Round the World Book Group Edinburgh (Reading World Literature and classics)

Thoughts on Europe from Iceland to

2011-05-19T04:32:00.012Z

Iceland – “The Fish can Sing” by Halldór Laxness (Score 7.0)

This book is not a novel, despite what it says on the cover. It is a series of chapters, each telling a different story, linked by the main character being a young boy (at the start), growing to be a youth by the end. Álfgrímur was brought up by an old couple living near Reykjavik on Iceland. I found the first few chapters interesting enough as we looked at the world through the wondering eyes of a young child. However, the stories became more and more tedious. The total absence of any real characterisation meant that I could not feel for any of the characters, not even for Álfgrímur. I skimmed most of the last half of the book, and found about twenty pages which I could read.

I scored this book at 5.5.

Norway – “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson (Score 8.5)

I loved this book. The hero, Trond, is 15 in 1948 when he spends a summer in the country with his father. Later in the book he is an older man of 67, living in an isolated part of Norway. Trond, at 15, has a friend called Jon whom he met when he is away with his father on the land which he has bought. There is a tragedy when Jon, who has gone shooting hares, leaves his gun lying about when he is supposed to be looking after his younger brothers. One of the brothers starts to pay with it and kills the other brother. Later we see Trond and his father helping the local landowner with the hay harvest. The description of this, in the 1940’s, and the preparations to make certain that the hay will dry properly, is fascinating. The passage where Trond describes his first experience in watching a lynx is wonderful. No one believes him since they seem to be rare in those parts. The war intrudes into the idyll which the young Trond inhabits. The Germans occupy Norway, arriving through neutral Sweden. A detachment of young men, little more than boys, is posted to the village. The locals cultivate them, putting them at their ease and lulling them so that they are not aware of what is going on. Trond’s father becomes a courier for the resistance. He chats to the guards, offers them cigarettes, smokes with them so that they get used to him walking up the road with his sack. He carries mail and papers to go to Sweden. A neighbour’s wife is also involved. She brings someone who has to escape to Sweden, and takes him in a boat. His fear leads him to make considerable noise in the boat, drawing the attention of one of the infrequent German patrols. Trond’s father activates the already laid explosive charge and blows up the bridge. The boat reaches the other side of the river, but the refugee is killed. The woman and Trond’s father escape to Sweden. Strangely, there seem to be no repercussions against the villagers. As we approach the end of the book, the adult Trond’s daughter Ellen visits him. She has sought him out, with great difficulty. It is an emotional reunion, written beautifully. We go back in time again. Young Trond is on a three day riding expedition with his father. The description is wonderful. You see what Trond sees riding through the woods, and you can almost feel the movement as the horse changes pace. After Trond took the decisive action which led to breaking the log-jam, the strengthening of the bond between father and son is almost palpable. We move forward again to a time when Trond’s father has been away for a considerable period. A letter arrives. It says that he will not be coming back from Sweden. There is an authorisation for Trond’s mother to go to a bank in Sweden and collect the money which was made from the timber floated down the river to Sweden. The description of the train journey is clarity itself. There isn’t much money, and it must be spent in Sweden under the currency laws prevailing at the time. Trond’s mother buys him a suit. The 15 year old Trond grew up that day. He made a decision which led ultimately to the 67 year old man we have met in this book. Any other decision at that crucial moment would have taken him on an entirely different, and not so good, direction through life, and he would have become a different person from the one we know. Please read this book. I think you will love it as much as I did.

I scored the book at 8.5, exactly on the group average.

Sweden – “Hanna’s Daughters” by Marianne Fredriksson Score (8.25)

I loved this book. I don’t usually go for multi-generation family stories, but this one is very different. All of the people seem real, so real that I would have thought it biographical had the author not affirmed strongly that it is not. To me this demonstrates the strength of her writing. It is the story of Hanna (grandmother), Johanna (mother), and Anna (daughter), their lives and the lives of their individual families. The times range from the 1860s to the present, the place from an isolated part of Sweden in the borderland with Norway, to modern major cities. We learn a lot about the history of Sweden and its relationships with the neighbouring countries. There was a famine in the 1880’s, with mass death from starvation, and displacement of people. Many children died young at that time anyway, from disease caused by lack of hygiene (from lack of education and knowledge of the causes of disease). Hanna is brutally raped by an older cousin, Rickard, who flees her father’s shotgun vengeance and, as we find out later, joins the army. Hanna was only twelve years old, and had only just become sexually mature (in body). The rape made her pregnant, and she later gave birth to a boy whom she raised with love, while suffering from the usual stigma of cruel neighbours that a victim of rape must have been guilty in some way. Years later she married John Broman, a miller who had recently moved into the area. John accepted the boy with as much love as Anna had for him. The family of Hanna, Johanna and Anna started from this marriage. Rickard returns to the area, swaggering in his smart army uniform. We read that, while there, he went hunting and died in a shooting accident which I hoped wasn’t. I won’t spoil your possible enjoyment of this story by telling you more. Let it suffice to say that all the group members enjoyed it, scoring it at 8.25, and putting it into our top ten as book 98 of our fictional trip round the world. I scored it at 8.5.

Finland – “The Howling Miller” by Arto Paasilinna (Score 7.0)

Kunnari Huttonen, a miller, arrives in the area sometime after the wars in Russia and takes over a sawmill, much to the amazement of the locals. He had a mill in Southern Finland, but it had burned down, killing his wife. He sets the mill to work over a period of time. There was a bad episode one spring when the millrace dam is damaged and river water pours through, bringing ice piling down against the mill and threatening to destroy it. Kunnari fought manfully, alone, to save the mill and repair the damage, with an audience made up of most of the locals, none of whom helped. Sanelma Käyrämö, a beautiful horticultural adviser, arrives one day and sweeps into Kunnari’s life to set up a vegetable garden. Is this the arrival of the love interest in the story? Kunnari completed the mill repairs after setting up the vegetable garden. He was now ready to grind flour for the local farmers. He was ready for Sanelma’s next visit. Because Kunnari has a habit of going into the woods and howling like a wolf, making all the local dogs howl all night, he is put into a mental hospital as a madman. To me he seems no more mad than the doctor who arbitrarily committed him, or the doctor who “treats” him when he is inside. Kunnari seems to me to be a Trickster figure from World folklore, like Till Eulenspiegel, Coyote, or Brer Rabbit who all get into scrapes but always manage to extricate themselves, so I was not too concerned when he was put into, as he named it “the loony bin” – how very non-PC. Kunnari escapes from the hospital with the help of another inmate who faked madness to escape being drafted., and made his way back to the mill. The local policeman, Portimo, comes to see him after receiving a phone call from the shopkeeper, Tervola. Tervola had refused to sell Kunnari any food even though he hadn’t eaten for three days. The policeman and Sanelma suggested that should go into exile into the woods for at least the Autumn, so he does. Sanelma brings him food from Portimo’s wife. Poor Kunnari can get no peace. He has made himself a good solid camp after having had his encampment destroyed when one of the villager’s followed Sanelma when she was taking food to Kunnari. A fisherman discovered the new camp and reported it to the chief of police. We find that the villagers’ wives are sympathetic to Kunnari, and blame their husbands when Kunnari starts howling after the husbands have destroyed the latest camp and stolen his possessions. Is this an indication for the future? The villagers are rogues and crooks. When Kunnari goes to the bank he signs for his savings, albeit at the point of a gun. The banker later tells the police chief that Kunnari robbed the bank “but his savings should cover the amount”, and says nothing about the signed receipt. Kunnari goes into the wilds again, where he is helped by Sanelma providing some food, Piitisjärvi the postman, and constable Portimo who has always been his friend. However, after a massive manhunt involving the army he is tricked by the Governor and the police chief, neither of whom had any intentions of living up to the deal they made with Kunnari. This story has been one of basic inhumanity to someone whose only crime was to be different, and eccentric. Kunnari and Portimo are handcuffed together, with Portimo being given instructions to deliver Kunnari back to the “hospital”, with a note from the doctor saying that he is to be treated like a dangerous madman. They go off in the train, but never reach the hospital. Portimo’s Spitz runs off into the woods. There is a happy ending of sorts when the Spitz and a large male wolf begin a campaign of revenge against the main persecutors of Kunnari. None of them are harmed, but they all suffer in some way, even if only to be made look ridiculous. Had the essence of Kunnari and Portimo entered, in some way, into the animals. Was this, after all, a Trickster tale, or was Kunnari a shape-shifter? I enjoyed it, cheering Kunnari all the way as the underwolf. I scored it at 7.5.

Estonia – The Czar’s Madman – Jaan Kross (Score 7.0)

I liked this book at first, and though it was a good story, though not one of beautiful prose. It tells us something about life in Estonia in the period after the Napoleonic wars, at a time when Estonia had been taken over by the ever-expanding Russian Empire under the land-hungry Czars and the peasants had been turned into serfs (more or less slaves). However the book grew tedious for me as I continued. At 350 pages, I think it could have been improved as a read by shedding 100 pages. The conceit that this book derives from a manuscript found, more or less, by accident, is one which was old at the time of publication in 1978. Even the afterword didn’t seem to me to support that possibility, or convince me that it isn’t pure fiction. The poem by Heine, quoted on page 182 with the English translation on page 351, has a strange translation for the first verse. The second line reads “though the world from cliff to coast”, a phrase which appears nowhere in Heine’s original. I can only think that the translator used poetic licence to make the poem scan, and to maintain the rhyme. Traduttore, traditore. (I don’t mean to insult the translator by that). I scored this book at 6.0.

Latvia – Red Weather – Pauls Toutonghi (Score 6.25)

This book is the story of the coming of age of a young boy, Yuri Balodis, the son of Latvian immigrants to the USA. His parents suffered under communism in Latvia, his father having three fingers cut off when taken unto custody by the communists. We don’t know why. Yuri falls for a young socialist, Hannah. One night, after an unpleasant incident between Yuri’s father and Hannah’s father, Yuri’s father “borrows” a fast car, a Corvette, from the dealership where he works as a night cleaner, and takes Yuri for a very fast drive. This is clearly an attempt at bonding. Yuri’s father has a lucky escape, being drunk, when he passes a stationary police car at a speed well beyond the limit. He slows down to the limit as the police car gets on his tail, six feet behind, and trails him to the county line before peeling off. Yuri is re-united with Hannah when they are in the same class at high school(age 16), and they start to skip gym together. We watch with Yuri and his parents as they follow on TV the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the break-up of the Soviet Empire. I well remember my emotions when I watched the Wall come down. I sat with tears streaming down my face. In connection with Yuri’s car crash I found it difficult to accept that even a hormonally supercharged 16 year old would be stupid enough to indulge in some heavy kissing at 50 mph, with no hand on the steering wheel. Some how or other everything turns out well and there is a happy ending. We even see the American justice system in a good light, instead of what we are usually fed, although we can only guess that Yuri got probation rather than a prison sentence. I even laughed out loud at the Russian joke near the end. I would like to quote it here without the author’s permission, but in homage to his father whom I feel is the model for Yuri’s father. “A Soviet citizen walks into his local post office. He is clearly angry. “These new stamps of Stalin are completely defective,” he says.” They do not stick to the envelopes.” The clerk looks at him and replies: “Comrade, the problem is obvious. You are spitting on the wrong side.” It reminds me of the time the UK post office published a set of stamps honouring Henry VIII, king of England. The Herald published my letter complaining that the Post Office expected Scots to lick the back side of the man who launched “The Rough Wooing of Scotland”. Check it on the internet if you don’t get the reference. The average score we gave the book was 6.25, though I scored it at 7.0.

Thoughts on our travels through the Caribbean from the Cayman Islands to Trinidad

2010-04-15T19:18:00.018Z

Cayman Islands – “Far Tortuga” by Peter Matthiessen (Score 4.5)

This is the most tedious book which I have ever read. It is written in a patois which seems to be distinguished mainly by substituting “d” for “th” in words like “that”, and “o” for “a” in words like “man”. It took a bit of getting used to and, for a non-speaker like me it distracted from what little story there is. It seemed a bit pointless to carry it on for the whole book. After all, the flavour could have come across by starting like that and then switching to Standard English.

The book is also written in a very disjointed style which made it read like a film script.

We get some idea of what the characters as like as people when, on page 60, Raib complains about the evils of “modern times”, and progress, which have led to all eighteen of his children surviving. He compares this with the “good old days” when half of them could have been counted on to die by the age of ten! I pitied his poor wife – either pregnant, or recovering from pregnancy for eighteen years, and counting.

The characters are all made of cardboard, with no reality. I was dreading their boat sinking in a storm because they would dissolve into a soft mushy mess.

All in all I resented every hour that reading this kept me away from something better.

Jamaica – “Homestretch” by Velma Pollard (Score 6.9)

I rather enjoyed this book. David and Edith are returning to Jamaica after thirty years in the UK. David’s retirement has been blighted by a massive stroke. There is an exchange of “irie” by the porter and the wheelchair assistant when they receive their tips. After some searching on Google I found that “irie” seems to be one of those untranslatable concepts, and very culture specific. It seems, to me as an outsider, to be something like “good”, or “cool”, or “fine”. I found the use by Davis and Edith of the word “press”, to mean a cupboard interesting. This is in origin a Gaelic word, and is, as far as I can determine, restricted to Scotland and Ireland when speaking English. I wonder if a Scottish plantation owner had presses in his kitchen, or even an indentured bondswoman transported to Jamaica during the Highland Clearances (an early example of ethnic cleansing). I enjoyed the split of the book into stories and sections of the different, though interrelated, people. Brenda’s story is especially enjoyable. I kept waiting for the bad side of her new friend, Anthony, to come out. I’m not going to spoil the story by telling you if it does, or not. You will have to read it for yourself. Brenda and Anthony, while travelling about, show us a lot about the lifestyle of reasonably prosperous people in Jamaica at the time. There is a lot of information about places, about the food and music, birds, trees, etc. An internet search showed pictures of most of those, and some of the places mentioned. This all added to my enjoyment of the book. Brenda’s grandmother says, when talking about a neighbour, “Joy will be well hungry when she come”. I have noticed this use of “well” in the speech of young people in the UK recently.

Cuba – “View of Dawn in the Tropics” by G Cabrera Infante (Score 5.13)

This book can’t truly be called a novel. The only story is that of how the peoples of Cuba, of whichever race, have suffered dreadfully for generations. It comprises many vignettes which might be based on rumour, history, anecdote, newspaper reports etc. There is some humour, but there is much more horror, resulting from the treatment of revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, peasants, natives, women, slaves, mothers. I found it an immensely moving book, though it has to be said that none of the other members liked it because of the unremitting horror.

Haiti – “The Farming of Bones” by Edwidge Danticat (Score 7.8)
We are straight into the thick of things. The book opens with two lovers and, within a few pages, moves to the graphically described birth of twins to an upper class descendent of the Conquistadors (those peasant butchers who destroyed the cultures of the native peoples in South and Central America and the Caribbean, and enslaved them). She is Valencia. Annabelle, Valencia’s servant, helps her during the birth. Annabelle’s “paramour” is Sebastian. On the way to the house by car Pico, the father is driving far too fast. He hits, and kills, a peasant on the road, knocking him into the ravine. Pico doesn’t seem bothered by this. We wonder if the irony is that it may be Sebastian. Beatriz’s father, her Papi, is also in the car but doesn’t make Pico stop and search in the ravine for the man he hit. The next day we clearly see a simmering resentment among the local men as they talk about the death. Is this a harbinger of things to come? Then there is another tragedy when Baby Rafi, the boy twin, dies after a few days of life. Racism raises its ugly head again when Pico destroys all his wife’s fine cups and saucers because she served coffee in them to the cane cutters. I may be imagining it, but I feel a sense of impending disaster in the text. Then there are rumours that the President has told people, and the army, to start killing Haitians who live in the Dominican Republic side of the border. Valencia’s father has gone missing – but he is a Dominican. He returns eventually, having made a wooden memorial cross for the cane-cutter killed by Pico. The tension mounts. Annabelle heads for the border with Sebastian’s friend Yves, hoping to find Sebastian and his sister Mimi. In the mountains they see the smoke from a burning village, inhabited by Haitian cane cutters. The danger increases. I didn’t realise how caught up I was in the story of Annabelle’s and Yves’ escape to Haiti until my eyes started to prickle, and my throat caught, when Yves was reunited with his mother. Will Sebastian and Mimi turn up? Will Annabelle marry Sebastian eventually? Will she marry Yves? The word “perejil” plays the role of a shibboleth in that the Haitians cannot, in general, pronounce the Spanish “j” correctly. “Shibboleth”, meaning “ear of corn”, was used in the biblical book of Judges to justify the massacre by the Gideanites of the Ephramites, who could not pronounce the “sh”. Guess what happened to anyone who mispronounced “perejil”.

Dominican Republic – “In the time of the butterflies” by Julia Alvarez (Score 8.5)

This book is told in four voices, one for each sister. The author distinguishes well between them, especially that of the ten year old Maria Teresa near the beginning. On page 53 there is a mention of the massacre of thousands of Haitian migrants near the border. This formed part of the story in our last selection “The Farming of Bones” by Edwidge Danticat. This book is interesting all the way through. It is a slow burner, but is all the more tense for that as time slips past the Cuban revolution (which causes great joy among a large part of the Dominican population). We read of the setting up of the underground resistance by the sisters when they are older. They are now known as Las Mariposas (the butterflies of the title). We read of their rounding up and imprisonment, along with many innocent friends and family members. Although there is little mention of torture we know that it has happened. The Organisation of American States intervenes, and the butterflies (but not their menfolk)are released into house arrest. Eventually the OAS apply sanctions to the country with a view of punishing Trujillo. Even the American embassy was being closed. I got one of those eye-prickling emotional moments near the end when the telegram man handed the message to Dede, and turned his back to her “because a man can’t be seen crying”. It lasted for several pages after that, and again when I was typing this up weeks later. You should search on the net for photos of the sisters. It is fascinating. There are postage stamps, photos of there weddings, of their husbands, of the houses which form part of the story.

Puerto Rico - The house in the lagoon - Rosario Ferre (Score 7.25)

We get a good introduction to Puerto Rico with descriptions of the landscape, the swamps, and then the carnival, and later on throughout the book we learn of the history of the country. Unfortunately, there is a lot of repetition in the writing. Even by page 27 I had lost count of the number of times a man or a boy was described as having “eyes so blue they make you want to sail out to sea”. This may be an idiom, but it grated. The translator could have done better. The next bit is real purple prose. The carnival queen is thinking about each (and I mean each) part of her body in terms of food and spices. She has a marzipan throat, cream-puff shoulders, cinnamon feet, a delicate ginger … This is dreadful stuff, and gave me a bad feeling about what the rest of the book might be like. On page 93 I liked Madeleine’s image of “squeezed cloud juice” for water. On page 124 there is evidence of exploitation of the peasants when the sugar mill owners (Americans) used their influence in Washington to defeat the efforts of the American Governor of Puerto Rico to improve the wages of the workers. We have seen the exploitation of, and brutality against, the colonised peoples by all of the European countries who had colonies, and by many Asian countries. Now we are seeing it applied by the Land of the Free in exploitation by Big Business, and the murder of peaceful protestors at the order of the replacement American Governor. I researched this – it happened. At one of the balls given by her husband, Buenaventura, Rebecca reveals herself as being a rabid racist when she deliberately knocks the hat from the head of the mother of Esmeralda (the girl whom her son is courting). Many of the other women at the ball laugh uproariously at the curly hair revealed by this. Rebecca’s son, Quintin, many years later, shows the same disgusting nature when he prohibits his son Manuel from marrying Coral because she is the daughter of Esmeralda, a mulatto. He rants about his “pure” Spanish blood, “with no Arab, Jewish or Black blood in it”, he says, and continues “thousands died to keep it that way”. He claims to be descended directly from the Conquistador, Pizarro. Pizarro was a pig famer in Spain, and moved on to being a butcher in South America, being responsible for the massacre of thousands of Native Americans. Ironically, Pizarro was no more “pure-blooded” than anyone else, being descended from the African mitochondrial Eve, just like the rest of us. As a direct result of Quintin’s intolerance, Manuel leaves home and Quintin’s family and world begin to break up. Over the last hundred or so pages I found this book increasingly tedious though the last ten pages led the author towards a high at the ending. There was a Manderley scene, or perhaps House of Usher, with the complete break-up of Quintin’s world – deservedly. To be fair, not all of the members of the group agreed with my feelings about the bad writing and tedium. My score was second lowest.

