Human Acts

Han Kang; translated by Deborah Smith

Human Acts by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, focuses on the 1980 Gwangju uprising in South Korea. Deborah Smith provides historical context of the uprising in the introduction. The two decades of the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee were followed by another military dictatorship, that of the army general, Chun Doo-hwan. The people of Gwangju, led by student demonstrators, revolted against the military dictatorship, demanding democratic freedoms and better working conditions. Lasting for ten days, the Gwangju uprising was met with brutality, torture, and the massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians. It is against this backdrop that Han Kang situates her novel.

The novel is divided into seven sections. Six of the sections are from individuals who experienced the uprising and its aftermath, including torture and rape. The six are all connected either through employment or friendship or as family. The seventh section, the Epilogue, veers away from fiction to fact by chronicling what prompted the author to research the Gwangju massacre, its impact on her life, and her decision to write a novel about it.

The novel opens with fifteen-year-old Dong-ho joining a group of civilians in the Provincial Office recently transformed into an improvised mortuary to deal with the influx of bodies. Dong-ho has been tasked with recording what information he can about the mountain of bodies piling up in hallways and rooms. His colleagues wash the bodies and cover them with sheets to afford them some dignity until family members can identify them and pick them up for burial. The next section is the ghost of Dong-ho’s friend. Killed by the army, he describes his body unceremoniously carted off in a truck and dumped with a pile of other rotting bodies before all are set ablaze. This is followed by sections from an editor, a prisoner, a factory girl, Dong-ho’s mother on the 30th anniversary of his death, and the Epilogue.

Each section describes in graphic detail the torture, the rape, the mutilation, the bludgeoning and shooting of innocent civilians. That human beings are capable of such inhumane acts is difficult to fathom. Through her characters, Han Kang shows survivors of the uprising as haunted for the rest of their lives by what they witnessed, what they personally experienced, and the loved ones they lost. Their psychological trauma remains unabated.

This is not an easy book to read. The descriptions are graphic; the horror is relentless; the violence is raw, brutal, and unflinching. The novel poses questions about the nature of humanity. What impact does a crowd have on individual behavior? Does crowd behavior compel us to perpetrate acts of unspeakable violence or acts of exceptional bravery or both? Are human beings naturally prone to inflicting such brutality and pain on one another? How does one confront such brutality? And how does one recover from it—assuming recovery is even possible?

Skillfully executed, gut-wrenching, immersive, and compelling, this is an important read. It is highly recommended but not for those who find it too distressing to read graphic descriptions of man’s inhumanity to man.

We Need New Names

NoViolet Bulawayo

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo unfolds in the first-person point of view of ten-year old Darling in Zimbabwe. Darling lives in a shanty town, ironically named Paradise. She is without consistent adult supervision and spends her time running riot with her gang of friends, playing games, stealing guavas, supporting each other, calling each other names, and generally getting into mischief.

Darling and her young friends suffer from bouts of hunger due to food shortages. They are surrounded by tragedy and violence: a young woman hangs from a tree; a mob invades the home of a white couple, destroys their possessions, and defecates on their floor; Darling’s father dies of AIDS; a man is brutally beaten and ferreted away by the authorities. Darling’s young friend is raped by her grandfather and now carries his child. The children are feral, dirty, hungry, barefoot, and clothed in tatters. Despite these horrendous hardships, Darling’s voice is fresh, young, and engaging. She is astute, sensitive, resilient, street smart, and with a keen eye for observation and an ability to decipher the moods of adults. She can also be very funny.

With no transition, the second half of the novel finds Darling living with her aunt in Michigan. She is torn between adjusting to her new environment and homesickness. She dislikes the intense cold and snow of Michigan but is gratified by the abundance and availability of food. She learns life in America has its benefits as well as its disappointments. Constantly reminded of her outsider status while living in fear of deportation because she is an illegal immigrant, Darling adopts the language and mannerisms of an American teenager to blend in with her new environment.

The plot structure of the novel is episodic in nature. The accumulation of events in Zimbabwe eventually coalesce to form a picture of life there. Darling does not shy away from describing the hardships. Her feelings of humiliation when aid workers take photos of the children covered in dirt and wearing torn clothing is poignant. The children tolerate the embarrassment and accommodate with smiles in exchange for gifts. But despite its challenges, Zimbabwe provides Darling with a sense of belonging, a community, and friends with whom she shares common experiences—qualities she doesn’t fully come to value until they are no longer available to her. This section throbs with vitality and energy.

