This book has now been shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize. Even its longlisting was while in line with the letter of the aims ofThis book has now been shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize. Even its longlisting was while in line with the letter of the aims of the prize, was not I think in line with their spirit of rewarding UK and Irish small presses taking risks on publishing innovative literature.
The book was published in the UK in 2021 by Daunt Books Press – who as far as I know are part of Daunt Books (a successful, profitable and cash rich chain of independent bookstores owned by the current manager of Waterstones in the UK and Barnes and Noble in the US). It was published under their Daunt Originals imprint (which seems to be a classic case of misbranding) as it was previously published in the same English translation by the not-for-profit Archipelago Books in the US as far back as 2014 (and for some time available on their website for free in electronic copy including as far as I can tell to UK readers), having been shortlisted in 2016 for one of the world’s richest literary prizes – the Dublin Literary Award (and as a result being available - and still available - in the UK library system in its original publication).
But (non) eligibility aside this is an excellent book
It is one that has been reviewed very widely – in the press and on Goodreads - in the original French, in its English translation and then a third time on its re-publication in the UK.
The book is in essence a harrowing account of the insidious effects of (particularly Belgian) colonialism in Rwanda, including the way in which the Western powers first established the opposing Hutu and Tsutsi ethic groups (as well as the underpinnings of the theory of Hamites) written in the form of a satire of an all girls school (think “Mallory Towers”) which mirrors developments in Rwandan society in the late 1960s and early 1970s up to and including the 1973 coup, as well as satirising Western views encapsulated in “Gorillas in the Mist”.
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The book is published by Turas Press “an independent, Dublin-based publisher dedicated to bringLonglisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The book is published by Turas Press “an independent, Dublin-based publisher dedicated to bringing contemporary poetry and literary fiction to Irish and international readers.”
The author - Anamaría Crowe Serrano is an Irish writer, translator and editor born in Ireland to an Irish father and a Spanish mother.
The book is historical fiction – set during the Battle of Teruel in the Spanish Civil War winter of 1937-8 – a battle which started as a Republican attempt to take what they thought was a relatively undefended town whose capture would be both of strategic importance and morale boosting, but which ended in a Nationalist/rebel/Francoist victory, one normally seen a pivotal point in the war. The contemporary poet Laurie Lee (who claims to have fought in the encounter said “The gift of Teruel at Christmas had become for the Republicans no more than a poisoned toy. It was meant to be the victory that would change the war; it was indeed the seal of defeat"
The author has been featured in some very informative articles in the Irish press on her motivations for and approach around writing the book including
From this I gained that: the original impetus for the book was the author’s realisation that her beloved Spanish grandfather not just fought in a war, but fought on the “wrong side of history”; her initial idea to write a memoir of his life to explore what lead to his choices founded, largely on the lack of much material not helped by the silence with which the Spanish often deal with the legacy of the Civil War (and the Franco era); her decision to explore the topic more obliquely by historical fiction; her desire for a high degree of historical fidelity but as background for her researches and sometimes incidental colour in the writing but mixed with an entirely fictional character set.
The story is largely not about the battle or war itself as its effect on civilians in the town and on the wives and families of those fighting - -the author said in another interview “Books about war, whether fictional or factual, seems to focus mostly on the fighting, on strategies, supplies for troops, but there is less mention of the women and children and older or infirm people who are living in the middle of a war zone, struggling desperately to stay alive in their own homes. I was very curious about this and wanted the novel to portray the resourcefulness of women. They had to adapt constantly to all kinds of deprivations – freezing temperatures, electrical outages, no running water, little fuel or food, poor access to medical services, blocked and/or dangerous streets, children at home because schools are closed, homes damaged by shelling… “
The book is based around the complex relationships between two sisters: Maria and Julita who find themselves, partly by proxy through their husbands and partly through their views on different sides of the conflict, despite living together.
Maria’s husband Ramón has joined (not entirely by choice) the Francoist militia. Maria is mourning the loss of her infant child – who died seemingly of malnutrition given her mother’s inability (due to rationing and shortages) to breast feed her. She is left with a son and daughter. Julita is a firm Communist – her mourning of her husband Antonio was lots in action attempting to ford a river with a Republican battalion and her concerns for her two older sons (of three) both fighting for the Republicans do not stop her forming a relationship with a soldier at the town’s Communist HQ.