Antigua – “Lucy” by Jamaica Kincaid (Score 6.5)

We don’t know where this girl woman has come from. Only later in the book do we get a vague “West Indies”, with a possible clue from the presence of a small French-speaking island nearby. We don’t know where the story takes place, or which of the Great Lakes is involved. That at least pins it down to either Canada or the United States. Until page 149 we wouldn’t even know her name if it wasn’t on the front cover. She is working for, and staying with, Lewis and Mariah, looking after their five children, so at least we know their names. The train journey to whichever of the Great Lakes is involved takes about 24 hours. We have the story of a young girl growing into a young woman, discovering herself and relationships. Sometimes she seems not to like herself very much. She is angry, though occasionally she tries to hold it back. She is especially angry with her mother because her mother “loves her too much”. She loves, but at the same time hates, her mother. This anger drove her to leave home in the first place. She is not a likeable person. Despite her personality flaws I liked, and enjoyed, this book though it is not great literature by any means.

Guadeloupe – “Tree of Life” by Maryse Condé (Score 6.2)

I really enjoyed this book, but I wish I had started to keep a family tree to help me track the story, and the people, through the years. Albert works on a sugar plantation on the French island of Guadeloupe. The workers are not slaves but, with the pittance they work for, the way they have to live, and the conditions they work in, they may as well be. Albert is an angry man who wants to leave and is determined to do so. The only thing which stops him is his poverty. Then he hears about the need for labour to build the Panama Canal, where workers apparently earn 90 cents an hour. He goes there somehow. He soon realises that things are no better in Panama. The conditions are dreadful, there is an extremely high death rate, and there is segregation of everything with signs everywhere saying “Reserved for Whites”. Albert moves in with Liza who later dies giving birth to their first child, Bert. Albert takes his son home to his mother on Guadeloupe and heads back to Panama for a few more years, saving every cent he can. Massacres of Negroes begin. Albert and his friend Jacob leave by boat, suffering humiliation when they are put out of their cabin (with no refund) at the insistence of the white passengers. They arrive in San Francisco. Jacob is brutally murdered in a racist attack by three rednecks. Why do curs always hunt in packs? Are they afraid of one on one? This moving story goes on through the generations of Albert’s family. We see racism, both white on black, and black on white. WE also see, among the often casual racism, unexpected acts of kindness such as when the merchants give food to Bert, Albert’s son, whose wife is pregnant and unable to work. The claim at page 190- that Tima, on Guadeloupe, felt her daughter Thecla’s labour pains (though Thecla was in France), and even had a bloody discharge (although she was past the menopause) when Thecla had a miscarriage seemed very far-fetched. There had been no correspondence between the two women since Thecla left the island. We hear much of various black freedom movements in the Caribbean, all of it new to me. That’s not a part of the world I know much about. This book has persuaded me to change that. There are also movements to stop intermarriage with whites. I consider that to be as racist as any similar ideas expounded by whites or, indeed, by any other group. We experience a fierce and devastating hurricane, and then a more sedate time during which our narrator, Coco, makes a new friend at school. Melissa is a little white girl. Coco visits Melissa’s home. They go to the kitchen where they start a meal, They are enjoying roast lamb together, with all the trimmings, and their first glass of wine. Then the author punches us right in the face when we least expect it and our defences are down. Melissa’s mother comes raging into the kitchen and orders Coco to leave the house, in the most vile racist language. After we have recovered from that the author starts to draw together the various threads running through the story, and reaches her conclusion.

Dominica – “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys (Score 7.25)

This is the story of Antoinette, a young Creole girl living in Coulibri, a large run-down house in Jamaica. Fairly quickly into the story the house in burned down by the local villagers because Antoinette’s family are white, even if poor white. They are still reminders of the slaving days. The family has to leave. Antoinette, a teenager, is put into a convent school. There seems to be some confusion in the text here. On page 31 Antoinette says that she seldom sees her step-father, who was often away for months. On page 33, at the top, she says that, during the eighteen months she was at this school, he came often to see her, and he gave her presents. Or is this, perhaps, an early harbinger of Antoinette’s future madness? As part Two starts, we now have a change of voice. The narrator is an unnamed man, married to Antoinette. We are still in, or back in, Jamaica in the pouring rain. They are on honeymoon, leaving Jamaica for the Windward Islands. They married a month after he arrived in Jamaica (and he was ill with fever for three weeks of that time. This feels to me like an arranged marriage. After a period of what seems like an idyllic life together, Antoinette’s nameless husband receives a letter (not anonymous as you might think at first) warning him about the background of Antoinette’s family and that he should expect her to go mad like her mother. Her bought husband takes this letter at face value, and his attitude to Antoinette begins to change, quickly. He gets lost in the jungle in the middle of a walk to think things through. He is rescued. Shortly after, we become Antoinette again about halfway through the book. We move back to Mr Nameless who goes to see Daniel, the man who sent the letter. Daniel tells him more about Antoinette and her family. Why is he doing this? Is his story true? We don’t know yet, but we don’t want it to be true. After all, we have been in Antoinette’s head for so many pages, and we don’t feel mad. Antoinette tells her husband her side of the story of her mother. They have a glass of wine and go to bed. He wakes in the middle of the night, violently sick. He thinks Antoinette has poisoned him. If she had I think that we, inside her head, would have known about it. He runs off into the jungle again, ending up at Coulibri. After he makes his way back the servant woman, Amelie, is waiting for him with food. He takes her to bed, the rats. The nameless one has decided to leave. The cook leaves. The overseer stays. The husband’s behaviour makes Antoinette hate him, where once she loved him. He finally admits he does not love her. I almost felt some sympathy for him when he realised that he had been bought by his father and Antoinette’s father. Then, as he begins his long thought of hatred of Antoinette, of everything to do with her, of the island, and of his determination to destroy her mind, we know what an evil man he is. He succeeds in his plan since Antoinette is quite mad at the end of the story, and **** SPOILER ALERT **** is the mad woman in the attic in the “sequel” by Charlotte Bronte. Interestingly, Rochester is nowhere named in this book and, if you didn’t already know Jane Eyre you probably wouldn’t pick up the various clues which point to “Wide Sargasso Sea” being the prequel to “Jane Eyre”. If you have read Jane Eyre, or already know the relationship between the books, may I suggest that you try very hard to read “Wide Sargasso Sea” without thinking about Jane Eyre? I hope you enjoy “Wide Sargasso Sea” as much as I did, and that you read “Jane Eyre” with a fresh outlook next time.

Martinique – “Texaco” by Patrick Chamoiseau (Score 5.4)

This book is another set on an island where there is no more slavery since the colonial power (France) has finally seen sense and abolished it. The people we meet live in a shanty town slum clustered round the derelict site of an oil terminal outside “City”. The city officials want to demolish the shanty town to “improve” its land. We don’t yet know if this is for altruistic reasons, or financial. For the first time on our world trip we get some idea of how the slaves sabotaged the plantations, and their output, thus reducing the owners’ income. Animals died, crops died, no slave women gave birth. The master imposed harsh punishment on the innocents because they could not find those who had fought back. Unfortunately, after this promising start, “Texaco” deteriorated rapidly. It became verbose and disjointed, and frankly extremely tedious to read. It is a big book of nearly four hundred pages, pretty well unreadable. Since this was a book group selection I persevered, but about half way through I finally gave in and skimmed for about another fifty pages. Eventually I did something which I have never done in my life before – I totally abandoned the book. I cannot recommend this book to anyone.

Barbados – “In the Castle of my Skin” by George Lamming (Score 6.6)

Pa and Ma are the oldest couple in the village, and are called that by everyone. It reminds me of when I was a kid. An old lady lived on our tenement stair. She was Aunty Peggy to the whole street, and everyone loved her. The book opens on G’s ninth birthday. The heavy rain has flooded the village, moved houses on their foundations, and even swept one away down the river. Still, everything seems quiet and calm. We get some idea of the village. It comprises board-wood houses laid out on a grid, with shops at the street intersections. There is gas street lighting. G and his mother have at least one oil lamp. He has a bed, a pillow and a bought (or presented) sheet. The roof leaks. On page 27 we find that the village people dislike the landlord’s overseers. This isn’t because they are brutal. It is simply that they are also villagers, but have “gone up in life”. It reminds me of the “Aa kent his faither” (I knew his father) attitude prevalent in parts of my native Scotland towards someone who has been guilty of upwardly social mobility. We see how events in the village, apart from major things like floods, are pretty much the same, day in, day out. Why aren’t they bored to tears? Is it because they don’t know anything else? There are two voices in the book. The authorial voice tells us what is happening when G is not there. In this voice the villagers speak their patois rather than standard English. We can see that they have so much lost contact with, and memory of, their roots that they deny that their ancestors could ever have come from Africa. The other voice is that of G. He speaks standard English throughout, as does his mother when she is talking to him. His mother tends to patois when she is punishing him for misbehaving, or if others can hear her. On page 111, the nine year old G does what nine year olds do. He watches, and imagines, human, animal and natural shapes in the clouds. I loved G’s description of the feeling of an ear full of water when he comes out after swimming in the sea (page 112). I’ve been there. So too, I enjoyed his description of Venus, the Morning Star. “It seemed a solid, four pointed flame that would crack under the hammer and scatter from the blow into a million splinters, each remaining solid and steady like the star itself. This is beautiful, and it is exactly what we see. However it doesn’t seem to be what a nine year old with a basic education, living in a remote village, would write. It is a distillation of the nine year old’s feelings through the prism of the memory of the 26 year old he has become, who is telling the story. These little gems of description are among the things which I enjoyed about this book. There is a fascinating description of an outdoor revivalist meeting at which a seven year old boy, totally confused, is being urged to confess his sins so as to be “received” into the “light”. Then at page 169 we have the young boys in the story (G and his friends) struggling to understand the concept of a slot machine where “you put something called a “dime” in one hole and a plate of food comes out of another”. As Arthur C Clarke said “Sufficiently advanced science seems like magic to us”. On page 186 we hear about the “poor whites” who all come from a place called Scotland. I presume this may be an effect of the Highland and Lowland Clearances. This was an early example of ethnic cleansing when the landlords drove the people away to make room for grazing the more profitable sheep. On page 187 three innocent young village boys are accused of sexually assaulting the landlord’s daughter. We know they are innocent since we were with them. The landlord’s daughter and a sailor were in flagrante delicto when the boys ran into them while escaping from the overseer. The sailor, to protect himself and the girl, immediately told people that he had rescued her from the boys. Of such lies and self interest dreadful things are often the result. Later we find that the landlord has “sold” the village land and that the new “owners” are attempting to move the villagers who live on the land which has been “sold”. How did the landlord come to think that he “owned” the land? By taking it from the people who lived there before Europeans arrived. This is the same situation as in Scotland where people “own” land which was “sold” to their ancestors, or “given” to them by someone, usually a king who never had any right to the land except by virtue of some dubious so-called eight of conquest. To summarise, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

Grenada – “Under the Silk Cotton Tree” by Jean Buffong (Score 5.76)

This book is set in Grenada, told by a young girl in local patois. I suspect that it could be well toned down from normal because it is reasonably easy to follow after a few pages. It certainly gives you a feeling of being in an exotic place. The young girl is Flora. She “has eight years”. While this is the standard way of telling age in Italian, and doesn’t seem at all odd, it comes across as being strange in English. It’s constant use helps to maintain the feeling of difference in the story. When the old, very popular priest retired back to Ireland a young priest, still in training, took his place. He isn’t as popular, and there are soon accusations against him by some young women. Innocent or guilty, he is moved to another parish. There seems to be a deep belief among some of the villagers about magic and supernatural beings. There is obeah; there are shape-changers (lougarou – from the French for werewolf), and other creatures. There are further traces from when Grenada was a French colony. There is the use of “Tanty” for “aunt”, and other words which clearly derive from French. I even wonder if the author’s name is of French origin. The book comprises a series of vignettes about various aspects of the life of the village people in Grenada, life, death, marriage, celebrations. There is one particularly funny bit, set in the cemetery on All Saints’ Night when Flora and her family are lighting candles for the family graves. Suddenly they see strange lights dancing over the graves at the centre of the cemetery, accompanied by strange whooshing sounds. They are terrified, thinking this is a case of lougarou. Then Ann, one of the family party, shouts out that … I won’t spoil the surprise for you. Read the book. It’s not great literature, but I think you’ll enjoy it. I did.

Trinidad – “In the Heat of the Day” by Michael Anthony (Score 6.74)

It is 1903 and we are in Trinidad, listening to Eva and Clement discussing the upcoming bill to charge ordinary people for water consumption. The people imposing this are the colonial masters, completely unelected, but seemingly crooked. At one time Eva talks about the fact that the Trinidadian people are uneducated, because that’s the way the masters want it. She says “You see, Clem, these overlords have to keep us in ignorance in order to rule. We mustn’t get too wise”. We find out that water is to be charged for to reduce waste, but we don’t yet know if there is waste, or if this is a made up reason. We spend considerable time in the company of the “antis” as they work out their plans to disrupt the proceedings and prevent the bill being passed at three readings, as is required by law. They want to do this by legal means. We spend time with the “pros”, together with senior police, as they work out ways to prevent the protestors even gaining access. They make a pretence of telling the police that they have to be impartial, but it is clear where the police sympathies lie. They keep talking about “stopping these people”. The police are to be armed, stationed in the debating hall and around the building, but have to open fire “only in dire necessity” – the decision being made by them. The text is Dickensian, with very detailed conversations going on for pages. This book is a slow burner, but the tension mounts steadily as the day of the first reading approaches. The climax of the first reading is when the brutal policeman, Sergeant Holden, takes the opportunity to beat severely one of the protesters against whom he has a particular grudge. On the weekend before the second reading, key supporters of the “antis” are arrested for no other reason than that they are “anti”. During the attempted second reading Sergeant Holden deliberately stabs a young girl in the stomach with his bayonet, claiming she was attacking him. We were there – we know she was not. Holden takes advantage of the confusion to murder a number of people he dislikes, and some he just decides to murder. Colonel Blake witnessed the last cold-blooded killing, of a woman you used to live with Holden but left him because he beat her. I don’t hold out much hope that Blake will bear witness against Holden.

This month we move back to Europe -

Iceland - The Fish Can Sing - Halldor Laxness (Score 7.0)

See my comments at "Thoughts on Europe from Iceland to"

Our top reads in the Americas - in alphabetical order

2008-11-12T21:25:00.018Z

Our top reads in the Americas - in alphabetical order

Brazil - Gabriella: Clove and cinnamon 7.3
Canada - House made of dawn - N Scott Momaday 7.0
Colombia – Love in the time of cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 7.8
Costa Rica – Assault on paradise – Tatiana Lobo 7.2
Dominica – Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys 7.25
Dominican Republic – In the time of the butterflies – Julia Alvarez 8.5
El Salvador – One day of life – Manlio Argueta 7.4
Haiti – The farming of bones – Edwidge 7.8
Mexico – The day of the moon – Graciela Limón 8.4
Puerto Rico – The house on the lagoon – Rosario Ferré 7.25
USA - Fools Crow - James Welch 8.4

Thoughts on our travels through the Americas from Canada to Mexico

2008-07-16T19:26:00.031Z

"House made of dawn" by N Scott Momaday of Canada (Score 7.0)

This book starts off with beautifully descriptive scenes. I can picture the land in all its grand magnificence as I have seen it in one hundred Westerns in the cinema. Everything is pictured vividly. The happenings in The Middle, in the pueblo, bring to life all the empty pueblos I have seen in travelogues. On page 51 we have an example of the native beliefs being turned into devil worship in the minds of the Christian fathers, eventually robbing the people of some of their culture. For example the kiva, according to the priest, is the haunt of Satan. Reading the rest of the old letter in which this point is raised, it seems clear to me that the priest who wrote the letter was a mean-spirited sort of person, possibly going insane from the isolation of his life, and certainly hallucinating. The letter dates from 1888. The sad thing is that Father Olguin, the priest at the time of the story thinks, because of this letter, that the 1888 priest was some kind of saint. From what we read on page 58 it is clear to me that Abel feels alienated from both his culture and his land. From page 79 to 81 there is an interesting example of the survival of the early native religion beneath the veneer of Catholicism. The Sacristan of the church who would, no doubt, think of himself as a good Catholic, is still a member of the kiva society. The survival, in some form, of earlier religions beneath the Christian surface seems to be widespread. Ancient gods become saints or devils in many areas, including Europe. For example, in Ireland St Bridget is a survival of the goddess Brighid, wife of the Dagda. I wonder if the bull is the sad remnant of a fertility rite like the minotaur in ancient Crete. On pages 82 to 83 Abel’s killing of the albino is like the sacrifice of a willing victim. In Europe some sacrificial victims seem to have been willing to die for the good of the people. The description of the peyote ceremony from page 110 is interesting. It seems to illustrate the sheer desperation of a broken people, and the broken individuals there. From page 154 there is a section in which the wonder of childhood is described. Everything is new to you, and you are shy when people talk to you. From page 197 we learn that the people remembered the seasons of the year from the location of the rising sun on the mesa, and knew from this when to plant, when to harvest, when to conduct their ceremonies to gain maximum effect, and when the rains would come. In this book we have again seen the universal story of a culture being degraded by the effect of a dominant, more powerful, incoming culture. This has probably happened throughout human history and prehistory.

"Fools Crow" by James Welch of the USA (Score 8.4)

This is not the most literary book I have read, but it is one of the most memorable, and most enjoyable. This book will stay with me for many years. It does exactly what it says on the box. The front cover endorsement by Dee Brown (Bury my heart at Wounded Knee) promises that it “may be the closest we will ever come in literature to an understanding of what life was like for a western Indian”. The important places in the book exist. Stunning photos of the land over which the action ranges can be found on Google, as can various Blackfoot websites which are worth a visit. The Pikuni (or Piegan) are part of the Blackfoot People). Edward S Curtis’ “The North American Indian, the Complete Portfolio” (published in a 768 page paperback edition by Taschen) has many photos of the Pikuni (identified as the Piegan, but the same people), and Blackfoot in general. These gave me images as I read the book, from Chiefs to warriors, women, old men and children. The photos must have been take after the events in the book since the story begins in 1870, after the American Civil War, and Curtis was born in 1868. I enjoyed this book very much, but on this occasion I feel I don’t want to give away too much detail of the story. We see the life of the Pikuni, hard as it may be, and we enter their tipis, hear their stories, witness their ceremonies, and join them in the hunt and on horse taking raids against the Crow (from which Fools Crow is given his new name). We visit the spirit world in which Fools Crow meets his medicine animal, he is given advice by birds, and he meets one of the beings from the beginning time of the Pikuni. He is given visions which, ironically, we know to be prophecies because we are aware of the history of the Wild West. Visions play an important part in the development of the story and the events we witness. From page 244 we begin to have intimations of the horrors to come for the Pikuni. The wild raiders have killed a rancher (who, it could be argued, deserved it – putting ourselves into the time), and raped his wife, who didn’t. Another white man, returning to his home through the snow with his son, has heard of this. He wants revenge. “I want to kill and Indian” he thought. It clearly did not matter which Indian – any Indian would do. After all, as we have heard in so many westerns, “The only good Indian id a dead Indian”. How stupid and vile this attitude is. He shoots Yellow Kidney with no warning – he murders him – an innocent man with no fingers. Compare this with the visions which Fools Crow has on the yellow skin. On page 250 Mik-Api has dreamed that the bluecoat cavalry are coming. Please read this book. It will make you a better person.