The second section of the book lacks the vibrancy and immediacy of the opening half. Darling seems to drift aimlessly, recording one experience after another. The series of episodes chart her sense of alienation in America as well as her growing estrangement from family and friends in Zimbabwe. She straddles between two cultures and feels the pain of being an outsider in both. She gradually realizes she is a displaced individual who no longer has a place to call home.

Bulawayo skillfully captures the intensity and communal life in Zimbabwe with vivid details and realistic dialogue. And through Darling, she captures the alienation of a first-generation immigrant torn between two cultures. Darling must abandon her old identity and adopt a new one, a new beginning and that calls for new names.

Recommended.

History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History

Samuel Noah Kramer

History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History by Samuel Noah Kramer, a leading Sumerologist, provides a fascinating look at cuneiform tablets detailing the achievements of the Sumerians of 4,000 years ago, a people who lived in what is now southern Iraq.

Piecing together various clay tablets, some of which are scattered in different museums across the globe, Professor Kramer translates and compiles 39 firsts. Among these is the first time on record where a father implores his juvenile delinquent son to stop idling about and to focus on his studies; the first bicameral congress; the first legal court case; the first instance of tax reform; the first flood; the first library catalogue; etc. etc. Professor Kramer discusses Sumerian use of literary imagery, laments, and elegies. He gives a detailed discussion of the Gilgamesh epic and shows the parts later borrowed by the Babylonians. He draws similarities between the language in tablets detailing ancient Sumer’s Sacred Marriage Rite with the Biblical Song of Songs. And he finds common threads in Inanna’s descent into the nether world and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

Professor Kramer is careful to credit the work of previous translators and makes it clear he is building on their efforts. He also expresses his indebtedness to his former students and assistants in compiling and translating the clay tablets. He summarizes the contents of each of the tablets before providing a translation. He includes a table showing the origin and development of the squiggly signs representing the cuneiform system of writing; illustrations of some of the clay tablets as well as actual photographs; addenda; a glossary; and maps.

This work is the culmination of years of brilliant, painstaking research. It is very accessible and will appeal to both scholars and a general audience interested in Sumer’s contributions to civilization. Professor Kramer’s tone is engaging; his enthusiasm for the material is contagious. By breathing life into these ancient documents, he reminds us we share many of the same joys and concerns as our ancient ancestors.

Four thousand years ago, a father pleaded with his child to take his schoolwork seriously. What’s not to love about a study that allows his voice and the voices of others to reverberate through the millennia?

Very highly recommended.

Whereabouts

Jhumpa Lahiri

In a series of short vignettes, some only 2 pages long, the first-person narrator in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, Whereabouts, unwraps her life as she meanders through various locations in an unnamed Italian city where she lives.

The unnamed narrator is a forty something university professor, living alone. She derives comfort by establishing a routine and rituals for herself, frequenting the same restaurant, coffee shop, bookstore, streets, and piazzas. She has friends and work colleagues, but she never seems to fit in, viewing herself as an outsider. She shies away from intimacy and is estranged even from her mother, her sole surviving relative.

The vignettes cover a period of one year. The city is shown in its seasonal ebb and flow with the narrator enjoying the first burst of spring or shivering under a winter blast. She describes what she sees, hears, and thinks wherever she happens to be, whether she is in bed, in the coffee shop, in the pool, on a train, or under a shade tree. She is an astute observer of people, their comings and goings and their overheard conversations. But she is primarily concerned with analyzing herself. She records her moods and is preoccupied with trying to understand the triggers that generate her feelings of contentment, sadness, depression, alienation, or belonging. At the end of the novel, her decision to leap into unknown territory by accepting a fellowship at an unfamiliar place perhaps indicates her willingness to push back her self-imposed boundaries.