The narrative tension in the book is due to Maria sheltering under the stairs in her house an unnamed deserter - who she and he know will face almost certain death (either as a deserter or enemy) from whatever side discovers him. And this tension is hugely increased when, after her own house is bomb damaged, Julita moves herself and her son into Maria’s house followed at a later interval by a homeless Doctor and then a small group of the Doctor’s elderly patients – each newcomer adding to the risk of discovery and making the soldier’s isolation in the tiny understairs area even more uncomfortable and intense, while at the same time increasing the tapestry of characters in the house (Note: while I liked the Doctor character and the ethical/professional/personal safety dilemmas he faces as he gradually starts to guess Maria’s secret – another character: a French ex-dancer seemed one of those characters who was more real and meaningful to the author than to me as a reader).
And added to this tension is the almost constant at least low level and sometimes very open sniping and rivalry between Maria and Julita – both of who seem to disapprove of pretty well everything the other does: Julita feeling she is justified both by Maria’s husband fighting for the wrong side and by Maria’s odd behaviour – which we know is due to her covering up the fugitive; Maria (who is more of a close third party point of view character and therefore who our sympathies fall with more naturally) feeling that Julita is just a provocative and untrustworthy trouble maker.
A further strand to the book is the unknow fate of the bar owner – Encarna - that ran the bar where Maria works at the book’s opening. She fled the town with a number of other refuges but is alleged to have been captured by left wing troops as a bourgeois element.
The story is told in a series of short sections (typically say 1 page) which are mainly told from the viewpoint of Maria and of the fugitive, albeit with Encarna, the Doctor and Julita among others to have sections. We also see through Julita’s eyes various letters she receives from the front which make her realise, more than ever, the chasm that has opened between her and her husband – letters she hides immediately. And the text is also illustrated by some newspaper headlines and classified ads which fit the text.
What I think most impressed me about the book and elevated it above standard genre fiction were three elements: a stylistic one, a thematic one and a brave choice.
The stylistic one is perhaps not surprising given the author (and publishers) lean toward poetry – the writing while not in anyway free verse, still leans towards a spare, economical style (the author has referenced “The Long Take” and “The White Book” as inspirations) . This is particularly the case for the often harrowing sections from the below-the-stair-deserter’s viewpoint which are particularly fragmentary cleverly reflecting the narrowly circumscribed confines in which he finds himself, his disintegrating beliefs in both the rightness of the Republican cause and in their chances of winning the war, and the PTSD he seems to be suffering from some horrors he witnessed before deserting.
The thematic one is the idea of truth and fact/fiction. This is of course a meta theme for the entire conception of the book (given its proto-origins as a memoir), but the propaganda of the Republican sides beliefs and updates on the war’s progress are also questioned and ultimately the existence of the fugitive means that the house’s inhabitants (other than Maria and the fugitive) are literally unaware of the ground beneath their feet (with a late revelation causing them to question what they have previously believed even more fundamentally).
And the brave choice given the number of poets and writers associated with the Republican cause and the way in which the War is inevitably viewed in the light of WWII – is to have a book which while not really featuring a Francoist character (other than largely as villains) questions the actions of the Republicans so closely.
Overall recommended and a worth addition to the longlist.
For me the best story in the collection has now been shortlisted for the BBC short story award.
The full collection was Shortlisted for the 2022 RepubFor me the best story in the collection has now been shortlisted for the BBC short story award.
The full collection was Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This is a debut collection of short stories although the author (a poet and writer) has already won the prestigious White Review Short Story Prize and a number of the stories have already been published there or in Granta (links presented below).
The book reminded me of two books which were shortlisted for the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize – a year I was one of the judges and both collections whose inclusion on the shortlist I strongly championed; David Hayden’s “Darker with the Lights On” for what the author of that collection described as his technique of “defamiliarisation” to create a text which gains its resonance precisely by losing obvious reference points and Eley Williams “Attrib.” for her innovative use of typography, spacing and language.
And interestingly the book is blurbed by Williams (who the author has specifically referenced as an inspiration) and was reviewed very strongly in The Guardian by Hayden (who is far more eloquent about the book than I can be here - https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...).