“Here if you need me” by Kate Braestrup

This book is an extra which does not fit in with our theme of visiting different countries around the world, one at a time, because it too is set in the USA, and is autobiographical rather than fiction. However it is, in fact, integral to our whole trip. This book was gifted to our group, by the author, with the dedication “For new friends in Scotland. I hope you like this.” It was brought to us by strangers from the USA, travelling in Scotland, who became our new friends in the course of the evening as we all discussed “Fools Crow” (see above), and enjoyed a meal together. Everyone in the group has now read this book, and all loved it. It is the very moving, and funny, story of Kate Braestrup who, after her husband died in a road accident, picked up the pieces of her life, gathering her children round her. She fulfilled her husband’s ambition to become a minister, and became chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, a group of dedicated men and women who, among other things, risk their lives to find and rescue people lost in the wilderness. Kate Braestrup brings this all to life for us as we share her, and their, joy when there is a good outcome, and grief when it is not so good. This is a most uplifting story, and I urge you all to read it. As the blurb on the copy which Kate gifted to us says “it’s not required that you share Braestrup’s faith to be moved by her struggle to maintain it.”

"Huasipungo (The Villagers)" by Jorge Icaza of Ecuador (Score 6.2)

The three introductory sections, the Foreword by the publisher, the preface by the author, and the introduction by the translator are very helpful for setting the scene and giving us an initial understanding of the situation in which we will find the “huasipungeros” in this book. It is not an enviable position for anyone to be in. Immediately we become privy to a plan, probably a long time in the making, for Gringo (presumably USA, though that is never said) big business to take control of the timber and oil resources of the land “owned” by Don Alfonso Pereira. His uncle, to whom he owes a large sum of money, is part of this plan. One of the obstacles to this development is the presence of native villagers who live along the river. As a Scot, this is immediately reminiscent of the Highland Clearances, the wholesale eviction, generally brutal, of people whose ancestors had lived on this land for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This was to make room for sheep which the land “owners” found more profitable than people. On the trip to the hacienda the natives are mere beasts of burden, literally carrying the landlord and his family on their backs. There is dreadful brutality towards the huasipungeros, from forcing nursing mothers to wet nurse the padron’s grandchild at the expense of their own babies, to the beatings and whippings used nonchalantly to keep the work parties going. How can one human being treat others like that? On page 87 we see the abuse of religious belief by a corrupt priest promising the uneducated and gullible natives enormous reductions in their time in purgatory after death for anyone who works on the new road which has to be built to extract the timber to make a fortune for the Gringos and for Don Alfonso’s uncle, while destroying the land. Some of the imagery is good. On page 103 we read “In the same lazy, sad way that the dawn draped itself over the mountains, the workers aroused themselves. In places the tragedy is almost comic, and the comedy is tragic. You will need to read the book to get the full flavour, but that is worth doing. On page 132 there is another example of the priest, with his sly sugared tongue, extracting money from a native to pay for a mass (the subtext is that the priest pockets most of it). “Can you imagine that the Virgin will be pleased with a cheap, ordinary mass? The Virgin will be angry. Once she is angry she could easily punish you from above.” Icaza has little respect for corrupt religion. Where is the Ecuadorian Luther? On page 159, in the middle of a famine, Don Alfonso is quite prepared to bury a dead ox rather than leave it for the starving Indians. He gives his totally immoral reasons. Towards the end the Gringos instruct that the huasipungeros should be destroyed and the people driven out to make room for their proposals. At last the natives revolt, armed only with makeshift weapons. The inevitable result, of course, is that men, women and children are massacred because of the superior weapons of the landlords and their cronies. This book will open your eyes, though you may find them filled with tears.

"Conversation in the Cathedral" by Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru (Score 5.2)

This book opens in a busy, noisy street with heavy traffic queued at the traffic lights. It’s clear immediately that I will have to get used to new terms and turns of phrase since the translator is an American. I have already had to think about some points. It reminds me about the difference in our languages. If I say I have gas in my flat, the story goes that an American will wonder why (as translated) I have petrol in my puncture. Back to the book! We are only a few pages in when we discover that the Cathedral of the title is a bar, and not a church building as I had imagined. This has changed my first thoughts of what the book might be about. The conversation is between a 30 year old newspaper editor of Spanish descent (“pure” we don’t yet know), and an older man, descendant of slaves, who have not seen each other for fourteen years. Santiago and Aida have to answer questions on world history to get into the local university. Looking at the aspects they are rehearsing I doubt if may of that age in the UK would have heard of them, let alone know anything about them. Beautiful little snapshots are dropped in between the text of the conversation. For example, on page 111 there is a description of an iguana running quickly across the roasting desert sand before being caught and eaten by a buzzard plunging from the sky. The technique of telling the story is interesting. Several stories are being told at the same time, intermingling in past and present as if they were all happening at the time of the conversation. Frequently this happens line by line, or in the middle of a long sentence. It makes you concentrate. Peru, at that time, seems to have been a society obsessed with the distinction between natives (at the bottom of the heap), so called half-breeds in the middle, and the self-declared “pures” at the top of the pyramid. They seem to forget that without a strong and broad foundation layer, the pyramid will collapse. If you persevere you will find that the unusual way of writing comes to an end and things change to an everyday tale of politics, and corruption in high places, with some police brutality thrown in for good measure. There is a good scattering of “deniable” nasty work going on to favour the people in power. Where have we come across that in the real world recently? I feel that I learned a little about life in 1950s Peru, but I couldn’t relate to the characters no matter how much trouble they were in.

"Daughter of Fortune" by Isabel Allende of Chile (Score 6.7)

On page 33 we have a horrifying image of a religious procession, complete with Catholic saints (very possibly matched to an appropriate native god) carried by penitents, flagellants scourging themselves with multiple leather thongs fitted with steel spikes to draw blood on every stroke, and poor uneducated superstitious people, the whole throng believing that this incredible performance would have the effect of making their god stop the storms. This leads you into thinking that this book might be a powerful condemnation of the effects of corrupt religious practices on the poverty stricken locals. No such luck. It is simply the tale of an orphan (as we are led to believe) being lucky enough to be dumped on the doorstep of a relatively well off English brother and sister who then bring her up until she gets pregnant and runs off to California to find her lover who has headed for the goldfields. The book was saved for me, to an extent, by the sections set in China and California. In particular the descriptions of the gold rush 49ers struck a chord. When I was young my dad had many books about the American West about which he had a passionate interest, and there were photos of the townships and of the gold rush. Other than that, and the time in China bringing in the other main character, there is nothing much to say about the book. It is a reasonable story, plainly told, with no literary pretensions of any kind. I did think, though, that the ending seemed rather rushed, as if Allende had got tired of it and didn't really know how to bring it to a conclusion.

"The Matter of Desire" by Edmundo Paz Soldan of Bolivia (Score 5.8)

On page 3 we are straight into the violence of Bolivian politics when the protagonist thinks back to the murder of his father in a military raid on the HQ of his party. We don’t yet know any background. We then find that the cousin of the military leader who planned the raid is a drug dealer who is to be extradited to the USA. The protagonist (whose name we don’t yet (page 7) know seems to feel alienated from his home when he returns to it from the USA, but also alienated from the USA when he goes back. He was brought up by his uncle after the murder of his father. His uncle lost an eye in the attack. The bodies of his father and his aunt (both killed in the raid) were never found. Did they die, or did they suffer more in some cell after being “disappeared”? On page 18 there is a statement by Carolina which makes little sense in the English translation, but in Spanish serves to indicate that the protagonist is losing touch with his roots – “You pronounce the “l” and the “r” worse all the time”. We learn on page 50 that he is called Pedro, after his father. There are a number of conversations throughout the book in which one or other of the speakers throws in a few words of Spanish. It would be interesting to read the Spanish original to see if this happens in reverse. On page 100 we learn that Pedro’s father read “Hopscotch”. That was one of our short-listed options for Argentina. “The matter of desire” is a book about one man’s search for himself, for his father, his city, his country, lust and love, and for the messages hidden in his uncle’s general knowledge crosswords which permeate the book.. There is a twist in the last three pages which I, at least, did not expect. I won’t reveal it in case you enjoy the book more than I did. Unfortunately, about half way through, I began to find the book very tedious, though I kept right on to the end of the road.

"I The Supreme" by Augusto Roa Bastos of Paraguay (Score 2.2)

Unfortunately I have little good to say about this book, other than that there are a very few short passages where the writing is very descriptive. Other than that I thought it was turgid. I gave it a fair go, slogging through 150 (out of 424) closely written pages of massive paragraphs before going into speed reading mode. This did not improve matters, and I gave up completely at page 275. This is the first time in my life that I have given up a book completely. The blurb states that Bernard Levin said “I read the book twice over a weekend, and marvelled even more the second time.” I am not a slow reader, and have read voraciously since childhood. I calculated that, to read this book twice, I would have had to read for 50 hours. Starting at 1830 on a Friday, reading continuously, it would have taken me until 2030 on the Sunday to finish the second reading. When did Bernard Levin eat or sleep? When did he go to the toilet? Why did he bother the second time? What did I miss in this book? The other members of the group thought exactly the same – one of the few occasions in which we have been absolutely unanimous in our opinion. I ask again, what did I miss? After all, someone thought it was worth while translating.

"The Winners" by Julio Cortazar of Argentina (Score 6.25)

At least “The Winners” starts as if it may be a fairly readable book, unlike “I The Supreme” which none of us finished, and some gave up about 10% of the way through. Here we meet people who have won a mystery cruise. They are as mystified as we are about the origins and the reasons for the prize draw. Then we meet Persio, one of the winners. Most of the test about him is in italics, and I quickly learned to skip those sections. For example, on page 37 we read “Every move is a battle at sea, every step a river of words or tears, every square on the chessboard a grain of sand, a sea of blood, a comedy of squirrels, or a farce given by buffoons who wander through fields of bells and applause “. This fills me with foreboding, especially coming immediately after a description of chess queens and bishops turning into dolphins and toy satyrs. The winners seem to be a microcosm of the population of Argentina, although mostly of the better off people. We get hints that they think that some of the other passengers are “not our sort of people”. Snobbery exists everywhere, clearly. Day One brings us the plotting of the revolution, thinly disguised as breaking down a locked door so that they can access the forbidden stern of the ship. Two pistols are found!!. Who put them there, and why? Day 2 gives us a dig at “high society” with its women who read celebrity magazines all day, attend fashion shows, always need the latest styles, and have the money to get them. On page 327 there is a potential homosexual episode which comes out of nowhere. This seems to me to be a piece of bad plotting. There has been no suggestion till now that the individual involved is interested in young boys. Up till now he has shown himself to be very partial to women. Perhaps Cortazar simply felt that he had to do something to revive the story. I have certainly been bored by it for about the last 100 pages. Felipe is subjected to a fearful male rape by one of the crew. On Day Three the pistols are brought out, ready for the confrontation. Medrano dies for nothing. The captain and the crew seem to consider the whole affair, including Medrano’s death, as a regrettable accident. The cover-up begins, but just what is being covered up? There is a threat that all of the passengers will be interned if the “revolutionaries” refuse to sign the declaration which is being prepared. Is the whole group going to become part of Argentina’s “disappeared”? No! All are released at the port, including those who have not signed. What was this all about? What have I missed in the story?

"The Book of Embraces" by Eduardo Galeano of Uruguay (Score 6.6)

This is a rather strange book. It is not a work of fiction, entirely, and yet there is much fiction in it. There are also parts which seem to be autobiographical. The text is divided into small sections, most of a page or less, with some even a short paragraph. Each section has small cartoon-like sketches, a la Alasdair Gray (Lanark, and other books). Some of the sections are comedy, some tragedy, some magical, some normal discussion, and some where I could see no meaning at all. I still haven’t decided whether I like the book or not, but I am glad that I read it.

"Gabriela: Clove and Cinnamon" by Jorge Amado of Brazil (Score 7.3)

Amado introduces us to the small town of Ilhéus, growing and changing from a rough frontier town just like the ones we have seen in the westerns. There is a light, almost comic, tone in the writing. It is clear that the cacao plantations which are bringing enormous wealth to the few, and some trickle-down to many others, were won at the expense of the destruction of large tracts of virgin jungle with their irreplaceable plants, animals and medicinal uses, to say nothing of the brutal murder of innumerable native people. We find out more about the history of Ilhéus, and meet many of the characters who seem likely to play a part in the story. They are well described. We learn that Colonel Ramiro Bastos, 82 years old and a former mayor of the town, is still the controlling force who approves everything, and that nothing he does not like gets done. He has spent his life manipulating things and people, in his younger days leading murderous expeditions against those in his way, and later hiring killers to get rid of his political opponents. Now he is finding that a newcomer to the town is doing things which the Colonel opposes, and is succeeding. On page 90 we finally meet the eponymous Gabriella, and economic migrant on her way to the promised land of Ilhéus. Women in this society are chattels, to be disposed of by men after they have tired of them, like changing cars. A wife caught with a lover can, it seems, be killed with impunity by her husband (who could, meantime, have a mistress, or even be the lover of another married woman). What hypocrisy in the name of “honour”. On page 198 there is a discussion of “The Crime of Father Amaro”, by Eça de Queiros. This book is on our options list for when we get to Portugal. This story grows in strength as you progress through it, with many threads intertwining: politics, corruption, murder. Gabriella is a constant presence, although at this stage she really seems to be no more important than any of the other characters. There is a powerful section in which a character (whom we believe to be good) helps an attempted killer to escape. The escapee is revealed to be a brutal killer with many murders to his “credit”, including torturing a man to death for information. The “good” character knows that he is a killer, is aware that it is wrong to kill, but shows that in this instance gratitude and friendship are overpowering. The killer had done hugely good things for the character. Despite this episode I finished this book with a warm feeling, all loose ends tied up, all problems resolved, and everyone happy for once. This is not great literature of world changing proportions, but it is a good, enjoyable, thought-provoking read.

Guyana – “Buxton Spice” by Oonya Kempadoo (Score 5.0)

The story starts in standard English as a young girl, Lula, sweeps dust out of the house, making us see the intense brightness of the day, dust floating in the light. She is clearly happy with what she is doing. The register begins to change as she begins to talk about others, and the behaviour of her and the other children. I can picture them laughing, doubling up “like we had hinges everywhere. What a simple concept, which describes it exactly. We see the innocence of childhood, jumping off trees, and their general play, even in the episodes with “safely mad Uncle Joe”. There is a beautiful concept on pages 30 and 31 of my edition. The family are at dinner, with a good going conversation. The words are described as physical objects, different sizes and shapes, bouncing, rolling, and flying backwards and forwards, along, across and above the table. Lula seems to be really scared of a large Buxton Spice mango tree growing beside the house. She has a conceit that it is sentient and can watch everything going on in the house through the various windows. But, all is not sweetness and light in this tropical paradise. Within a few pages we have the brutal beating of a suspected thief, petrol bombs, and race riots. The scene from page 86 to 88, in which Aunt Ruth deals with preparation of the dead baby Isabel’s funeral is extremely tender. Then there are several very funny scenes when the children begin to realise what it means to be growing up – no punches pulled, and very earthy. They go to the cinema which shows two films. I remember that from my childhood and youth. The book finishes abruptly after a horrendous episode in which a mother beats her daughter severely for breaking a table. The old devil, racism, comes into that episode too. In the final two pages Lula’s family are packing to go to Britain. It happens so suddenly that I got the feeling that the author had run out of story and didn’t quite know how to finish it.

Venezuela - "Doña Inés versus Oblivion" by Ana Teresa Torres (Score 6.80)

The opening chapter of this book is dense, and I had to wonder if the rest will be like this, and whether I will enjoy it. We read about constant and continuing exchange of legal documents between Doña Inés and Spain, and her nemesis who claims the same piece of land to his legal people in Spain and even to the king. Let’s face it – the land was stolen from the native peoples in the first place. We then begin to read about the wars, and the civil wars, ravaging Venezuela and other areas in the fight for independence from Spain. There is great brutality, murder, destruction of villages and cities. We read of Simon Bolivar leading a retreating army and hundreds of refugees away from a royalist army of escaped an former slaves. There is fighting and murder, predicated on race and racism. I had only read of Bolivar in connection with Bolivia up to now. Despite the conceit of the story being told over a period of 270 years, it isn’t magic realism to me. What it is is a very interesting novel telling the turbulent history of Venezuela over that period by following the lives of a range of protagonists through various time periods. It gave me some insight into a troubled land. Despite all the war and murder which goes on, I found the most shocking scene in the book to be when Dominguito, a captain in the army, panders the girl whom we have been led to believe that he loves, to his general in return for future favours. Dominguito wants nothing more to do with her after he has “given” her to the general as a birthday present. Later we have a good description of the man into whom Dominguito turns, re-inventing himself as he rises in society and wealth, hiding and forgetting the things in his past which we have read about. The book continues to illuminate us on the history of Venezuela in a very interesting way. Eventually the matter of the ownership of the land is resolved, and the spirit of Doña Inés readies itself to depart, and fade into eternity. This book is apparently based on an actual centuries long legal wrangle over a parcel of land.

Colombia - “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Score 7.8)

The story opens with the scent of bitter almonds, and we know immediately from that that someone is dead. Dr Urbino reads the long letter left to him by his dead friend, Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, but we are given no clue as to the contents. Dr Urbino goes to the address given in the letter, and the woman who opens the door says “This is your house, Doctor”. However, as we find out a few pages later, the letter says that the house has been left to her. What is going on? Then it dawns on us that this is a false friend in translation. The Spanish term for “Welcome” is literally “This is your house” in English. On page 19 there is a wonderful image of the northern winds “tearing away roofs, and spending the night circling like hungry wolves looking for a crack where they can slip in. On page 34 an approaching storm gives us “… and the sky collapsed in a catastrophic downpour”. The second chapter steps back in time to deal with the developing love between Fermina Daza (who will eventually become the widow of Dr Urbino) and Florentino Ariza, until the unexpected moment, after a three year parting caused by her father taking her away, Fermina realises that she does not love Florentino Ariza after all. Is he not good enough for her? On page 111, the Italian inscription on the bridge to the poor people’s cemetery is from Dante’s “Inferno”, and means “Abandon all hope you who enter”. It is the inscription over the gate to Hell. On page 116 the young doctor Juvenal Urbino is called to visit an 18 year old girl who is suspected of having cholera. She is Fermina Daza whom he will later be married to for 54 years, until his death on page 42. We find throughout the book that Florentino Ariza has a really adolescent and immature approach to relationships, and that Fermina Daza seems to have made a very wise decision in breaking with him when they were young. On page 272 we come across the first instance I have seen in more than 40 years of reading, of “gr**ming”. This turns Florentino Ariza into a totally despicable person in my eyes. Even when I found out that the age of majority in Colombia was, and still is, fourteen, I can’t change my mind. She was his ward. This was a matter of trust, and he broke that trust. Interestingly, when the river boat service was restarted a few years ago after a 40 year gap, the boat was named “Florentino Ariza”. I wonder if the person who chose the name had read the book and knew what kind of a person he was. Later, when he is making up with Fermina Daza, the woman he has dreamed of, and pursued, for more than 50 years, he tells her that he has kept himself pure for her. We readers know better.

