evoking a sense of malaise and restlessness, where the boundaries between reality and illusion blur with haunting elegance. Maugham navigates a labyrinth of desire and despair, where the lives of the protagonists intertwined in a delicate dance of fate and coincidence. His incorrigible blend of magical realism and melancholic lyricism, conjures a dreamscape where every raindrop whispers secrets of longing and regret. As the narrative unfolds, the hypnotic "Rain" transcends to a haunting meditation of “self” through the heart of darkness, where the storm rages eternal and the soul finds solace in the embrace of our “pitiful” existence.
“You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You’re all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!”
“In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes. There will also be singing. About the dark times.” Bertolt Brecht
In “Prophet Song” , Paul Lynch u“In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes. There will also be singing. About the dark times.” Bertolt Brecht
In “Prophet Song” , Paul Lynch unleashes a dystopian nightmare, a potent strain of anxiety that chills and frightens. We are plunged into a fracturing Ireland, where a tyrannical government tightens its grip with each passing day. Through the tormenting lens of Eilish Stack, a scientist and mother of four, Lynch paints a portrait of a society succumbing to the suffocating grip of totalitarianism. When the secret police comes to Eilish's house, her reality starts falling apart. Her husband, a trade unionist, vanishes into the government's entrails, leaving an insurmountable void in her family lives. Her children, no longer innocents, become sad symbols of a stolen future. Their anguish and outbursts become a constant distressing counterpoint to Eilish's desperate attempts to maintain a façade of control. What remains is just the mere belief that there cannot be despair where there is doubt, and where there is doubt there is hope. Eilish desperately seeks to clench the future back out of nothingness, to break its silence…
“They take something from you and replace it with silence and you’re confronted by that silence every waking moment and cannot live…you cease to be yourself and become a thing before this silence, a thing waiting for the silence to end, a thing on your knees begging and whispering to it all night and day, a thing waiting for what was taken to be returned and only then can you resume your life, but the silence doesn’t end, you see, they leave open the possibility that what you want will be returned some day and so you remained reduced, paralyzed, dull as old knife, and the silence does not end because the silence is the source of their power, that’s its secret meaning.”
Lynch employs a gasping, paragraph-less narrative, mirroring Eilish’s relentless journey for normalcy amidst a collapsing world. It creates an inescapable current of fear and paranoia that consumes Eilish and the people around her. “People passing by harried and preoccupied, imprisoned within the delusion of the individual”. We are trapped with her, forced to endure the overpowering anxiety that permeates and punctures her normalcy; now a battleground where the stakes are nothing less than survival itself - mirroring the claustrophobic atmosphere of a society under siege. “Prophet Song” is not, however, a mere descent into despair. Lynch focuses on the intimate tragedies – the rupturing of the family unit, the slow suffocation of life and spirit under the “Tyrant Boot” of the state.
The banality of evil, the normalization of state violence – these are the true indictments of the totalitarian order. The rise of authoritarianism, the erosion of democratic norms – these are not mere abstractions, they are the harbingers of a dystopia that may well be upon us…
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.” (G. Orwell 1984)
“In this process, I would become reduced, diminished, ultimately I would become clarified, even cease to exist. I would be good. I would be all that h“In this process, I would become reduced, diminished, ultimately I would become clarified, even cease to exist. I would be good. I would be all that had ever been asked of me.”
An unnamed protagonist is embedded into a dissolving rural society. Her self-flagellated - agitated persona provides the basis of a cryptic narrative that puzzles with the amplitude of masochistic, humiliating and anachronistically indisposed wonders succumbed to her life. The sadness of the passing days, the melancholy one felt in the air, only exacerbate the swift contraction of the world around her.
This is a claustrophobic and ambivalent novel that will leave you wondering of the righteous path to the purgatory of life, and dare you to ponder what the outcome might have been if the presence of our protagonist had been a mundane joke or just a purposeful game of existential struggle. Allegorical sound - with ethical and comical manifestations spliced in a beautiful narrative of a wondering aptitude and tumultuous angst.
“All the courage, I’d tried to instill in myself would drain away, the courage needed to live in that hostile land of perennial sun and occasional rai“All the courage, I’d tried to instill in myself would drain away, the courage needed to live in that hostile land of perennial sun and occasional rain. That abusive land where people were dying constantly, denied all succor, where we lived like cattle, working and getting nothing in return, not even rest, and our sole rights were to reside on their land for as long as the owners were willing, and, if we never left Água Negra, to be buries in the grave awaiting us at Viração.”