Of Hayden’s own collection my 2017-18 review says “Many of the stories can at first read seem disorienting lacking an obvious and familiar anchor around which to base one's comprehension and on a first read I preferred the stories where I felt that I understood Hayden’s theme or concept for the story, although often even these stories veer off into a surreal ending.”. And so I was intrigued both to experience something of the same phenomenon here and to see in Hayden’s review of this book this comment: “The disruptive style works to convey the textures and deep resonances of harsh experience: to explore the necessity and difficulty of memory, and the challenges of knowing ourselves and others in the midst of life. At its best, this is prose that courses with energy, confident in its inventiveness. The risk in not relying on borrowed formulas and striking out into a world of new phrases is that the reader might lose their hold on sense and coherence, but Onwuemezi’s meanings are rooted firmly in her gifts of attention, rhythm, colour and shape.”
One thing I particularly appreciated in this book was how the stories play with this very sense of moving away from conventional communication and phrases in order to get a real handle on what is happening. For example when in the striking titular opening story (see below) a character reverts, unusually, to a boring cliché of “Long time no see”, the other character immediately comments “Ah some words are in the right order”. In the strongest story “Green Afternoon” (again see below) the narrator trying to make sense of life (and in particular a death) ends up shuffling letters around “changing one letter at a time moved towards the wanted word. And talked out loud to help me through”
I have added some other relevant quotes under each story.
“Dark Neighbourhood” is set in a form of waiting room for a better life – the narrator, who runs a form of swap shop and sees her closest friend die (death and mourning are recurring themes) only realises at the end that her waiting for was only ever really self-sanctioned
‘Some kind of ridiculous,’ Stevi says, and looks around like casting judgement on all but unseen fragments of dust. Those statements, piped out at regular intervals, make nonsense for our ears, fatherly condescension. A kind of love, perhaps, perhaps that’s it, Stevi is here, grazed, looking rough and in love after all. ‘By the time those words reach my patch, they’ll be mixed up, and some words swapped out for other words. The statement will make another sense, or another nonsense by then,’ he says.
“Cuba” (https://granta.com/cuba-vanessa-onwue...) and “Heartbreak at the Super 8” I found the weaker stories – I think due to their setting. I know the author’s interest in Afro-Cuban religions was key to her researches for the novel which may justify the first (a tale of hotel maids, unionisation and a lost baby) but the second seemed to American road-trip for my tastes.
“The Growing State” had particular resonances for me – a successful businesman “The Winner” is seemingly dying in his office, contacted in turn by his third wife and her two predecessors, and his children – all critical of his concentration on business ahead of his family, with his interlocutor an office cleaner who is possibly there to clean up his body and soul.
One paragraph in particular reminded me of my own conversations with my EA albeit I hope I achieve a slightly better work-life balance
Ottessa runs through the week: ‘You don’t want to be disturbed, I know, but a reminder.’ She’s standing up, voice full and assertive. ‘Morning meeting tomorrow, 9 a.m., over at Tullow’s offices, good luck, I’ve emailed you the briefing notes, car booked for 8.40 car back to the office, let me know, car home car booked afternoon lunch pre-ordered then we have them coming in, I know, there was no other day table across the road booked for dinner, breakfast, I thought that you would be hungry, let me know, safe trip, your flight for Wednesday booked for 9 p.m. as you asked need your sign-off on those expenses at some point and those and those, lunch meeting with the lawyers when you’re back please let me know … good luck, safe trip, next time.’
I try to say something true. I don’t have the vocabulary to say it. ‘I am the way, the truth,’ we would say sitting in rows can you hear it? A clash of memories, the only truth I can get at. And to love each memory without falling apart, to love is the hardest thing. My voice rebounds. Memory slips and is split, I disappear inside and everything else is lost because my brother, the good man is dead.
“Green Afternoon” was I thought the best book of the entire collection – a man witnesses finds a young man dying of a stab wound in his garden and enters a darker side of London in his quest to find out more about the man and what lead to his death (with some troubling implications for himself at the end)
I photographed the site, on film, objects and edges blurry. But it wasn’t precision I was after, not the faint details of the ground, but the mood.
They spoke in sentences broken between three mouths, like a ball being batted between them and kept from touching the ground.
“At the Heart of Things” (https://www.thewhitereview.org/fictio...) – the closing story and her White Review winner is ostensibly about a woman who trips on an escalator on her commute and recuperating at home enters an underwater land where she encounters her family including her estranged sister and late father.