Costa Rica - "Assault on Paradise" by Tatiana Lobo (Score 7.2)

We enter, immediately, the world of the people who were there before the Spanish invasion and the clearly foreseen (with our 20/20 hindsight) destruction of the people and their culture. Pa-Bru is on a spirit quest in the womb of the earth (a cave). Then we move to the story of Pedro who has come to Costa Rica to escape the clutches of the Inquisition in Spain, for a crime he may have committed, but doesn’t know what it is. Pedro has many adventures, eventually becoming a father. On page 152 we are given a glimpse of that future event in a most beautiful way – “That night, Catarina began to live without anyone realising it, not even herself or her mother. At page 173 we hear of the planned Native American uprising. There is an occasional good image – on page 210 “The month of September was shedding its days”. This book isn’t great literature to me, despite its having won a literary prize, but it’s OK as a story. I would have preferred to read more about the native people’s reaction to the Spanish. One possible group of insurgents was a tribe on the Island of Mosquitoes, called, in Spanish, the Zambo. According to Wiki, a Zambo was born from the union of one native American parent and one escaped slave. Zambo which, it seems, was not derogatory is, apparently, the origin of the obvious derogatory English word. What does that say about British and Americans?

Nicaragua - "The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma" by Rosario Aguilar (Score 7.15)

This book is set mainly in Darien. As a Scot this resonates with me because an ill-fated attempt to found a trading colony in Darien bankrupted Scotland. The failure was caused by Spanish antagonism and by the English colonies in America and the Caribbean being forbidden by law to trade with their fellow members of the United Kingdom. The local chief has a plan to make the Spanish peaceful. He sends his daughter to their leader to become his wife. He, being married already, passes her on to his second in command. She performs her duty ardently to save her people. Ironically, none realise that these invaders from the sea are motivated, not just by greed for their bloodthirsty religion and their king, but by personal greed and a lust for conquest. The real irony of the situation is that the local religion held that their civilising god had lived among the tribes and had eventually left on a journey across the eastern ocean, promising to return. The Spanish ships arrived in the year that the local calendar forecast that their god, Quetzalcoatl – Tezcatlipoca would return. The people welcomed their god back. We read of a great massacre of the native peoples. We read of the betrayal of the woman by the man who would not marry her despite her having converted to catholicism and borne him two children. They are married by native custom, but not in the eyes of the new religion. We read of him arranging a marriage to an aristocratic woman in Spain. The use of the fictional author in the “interludes” to describe her research, and her travels in connection with her writing, makes everything more real.

Honduras - “Never Through Miami” by Roberto Quesada (Score 6.1)

Helena may be upset because Elias uses the familiar “tu” form when he calls her. Or she may be upset because he won’t tell her that he is using it because he loves her. Or she may be delighted that he is using it even though she has not told him that he can. Or I may be totally misunderstanding cultural differences among the Spanish speaking countries in South America with regard to personal relationships, and between them and Spain. This is a problem which we don’t have in relationships between English speakers. We’ll see what happens. Unfortunately there isn’t very much more to say. Elias goes to America. Helena is left behind. Will he won’t he send for her? Will he won’t he take up with another woman? Who cares? I found it a lightweight, episodic book, despite the occasional lapses into humour. The characters aren’t even wooden, they are paper thin. I have to say that a number of the other members of the Round the World Book Group found it to be a good picture of the problems faced by immigrants to the United States.

El Salvador - “One Day in Life” by Manlio Argueta (Score 7.4)

This book goes straight into the difficult lives of the poor people of El Salvador, the troubles caused by corrupt policemen, the brutal National Guard, and other problems. People are shot out of hand because they dared to protest, or because they just happened to be in the vicinity of a protest. Some of the dead were children. People have been “disappeared”. Sometimes they are never seen again, and on other occasions their bodies are found with clear evidence of horrendous torture. This is a real tyranny. We have sections in the voices of several women illustrating the harshness of their lives, and how things have got worse since that they are poor, and that there are better off people. Suddenly we have a chapter in which we read of the point of view of a member of the National Guard. We tend to think of people who join an organisation like that are thugs and the dregs of society. In this case, however, he is an ordinary young man from the people, no different from them. He has been made different by his foreign instructors. He has been taught to kill brutally, with and without weapons. He has been taught that his enemy is the people from which he came, and he maintains his position by brutalising them. It reminds me of the concentration camp guards who were recruited from the prisoners. He is taught to shout that the people are the enemies of democracy. What a perversion of the truth. That particular chapter was the most horrifying in a book of horrors. I can’t say that I enjoyed this book. It is not a book to be “enjoyed”, but it certainly makes you think. For that reason I recommend it to anyone.

Guatemala - “Rattlesnake” by Arturo Arias (Score 4.25)

This is a spy story, with a CIA agent being the spy. At the beginning he comes across as being singularly inept. I thought at that stage that this was a result of either the writing or the translation but, by the end of the story I had decided that the writing was to blame. The book is full of purple prose, and is seriously overwritten. There are descriptions, in minute detail of characters whom we never meet again. One character apparently looks much taller than she is because she is thin. A few paragraphs away another looks smaller than his neighbour for exactly the same reason. There are odd turns of phrase which may or may not be the result of mistranslation. The misuse of the word “operative” for “operation” grates immediately on each of the myriad times it comes up. This meaningless sentence on page 111 is fairly typical; “Like moving black crosses, the rambling wings of birds flapping to get to countless roosts to rest at nightfall hovered around them …..” So far, so fairly acceptable. However, it continues “… submerging the restless environment in a deadly darkness that felt like a quick burning sensation on tender skin, lightly coated by the cinnamon sweetness”. Is this rubbish bad writing, sloppy editing, or poor translation? On page 135 we read “Everything always has its reason for being, in life as in sewing patterns, and Sandra almost ran in the direction of the small office full of papers and trinkets. But they weren’t trinkets”. Come on. That’s enough of this kind of stuff. This is supposed to be a thriller. There is a sentence on page 207 which describes this book perfectly, in an act of self parody; “The sudden rupture of the stifling atmosphere froze them momentarily, as if the screeching sound could paralyse the thick entangled currents of this overacted drama staging their unpredictable serpentine passions”. The sentence before that had told us that the phone had rung again, while two people were arguing. There is a horrifying brutal scene near the end. It is a pointless intrusion, and could well have been left to our imagination, especially bearing in mind the information we are given in the last two pages.

Mexico - “The Day of the Moon” by Graciela Limón (Score 8.4)

This is the powerful story of a man who cannot accept his mixed race ancestry, and the evil he does in trying to hide the truth from himself and his family. The story is told by following the lives of a number of people through the years, We meet Don Flavio Betancourt in Los Angeles, in the throes of growing ancient, with all the physical troubles which now afflict him. Perhaps he is suffering some mental strain too since he seems to be having hallucinations about a Rarámuri tribesman running fast, but not moving. As we progress through the book we learn that Don Flavio, very much a self-made man, is of mixed Spanish and Native Mexican descent who turns his back on his native half even though he, in his turn, married a Native Mexican woman. His daughter is Isadora. Don Flavio forces Isadora into marriage with a man who abandons her. At this she returns to Jeronimo, the Rarámuri she grew up with and came to love. We see the effects of the toxic mix of racism and “Victorian” so-called family values, The opposition of the Rarámuri tribe to Jeronimo’s having a relationship (and ultimately a child) with a woman from the outside could, perhaps, be considered as racism too. However, I wonder about that. We understand that this is a small tribe, driven to the margins and living in caves. We have also seen, all over the world in our reading, that a small vulnerable cultural group is generally destroyed by contact with a massively more numerous, and technically developed surrounding group, even without intermarriage. I think they are simply trying to defend and maintain their culture by isolationism. Don Flavio ultimately exacts a horrendous revenge on his daughter for defying him. There is an upbeat note near the end when Don Flavio’s granddaughter, who had thought she was a servant girl (and was treated so by Don Flavio) learns the truth and, after twenty years, seeks out her heritage among the Rarámuri.

We now jump onto a large yacht and sail off to the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.

Thoughts on our journey through Oceania from Australia to Samoa

2008-03-17T22:49:00.010Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Australia - "Rabbit-proof fence" by Nugi Garimara (Doris Pilkington) - "Score 6.2)

The book opens on a peaceful scene of a camp in the early morning. We see a man going to the river to bring the fish which his traps have caught overnight. It is not long, however, before the outside world intrudes on this relative idyll and we begin to hear of the atrocities carried out on the native peoples by the settlers, soldiers and escaped prisoners of the British Empire. Later we watch as they are deprived of their culture and their inheritance, as well as having their lands taken from them, and turned effectively into beggars. We have seen this so many times in our fictional odyssey when a dominant culture intrudes into the lands of a less technologically advanced people. On page 35 we learn that Maude was betrothed at birth. To most of us this would probably be shocking. However, it should be remembered that this has always been practiced among small isolated groups to avoid inbreeding by ensuring that mating takes place outwith the close group. On page 38 the insulting of the newborn child to ward off evil spirits is common throughout the world. We are beginning to have inklings of the tragedy to come, which later formed the basis of the eponymous film. The taking away of native children “for their own good” by the dominant culture was widespread. As well as Australia it has also happened to the Mauri, Native Canadians and Americans and to Gaelic speaking Scots. For all I know it may have happened elsewhere too. The result was to deracinate the culture and the people. On page 43 the story changes from the general tale of the inhumanity shown by one type of people to other types caused here by sheer naked greed for the land and its resources to the specific case of these young girls being taken hundreds of miles from all that they know and love. The most horrific thing about this is that it seems genuinely to have been done with good intentions, at least from the perpetrators point of view. The school at which they arrive seems, though, to be run by people at least some of whom do not share these so called high ideals. For example, the practice of incarcerating young children for days on end in the “boob” is horrendous. We are talking about children, not mass murderers. Even the children’s language is being stolen by being forbidden to them. Destroy the language and you destroy the people and their culture. The settlers who take in the girls on their trek home, bath them and feed them and give them supplies show true humanity, consideration, and love of their fellows. This consideration and a genuine concern for the well-being of the girls seems to be what drives them to report their presence (after the girls have gone on their way) to the authorities. I was disappointed that I found the story of the actual trek much less interesting than the introductory section which give the background to the arrival of the white settlers and the first contact. Although I found the film a good interpretation of the trek from the book, it would, I feel, have benefited greatly had the earlier introduction been retained. One final point is that one member of the group pointed out that, relative to the text of the book, the back cover blurb in the edition which we read contains several errors.

New Zealand - "The Bone People" - by Keri Hulme (Score 8.7)

The Prologue is strange. It doesn’t seem to do anything, or hang together in any way. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the story we are expecting. When the first chapter proper arrived, I enjoyed the section where Kerewin Holmes is on the beach, jumping between the wooden piles of an old jetty, and spearing her dinner with a sword cane. Then we move into her house where, in her library we, and she, are surprised by a child in the window “like some weird saint in a stained glass window” – what an image. I enjoy her play with words, merging them to make one long word which doesn’t mean quite the same as either, or both, of the roots. I like the way in which the internal monologues break in. It helped me to understand the characters of Kerewin and the boy, Simon. We are left, for a while only, I hope, why Simon has a reputation. Are the missing teeth a gift from an abusive father or an accident; is he short of a loving relationship; is his silence physical or psychological? Presumably all will be revealed as the story develops. On page 72 we have a hint of abuse on Simon by a young bearded man. On page 73, how is Simon seeing Keri? Has she an aura? Is Simon one of these people who have synaesthesia? We get a pleasant surprise when we meet Simon’s father, Joe. He is not at all how the hints led us to expect. He clearly loves Simon very much. New Zealand must get a very much better class of Liebfraumilch than we get in the United Kingdom. On page 78 we have the auras again. On page 99 we learn that Kerewin has Hebridean in her ancestry. Taken together with the similarity of her name with that of the author, just this suggest that the story can be autobiographical in any way? On page 122 I found the incident in the tobacconist shop really amusing. I have been feeling that these three people are entirely real, each possibly modelled on someone, and this incident reinforced that feeling. On page 136 we find that Joe, the father, is a brutal animal, obviously beating Simon severely “for his own good”. On page 190 I begin to feel that there is something seriously wrong inside Joe’s head. This book contains three mysteries – 1 Where did Simon (Haimona) come from? – 2 Why is Joe so brutal to a child whom he clearly loves deeply? and – 3 Will Kerewin and Joe get together, or won’t they? On page 256 we are not told what the message which Simon wrote with the holed stones said. I know that I said earlier that I like her wordplay, but “smokering” rather than “smoke ring” catches me out every time. One page 308 Simon’s punishment is vastly out of proportion to his offence. No child should ever be beaten like that, for anything. I really hope that part is not autobiographical. Why won’t Kere see a doctor? Does she have a death wish? The basic goodness in Joe shows through again in his dealings with Tiaki, and in particular in the care and respect with which he buries him. Joe really is a complex, contradictory character. We had a hint about the mystery of Simon near the beginning. The author peels the onion slowly, making us beg for what lies under that layer, and the next. This is magnificent writing. I really care about these people and I want a good result for each of them, but not a soppy obvious one. This is one of those rare books which I just want to keep reading to see what happens next. Sleep and work really got in the way this time. I have kept silent about the ending of the story because I feel that the book should be read without any clue as to what happens eventually. This book received my highest score yet, beating the selection from Albania. The average vote was enough to put it straight to the top.

Tahiti - "Frangipani" by Celestine Hitiura Vaite (Score 5.75)

Collecting her husband’s pay is something which I remember from my childhood in Glasgow in the 1950s. We lived in a tenement building and the wives vacated the building on a Friday afternoon to go and wait outside their husbands’ works so that they could pay the rent and feed the family, otherwise the money would have been spent “putting fur coats on the publican’s and bookie’s wives. Luckily my mother never needed to do that since my dad didn’t drink or gamble. On page 9, telling the sex of a baby by using a needle is common, but it has to be an untwisted thread. In paces where wedding rings are worn, it is done with the ring. Apparently it works, like dowsing. I know dowsing works since I have done it. I was taught to use two bent welding rods which I still have. I’m a civil engineer, and I used them to find underground metal bars, water and gas pipes and electricity cables on the construction sites. I suspect that electric fields are involved in some way. On page 11 we have the planting of a tree to mark the birth of a child. This was common in Gaelic Scotland. On page 91 we find another example of the cultural destruction which we have come across so often as a result of colonialism. Among her talents, Materena’s daughter Leilani can speak French, English, Spanish “and a bit of Tahitian”. This is the native language of her people, for goodness sake, supplanted by French. In several places in the book it becomes clear that the educated people are aping the French and have effectively lost their language. Only the poor people speak Tahitian. How sad that is! There is much gentle humour in this book. Towards the end the story becomes rather episodic as if it was being serialised. One chapter bears no relation to the one before other than that it is clear that the time line is later. Each vignette is a pleasant read in itself, as is the whole book. All in all I found it to be rather lightweight. I certainly won’t be tempted to buy the other three books of the story, unlike when I completed the Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer of Burma.

Samoa - They who do not grieve - Sia Figiel (Score 4.7)

By the second page (page 12 in my edition) the triple repetition of many words is already beginning to annoy me. On page 16 we have the more or less deliberate introduction by immigrants from New Zealand into Samoa of disease. This is the first time I have come across this anywhere but the USA where smallpox and other diseases were used to weaken, or wipe out, Native American resistance to the invaders. On page 21 the attitudes expressed are precisely what has given Americans their generalised, hopefully rare, reputation of knowing nothing, and caring less, about the rest of the world. I have heard it said of someone, by another American, that “he (a fellow countryman) couldn’t find America on a map of America.” Surely a considerable exaggeration. The point of view has changed to that of Mrs Winterson, an American, at a time when she is still at college – but the voice does not change to reflect this. It still uses the pointless doubling and tripling of words, and so is clearly that of the author. I think this is shoddy, careless, writing. Is Malu’s long hallucinatory passage, from page 38 to page 67, the result of a drug assisted coming-of-age ceremony. I wish that I had read “Coming of Age in Samoa” by Margaret Mead. On page 93 there is an echo from “Gone with the Wind” which I imagine Ela has been saving for the right moment. On page 101 the German doctor, Herr Weiss makes an unexpected return after a long absence from the story. I had completely forgotten about him – he was not at all memorable. I have decided at this stage that I really am not enjoying this book. I’m only finishing it for the discussion at our meeting and for this entry on the blog. The writing seems to me to be precious and pretentious. It’s a long time since I have read anything which I dislike so much. I can’t relate to the characters (see the last paragraph in the middle of page 108 just before the break.). This is typical. I have read many hundreds of books, so I think I know when I find good writing. On pages 108 and 109 Ela has a nightmare, but tells no-one about it. None of the book is told from Ela’s viewpoint. Malu is the narrator. How does she know about the dream. The second part of the book does say good, and pertinent, things about cultural alienation and the desire for the “good” things brought by western contact. It’s a pity they are lost among the verbiage and purple prose of the rest of the text. There is also the pain of exile (in this case unwilling emigration). On page 190 we find that racism in New Zealand works in a hierarchy and is white on Mauri on Samoan and other Islanders. This puts the lie to any suggestion that people of European descent are the only racists around. On page 201 there are two incidents involving Alofa. In the first a white woman makes a brutal racist remark. In the second, an old white man apologises for the white woman’s behaviour and takes onto himself all of the racist slurs and attacks which have been suffered by Alofa and, by extension, all Islanders from anywhere. This seems a Christ-like act. I know which of the two I would prefer to call a friend.

Thoughts on our travels through Asia from Myanmar to Japan

2007-06-02T11:09:00.008Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Myanmar - "Not out of Hate" by Ma Ma Lay (Score 6.9)

This is the first inserted book for some time. Only one copy was available on the internet at a reasonable price when I started this entry. However, several more became available, so the group decided to backtrack a little. The preface and the introduction give some good background on the story, and on the author. On page 12 I fancy I see the beginning of Way Way's infatuation with the colonial way of life. It will be interesting to see if she starts to feel inferior to the colonists in the way which we have seen in several of our books. The translation generally flows well, with only the occasional thing which doesn't seem quite within the personality of the person being talked about. For example, on page 25 we find "When one first meets him one gets the impression ..... but when one talks to him ... . Most people just wouldn't think that way, except mockingly. On page 38 we have a very clear statement of the detrimental effect of colonialism on the local culture. We have seen this time after time on our travels. Is Ko Nay U's reaction preparing us for a sorrow to come to the family of Way Way some time in the future? Way Way's new husband, U Saw Han, is extremely possessive and oppressive to her. The author tells us he loves her very much (and the author cannot lie to us), but it seems to be the love of a child for a favourite toy or a puppy. He wants her to dress in a way chosen by him, and only provides British style food. We see the tragedy of this later. He forbids her to spend any reasonable time with her sick father and forces her to go against her whole cultural heritage (though she made a massive start in that by herself when she felt shame at having a Burmese style home once she saw U Saw Han's British style home being assembled). In a way I can understand U Saw Han wanting to be like one of his British bosses so that he can get on in business in the colonial society in which he lives. What I can't understand, or forgive, is his rubbishing of his entire civilisation and culture. I found his approach to Maung Mya particularly abhorrent, especially when he "came down on Way Way like a ton of bricks" when she automatically treated Maung Mya with the respect due to him in Burmese society, servant or no servant. On page 104 (note 49) - I didn't know that Burma had once been part of India. I googled this and found it had been set up that way by the British for ease of administration. That could have been yet another disastrous intervention by the British Empire, leading to horrendous wars. Despite U Saw Han's coddling of Way Way, she inevitably has a miscarriage and, on top of that, she catches tuberculosis from her father. For me, the book began to drag. I feel that Way Way's long drawn out decline and her death were necessary because the author did not know how to close the book without them. Way Way is a wimp, besotted by the idea of being in love and thus putting up with everything put on her by her husband. He, in turn, is a totally unthinking egotist. He forces Way Way to eat dairy food and drink milk (good food for a Westerner) which are effectively poisonous to Burmese and other south-east Asian peoples because their bodies are not genetically able to deal with these foods. If U Saw Han did not know this, he has clearly been ignorant of his own people since long before the book started. If he did know it, what on earth was he thinking of?