Under the scorched underbelly of rural Bahia, Itamar Vieira Junior crafts a sinuous narrative of the lives of two sisters (Bibiana and Belonísia) bound by blood yet divided by the invisible lines of fate and freedom. Vieira Junior’s storytelling threads magical realism and historical truths, matching cleverly content and form. The knife discovered beneath their grandmother’s bed is the catalyst for the unfolding drama. “The blade’s edge, which produced such violent light.” This ancient relic, around which the sisters’ destinies entwine, serves as an emblem of the colonial history, its legacy of slavery—a blade that has carved deep scars into the land and its people. Bibiana wants to break the bond of the land, to cherish a life beyond her dreams, beyond conformity and boundaries . Belonísia remains rigid to the fate of the norms. Their hopes bound to a pantheon of spirits, encantados who direct energies between the world of the living and that of the dead.
Vieira Junior’s exploration of spirituality and political struggle echoes the universal quest for identity and belonging. We cannot avoid drawing parallels to ongoing issues of racial inequality and the struggle for social justice. “Crooked Plow” balances the intimate portrayal of its characters’ inner lives with a broader commentary on cultural and social norms such as race, class, and patriarchy. It is a testament to the enduring spirit of resistance and the unyielding bonds of family. The portrayal of resilience in the face of adversity offers a powerful message of hope and the possibility of transformation. It is a novel that resonates with the soul of Brazil - yet speaks to the heart of us all.
“Every woman feels the strength of nature her body houses in the vital torrent of her life.”
Worthy contender for the international Booker award.
A tormenting gust of putrid air penetrates the broken body and soul of an unnamed soldier. The indifference and malaise ensures that horrors and savagA tormenting gust of putrid air penetrates the broken body and soul of an unnamed soldier. The indifference and malaise ensures that horrors and savagery can be sustained: Innocence is a virtue for debate. Victimhood is a bartering coin. How can suffering be endured in the name of an idea(l)? How can we deviate from righteousness, morality and justifiable reasoning? Some actions are beyond comprehension. It’s all just history repeating itself. Adania Shibli’s telegraphic language, void of fanfaronade , gives us a glimpse into the eclipse of humanness. This is sharp-tasting novella that will leave you petrified with the illusions and realities of the human psyche.
"So many roads, I’ve travelled in my life that took me away from this one, and now this is the one I have to go along…".
Under the scorching Brazilia"So many roads, I’ve travelled in my life that took me away from this one, and now this is the one I have to go along…".
Under the scorching Brazilian sun, Stênio Gardel‘s words erupt, forming a scintillating drama that will absorb your every breath, punch you hard and leave you brooding of realities that are all too hard to digest. A forbidden love, an unyielding desire, a clean life digested in guilty acidity, bones of stained decency… "and then the world will bury you, because that’s what happens to people like you." The purity of a single hug that will meld two people together, the longing for a tender kiss that feel so wrong yet so true: how can you live every day of your life gasping for affection like a drowning man gasp for air? A single letter, waiting to be read, words waiting to be answered, words that remain engraved all of your life waiting for a final glimpse of forgiveness.
A mother’s cry, a touch of fear …."what you did isn’t fit for men under the eyes of God…The voice that caresses, the voice that drowns."
Choice is more than a confession, is a promise that will cast its spell in the unyielding darkness of conformity and hatred…scars carved that lost their depth. “Have I changed that much in your eyes, Father, that you can’t even see me in front of you?” Falling out is a kind of death; the sterile darkness cries its eternal murmur, but then there are the first rays of light that peek through the window. Can you find solace in a world spinning uncontrollably around you, chastising your every step? …Absolutely!
"The stars must have fallen and become the seeds of reality at his feet…"
Ο Κορτώ ξέρει να πιάνει τον παλμό της εποχής. Η πρόζα του ρεαλιστική και το κείμενο σκληρό, γυμνό χωρίς πολλές φανφάρες. Αφήγηση που πληγώνει και θρέφΟ Κορτώ ξέρει να πιάνει τον παλμό της εποχής. Η πρόζα του ρεαλιστική και το κείμενο σκληρό, γυμνό χωρίς πολλές φανφάρες. Αφήγηση που πληγώνει και θρέφει. Ο Κορτώ προσεγγίσει την κακοποίηση - ενδοοικογενειακή βία καταθέτοντας σωματικά αλλά και ψυχικά τραύματα, που καθίστανται βαθύτερα, μακρόχρονα και συχνά ανεξίτηλα. Το τέλος λυτρωτικό και επάρατο… ποιο είναι το τέρας τελικά;
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