There was nothing to my fingers, no weight, no force on the pads of my feet, no cold draught wafting past the hairs of my skin, no sound, no sight. I couldn’t set my watch to nothing. I waited, couldn’t scream, unaware of mouth or lungs to do so not breathing, not dead, not alive. No fear. Not yet. Eyes wide open into dark and no sense. Unsayable.
Overall an innovative and very promising collection – one which, like many of the best experimental literature causes the reader to re-examine our assumptions about language and life....more
Previously shortlisted for the 2022 Jhalak and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott and Republic of ConsNow shortlisted for the 2022 Goldsmith’s Prize.
Previously shortlisted for the 2022 Jhalak and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott and Republic of Consciousness Prizes
This book is published by the UK small press And Other Stories under their hugely successful subscription model.
The author Mona Arshi (a human rights lawyer for Liberty and an award winning poet) is best known to me for her spell as writer-in-residence at the nature reserve at the beautiful Cley Marshes in North Norfolk
The book is narrated by Ruby, a British Indian girl and tells of her own troubled childhood (including when she stopped speaking), her mother (struggling with mental illness), her more voluble sister Rania and her retiring father – as well as a cast of visiting relatives, the families neighbours and Ruby and Rania’s schoolfriends.
As can be seen from the excerpt the book has both a distinctive structure and writing style. What cannot be judged is the production of the book – the paperback has a beautifully vibrant cover of a garden (fitting for a book where the mother’s mental state is based around her gardening) and French flaps and this quality production seems to me to both match and enhance the beauty of much of the writing.
The structure is a fragmentary one – a series of 60+ short sections from 1-8 pages, each vignette of the life of Ruby and her family, told in a chronological progression best described I think as part approximately linear (at least as its relates to certain sub-storylines) and part recursive (particularly when relating to key incidents in the family’s history – such as the mother’s first mental attack - or to recurring themes such as racism and misogyny).
And the writing is (as might be expected) poetic in nature. The sections are told in first person with Ruby’s silence a key to the novel in allowing her to act as an observer of others, of society (racism, mental illness, family expectations, sexual assault, misogny all play a part in what at times is a disturbing novel), nature and even of herself in a reflective and descriptive prose.
Overall a novel whose beauty of production and writing is matched only by its slowly emerging but powerful themes....more
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize and the real find of the longlist
I plough I plough, the old man says, I plough acros
[image]
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize and the real find of the longlist
I plough I plough, the old man says, I plough across this stony earth. The sun does not set in a sunless sky and so it is to man himself to know what he has done and to know his soul. The ground cleaves before him. I plough I plough, he tells the clutch, he tells the gears. Pain rings through his shoulders, looking behind him as he must, a glinting current, an internal melody. He breathes in dust and vibrates in his seat. When they break him in two they’ll find he has no bones, no blood. That he is a dust-packed shell, hardened and hollow. The soil turns behind him. I plough I plough, he tells the grease gun in the corner. To the end of the field. He bounces in the seat. Is shook, jostles. The vulgar ground. If all ground was honey it would not ache so to plough it. Honey, he yells at the dashboard. He raises the front mouldboard and lowers it again setting it back to task, to peeling away the skin of the world to reveal the scowling bones beneath. He strips the field of the fallow grass one furrow at a time. Each pass leaves four rows of heaped resolve, compass straight, the next pass four more. The field a letter to the world. He knows the violence of the land of the heaving tractor because he knows the violence inside himself. Him shaking in the seat, body turned to nothing is him tussling with the open field before him and being numbed and being lifted. Lifted up, above the seat, above the valley plane, so that he is a man between land and sky, belonging to neither, a transition, a flicker of an image of a man. I plough I plough, the old man says.
The books is published by époque press, a new-ish UK small press whose aim to seek “out new voices, authors who are producing high-quality literary fiction and who are looking for a publisher to help them realise their ambitions.”.
Impressively they have, via their author Lynn Buckle won the 2021 Barbellion Prize for “What Willow Says” which the prize called a “powerful story of change and acceptance, as a deaf child and her grandmother experiment with the lyrical beauty of sign language through their love of trees, set to a backdrop of myths, legends, and ancient bogs.”