Malaysia - "The Rice Mother" by Rani Manicka (Score 7.0)

I worried when I read the reviews published in this book. They were invariably by magazines which I have never heard of, or by a couple of newspapers, one of which I have absolutely no respect for. I had to contrast this with the one "word-of-mouth" feedback which I have had of this book, which praised it highly. As always I will have to make up my own mind. I have now reached page 150, and I was right to be concerned. This book, I'm afraid, is doing nothing for me. I am finding it bitty and episodic. Nothing much seems to hang together. The short section where we see the excitement of the children when presented with the wonders of nature by Professor Rao is good, though it is not really narrated as if by a child. It is very much told years later when their education has equipped them to understand what the professor is talking about (ie it is the author who is talking and not the children). This is one of the main problems I have with the book. All the characters have the same voice, that of the author. Lakshmi turns into a brutal woman, and could in fact be insane. Her treatment of Jeyan on page 278 over a missing coin of little value (which it turns out she lost herself) is indicative of what is driving her family to fear and hate her. Her eldest son, Lakshman, seems no better since he inflicts the decreed dreadful punishment on the innocent Jeyan with gusto. I learned a lot, presumably accurate, about birth, marriage, life and death in Malaysia. So much, in fact that this seemed almost to be the main purpose of the book, for example long lists of food prepared (page 349) by Jeyan's new wife. She is a paragon, and seems to have been introduced as a foil to Rani. This book grows increasingly tedious and is keeping me from books which I would much rather be reading. Dimple's surrender to opium doesn't seem realistic. She knows that it is a trap set by Luke, her philandering husband, she has seen the effect on people round about her, she knows how her daughter will be hurt by it, no-one is putting any pressure on her, she has never shown any hint of being so weak, she doesn't want to be a user - and yet she starts deliberately. I took a week's break to read one of the books I was more inclined to ("A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini of "The Kite Runner". Thank goodness I did. It was magnificent and kept me sane). Strangely, when I went back to the tedious "Rice Mother", struggled through twenty pages at a time up to that point, I flew through the last 80 pages in one sitting, finding much more of interest as things were closed down. Was this merely a last sprint designed to get me to the tape before I collapsed with fatigue at the end of the 580 page marathon?

Indonesia - "This Earth of Mankind" by Pramoedya Anata Toer (Score 6.1)

This is the first volume of the "Buru Quartet", and seemed a reasonable place to dip our toes into the water. Almost from the beginning we become aware of the inferiority complex felt by those who are full blooded indigenes of the country as opposed to the Dutch colonists and the children of the colonists and Indonesian women (it seems to be exclusively that, and never the children of a Dutch mother and an Indonesian father). This type of complex seems to be widespread throughout subjugated nations. We have witnessed racialism of all kinds during our journey. Now we see it again in the attitude of Mellema the Dutchman, to Minke the native Javanese, when he finds him sitting at dinner with his (Mellema's) concubine and his daughter. We already know that Minke has accepted the name given to him by the Dutch pupils at his school, and that it means "monkey". We now find that the colonial society, and the colonised, consider the concubine's daughter to be of a higher status than Minke because she is half Dutch and he is a pure native Javanese. Mellema's disgust is palpable. I think there is more to be uncovered here. It is clear from the description of the resistance of the Achenese to the Dutch colonial invaders that the Dutch army used the same tactics as all other colonials seem to have used, extreme cruelty, slaughter of the innocents, and divide and conquer to achieve the aims of the puppet-masters, conquest of the land, enslavement of the people and pillaging of their resources. Round about page 80 we see a perfect example of the degradation caused by the colonial process to both colonised and coloniser. We see the sale of a 14 year old woman, by her father, into a life where she seems likely to become a living sex toy to an important Dutch official. On page 282 it is interesting that, at the trial, Nyai is not allowed to testify in Dutch. If she had been, that would have confused the Dutch authorities, and would have destroyed the prevailing attitude, probably fostered deliberately, that non-Europeans could not be educated. This is not a great work of world literature but it is an entrancing, if at times heartbreaking, story. I want so much to follow the story, to find out what happens to the main characters, that I have bought the rest of the quartet and will read them as and when my commitment to the rest of our travels round the world allows.

Vietnam - "Memories of a pure spring" by Duong Thu Huong (Score 7.3)

We are taken suddenly (page 16) from life in a small, isolated hamlet into a wider, much more dangerous world - "That night, planes bombed the road on the other side of the mountains". The description of the celebrations for the end of the war (page 25) is dramatic, followed by the hints of the hardships experienced by the people during the war. It seems incredible that the theatre group could keep going through ten long years of war, constant bombing and defoliation of the forest, moving from place to place, keeping up the people's spirits. My parents have told me of a similar spirit of community reigning in the United Kingdom during the Second World War, and I always imagine a similar attitude in every country which was involved, on both sides. We see on page 50 that, even when travelling though the countryside, living underground to avoid the bombing, Hung has still managed to keep hold of a few books by such as Chekhov and Gogol. Later in the book at page 165, when Lam goes to warn off Doan from any further contact with Hung and Suong, he exposes Doan's venality to his parents, with no pity for any of them. (I'm not saying why this occurred since this is one of the main threads of the story). On page 188 we have Auntie Tuang's words of wisdom, still true today unfortunately "People today are short on compassion but they've got cruelty to spare". The abject poverty of those with no manual skills such as fishing or farming, living in communist Vietnam, comes through in this book, especially for those whom the state 9in the shape of the petty local officials) has decided must be Orwellian non-persons. I cannot feel sympathy for the condition of the painters and poets in this book since everyone in the country suffers. The painters and poets are a particularly unattractive group, and I am not even certain that they have any significant talent in their fields. On page 245, the ylang-ylang appears again as Dam visited Hung and Suong. The threat of these flowers pervades the story as their scent pervades the air around them. A passage later in the book gives away part of the story which we will read when we arrive in Russia (A hero of our time). The concert scene near the end is magnificent and very moving. However, the very end of the story really brought me back down to earth. Hung, despite his cavalier attitude to Suong, and his behaviour after release from the prison camp (he was prepared to satisfy his desires at the risk, indeed certainty, of her contacting a deadly strain of venereal disease) did not deserve to die like that. The constant menace of the ylang-ylang is finally explained by the strange fruit. The ending was like a hard punch in the stomach. It took me quite a while to recover fro it. I had kept thinking that Suong would arrive, in the nick of time, to save him.

Taiwan - "Wintry Night" by Li Qiao (Score 7.0)

I advise you to make up a family tree right from the start of this book. You may well find it difficult to keep track of the characters if you don't. We learn how to make potash and other chemicals by watching these Haka invaders of Taiwan do it to make their living. The book begins to have a "Wild West" feel about it, with fears of attacks by the native Taiwanese peoples, who are certainly not of Chinese origin. So much for China's claim on Taiwan. The time period at the start of the book is about the same as that of the American West. The Haka people are very much steeped in their old traditions, and life is hard, particularly once they have been cheated out of "ownership" of the land they took from the natives and cleared. Ye Atlan is the name of the con-man and thief. We learn a lot about the history of Taiwan, the original take-over of the islands from the native peoples by Chinese settlers, the ceding of Taiwan to Japan after the Sino-Japanese war, and life under the Japanese. It had never occurred to me that the Japanese might be like all other colonial countries and conscript the conquered peoples into fighting in their wars - largely because, I suppose, before reading this book I did not know that Taiwan was the spoils of war, ceded by China. Thus we have the bizarre situation in the Pacific war of conquered Taiwanese conscripted into the Japanese army to fight against conquered Indians and Burmese conscripted into the English army. There is an extremely poignant section from page 232 to 239 when many of the families have to collect white boxes containing the ashes of their sons and grandsons who have died in the war. Then, on page 239 we find that Yonghui's box, at least, only contains river sand and no ashes at all. We had an interesting discussion on whether this was a humanitarian gesture by the Japanese army who had been unable to identify individual bodies after the bombing by the Americans, but wanted to give the families some reminder to bury and grieve over. We felt that this was likely since the author would hardly have shown them in a good(ish) light if she had not heard of such experiences. The whole latter half of the book mostly deals with the Taiwanese men being transported back and forwards across the Pacific, finally ending up on an island which was being captured by the Americans. I was really cheering for these guys to get back to Taiwan, especially Mingji. What a blow it was when he died. Dengmei, his grandmother, died at exactly the same time.

China - "Red Sorghum" by Mo Yan (Score 5.4)

We open the book and we are right in the middle of the Japanese invasion of China. From there the story alternates between the war and life in a small village where wine is made from the sorghum of the title. There is a "Special Reserve" variety, made in small quantities by adding a special ingredient. This, however, must stay a secret until you read the book. This book is not great literature, but it has the occasional nice image. For example, there is an occasion when the narrator's grandfather Yu Zhan'ao, after an encounter with the bandit Spotted Neck, dives into the river "splashing around like a fritter in hot oil" (page 170). What an image. The book is full of conflict - the Japanese invasion, battles between the guerrillas and the Japanese, the civil war between at least three different groups of resistance fighters. There are many horrific scenes of brutality, murder, rape, skinning alive, slaughtering children. This is not a pleasant book, but no doubt it gives a pretty accurate picture of what it was like in China at the time. The cover blurb tries to say that the author is on a par with people like Kundera and Garcia-Marquez. I think not.

Russia - "A Hero of Our Time" by Mikhail Lermontov (Score 8.0)

We meet this book here, not because we think Russia is an Asian country, but because so much of it is in Asia. We needed a passage from China to Korea. The introduction to this book is very helpful in understanding the period and the setting. The chronology is also interesting. It is amazing that Lermontov seems to have been publishing poetry at the age of 14. In this book we are once again in the frontier lands of an expanding empire. There is much talk of friendly tribal chiefs and untamed (ie free) tribes raiding across the river Kuman. This is a valuable insight into the origins of the present situation in the Caucasus, where they Russians claim that the land is part of Russia even though it was only occupied (taken from the inhabitants) less than 200 years ago. The parallels with the American West are obvious, except that the Lakota, Apache etc are no longer raiding the invaders. In "Maxim Maxymich", the first part of this book, the frontier feeling is strong when we read that the narrator has to wait for an escort which will guard the convoy through the hostile lands to Yekaterinograd. In how many westerns have we seen the same thing? I wonder if the "Indians" will attack. Having seen the kind of unthinking and inconsiderate person Pechorin is in "Bela", where he is totally indifferent to the death of the woman who loves him, he reinforces this in "Maxim Maxymich" by his cold response to Maxim who greets him warmly and enthusiastically as an old friend. In "Taman" Pechorin does not come across in his own account as being the cold and uncaring person he has appeared to be in the earlier accounts by others. He has to fight for his life against someone who is determined to kill him, by drowning, to keep a secret. However, later I had to change my mind when I met the cool, calculating Pechorin, and the disturbing manner in which he sets about, for his own amusement, the destruction and humiliation of the guileless young man, Grushnitsky. I believe that Pechorin suffers from a dreadful disability - he is unable to empathise with another person. Basically, he seems to feel that he is the only real person in the world and that everyone else is only a shadow, there for Pechorin's convenience and amusement. Will they all cease to exist at the moment of his death? Yes, but only from his, soon to be extinct, point of view. His philosophy seems to be that of Hogg's "Justified Sinner". On page 122 Pechorin wonders why everyone hates him. He seems to have no idea that he is a brute. On page 131 he clearly reveals that he is well aware of his defects, but cannot understand why he is like that. I have mixed feelings about Pechorin's behaviour during the duel. In the first place he effectively forced the duel, but Grushnitsky's second hatched the plot to load Pechorin's gun with a dud. Grushnitsky won the toss so gained the right to shoot first and did so without revealing the plot. Trying to put myself into the frame of mind of the people, I can only think that Grushnitsky was more afraid of dishonour than of death, and carried on when Pechorin revealed that he was aware of the plot, and loaded his gun. The real villain of that piece was Grushnitsky's second.

Korea - "Translations of beauty" by Mia Yun (Score 7.7)

We have had hints about the accident suffered by one of the twins, but on page 33 we just know that it is going to happen. I have not named the twin's so that the surprise is not spoiled if you chose to read this book. The description of the other twin's experience of slow motion and silence, and stop-start as she watches, unable to take it in, is so realistic. I enjoyed the description on page 39 of one of the twin's first sight of the Grand Canal and its teeming life, so positive in its many forms. Then we have the immediate contrast of the other twins foul temper breaking through. The dreams which one of the twins has at the end of Part 1 match the kind of dreams experienced by someone who has lost a loved one, or fears for such a loss. On page 55 we read "all but forgotten, pushed in the place where memory goes for a long hibernation, to re-emerge later". What a wonderful way this is to say "forgotten". On page 74 - before the point at the end of the fight there had been no indication that Uncle Wilson is an Afro-American. On page 93 the Koreans who know Aunt Minnie certainly seem to be racist. They look down on her because she married Uncle Wilson. I felt that the poems on pages 104 and 105 seem very advanced for children who are supposed to be 11 and 12 years old. They say that you can learn anything from books. On page 136 we are given a dramatic lesson on the perils of jay-walking (and of driving too fast). On pages 164 and 165, the images of Inah and Yunah with their father, walking in the woods are magical, even if the two girls don't seem to enjoy it very much. Racism once again rears its ugly head on page 172 when the hillbilly redneck tells the children (would you believe?) that they are not welcome in the area. I get the impression that Yunah feels immense guilt about the severe injury which Inah suffered as a child, even though she was in no way responsible. Is this a kind of "survivors guilt"? On page 195 we are watching TV where they are showing lions in the African tundra!! Tundra is found in areas just south of the Arctic Circle. She surely means "savannah". On page 294 Inah and Yunah are eating in an open air restaurant on Via del Lavatore. I very much doubt it. I know that street very well. It has a few small restaurants and cafes, one of which used to be owned by my uncle's father before he retired. The street is far too narrow for outdoor eating, to say nothing of the hordes of people constantly thronging up and down the street since it is one of the small streets which run from the Fontana di Treve. She doesn't even mention the Fontana which the sisters almost certainly passed when they walked from there to Piazza Venezia. There is a small square at the extreme end of Via del Lavatore away from the Fontana where an open air market is held. She may mean there, or perhaps a roof level restaurant though she doesn't say that. I loved the concept on page 330 of immigrants being biodegradable and fitting in. Most nations seem to have large percentages of their populations descended from immigrants who have arrived over the centuries, and who have melded into one whole in the famous melting pot.

Japan - "The waiting years" by Fumiko Enchi (Score 8.1)

The first thing which I noticed when reading this book is the Japanese speech rhythm and phraseology which comes through in the conversations. This is an extremely translation. On page 20 we read of male geisha. I have never come across this concept although some of the other members have read about it. Tomo's feelings about the purchase of Suga are clearly ambiguous. She went along with her husband's intentions, sought out over an extended period a beautiful child when she knew that she was destined eventually to become her husband's mistress, and hated herself for it. Is she beginning to hate her husband? To our 21st century morals it is an incredibly shocking thing which she has connived at with her husband. If we try not to judge people (possibly atypical, possibly not) in 19th century Japan, can we see that she may have had no alternative. Is she not simply in the same situation as many a wife with children (or without) in our society, unable to leave her husband because she would then find herself in an impossible situation with no money and no home? Presumably there were no centres for women in that situation in rural Japan at the time? The astonishment that we see in the people who witnessed what she is doing in Tokyo suggests that such purchase of a young girl was very rare by that time. On page 44 we read about Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) who was an ukiyo-e (floating world) artist who also painted in oils. He liked scenes with fireworks which are called "hanabi" or "fire flowers" in Japanese. That is a beautiful concept. On page 85 I almost, but not quite, felt sympathy for Shirakawa, the merciless prefect. Page 92 is the first occasion on which we read of the son, Michimasa, who has been brought up in the country. Was this isolation and apparent abandonment by his father the main reason for his "twisted disposition". Does the description of Michimasa on page 93 hint at a degree of retardation. About page 90 we have the baby Takao. Who was his mother? It comes as a considerable shock to realise that the baby is Michimasa's son, especially when we remember the brutal way in which he has talked about the child, on page 95, to the wet nurse, Maki. On page 115, Yukitomo's behaviour with his daughter-in-law must surely be frowned on in any culture, if not downright illegal and criminal. On page 116 we have a reference to the "snow country". This is also the title of an excellent book by Kawabata Yasunari. Even at the end Yukitomo refused to fulfil his wife's final wishes, clearly thinking more of his family's reputation.

From here we board a 747 for a long-haul flight from Japan to Australia on the first leg of our trip round the New World continents.
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Thoughts on our travels through Africa (Botswana to Sudan)

2007-03-04T23:33:00.003Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Botswana - "Maru" by Bessie Head (Score 7.0)

The first few pages of this book read as if they are the traditional, descriptive type of European literature. On page 11, racialism once again raises its ugly head. It is universal, and everyone seems to look down on some-one else who is different. If I felt that this really described everyone in the world, I would really despair> On page 12 she is very scathing about missionaries. I wonder if this derives from personal experience. On page 15 we have possibly a case of nature versus nurture. On page 24 Dikeledi, the other teacher, seems to be a decent caring person who takes Margaret as she is, with no prejudice. On page 41 we read "She can be shoved out. It's easy, she's a woman". Is there any society on Earth where women are not put at the bottom of the heap? On page 73 Maru reminds me of Hogg's "Justified Sinner". His god speaks direct to him - conveniently justifying anything he wishes to do. We have a humorous interlude on page 96, concerning goats! Maru seems to be completely amoral at times, taking what he wants, and going where hi gods lead him at the cost of other people. However, his actions at the end all lead towards the emancipation (in their own minds at least) of the Masarwa, so that they begin to realise that they should control their own destiny.

South Africa - "The House Gun" by Nadine Gordimer (Score 7.2)

I found this a very disappointing read considering the reputation of the author. After finishing it, I did not know the characters any better than I did when first meeting them. Cardboard cut-outs came to mind. The author did not seem to have made any attempt to bring them to life. It was as if the murder, and the question of whether the death sentence was, or was not, constitutional in the new South Africa were the "heroes" of the book. Gordimer seems to have very much distanced herself from the characters. As an afterword, I attended a talk on 24 August 2005 at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Leila Aboulela, Justine Hardy and Kamila Shamsie were talking. Hardy does not like books where the author does not get inside the characters. How is the reader to do this for the author? My sentiments exactly.

Mozambique - "Under the Frangipani" by Mia Couto (Score 7.1)

This book takes us straight into the culture and mythology of the Mucanga, and introduces us to their funeral customs. Why was the dead man buried that way? Was it ignorance of his traditions? On page 27 we have the riddle of the sphinx, with the answer being related to the three ages of man. Many passages seem to relate to folk tales. For example, on page 36 plovers control the incoming tides and the sandpipers control the outgoing tides. This is clearly an observation on the feeding habits of the two species. On page 64 we have a creation legend in which everything is created out of surplus men and women so that all are inter-related and no-one has the right to abuse animals. In many cultures hunters apologised to animals before killing them, calling them brother, uncle etc. On page 81 we find the image of the world as a fruit with a wondrous stone at the centre. On page 84 we have the legends associated with the severe storm. On page 131 - does the dew fake pearls. He jumped into the mortar, but wanted to remain intact.

Zimbabwe - "Harvest of Thorns" by Shimmer Chinodya (Score 7.9)

We are immediately aware that there has been a war. Did Peter lose his leg to a mine, or to an accident (see page 85). Chapter 2 opens with the immediate knowledge that the war has been over for some time - there is an ice-cream man, there are boys playing football, there are casual shoppers. There is clearly no tension and no expectation of violence. We know that the people are poor - we read about dirt roads, thin walls, corrugated asbestos sheet walls. They are poor, but not all are destitute. The house we enter has a shower. The inhabitants can read and write, so education is presumably common. We find that, while there may not be tension in society, there is certainly tension between Benjamin and his mother because of the family background. The "church" which the Trichinas join seems to bring close together the small congregation, but clearly splits them from the wider community. The behaviour of the children, with their religious name calling, is shocking. The overseer of the "church" leads a life of comparative luxury, paid for by the poor folk in the congregation. It reminds me of certain television evangelists and sect leaders with their huge mansions and big limousines, as well as the fat priests in Western mediaeval and Renaissance painting, surrounded by starving peasants. On page 103 the soldier tries very hard to provoke Benjamin into a fight. On page 146 - my sympathies till now had been with the insurgents, but the brutal murder of the farmer seems pointless, serving only as bait to bring the soldiers into a trap. The last part of the book is a very taut account of the lives of people forced together in the very difficult and dangerous conditions in wartime. They have little in common, and the terrible stress under which they live comes across strongly. The episode on page 220 with the "svikiro" is fascinating. Is she real, or just a good actress? The group seems to believe that she has powers. By the time we get to page 223, though, they seem to be having doubts, or at least trying to convince themselves that she is a fake. When does a freedom fighter become a terrorist? When he attacks and kills civilians? Does a single, never repeated act, mean that he is forever a terrorist? What about a government which burns the farms, starves the rural population and poisons the wells? They must also be considered to be terrorists, especially when they start to destroy the villages and leave the people with no shelter. The hope on the last page is ironic in view of the current situation in Zimbabwe.

Zambia - "A Cowrie of Hope" by Binwell Sinyangwe (Score 7.1)

On page 5 the husband's family take everything on his death, and leave the wife and child destitute. We have, of course, come upon the same thing earlier in our travels in Africa. On page 22 - the mother has already been named after her daughter. Now the grandmother is named after the grand daughter. The grandfather is the same (see page 23). On page 27 we have the first mention of Aids in any of the books so far. On page 37 we read about free education in Zambia in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but not now. Where have we come across this concept before? Oh, yes! In the UK!. The whole area is clearly suffering the effects of climate change. Nasula's plot, and the in-laws farm, have been devastated. On page 50 we read "She held the reins of the conversation". This is just one of the many apt turns of phrase used in the book, unusual, but able to be understood immediately. I wonder if these idioms derive from the local language. Another example is "A colony of ants eating at the stem of her soul". This book has a happy ending.

Malawi - "Smouldering Charcoal" by Tiyambe Zeleza

This is another insert where you will have to wait until I have caught up with it.

Tanzania - "By the Sea" by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Score 8.1)

I seem to have lost my notes for this one, so I will have to read it again.

Rwanda - "The Oldest Orphan" by Tierno Monenembo (Score 6.5)

This is a harrowing book, but it is one which you should read. It highlights clearly the evils of colonialism. The occupiers interfered immensely in the development of the people of Rwanda, introducing an artificial ethnic divide so that they could divide and rule by playing one group off against the other. You don't need me to tell you of the consequences once the occupiers had left.

Uganda - "Abyssinian Chronicles" by Moses Isegawa (Score 6.6)

We have here a raw and earthy book. It seems obvious that Serenity's new wife Padlock suffered serious abuse at her convent school - she would not otherwise have fantasised about her treatment of her sisters-in-law. In fact we find later that it was she who inflicted this on others when she taught them. Mugezi was glad to be left behind when his parents went to the city - freedom? lack of feeling for his parents (particularly his brutal mother)? I'm afraid I found this book tedious and much too long. On page 90 there is a typical example of the purple prose to be found throughout the book - on line 2 we read "semi-volitional etc". Would a village boy, with minimal education, have known anything about the prehistory of the area, never mind fault lines causing earthquakes? Padlock has a rigid old testament view of God - every misfortune is inflicted by God to test his people, Amin is God's tool, etc. This is the worst type of fundamentalism. Where is the love of God in her scheme of things? The New Testament might as well not exist for her.

Kenya - "Devil on the Cross" by Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Score 6.1)

Presumably the composer Gatuiria's search for a national music to compose a symphony using the instruments of all Kenya's peoples is an analogy for the attempt to meld the disparate tribes into a unified nation. On page 22 Ngugi reminds us that "Literature is a nation's treasure". The book becomes novel-like towards the end when the couple are travelling towards their parents for blessings on their forthcoming marriage. However, it becomes didactic again with telling points on the problems of cultural imperialism. This is hardly "one of our centuries great novels", but is an extended parable, a political pamphlet and a manifesto, all combined - and it makes telling points about capitalism, colonialism and greed, both of the capitalists/colonialists, and of those who aid and abet them. This must be universal!!

Somalia - "From a Crooked Rib" by Nuruddin Farah (Score 6.9)

This girl is an innocent. Her youth and her rural tribal upbringing have certainly not prepared her for the problems of urban living, and dealing with the wiles of the people she comes into contact with. Her lack of education makes her accept her subservient role of being more or less a sex slave to her husband - but is he really her husband? Is this a scam dreamed up by Asha to entice Ebla into prostitution?

Ethiopia - "The God who Begat a Jackal" by Nega Mezlekia (Score 7.4)

Ethiopia has been literate for more than a thousand years, but was it commonplace, and was it all tribes? The rich are sponging off the poor, this being supported by religious belief. Organised religion, in the shape of the Sage, sponges off both rich and poor, but clearly the rich have more to give. On page 22 Aster's powers of persuasion are demonstrated - he can "chain the wind to the wall". The zealots showed "mercy" to the Amma convert by strangling him before burning his body. Yiman (through the author) cleverly highlights the excesses of mediaeval Christian armies during their crusades. I'm not sure about the cannibalism he attributes to Peter the Hermit. On page 24 the family of the Areru twins is so poor that the twins have to share their name. This is common among some cultures where twins are considered to be the same person in two bodies (see Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough"). On page 49 the elders left so fast that their shadows were left behind. This book is full of, presumably deliberate, anachronisms - Englishmen, cigarettes etc, so that it seems to be set in many different times all at once.

Sudan - "The Translator" by Leila Aboulela (Score 8.4)

On page 55, Rae sleeps soundly while "sunset and the boat floated over the Straits of Gibraltar". This is a wonderful image. On page 116 Sammar is greatly concerned over whether Rae will accept Islam so that they can marry. Accepting another religion must be an extremely difficult decision, made with great integrity. If you really believe that your religion is the only true one, is it really possible to change and to believe instead that another religion is the only true one. If you are an atheist, the same must surely apply. It may be easier for an agnostic. I don't believe that simply going through the motions is sufficient, particularly if changing to a religion which makes serious demands on its practitioners. On page 190 I was as relieved as Sammar was when she learned that Rae had become a Muslim.

Thoughts on our travels through Africa (Egypt to Namibia)

2007-02-10T11:13:00.004Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Egypt - "Beer in the Snooker Club" by Waguih Ghali (Score 6.4)

On page 31 Ram will give up "that other business", hinting that, if caught, he'll be tortured. Is it political or illegal? (cf page 206). On page 32 Ram lets an unknown boy stay in his car to look after it. Who would dare do that here? "Watch your car, mister?" - protection money, with a scratch all down the side if you don't "employ" them. On page 53 there is discussion of "two types of Egyptian", implying that the rich people who spoke French in daily life were not really Egyptian. Think what this kind of attitude could lead to. On page 56 there is difficulty over obtaining passports. Is this merely unlucky, or is it widespread for the intelligentsia and the upper classes? On page 62 we read about the clippy's London accent. This is the first awareness that the book was written in English. About the middle of page 85, Steve Ward's unthinking racism and anti-semitism is very much of his time, and on page 95 it is clear that he does not even realise or consider that the terms he uses are unacceptable, even in the context of the story. On page 97 during the argument, Steve resorts to racist name calling - the last resort of the inarticulate faced with a situation he can't control - followed by violence. On page 150 there is another hint that Ram is involved with something subversive - the rich even have privileges in the concentration camps. In view of the last page is Ram really involved in collecting the photos. We see the hedonistic lifestyle of Ram's social group - the attitude that the fellahin have always been poor, so what can be done?

Libya - "The Bleeding of the Stone" by Ibrahim al-Koni (Score 8.0)

The review of the rock art and its location in Libya and Algeria (Tassili) helped to develop the sense of place. The "chase" episode seems to be mythological, likening Asouf to some ancient hero (eg Enkidu, who also lived wild in the desert). Hanging over the precipice all night is even more heroic. He is saved by the monster with which he has battled. His mother's scattered body is like that of Osiris, torn apart by Set, his brother. On page 70, creation occurs by the sky meeting the earth - compare this with the Egyptian cosmology with Geb and Nut performing the same function. Asouf has become a shape changer, a "were-waddan". Is the story of the antelope a folk tale, a folk memory of the time when the Sahara was green, or is it a totemic explanation? Does the murder of Asouf lead to the redemption of Cain as well as the salvation of the land through the rain which it brings?

Tunisia - "Wounding Words" by Evelynne Accad (Score 5.6)

This book is didactic, hectoring and preachy. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural (possibly a result of the translation?), for example on page 21 we have "Several unreconcilable etc". People don't speak like that - they write an article, or give a lecture in that type of language. On page 49 the fight between Nayla and Hayate comes from nowhere, and seems very contrived. The exorcism from page 64 is fascinating, quite bacchanalian. In some societies, including some western fundamentalist Christian groups, "demons" are driven out in this way. On page 119 the scene with the landlord seems to be contrived just to bring in a stereotypical patriarchal chauvinist pig. All in all this is not a novel - it is a polemic. All of the women are beautiful, warm, talented, but there is no characterisation to help us distinguish one from the other. All seem to be avatars of the author. The tension which occurs between them seems strained into existence, purely for the politics of the feminist arguments.

Algeria - "The Last Summer of Reason" by Tahar Djaout (Score 8.1)

From this point on we began to find that there was a dearth of new books. Since the group was at that time being hosted by, and partly sponsored by, Ottakars we felt that it would not be appropriate to buy books from Amazon or similar for the full group. Some of us made the decision to buy the "missing" books for our own interest and for reading later while the whole group skipped that country and moved on to the next available one. This book comes under the "additional read" category. The importance of this book in the grand scheme of things is highlighted by the fact that the author was assassinated shortly after it was completed. It was claimed that the murder was carried out by a fundamentalist group. This book is worth reading in its own right, but even more so because of the incredible foreword by Wole Soyinka. Soyinka illuminates brilliantly the intolerance which lies behind much of the trouble, murder and war in today's world. He is particularly perceptive in regard to the effect of the cancer of political correctness in supporting such intolerance. In the book itself, the fear in which many people live in the society of which we read is immediately apparent - when what is being destroyed is beauty and creativity, how can the thinking person possibly survive? Boualem, while a humble bookseller, is subject to this fear. On page 36 we have to imagine living in a world in which a book costs half of a labourer’s monthly wage. Where would the lad o' pairts have gained his education. The masters in the society described clearly do not want education. After all, an education teaches people to think for themselves and which masters want that? We then see Boualem as a child in the Koranic school, learning to read and having the texts beaten into him. This seems to be where his love of books comes from, despite the constrained feeling he has, and his desire to be able to go out to play and explore. He loves the calligraphy which he is learning. We see a loving family torn apart by the extremes of fundamentalist religion, leaving only the father who has not succumbed to it. The ironic thing about this situation is that these people, the masters, were elected in the hope that they would improve matters for the ordinary people. On page 113 we see that someone, knowing that their unreasoning argument can win over Boualem, a reasonable man, have decided not to try. In the place of discussion and reason they simply resort to death threats to convince the reasonable man of the error of his ways. The claustrophobic world of the fundamentalist society described here must surely tempt the thinking man just to go with the flow of the masses, for both safety and security, keeping his head below the parapet. I have used the word "man" deliberately because in the society described the fate of women is much worse, and their opportunity to resist is much less. Read this book, please, be very afraid, and think what you can do to stop the insidious loss of liberty in your own society.

Morocco - "Welcome to Paradise" by Mahi Binebine (Score 7.5)

This is a wonderful book, bright with the hopes of a range of vividly portrayed characters seeking to flee abject poverty. It brings out the sheer brutality, hopelessness and boredom of village life for the poor - a life which must have been the fate of the vast majority of humanity for thousands of years. The individual stories of the lives of the members of the party, their hopes and ambitions are well told and seem real. I felt I had got to know them as friends - even the trafficker. The sadness I felt when Aziz and Reda failed to get on the boat was overwhelming. Strangely though, this did not turn to relief when I discovered that they have missed the disaster and have not suffered the fate of drowning which happened to the others. I only felt more sadness.

Senegal - "God's Bits of Wood" by Sembene Ousmane (Score 7.5)

This is another book which I enjoyed very much. The first page is beautifully descriptive. The searchlight effect of the ray of the sun on the Governor’s residence makes you wonder what role this building is to play in the story. The following pages, with the grandmother Niakoro, set the scene beautifully and illustrate yet again the loss of the old ways caused by the corroding influence of colonialism and rule by others who won't even learn to speak the local language. Contrast this with the eventual loss of their French language by the Norman invaders throughout Europe. Did the original peoples practise dumb resistance by refusing to learn French? Was the difference that the Normans moved in primarily as settlers rather than as plunderers? Starving the strikers into submission is horrific. My mother came from a mining family and she tells stories of hunger in her village during the General strike. N'deye's experiences on page 58 show how colonialist education removes the people from their culture. Does this always happen when there is a dominant group in a society? On page 63 Beaugosse and N'deye speak French to each other rather than their own language. On page 92 "The trial of Diara" is a new concept, that they can take this power (it is better than the random beatings of the blacklegs - who are probably only trying to put food in the mouths of their families) but they are equally shocked by the idea that women can take part and have a voice in society. Fa Keita's speech may have stopped the murder of Diara, or his flogging, but it revealed Tiemoko's thoughts as being "we must win, even if we are not right!" On page 97 I enjoyed the pestle and mortar interaction between the neighbours. I see the drying up and cracking of the implements through non-use as being a metaphor for the loss of local customs through non-use and the stultifying influence of the occupation. On page 102 the taking of Fa Keita and the brutality of the militia towards the old woman and her grand-daughter show the colonialist divide-and-rule policy, by using native policemen to do the arrest. Is the racialism of the French colonists at the top of page 184 truly representative of the time, or is it exaggerated for dramatic effect? Compare this with the unconscious racialism exhibited by Steve, the brother in "Beer in the Snooker Club"? On page 200 the heat stroke episode shows how close our most primitive fears are to the surface when we are under extreme stress. On page 206 the behaviour of the religious leaders is unforgiveable. It is one thing to support the colonial power (Why? What do they get out of it?) but quite another to tell brazen lies from the pulpit. On page 230 we see guards from other countries who do not even speak the local language (and therefore cannot interact with the locals. We see this approach in colonial powers from Persia onwards, through Rome and up to modern times in the British Empire. On page 239 we contrast the quiet dignity of Fa Keita with the extreme racism and brutality of the Corsican commandant.

The Gambia - "Chaff on the Wind" by Ebou Dibba

Another extra for which you will have to wait.

Guinea - "The Radiance of the King" by Camara Laye (Score 7.6)

Clarence's unthinking expectation of his own superiority as a white man is challenged immediately when, to his surprise, the crowd does not automatically part before him to allow him to pass unhindered. On page 19 we see his first tentative questioning of his own preconceptions - but why "despite the pitch black night of his skin"? Leading up to, and on, page 42 the beggar seems to be respected by the caravanserai keeper - who is he? I am reminded of "The guid man of Balangeich". From page 72 onward the trial and the escape become ever more surreal and dreamlike with every page. This is very picaresque and reminds me of Roderick Random. On page 94 we read of "the odour of the south". This reminds me of Sicily, where the smell of the bougainvillea is pervasive. On page 153 the rhythm of the pestle and mortar puts on a repeat performance (compare this with "God's Bits of Wood"). There is a play on western fantasies of the harem, as expressed in 19th century art and literature. Do we see the requirement of isolated communities for fresh genetic input to avoid inbreeding? From page 217 on we see, floating down the river the "women". Is this a total hallucination, or is it perhaps dugongs? On page 234 we see a very human reaction. Clarence enjoys eating snails, but thinks that grasshoppers are strange. Did Clarence die, or did he have an epiphany (compare with Bernini's great statue of St Catherine in St Peters)?

Sierra Leone - "Sunset in Sierra Leone" by Michael Nicolas Wundah

Another wait, I'm afraid.

Liberia - "The Village Son" by Dwaboyea E S Kandakai

Yet another wait. Sorry.

Ivory Coast - "Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote" by Ahmadou Kourouma (Score 6.0)

On page 18, Kayoga is taken to school. This seems to be yet another example of the stultifying effect of education forced into the colonial mould so as to make French people out of the locals. On page 26 the discussion of the giving of blood and the doppelganger is very interesting. On page 30 we again have an example of troops from one part of the colonial empire being used to subjugate or kill people of another part. Compare this with the Roman use of troops from Eastern Europe to kill Picts in Scotland, and the use by the British Empire of Scots to kill people in North America and India. On page 40 we see an example of marriage by capture. This may, like the rape of the Sabine women, be an attempt to add new blood into the gene pool to reduce the amount of inbreeding. On page 86 we see de Gaulle's fake independence strategy. The proverbs scattered throughout the book are interesting. It would be good to know if the were genuine. Many seem impenetrable, and may depend on cultural references which I do not understand. Others seem more universal, for example the second one on page 358. No matter how much good you do for someone, they only remember the time you let them down.

Burkina Faso - "The Parachute Drop" by Norbert Zongo

Another wait, I'm sorry to say.

Ghana - "The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born" by Ayi Kwei Armah

This is another wait. Yes, the spelling is correct. That is the way it is in the book title.

Togo - "Neyla" by Kossi Komla-Ebri

We were going through a bit of a desert as far as in print copies of books from some countries was concerned. You will just have to wait till I catch up.

Benin "The King of Ketu" by Antonio Olinto

Still in the desert.

Nigeria - "Anthills of the Savannah" by Chinua Achebe (Score 8.3)

As you might expect from Achebe, an excellent and well written book. "First Witness" takes us right into the fear and sycophancy of those who serve, and are in intimate contact with, the dictator. On page 22 there is an excellent example of something known to Scots as "I kent his faither" (I knew his father). This is the refusal of people to accept that another person can get on in the world and be more successful than them, and can leave their background behind. The reason for this is that you they have known the person intimately for years. They themselves are nothing special and they couldn't possibly know someone who is special. Therefore, by definition that person is not special and must either have been helped by someone to better themselves, or to have done it by illicit means. Either way they are a traitor to their origins. In "Second Witness" the use of dialect was helpful in setting the story clearly in another country. I think I got the gist, but it was like reading a foreign language when I don't know all the words. The last paragraph of page 35 reminds me of Tony Blair and the terrorist "threat" and the "weapons of mass destruction". On page 37, it is a very good person who never looks down on someone else less fortunate, or different. The argument on pages 117 and 118 is beautiful. The book finishes on a note of hope for the future. Chinua Achebe won the second Man Booker International prize in 2007.

Cameroon - "Houseboy" by Ferdinand Oyono (Score 6.5)

On page 4 the drums said that a Frenchman was dying. I expected it to be a colonist. While I am aware that the French "considered" their colonies to be departements of France, I wonder if the locals really considered themselves to be Frenchmen and women. On page 9 we see the amusement of the villagers when the catholic priest inadvertently uses obscene language because of his poor pronunciation of the local language. But, at least he was trying, unlike most of the colonial overlords we have read about. Was it a tonal language, I wonder? On page 53 we see the subtle comments about the commandant's wife. I could imagine that this went on a lot in the countries occupied by Europeans since I suspect that few of them, unlike the priest, would have made any attempt to learn the local language.

Gabon - "Mema" by Daniel Mengara (Score 5.5)

We have come across inter-tribal wife kidnap earlier. This reduces the risk of close inbreeding. Mema and Pepa are the same as Mama and Papa, as in many unrelated languages. They are among the first sounds which any baby makes. On page 33 we see the universal constant - wives run things, but the best ones let the husbands think that they run things. On page 42 it seems that Mema's own name means "destroyer of villages" - surely a strange name for any woman. On page 44 - this is the same woman who went back to her people because her husband beat her!! This book is full of mythology and folk tales, recognisable from similar European stories, which means that they may be universal truths. For example there is the village of the boar people who forget the adventure in the land of the dead (or ghosts) which reminds me of the story of Thomas the Rhymer who lived for years in the fairy mound and thought he had only been there for a few days. There is also the youngest son succeeding at a difficult task when his older brothers have failed.