And I think this book – a very high quality literary tale of smallholding farming in Ireland – both has much in common with “What Willow Says” (an older person and a child, a powerful story of change albeit with little acceptance, a background of myths and plenty of bogs) while also in its publication fitting firmly into their aims as the author has commented “It was a bit tricky getting it published, because the larger publishers are concerned about marketability, as are agents. They thought it was too non-conventional in style. It’s not an easily digestible story of “down-on-the-farm” or anything. And I think some of the more literary circles were a bit wary of all the intimate farming details.”
And as well as being a tribute to époque who did give the book great support and bring it to market that quote explains much of what makes this book unique (despite some strong resemblances to both the 2020 International Booker winner – “Discomfort of Evening” and much more so to the 2020 Republic of Consciousness winner “Animalia”).
It is a book which is simultaneously:
A serious, well-informed and partly didactic exploration of the plight of family agriculture in Ireland and the struggles of small farmers and small towns to hold out against the tide of the seeming imperative for expansion into larger argi-industrial concerns (together with the pressures of animal welfare authorities, government agencies and banks);
And a novel of the highest literary quality – written in an episodic style in a deliberately fragmentary and intense present tense, with a palpable sense of the countryside and weather and one where the boundaries between land and sky are as porous as those between earth and bog, the present and the past and the tangible and the fantastical.
The set up of the novel is a small town in Ireland – where an ageing farmer (normally known as the Old Man but identified through others as Íosac Mulgannon) stubbornly maintains his smallholding (a small flock of cows, peat digging, field ploughing) while also taking care of a small child whose links to him are less than clear.
The child is a mute and somewhat brooding presence at Íosac’s side, spends most of the novel wearing a cow skull which Íosac places on his head in a prelude to the novel, and is seen by the other inhabitants as potentially cursed. Íosac is a strong willed character, never without his hurl (hurling stick) in his hands (something which has explicit links to Gaelic mythology that he shares with the child), albeit struggling with his age health, his sanity and the pressures of officialdom.
Around Íosac and wearily interacting with him are the local town dwellers – in particular a foul mouthed Priest, the neighbouring farmer and a group of drinkers at the town’s pub (some of who are ex-farmers) – his relationship with them is difficult albeit when outside forces threaten them all (in particular a group of thieves who over time steal from the church, the instruments from the pub and the local Gaelic Football goalposts; and later a ferocious storm) they pull together in a limited sense.
And in the book through some 60+ beautifully presented short chapters (typically 1-3 pages) we follow the rhythm of Íosac's life on the farm - from milking to slurry spreading to peat digging.
The book is literally down to earth but also highly symbolic – the thieves effectively targetting what holds the community together the storm coming from the East (which of course makes almost no metrological sense but signifies Dublin).
Overall this is an unconventional and wonderfully crafted novel. If I had a criticism it is that the book can feel a little repetitive if read conventionally (i.e. on its own and cover to cover) and in fact the very episodic nature of the writing is I think best suited to more of a sampling approach – perhaps reading the book
If I did not perhaps read the book in either the ideal or intended fashion – I did I think read it in the ideal location. Appropriately for a book which has repeated references to cows, with one cow (both when alive and dead) a main side character and with one of the two main characters (a young boy) wearing a cow skull for almost the entire novel – I read it in a barn which for many decades was used by the local farm for registering cows and with a small group of cows housed around 20 metres from my front gate (see opening picture to my review).
Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.
Child, listen to me now, he says. We are the Mulgannons. We stand on what is ours. Let it tear itself from our feet before men take it from us. We do not move. We do not yield. O’Grady paces back and forth, his fingers spread over his face, whispering oh, and when he changes direction he starts to curse and then stops and says, oh, oh. He takes a step towards the old man and then throws up his arms and starts pacing again. It’s the milking and the feeding and the fieldwork, the old man knows. The throb of the milkers, in the pipes. In the shed. And the milk falling to the tank. The scrape of the fork against the bunks and the long draw of water a cow takes in gulps. His feet colliding against the inside of his wellies. The wild swing of a calf’s tail when it’s on the teat. And the ache of it all, of all of it. It’s the rhythms of these things that fill him, the move of it in his bones, that drown himself inside his skin. He has worn himself into everything here. How is it that he must give up that which is his? That which is the all of him.
Shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The book is published by the UK Fum d’Estampa Press, founded in 2019 with the aim to bring “awShortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The book is published by the UK Fum d’Estampa Press, founded in 2019 with the aim to bring “award-winning Catalan language poetry, fiction and essays to English translation”
The author is the late Montserrat Roig – 1946 to 1991 -(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montser...) was an award winning writer (of novels and short stories) and journalist, feminist, Catalanist and left-wing activist (particularly in the Franco era). This collection of short stories dates from the very end of her career - published in Catalan in 1989 when she had (from what I can find in her researches) moved to a more literary, reflective and lyrical style in her fiction without losing (but perhaps no longer dominated by) her activist themes.
The collection has been translated by Tiago Miller – a London born and raised translator now living in Lleida.
The collection for me fits into two very distinctive parts – six really quite short stories and two lengthier stories and I must admit my strong preference (and for me the real literary merit of the collection) lies in the longer stories.
“The Song of Youth” (the first story, which gives the book its title ) is about an elderly woman in a hospital ward where many of the other patients are dying of old age, and reflecting on a love affair in her youth. “Love and Ashes” is a rather quirky story about a poor married couple who save up for a safari – the husband’s obsession with Giraffe’s being literally his downfall but liberating his wife (the story can be read here https://static1.squarespace.com/stati...). “Free From War and Wave” is a tale heavy in literary references about a son of a tavern-owner and man-entertainer who later is caught up in the Civil War. “Division” is about a married couple visited by a flirtatious senator (who can advance the husband’s interest) and his wife. “I Don’t Understand Salmon” is a story about Republicans reminiscing (returning metaphorically to their spawning grounds) many year after their Civil War defeat. “The Chosen Apple” is about a woman who marries to the disapprocal of her mother in law.
All of these are enjoyable and contain some interesting elements and also build a theme of female independence, particularly later in life – a theme I can also see could be allegorical for post-Franco Catalonia. None however are for me either particularly successful, memorable or innovative as short stories – I wonder also if a temporal as well as linguistic/cultural distance has impeded my full appreciation.
Since the publication of Anna Karenina, or perhaps even before, it has become customary for humanity to believe that happy people have no stories to tell, something I now know to be false, for if there are any stories really worth recounting, it’s those of people who have known happiness. And that is exactly what I was next to Mar: a happy person. Those moments, despite their stillness, are far from dead: they are silent when I want, voluble when I choose, rising up in me as seemingly profitless fragments of memory united by pain or converging in joy to challenge my belief that the youth I’d regained thanks to Mar, was lost forever.
“Mar” (at some 30 pages) is the highlight of the book, a much more involved and memorable tale by a female narrator looking back on an intense, almost obsessive, life defining and societal convention-defying relationship with another woman – Mar – who suffered a catastrophic (and possibly non-accidental) car accident in her jeep-style vehicle two years before the narration. The narrator’s fierce but one might say theoretical feminism is challenged by Mar’s determination for independence on her own, unconventional terms.
Subordinate clauses always sound good at night. But in narrative terms, the kaleidoscope and its harmonised images shattering just as they take shape is far more alluring. In the daytime, subordinate clauses shatter all by themselves. In the daytime, the world demands simple sentences, subject-verb-object, full stop, new paragraph, while adjectives are to be austere, precise and to efficiently complement the verb. As the terse prose of day takes over, nocturnal rhetoric begins to feel inhibited and awkward. At night, anyone who dreams can be a poet but during the day only a few are writers who write. Prose, then, admits no excuses: this is not about an old man not yet tired enough to die but a bad literature teacher spying on schoolgirls as they get undressed. The precise adjective is ‘ridiculous’.
“Before I Deserve Oblivion” is the other longer story (at some 40 pages) – it begins with a rather clumsy metafictional conceit of a narrator sent at third hand a largely “autobiographical” and “ponderous” text, by a near-retired Spanish literature high school teacher seeking to justify (albeit in a way he admits lacks coherency) his discovery as a voyeur on his female pupils, with the vast majority of the story the actual text. The Spanish teacher was for many years a censor and his censorship increasingly moved away from the political as desired by the authorities to a more personal obsession with removing sexual imagery. Roig is at pains to set up the story in advance (as my comments imply) as self-consciously ponderous, incoherent and rambling – but once that is accepted there are fascinating ruminations in the text on both what it means to write, what it means to read and what it means to censor as well as how all interact with life and ageing.