Congo - "A Bend in the River" by V S Naipal

Wait for it!

Zaire - "Full Circle" by Frederick Yamasangie

Wait for this one too!

Angola - "The Return of the Water Spirit" by Pepetela (Score 6.5)

This story is more humorous than most of our selections have been. That said, we have the eternal playing of war in computer games when a devastating real war is being fought all around Luanda. On page 45 no-one believes this Cassandra either. Buildings falling down like a house of cards - the "building under construction" must even look like a house of cards since it has no walls. Shortly after reading this book I watched the film "The Interpreter". That really struck a chord with the books we have been reading since we moved on into Africa. Power corrupting the basically good is a frequent theme of these books.

Namibia - "The Purple Violet of Oshaantu" by Neshani Andreas (Score 6.5)

This book is written in a very matter-of-fact style, just to tell a story. It illustrates well from peoples' actions that people are just the same everywhere, the petty jealousies, the little kindnesses, "I'm better than you", "You're no better than you should be". This is well illustrated by Shange's relations who complained that the teacher had not broadcast their names when he reported Shange's death, even though he had never met them and could not possibly have known their names. Then there is the hint about the accusations of witchcraft. The changes of the narrative from past to present and back again helps to keep up the flow of the story. I feel that it would have been better if the blurb had not mentioned the witchcraft. The brutality, and possibly the cowardice, of Shange contrasts with the anger of Mukwankala when she takes him to task for beating up Kauna. On pages 97 to 101 we see the sheer greed of the family. This is frightening. Is it common to leave the widow destitute? Even worse, is it tradition? We see from page 103 on that this is tradition. I have to ask "Do the family really believe the decision that it was witchcraft, or do they merely seize on this as an excuse for what they have done?". From page 115 on the communal ploughing is hugely successful.

Thoughts on our travels through Asia from Turkey to Sri Lanka

2007-01-25T21:52:00.005Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

From Greece we moved into Asia, starting with Turkey. Our intention was to read our way along the east coat of the Mediterranean and into Egypt, returning to Asia after an extended sojourn in Africa. This section is therefore written in two segments.

Turkey - "The Other Side of the Mountain" by Erendiz Atasu (Score 7.1)

The first few pages of this book are very difficult, with much cod-philosophy. It begins to improve quickly with a statement by Kemal Pasha (Ataturk) - how I wish this Blog could support diacritics so that I could write names such as Atasu and Ataturk correctly. He said "Don't ever bear a grudge against a nation. Our foes are not people, but politics". This is one of the wisest statements I have ever read by any politician. Referring to page 83 and Cybele - Do the Turks think that they are indigenous to Turkey. They are not; they came fro the steppes as conquerors. Although I did not find this book a page-turner, it was nevertheless a most enjoyable read. It gives a good insight into Turkish attitudes, and the suffering of their refugees - no different from any others (leave the question of Armenia to others). Neither was their occupation by Britain and France particularly gentle. Raik's snobbish comments (page 180) about people who don't speak standard Turkish makes him seem very real, and fallibly human. Have the peasants been failed as a result of the greed of the emergent Turkish middle classes "pulling up the ladder" after they themselves have climbed a bit further up to the next platform? Or is it an inherent lack of desire to leave their land and age old way of life, or lack of education? There certainly seems to be a feeling that remote areas are "less Turkish" (and therefore less capable!) because they speak local dialects. This seems to be a universal problem - there are similar attitudes throughout the United Kingdom. The final section seems to be a desire for a lost golden age. Do such golden ages ever exist? All ages seem to look back to a better life. The author seems to feel that the Turkish revolution has failed to deliver a good life for all the peoples of Turkey. The problem of the nomadic peoples is perhaps unresolvable. Many of them are not in fact Turkish

Syria - "Just Like a River" by Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib

I enjoyed this book, and in particular the complex interplay between the very believable and human characters. I felt with them as they struggled to come to terms with each other, and sympathised as their lives and dreams fell apart. No-one wins in this novel. I found a number of points of interest from the description of the society - The respect terms were much more meaningful than our simple Mr, Mrs and Miss - Army life seems undisciplined and therefore seems to lack the institutionalised bullying which seems to be widespread in the United Kingdom army, and brings such shame on it - Soldiers come to work and take the bus home at night - The drift from country to city seems to be a major problem.

Lebanon - "The Rock of Tanios" by Amin Maalouf

This is an excellent book, and I thoroughly recommend that you read it. The action starts in the 1830s in a small feudal domain in the area once known as The Levant. The Sheikh seems at first to be a fairly honest lord of the manor, taking his due from the villagers, leading them in wartime, but giving them his protection in return. However, we find that the Sheikh is not above exercising his feudal privileges, and in particular his droit de seigneur, in the same way as any mediaeval lord would have done. The village of Kfaryabda is Druze, rather than Roman Catholic, but the same rule applies. The Sheikh's exercising of these "rights" may (or perhaps may not - that is the mystery) have led to the birth of the eponymous Tanios. The "Great Game" begins to be played out in and around Kfaryabda, with the Egyptians taking over the area, supported by the local overlord, the Emir, with his co-operation being assured by taking members of his family hostage. Thus Britain's route to India is blocked. We see the first hint of tragedy to come when the English Consol (cunningly, a Catholic) presents the gift of a beautiful hunting rifle to the Sheikh's proud son, Raad (page 103). Shortly after this we see the Patriarch's pride beginning to lead him to take actions which, inevitably, have consequences far beyond anything which might be imagined. The assassination of the Patriarch concludes the first part of the disaster hinted at on page 103. Things progress. Tanios and his father, Gerios, escape to Cyprus, they are tricked by an agent of the Emir into boarding a ship to return to The Levant, Tanios is prevented from boarding by a Turkish official because of superstition. Gerios is executed by hanging. The war goes on and rebellion spreads. The Tanios finds himself tasked by the English with taking an ultimatum to the Emir - he must either abandon his support for the Egyptians, or go into exile. Later, when asked to judge and condemn Roukoz, Tanios experiences at first hand the problems of rank. At the beginning and at the end Tanios has chosen to disappear. Perhaps, like all heroes who have disappeared, he will one day return to save his people

Israel - "The Blue Mountain" by Meir Shalev

The early section of this book had me thinking that I was really going to enjoy it. However, pretty soon it became rather a chore to keep reading it. It was a difficult book to follow and, in the end, rather disappointing. On page 57 murder is committed (probably several) in a very matter of fact way, with no condemnation from the author. This happens long before the Holocaust. Page 89 "The bull of memory heavy on my shoulders". Page 106, near the bottom, there are some unusual results of laughter. There is lots of biblical imagery, for example on page 254 "Cows as meagre as those in Pharaoh's dream

Palestine - "The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist" by Emile Habiby

On page 12, Abjar anticipates Louis XV. On page 111, the conversation between Walaah and his mother as she tries to persuade him to come out of the cave is one of the most eloquent statements I have ever read of a people's right to be free and to govern themselves.

From here we returned to Asia after our tour of Africa.

Yemen - "The Hostage" by Zayd Mutee' Dammaj (Score 5.6)

The introductory sections are long, but I found them useful in aiding my understanding and appreciation of the background to the events in the novel.

Saudi Arabia - "Adama" by Turki al-Hamad (Score 6.0)

The description on page 5 of the city being like something from the Arabian Nights is good, as is the crowd of people preparing noisily to leave the train like a genie leaving a bottle. It must always be a mistake to try to try to reason with people of strong fundamental religious belief, for example, will you ever persuade them even to consider the possibility that evolution may have led to humans, but is not incompatible with belief in a creator. He need not have created anything in the simple ways imagined by relatively unsophisticated nomads several thousand years ago. In this book every look is "penetrating". There is a lack of imagination here. The author gives good physical descriptions of the main characters. The "Shahda" also played a major role in "The Translator" where Rae hesitated to become a Muslim so that he could marry. Hischam's constant travail as he tries to reconcile his love of, and duty to, his parents with the risk he is putting them in when he joins the revolutionary group is intense and believable. The political discussions at the start of chapter 17 were heavy going, but helped in understanding Hischam's thoughts. The description of the start of the Baath party was interesting. Is the way in which Muhdi does all the work fore the three men and her father fairly typical? What will the family do when she gets married? Will the future wife of the older son take over? It seems to be not too different from many Western families. The episode on the roof is typical brother behaviour at that age. Muhdi clearly is not happy about the distribution of labour which is in place. When he got on the bus to go to college and enrol, and the odour hit him, it brought back my memory of the smell of a similar situation many years ago when I was a student on holiday, boarding a bus from Thessaloniki to Athens. Unfortunately I didn't get used to it. Luckily the memory didn't last as long as the actuality. It is interesting that he paid the fare at the end of the journey rather than when he boarded the bus. Hischam seems to enjoy making girls blush. Is this an adolescent fantasy.

Jordan - "Pillars of Salt" by Fadia Faqir (Score 6.5)

This is an easy reading and very interesting story of village life in Jordan, post First World War. There are good descriptive passages, and some flashes of genius. Despite the rape of Mahan’s friend by her brother, and the death of her husband in a slaughter carried out by British troops, this is a book with a generally positive outlook and good feeling. Nowadays our press would probably call Mahan’s husband Herb a terrorist. I don't think he is anything of the kind. He is a brave man, seeking honour, who goes on horseback armed only with a rifle and a dagger to do battle against the British invaders of his land who have no right to the country. (Hands up all those who cheered for the Indians against the cowboys.) His resistance is futile since he and his compatriots have no chance against machine guns and armoured cars. The ultimate irony is that the British destroy him and his comrades by bombing, using planes which he can barely comprehend. My sympathies in this book are 100% with the insurgents. The birth of Mubarak among the orange trees is a wonderful moment. Mahi is doing her best to give the trees new life, and brings her own new life into the world among them. I have been so caught up in her world that I am caught unawares every time the action returns to the asylum. The episodes with The Storyteller tend towards mythologising the story of Maha as though it were taking place in a dream world, and as if she is more than a normal human being. The pointless brutality of shaving off Um Saad's hair is horrific, and seems to be done in an attempt to defeminise her. I think that Daffash is the most unscrupulous character we have met so far in our travels - he is truly evil.

Iraq - "Naphtalene" by Alia Mamdouh (Score 4.5)

The episode in the public bath (page 22) seems like complete pandemonium seen through the eyes of a child. On page 34 the father seems like a complete bully. This is not our idea of a policeman. Will he redeem himself later? Then we get a description of the grandmother, a wonderful, kind, loving person like my own granny, except that she is slim (mine was chubby - more to cuddle when you are a child). This book is rather disjointed and discordant. The frequent changes of viewpoint from "I" to "you" and back again seem to make no sense. It seems to me that the book is all first person and that "you" is used where another writer may have used "one". It seems like a trick for the sake of it, and adds nothing. Much of the text seems meaningless - or am I missing something? For example, on page 27 we have "She filled your head with the dark side of death, as if she were opening up all the holes in all the heads, land and souls". On page 79 we read "She had no double wings, but she did have a skull like my father's pistol". What are these all about? Is it a problem caused by translation, first to French, and then to English? Is there an imperfect understanding of the original text somewhere? I guess the mention of "trilling" at the wedding may refer to "ululating". I really think this book suffers from translation in a number of odd turns of phrase. For example, on page 91, Huda falls, picks herself up, and strikes her face. Why? On page 101 we have "chests awaiting meters of pardon and health. This is rubbish. Other than this type of thing my memory of this book will be body odour. The author constantly reminds us how smelly everyone is. There is mush meaningless and contorted language in which I can see no figure of speech which might help to explain what the author is saying, for example the last paragraph on page 182. The only thing which I can think is that she may be trying to evoke a sense of fear and uncertainty. I have spent a long time saying simply "Don't waste your time reading this book".

Iran - "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi (Score 8.5)

In complete contrast to the above, what can I say about "Reading Lolita in Tehran"? It is simply magnificent, and is one of the most enjoyable books which I have read. It is not literary - there are no long, lingering descriptions of landscape, no painting of portraits, and yet everyone who appears in this book is a living, breathing person. Their tribulations in the Islamic Republic come across so clearly. Their feelings and their fears were mine while I was engrossed in the reading. I well remember from my youth the shocking reports from Iran on radio, on TV and in the newspapers. I remember the dreadful photos of cranes, those symbols of progress throughout our world, being pressed into service as gallows, with clusters of people being hung from them like some dreadful fruit. I don't know where the ayatollahs and their cohorts get their idea of Islam, but I would like to think it is a dreadful perversion of the true meaning of the Koran. The episodes from the Iran-Iraq war, with the images of peasants and children clearing minefields by walking across them until they stepped on a mine are the most chilling images which I have retained from that whole period. And I haven't even touched on the treatment of women. At the end of it all I still find it a book vibrant with hope for the future. It is the only book I have read which has persuaded me to read others by different authors. I have seen "Lolita" from a new perspective and, from merely having "The Great Gatsby" and "Daisy Miller" on my "to read" shelves, I read them both within a week of finishing "Reading Lolita in Tehran". I thanked the fates that there are no posses going around the United Kingdom telling us who to read and who not to read.

Uzbekistan - "The Railway" by Hamid Ismailov" (Score 5.4)

This book seems to start as a picaresque novel, not quite in the vein of Roderick Random, Don Quixote etc, but tending in that direction. It is full of humour, making considerable fun of the petty bureaucrats, mostly petty criminals, who have floated to the top of the local hierarchy like scum on a stagnant pool of dirty water. At this stage (about page 50) the railway has not yet played a big part in the story, although the engines are frequently in the background. I can sympathise immensely with the embarrassment of the boy in Chapter 10. I won a small bursary to Allan Glen's in Glasgow (enough to pay the fees, but nothing else). My parents were really strapped for cash and could not afford to by the official school uniform. So I had an ordinary deep blue blazer with a badge which my mother sewed on by hand (the background colour was sufficiently different from the blazer colour to be obvious, at least to me). I don't remember anyone ever making fun of me for our relative poverty (everyone was too well brought up in those days for that to happen), but I felt that I stuck out a mile. Page 53, madrasas in the United Kingdom (possibly elsewhere in Europe) are being accused of teaching sedition. On page 58 the fear and wonder of the nomads being confronted by a train for the first time is well described. In Chapter 16, from page 88, what is the point of all the repetition? Have I missed something? Page 130 - I have been finding the book tedious for some time now. Page 162, the story of the ark, and why cats and dogs hate each other - the cat reported to Noah the plans of the dog and bitch for offspring (which could have eventually sunk the ark). On page 168, where did the Koreans live on Sakhalin? I understood that it had been part of Japan before the Second World War. Later we find that they were driven by famine to flee to Russia in about 1905. After that 175,000 were resettled in Uzbekistan where their descendants still live (Google it for details).

Afghanistan - "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini (Score 8.3)

It is clear at the beginning of the book that life in Afghanistan, or at least in Kabul, was very different from what we hear about it after the mullahs took over - though perhaps not for the servants who lived in the mud huts in the gardens of the better-off people. Amir's relationship with Hassan seems to be a bit undecided. He seems to be jealous and resentful when Hassan does better than him (for example, at stone skipping). I think that a real friend would be happy at Hassan's success. Amir clearly feels guilt about having "stolen" his mother from his father since she died giving birth to him (though obviously he cannot have any responsibility for this). I sympathise very much with Amir about football. I was always the last kid picked and, if there was an odd number of us, I had to watch the jackets. However, I cannot, at least at this stage in the book, sympathise with him as a person. He is very self-centred and uses Hassan when he has nothing else. He does not even express reasonable thanks when Hassan saves him with the threat of the catapult. The rape scene is difficult. Amir is only 12 years old and the bullies are huge. If he had moved to protect Hassan he would have been raped too. While I want to condemn him as a coward and a betrayer of Hassan, I find it difficult to do so. However, I feel certain that Hassan would have attempted to save him if things had been the other way around. Hassan has neither the courage, nor the moral fibre, of Hassan, and his guilt makes him take it out on Hassan who suffered the rape in the first place. Amir's betrayal of Hassan over the money and the watch is surely unforgivable. But - would Amir have been a better person if his father had been a better father and shown him fatherly love? Although his father is not a loving father to Amir, he clearly feels "noblesse oblige". The episode where he faces down the Russian soldier, who certainly would have killed him, shows him to be either very brave or very foolish. He was putting honour before the future of his son. Afterwards, if Baba had died, the Russian soldier would still have taken the women. Contrast Baba's behaviour with that of Amir when he failed to even try to defend Hassan in the alley. On page 106 when Amir is in the fuel truck, how can he bear to think of the happy times flying kites with no remorse for what he has done to Hassan and Ali? Amir's speaking to Soraya is another example of his "me first" attitude. He is fully aware of the likely effect this will have among the Afghan community, but does it anyway. Has Soraya's reputation been saved by the timely arrival of her mother, or is Amir again going to be consumed by guilt when it is much too late and the damage is done? On page 192 I was shocked by the murder of Hassan and his wife. Sohrab, their son, is now an orphan. What hope is there now for redemption for Amir? Will he go to Kabul, find Sohrab, take him to America and adopt him? On page 204 Farid the driver makes a very interesting point about Amir always having been a tourist in Afghanistan. I have met people who have lived in Edinburgh for years about whom the same could be said. Amir is back in Afghanistan! Will Assef (the rapist of Hassan) be found to be the Taliban official who buys the children from the orphanage? Of course he will - as inevitably demanded by the dramatic needs of the story. The wonder is that Amir did not recognise him sooner. On page 299 I felt the palpable shock felt by Amir when he opened the bathroom door and discovered Sohrab's body in the bath. it was so unexpected since we seemed at that point to be moving towards a happy ending. Ultimately we have had a realistic (instead of a syrupy) ending, but it gives considerable hope for the future of the "family".

Pakistan - "Kartography" by Kamila Shamsie (Score 7.8)

This book starts out looking like a feel-good story about two children growing up together. However, about page 39 we find bigotry, tribalism or racialism rearing its ugly head yet again with the cursing of the migrant Muhajir refugees. At the bottom of page 73 we have the Sunni versus Shia thing again. On page 243 we read "It was that gorgeous moment of sunset when the most vibrant colours in the world are pulled towards the sun. Finally, much later, what an unexpected ending!

India - "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy (Score 7.5)

Right from the beginning we are in a world of vivid description. I like the image near the foot of page 1 where we read "The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears". The author plays games with language, inventing new compound words which immediately have clear meanings - "furrywhirring" and "sariflapping" in connection with the baby bat in the church, and "dullthudding" to describe soil hitting a coffin lid. I love her use of language and the inventive images which just keep coming. On page 37 we have "Rahel's new teeth were waiting inside her gums, like words in a pen". From page 73 onward the simple description of the lives and attitudes of the Paravan is all the more effective by being non-judgmental. The most frightening and powerful thing is that the father seems to accept his pariah status and is angry at his son for kicking against the traces. I like the concept on page 117 of the baby Mol's body noises being messages sent from one organ to the other, with the body setting up a government to run itself. On page 156, holding up a silver crucifix on a chain of beads ... "She held it up to the light. Each greedy bead grabbed its share of sun". Velutha, the "Untouchable" is like a favourite uncle with the children. Throughout the book we keep getting brief intimations of horrors to come, bringing an end to happiness. We are also aware of how Estha continues to have nightmares and fears about the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of the man in the cinema when the family went to see "The Sound of Music". What a dreadful juxtaposition. On page 223 "She saw a wisp of madness escape from its bottle and caper triumphantly around the bathroom. On page 230 we see another example of a people's culture being lost because of the march of "modernity" and "internationalism". These Kathakali dancers could well be the last in a long family tradition. The dance has become a spectacle for the tourists, most of whom will not have the background to understand the story and its meaning. The murder of Velutha by the police, brought about by the lies told by the children's grandmother, is an example of mob lynching. It reminded me of Paul Simon's "He was my Brother" and of many books and films set in the deep south of the USA. In contrast, the final chapter is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. It was a brilliant move to put this episode, out of sequence, right at the end.