Overall a worthwhile if uneven read – perhaps best approached as an insight into a literature (Catalan) which is, I suspect, almost entirely unknown to English readers....more
Longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize as well as the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
This is the English language translation (by SLonglisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize as well as the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
This is the English language translation (by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg) of a multi award winning Danish short-story collection written by Jonas Eika, a politically provocative wunderkind in Nordic literature. It was simultaneously published by Riverhead (part of the might Penguin Random House) in the US and by Lolli Editions (very much a small press) in the UK.
Lolli (who achieved an early success with the 2021 International Booker shortlisting of Olga Ravn’s “The Employees” aim to “publish contemporary fiction that challenges existing ideas and breathes new life into the novel form by [introducing] …. to English-language readers some of the most innovative writers that speak to our shared culture in new and compelling ways, from Europe and beyond” – and this book seems to fit their core aim perfectly.
The book is actually a collection of four comparatively lengthy short stories (well five in the index but one is split over two parts making it more of a novella). In outline these are:
Alvin: very much the highlight of the book and published as a short story in the prestigious New Yorker - a part surreal, part parody but very distinctive and powerful exploration of the amorality and gamification of commodity trading and the indestructibly of banks even after they have seemingly destroyed both themselves and wreaked havoc on society
Me, Rory and Aurora: the second best of the stories set in run-down London and featuring a previously homeless girl Casey who has added herself in a threesome relationship with Rory and Aurora who live in a run-down flat and survive on soup that Rory makes from stolen ingredients (and often serves to other homeless people he invites back) and on money Aurora makes from selling recreational drugs to recovering addicts at a rather bizarre church and rehab centre in Stratford – the book taking a rather ridiculous turn at the end.
Bad Mexican Dog: the two part story, each part of which has two strands – the story starts promisingly as a tale of beach boys serving wealthy tourists on a Cancun beach interleaved with tales of a blackmail scam that is played on some of the tourists; however it quickly veers off into (and largely remains in) rather naïve attempts at transgressive provocation with rather absurd scenes involving jellyfish, shells and parasol shafts.
Rachel, Nevada: a tale which I think started with the interesting idea to write a story set in the UFOlogists favourite Area 51 and to mix the idea of aliens with that of alienation from society but which I think ends up largely incomprehensible as I am not sure that the author really ever worked out where he was trying to end his story once he started it. In some cases I am not really sure the author knew how he intended to end individual paragraphs or sentences once he started them.
Much of this stylistic issue is I had is I think both a deliberate artistic choice and one which is very much integrated with the author’s wider purpose of addressing marginalisation directly, in an interview he said “Because of a strong, minimalist tradition here in Scandinavia, writing short stories comes with the expectation of a certain kind of moderation, which I wanted to go against. I wanted each story to contain many different genres, temperaments, digressions, and perspectives, and to sometimes push the periphery into the center, for example by suddenly focusing on a minor character or a side story. It was also about insisting—narratively and at the sentence level—of a potential for transformation in the midst of very bleak and oppressive circumstances”
Some of the writing reminded me a little of Murakami in the way in which the author aims to make the ostensibly bizarre, surreal or dream like parts of the story a real and valid to the protagonists as the more familiar elements. I think Murakami succeeds much better in bringing the reader into that sense of equality between apparent fantasy recognised reality and also avoids the need for deliberate but aimless transgressive writing – having said that Eika’s writing at its best is much better at examining and confronting real power dynamics and exclusion in society.
There is something which is at the same time both admirably provocative but also predictably familiar about Eika’s politics - seen in his acceptance speech for the prestigious Nordic Literature Prize in 2019 (see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6kCj...) and I think also mirrored in much of his writing here (perhaps dare I say even in the green dyed hair he wore in several interviews about this book). His targets (banks and particularly financial traders, the excesses of capitalism and free market economies, rich tourists distorting other countries’s economists, western societies in general, anti-immigration politicians) are both necessary and yet rather easy. At times I was reminded of a Danish Owen Jones and at others of a more immigration/inequality focused Greta Thunberg (the extent to which you regard those as compliments or criticisms or somewhere between I will leave as an exercise for the reader).
I was also not sure at all how I felt about his right to appropriate the stories of others. For example ultimately his story set in London perpetuates many harmful stereotypes of impoverished and homeless people as well as those that aim to assist them – and I have my doubts if the author really knows any of the homeless in England or has spent time with them or with those who try to help them via drop in centres and shelters.
I am in two minds about the book – the author is clearly one to follow and whose transgressive provocation here will interest many readers, the UK publisher is an admirable one also, so for some readers spending the £12.99 to buy the book from the publisher will be a good investment.
I think for many though in the UK a much wiser course would be to read the New Yorker version of Alvin (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...) and for the next month buy a copy each week of The Big Issue – the engagement with the societal issues ,the representation of the voices of the homeless and dare I say the writing is generally of much better standard....more
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
I will tell you the story from the beginning. Not from its beginning but from its roots, for
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
I will tell you the story from the beginning. Not from its beginning but from its roots, for pain and stories are like trees. They have roots that nourish and sustain them, granting them the power to endure and to last.
In June 2021, the British Council published an article by a translator from Arabic who together with eight of his peers recommended a list of 10 Arabic titles (the majority novels) which should be translated into English (https://literature.britishcouncil.org...).
One of the list was recommended by a US diplomat Christiaan James (https://www.state.gov/biographies/chr...) who recommended “Five Days Untold” by the Yemeni author Badr Ahmad and who it seems then followed through on his views by working with a new to English language publication UK small press – Dar Arab (so new that their website is still under construction, albeit they have published their first set of four books) – to translate and publish the novel.
Five Days Untold was described in the British Council article as bringing “into sharp focus the horrors and senselessness of war while offering a dark meditation on how the past, both collective and individual, impacts the present” and painting “an unflinching portrait of war on a micro level and weaves together themes related to fate, agency, and the sustaining power of family bonds.”
The book is set on New Year’s Eve 2012 and then the eponymous first five days of 2013 in and around a small town in an unnamed country at Civil War.
The country is I think heavily based on Yemen although not named and the briefly outlined colonial history of the country (literally an Arabic Banana Republic) and the origins of the Civil War (with the “War of the Fingers”, and the “Al-Kook” dispora) are (I think) fictional, albeit the Civil War which started in 2013 seems much closer to the Yemeni one.
The book’s main character is Ziad Al-Niqash – a third generation craftsman (a plasterwork sculptor and carver). He lives with his father (now sunken into a form of silence), mother (now by ncessaity the family matriarch) and three younger sisters – but at the book’s opening is, together with the remaining young men in the town, handed a notice by Naji Awad (a violent and corrupt officer of the local Political Guidance Committee) ordering him to report for immediate conscription to the government army (any previous exemptions from conscription being invalidated due to the manpower crisis the army is suffering).
The book alternates between three sets of chapters: one telling in first person the story of Ziad and the horrors he suffers after his conscription; the second - still effectively told in Zaid's voice - the story of Zaid’s family (strictly his father’s family) and which concentrates on the equal horrors suffered both by the town at the hand of armed forces and by Zaid’s family and the hands of Naji Awad; the third the equally unflinching close third party story of Naji Awad himself (as we understand a little too of how his own past leads to his terrible actions).
This book is a difficult and at times very harrowing read. It is one perhaps I think more distinguished by (and worthy for) the power of the story it tells and its links with what remains one of the worlds most intractable wars (the now 7+ years Yemen Civil War and its associated humanitarian crises – currently one of the worst in the World: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-midd...) than on literary experimentation (as the writing is relatively straightforward albeit I think this is a correct choice reflecting the thoughts of the narrators).
It is ultimate a tale of people in the midst of the suffering of an impoverished country and society ripped asunder by the almost unfeasibly awful violence of a capricious civil war (and the associated arbitrary exercise of corrupt power) – and how through this one family tries to retain some agency in its struggle to survive.
It is also a tale (as my opening quote implies) of how the past nourishes and sustains the present, both in positive ways (family histories and bonds and how they aid the ability of present generations to hold together in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles) but also negatively (in particular how historical divisions, even ones that are believed by many to be quasi-mythological, can cause the horrors of war in the present).
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
>
Books:
2022-republic-of-consciousness-long
(8)
Loading...