Bangladesh – “A Golden Age” – by Tahmima Anam (Score

This book is a very much delayed find as an entry from Bangladesh. I will add text here once I have caught up with the book.

Sri Lanka - "The Sandglass" by Romesh Gunesekera (Score 5.0)

If this had been the first book I had ever read by Gunesekera and probably would not have read any more. Luckily it was not. It is a reasonable enough story, but it did not grip me. I couldn't really relate to the characters or to their problems. It starts as being a simple, easy read about a Sri Lankan family (minus dead father) who have moved to England. Before that they lived in a large, ex colonial house on a narrow strip of land surrounded, apart from a small contact area with the outside world, by land belonging to the mysterious and vengeful Vatunase family. There is one nice image at page 209 where "The sea puckered; its blue skin wrinkled by the lives of all those who worried at its fathomless face". The horrors of the insurrection, war and repression are all in the background, only hinted at occasionally. The effect on the family of the actions of the various Vatunase are what gives the story its coherence.

Thoughts on our travels through Europe from Italy to Albania

2006-11-23T22:19:00.005Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

These are my thoughts and mine alone, jotted down as I was reading each book (except for the first one for reasons which will become apparent). No-one else can be blamed for these opinions. The purpose was to provide me with an aide-memoire for discussion at the monthly meetings. If you are planning to read any of the books you might prefer to skip these notes until you have done so, since I might give something away.

The group was set up by the George Street, Edinburgh, branch of the much missed Ottakars chain. I was not at the opening meeting of the group and so did not find out which book had been read until the second meeting. You should also be aware that our approach to the books has changed since we read the first few. The original options were that we could read fiction by a native writer, fiction by a non-native writer, but set in the country (hence the selection of "Setting Free the Bears" by John Irving) or a travel book (hence the selection of Goethe's "Italian Journey".

It soon became clear, however, that the preference of the group members was to read books by native writers, so that is what we have pursued since we left Austria. If you want to read any of these books (especially the non-European ones), and can't find them in your local library, you will have to buy them from one of the internet sources, such as Amazon or Abe. My notes are not meant to be a telling of the story but, especially in the case of the later books, I found that they were developing towards points for discussion at the book group, probably because we started off at nearly twenty, and are now rather fewer so there is more scope for all to contribute. The scores which are given against each book are the average score out of ten given by the group members, except for the first four which are my own scores from before we started to keep records.

It is my intention to add a book to my comments list as often as I can find the time to do that. The first entry will be for

Italy - "Italian Journey" by Wolfgang von Goethe (Score 7.0)

I first read this book several years ago when on holiday in Italy, visiting the Italian lake region and staying in Malcesine. Goethe visited Malcesine during his journey and stayed there for some time. I found his description of the town and the surrounding area very colourful, and I could follow some of his travels myself. The one thing we did in Malcesine which he didn't was to be caught in a mountain thunderstorm, a temporale, and get thoroughly soaked.

Austria - "Setting Free the Bears" by John Irving (Score 5.0)

I didn't make any notes for this book. It is not a work of literature with beautiful writing to discuss, or with great characterisation. It simply tells a simple story. It is not the best book by John Irving which I have read. I would say - only read this one if you are an Irving fan, or if you are a completist.

Germany - "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind (Score 8.0)

As you will all be aware, this book has been made into a film since we read it. I enjoyed the book, and look forward to seeing the film sometime to see how much they have messed the story about. I sympathised immensely with Jean-Baptiste and his predicament from the start of the book (I also sympathised with Carrie and thought that her fellow pupils deserved everything they got). After the christening of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (frog) there is no use of his first name until much later in the story. There is no hint that he is evil until his soul is described as "black" just before his first kill. There is some powerful imagery in the description of his life, flowing like a river (find it yourself). The perfumer, Baldini, does not like the fact that the Enlightenment has happened. His death in a Bacchanalian frenzy seems to be a parody of the Christian sacrament. Suskind seems to be trying to make Grenouille less than human in an attempt to take away our sympathy. The rather forced attempt to do this using the needless first murder failed in my case because it seemed at the time to be too obvious a devise. In retrospect, while typing this I am beginning to wonder if that was the intention all along. Grenouille retained my sympathy right through to the point when he embarked on mass murder.

Poland - In my Father's Court" by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Score 6.0)

I found this to be very much a book of 1/4 and 3/4. I gave it up after the first 70 pages as being the most boring book I had ever read. Since I had never before in my life not finished a book once I had started it, this was a huge departure. However, after the book group meeting at which about half had found it equally boring, and half had persevered to find it enjoyable, I had another try. It did improve a bit as he got older and the incidents became less childish, but I still don't think it was great writing and, for me, it contains nothing memorable. It certainly doesn't come into my 500 favourite books, it doesn't live up to the author's reputation, and it's difficult for me to understand why it received special acclaim at his Nobel award ceremony. Was it merely a case of "Buggin's Turn" that he won at all?

Czechoslovakia - "Closely Observed Trains" by Bohumil Hrabal (Score 7.8)

I didn't try to define Hrabal as being either Czech or Slovak since the book was written before they went their separate ways, and the events take place in Czechoslovakia. The great unanswered question for me is "Does the narrator die on the last page or not?" This book shows the ultimate futility and waste of war in many places, of which one is in the approach of the narrator to the dying German, even though he ends up killing him. There is a comic scene with the pigeons while the stationmaster is telling the story of the stamps, and then with the countess. There is the stated, closely observed, horror of the beasts in the wagons, in comparison with the unstated horror of the forced starvation of those from whom they were stolen. This was a deliberate policy, and there was no attempt to ensure that the beasts reached slaughter in a state fit to eat. Dresden fire bombing etc. Watch the film if you get the chance.

Hungary - "Embers" by Sandor Marai (Score 7.6)

I enjoyed this book. It is suffused with images of isolation and aloneness (not necessarily loneliness). Note the Countess's trip to Hungary after the wedding, with the descriptions of the endless Hungarian plain, the castle in the forest, the wolves, the child in Paris, the tropics, the staring woman. The mother is always "The Countess" and the father is always "The Officer of the Guards". There is an interesting use of tenses. Everything is in the present tense, even the events of 40 years ago. On page 19, see the "sway bellied stove". The child calls, on page 27, for Nini rather than cuddling his mother.

Ukraine - "Diary of a Madman and other stories" by Nikolai Gogol (Score 7.7)

"Diary of a Madman" - In aristocratic households even the dogs eat woodcock with fine sauces in contrast to the spartan life of peasants and serfs. How far are the dogs in the letters representative of humans. December 03 - very socialist thoughts, how did this escape government censorship? December 05 - Is this really supportive of monarchy, or is it ironic? December 08 - "England wouldn't stand for a queen" - written just a few years after Anne and just before Victoria. This story is very mocking and seems extremely subversive.

"The Nose" - A piece of whimsy? What's the message? Don't judge by appearances? Don't chase after the unattainable? Gogol closes by effectively denying that he is the author, but is merely passing it on - and it is all stupid anyway. The joke is on us!

"The Overcoat" - Is Akaky Akakievitch a Christ figure? "Why do you torment me?" (to St Paul) - I am your brother. Or does he perhaps stand for all the persecuted and tormented people in the world? Gogol uses many non-sequitures. For example, in the description of Petrovitch the tailor he says "... in spite of being blind in one eye and having pockmarks, business was good". Gogol also frequently interposes as author, rather than as fictional narrator, a style which doesn't seem to be used much nowadays. See, for example, the last paragraph on page 78, on to page 79.

"The Quarrel of Ivan and Ivan" - This is written in a very different register. There is a modern first person narrator and it's very colloquial and conversational. This is an excellent comic story and I think it would make a very funny short play. There is a "Bleak House" type of theme.

"Ivan and his cat" - Even though you have read the introduction and know that the story does not end, it catches you out and leaves you wanting a resolution. Did Ivan get the deeds? Did he marry the blonde? Etcetera? Very comic. I wanted to read more Gogol, and tackled "Dead Souls" next. Give it a try. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Romania - "The Land of Green Plums" by Herta Muller (Score 5.3)

I found this book to be extremely pretentious and, at the same time, mediocre. There were many nonsensical statements. For example, on page 34 "Always tying ...", on page 99 "I said yes, ....", on page 144 "Even if the man ...." and on page 154 "Because of the mixed up ...." (Granta 1999).

Serbia - "The Dawning" by Milka Bajic Poderegin (Score 4.7)

This book achieved the lowest score of any we have read, before or since (3/10). It is 360 pages of nothing much. There is no characterisation. I could not relate to the cardboard cut-out characters, nor could I feel for them when they suffered. Where was the religious tension which must have existed? After all, the Balkan wars of the 1990s did not come out of nowhere. "You could write a story, Granny. Why don't you try?"

Albania - "Broken April" by Ismail Kadare (Score 8.3)

Thank goodness for this book after the previous two. It was an excellent selection, and was the first to give me a real feeling of being introduced to a completely unknown world and culture. Kadare was still nearly two years away from being the first Man Booker International prize winner (2005) when we read this book. We voted it straight to the top of our list (January 2004) and it stayed there against several serious challengers until it was pipped recently by "Reading Lolita in Tehran", of which more when we get to Iran. The topic of the book is the vendetta or Kamun. The approach reminded me very much of Robert Silverberg's "A Time of Changes" and Ursula Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness", both of which introduce the reader to familiar, yet unusual, worlds. The inevitability of Gjorg's death is the thread which binds the whole story together. I wonder if the Kamun was introduced originally to control and limit the number of revenge killings which were taking place. The horrific perversion of the Kamun is shown clearly in the section in which Mark Muses on how to increase the income from the blood money so as to preserve his position (and his livelihood) as if human lives can be traded like horses. Could someone from outside that culture truly understand such an alien way of life? Thank goodness Kadare resisted any temptation to reconcile Bessian and Diane. After finishing this book I read, within a couple of months, every one of Kadare's books which had been translated into English. If you only read one of the authors whom we discuss, make it Kadare. You won't regret it.

Greece - "Uncle Petros and the Goldbach Conjecture" by Apostolis Doxiadis (Score 7.5)

This is the story of one man's attempt to solve a centuries old mathematical mystery. I don't have much more to say other than that it is a pleasant enough read, though with no tension.

Our top reads in Asia - in alphabetical order

2006-10-09T21:21:00.004Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Country - Author - Title
Afghanistan - Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner
India - Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Iran - Azir Nafisi - Reading Lolita in Tehran
Israel - Meir Shalev - Blue Mountain
Japan - Fumiko Enchi - The Waiting Years
Lebanon - Amin Maalouf - The Rock of Tanios
Pakistan - Kamila Shamsie - Kartography
Palestine - Emile Habiby - The Secret Life of Saeed
Syria - Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib - Just like a river
Turkey - Erendiz Atasu - The Other Side of the Mountain

Our top reads (so far) from Asia (in alphabetical order)

Our top reads in Africa - in alphabetical order

2006-10-09T21:16:00.005Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Country Author Title

Ethiopia - Nega Mezlekia - The god who begat a jackal
Libya - Ibrahim al-Koni - The bleeding of the stone
Morocco - Mahi Binebine - Welcome to Paradise
Nigeria - Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the savannah
Senegal - Sembene Ousmane - God’s bits of wood
South Africa - Nadine Gordiner - The house gun
Sudan - Leila Aboulela - The translator
Tanzania - Abdulrazak Gurnah - By the sea
Zambia - Binwell Sinyangwe - A Cowrie of hope
Zimbabwe - Shimmer Chinodya - Harvest of thorns

Our top ten reads from Africa (in alphabetical order)

Our top reads from Europe so far - in alphabetical order

2006-09-02T10:13:00.006Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Country – Author - Title

Albania - Ismail Kadare - Broken April
Austria - John Irving - Setting free the bears
Czech Republic - Bohumil Hrabal - Closely observed trains
Germany - Patrick Susskind - Perfume
Greece - Apostolis Doxiadis - Uncle Petros and the Goldbach conjecture
Hungary - Sandor Marai - Embers
Italy - J W von Goethe - Italian journey
Norway - Per Petterson - Out stealing horses
Poland - Isaac Bashevis - Singer In my father’s court
Romania - Herta Muller - The land of green plums
Ukraine - Nikolai Gogol - Diary of a madman

Our journey so far...

2006-08-29T14:07:00.047Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

See our interview at "http://www.readingbooksguide.com/">http://www.readingbooksguide.com

Country - Book - Author

Italy - Italian journey - JW von Goethe
Austria - Setting free the bears - John Irving
Germany - Perfume - Patrick Süskind
Poland - In my father’s court - Isaac Bashevis Singer
Czech Republic/Slovakia - Closely observed trains - Bohumil Hrabal
Hungary - Embers - Sándor Márai
Ukraine - Diary of a madman and other stories - Nikolai Gogol
Romania - The land of green plums - Herta Müller
Serbia - The dawning - Milka Bajić Poderegin
Albania - Broken April - Ismail Kadare
Greece - Uncle Petros and the Goldbach Conjecture - Apostolos Doxiadis
Turkey - The other side of the mountain - Erendiz Atasü
Syria - Just like a river - Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib
Lebanon - The rock of Tanios - Amin Maalouf
Israel - The blue mountain - Meir Shalev
Palestine - The secret life of Saeed - Emile Habiby
Egypt - Beer in the snooker hall - Waguih Ghali
Libya - The bleeding of the stone - Ibrahim al-Koni
Tunisia - Wounding words - Evelyne Accad
Morocco - Welcome to Paradise - Mahi Binebine
Senegal - God’s bits of wood - Sembene Ousmane
Guinea - The radiance of the king - Camara Laye
Ivory Coast - Waiting for the wild beasts to vote - Ahmadou Kourouma
Nigeria - Anthills of the savannah - Chinua Achebe
Cameroon - Houseboy - Ferdinand Oyono
Gabon - Mema - Daniel Mengara
Angola - The return of the water spirit - Pepetela
Namibia - The purple violet of Oshaantu - Neshani Andreas
Botswana - Maru - Bessie Head
South Africa - The House Gun - Nadine Gordimer
Mozambique - Under the Frangipani - Mia Couto
Zimbabwe - Harvest of Thorns - Shimmer Chinodya
Zambia - A Cowrie of Hope - Binwell Sinyangwe
Tanzania - By the Sea - Abdulrazak Gurnah
Rwanda - The Oldest Orphan - Tierno Monénembo
Uganda - Abyssinian Chronicles - Moses Isegawa
Kenya - Devil on the Cross - Ngungi wa Thiong’o
Somalia - From a crooked rib - Nuruddin Farah
Ethiopia - The god who begat a jackal - Nega Mezlekia
Sudan - The translator - Leila Aboulela
Yemen - The hostage - Zayd Mutee’ Dammaj
Saudi Arabia - Adama - Turki Al-Hamad
Jordan - Pillars of Salt - Fadia Faqir
Iraq - Naphtalene - Alia Mamdouh
Iran - Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
Uzbekistan - The Railway - Hamid Ismailov
Afghanistan - The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Pakistan - Kartography - Kamila Shamsie
India - The God of small things - Arundhati Roy
Bangladesh - A Golden Age - Tahmima Anam
Sri Lanka - The Sandglass - Romesh Gunesekera
Myanmar - Not out of hate - Ma Ma Lay
Malaysia - The rice mother - Rani Manicka
Indonesia - This Earth of Mankind - Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Vietnam - Memories of a pure spring - Duong Thu Huong
Taiwan - Wintry night - Li Qiao
China - Red sorghum - Mo Yan
Russia - A hero of our time - Mikail Lermontov
Korea - Translations of beauty - Mia Yun
Japan - The waiting years - Fumiko Enchi
Australia - Rabbit-proof fence - Nugi Garimara (Doris Pilkington)
New Zealand - The bone people - Keri Hulme
Tahiti - Frangipani - Celestine Hitiura - Vaite
Samoa - They who do not grieve - Sia Figiel
Canada - House made of dawn - N Scott Momaday
USA - Fools Crow - James Welch
Ecuador - The villagers (Huasipungo) - Jorge Icaza
Peru - Conversation in the cathedral - Mario Vargas Llosa
Chile - Daughter of fortune - Isabel Allende
Bolivia - The matter of desire - Edmundo Paz Soldan
Paraguay - I The Supreme - Augusto Roa Bastos
Argentina - The winners - Julio Cortazar
Uruguay - The book of embraces - Eduardo Galeano
Brazil - Gabriella: clove and cinnamon - Jorge Amado
Guyana - Buxton spice - Oonya Kempadoo
Venezuela – Doña Inés versus oblivion – Ana Teresa Torres
Colombia - Love in the time of cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Costa Rica - Assault on Paradise - Tatiana Lobo
Nicaragua – The lost chronicles of Terra Firma – Rosario Aguilar
Honduras - Never through Miami - Roberto Quesada
El Salvador – One day of life – Manlio Argueta
Guatemela - Rattlesnake - Arturo Arias
Belize - Time and the river - Zee Edzel
Mexico - The day of the moon - Graciella Limon
Cayman Islands – Far Tortuga – Peter Matthiessen
Jamaica – Homestretch – Velma Pollard
Cuba – View of dawn in the tropics – G Cabrera Infante
Haiti – The farming of bones – Edwidge Danticat
Dominican Republic – In the time of the butterflies – Julia Alvarez
Puerto Rico - The house on the lagoon - Rosario Ferre
Antigua - Lucy - Jamaica Kincaid
Guadeloupe – “Tree of Life” – Maryse Condé
Dominica – “Wide Sargasso Sea” – Jean Rhys
Martinique – Texaco – Patrick Chamoiseau
Barbados – In the castle of my skin – George Lamming
Grenada - Under the silk cotton tree - Jean Buffong
Trinidad - In the heat of the day - Michael Anthony
Iceland - The fish can sing - Halldor Laxness
Norway - Out stealing horses - Per Petterson
Sweden - Hanna's daughters - Marianne Fredriksson
Finland - The howling miller - Arto Paasilinna
Estonia - The Czar's madman - Jaan Kross
Latvia – Red weather – Pauls Toutonghi

These are the books we've liked best so far....

2006-08-07T20:19:00.017Z

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature

Rank - Country - Author - Title - Score

1. New Zealand - Keri Hulme - The bone people - 8.7
2. Iran - Khaled Hosseini - The kite runner - 8.5
2. Dominican Republic – Julia Alvarez – In the time of the butterflies – 8.5
2. Norway – Per Petterson – Out stealing horses – 8.5
5. Albania - Ismail Kadare - Broken April - 8.4
5. Sudan - Leila Aboulela - The translator - 8.4
5. USA - James Welch - Fools Crow - 8.4
5. Mexico – Graciela Limón – The day of the moon – 8.4
9. Nigeria - Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the savannah - 8.3
10. Sweden - Hanna's Daughters - Marianne Frediksson - 8.25
11. Tanzania - Abdulrazak Gurnah - By the sea - 8.1
11. Japan - Fumiko Enchi - The waiting years - 8.1
13. Libya - Ibrahim al-Koni - The bleeding of the stone - 8.0
13. Russia - Mikhail Lermentov - A hero of our time 8.0
15. Israel - Meir Shalev - Blue mountain - 7.9
15. Zimbabwe - Shimmer Chinodya - Harvest of thorns - 7.9
17. Pakistan - Kamila Shamsie - Kartography- 7.8
17. Colombia – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Love in the time of cholera – 7.8
17. Haiti – Edwidge Danticat – The Bone Cutters – 7.8