The novel is without a plot. Lahiri originally wrote it in Italian and then translated it herself into English. This once removed process may account for the narrator’s unwillingness or inability to allow for intimacy. Not only does she distance herself from others, but she distances herself from the reader. The impression is of a person talking to herself, not of one inviting others into her life. Her language is restrained; her observations are detached and calculated. Her impenetrable external veneer inhibits investment in her as a person or in her story. As a result, we don’t really get to know her or feel sympathy for her isolationism. What we do get is a glimpse into the self-absorbed mind of an individual who has taken deliberate steps to maintain her sequestered lifestyle while simultaneously trying to locate her place in the world.

Voices of the Lost

Hoda Barakat; translated by Marilyn Booth

Winner of the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Voices of the Lost by Hoda Barakat, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, is in a three-part structure. Part 1, Those Who are Lost, consists of a series of letters to and from unnamed individuals in unspecified countries in the Arab world. Part 2, Those Who are Searching, consists of several monologues by the intended recipients of the letters who never receive the letters but who present events from their perspective. The final section, Those Who are Left Behind, is a monologue by a postal worker sheltering in a bombed-out post office. He has sorted and registered the letters in the hope they will eventually be delivered.

Part 1 is by far the largest part. The letters, addressed to a former lover or family members, are confessional. A woman writes to her former lover. An escaped torturer begs forgiveness from his mother for torturing, maiming, and killing while he was a member of the secret police. A sister writes to her brother explaining why she became a prostitute. The letters never arrive to their intended recipients. They are discarded in hotel rooms, storage lockers, and airports to be picked up by complete strangers who are then prompted to write their own letters in a chain that tangentially links the letters.

The format is interesting and well-executed. The contents of the letters reveal individuals living on the margins of society. They suffer from poverty, childhood trauma, and abuse. Some are illegal immigrants or criminals hiding from authorities in a European country. A few of the letters are very disturbing, describing violence, rape, and domestic abuse in graphic detail. The writers seek understanding and forgiveness for their past actions. Their tone is fatalistic—as if fate dealt them a poor hand and they had no option but to pursue the path they did.

Barakat’s portrayals are sensitive and nuanced. She gives voice to individuals denied voice by mainstream society—the criminals, the prostitutes, the homeless, the refugees, and the desperate. The letter-writers have in common they escaped from their war-ravaged countries. They are alienated, isolated, and bereft of support structures. Some generate sympathy; others generate absolute horror. But all emerge as real individuals suffering from serious, deep-seated wounds.

Although there is a smattering of hope embodied by the nameless postman who continues to sort letters in anticipation of better days, the tone throughout is unabashedly bleak. Its value lies in depicting those relegated en masse to the periphery of society as unique individuals whose powerful and angst-ridden voices deserve a hearing.

Recommended.

Second Place

Rachel Cusk

In the afterword to her most recent novel, Second Place, Rachel Cusk states she was inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s 1932 memoir of the time D. H. Lawrence stayed with her in Taos, New Mexico. Unlike in Luhan’s memoir, the visitor in Cusk’s novel is an artist, not an author.

Second Place is in the form of an extended monologue. The first-person narrator is identified as M. She addresses the monologue to her friend, Jeffers, telling him about the time L, the artist, visited her and her husband in their home on the marshes. The title refers to the second home they constructed as a guest house for visiting artists to work unencumbered by the outside world. It also refers to M’s self-identification as someone who is, at best, second place and subordinate.

M is a conflicted, tortured soul plagued with questions about her identity as a woman, her skills at parenting, her need for recognition, and her role in her marriage. She is not a particularly likeable character. She invites the celebrated artist L to stay in her home because she feels connected to him through his paintings. She wants to see her marshes through his eyes. But above all, she wants him to paint her, as if by seeing her he will, somehow, endow her with self-worth. When L eventually shows up, he recognizes her intensity and need for attention. He reacts by distancing himself from her. M’s frustration grows and eventually comes to a head.

This brief summary might lead one to believe this is a lengthy, boring monologue where very little happens. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although M is not particularly likable, her words are hypnotic and fascinating. While wallowing in self-examination and self-doubt, she philosophizes about the meaning of freedom, the role gender plays in our identity formation, selfhood, power dynamics, positions of privilege, marginalization, the nature of parenting, marriage, the role of art in society and its relationship to life, and the character of the artist. She contrasts her approach to life with that of her steadfast husband, Tony. She shares her feelings toward her daughter and how parenting her now adult child is fraught with tension.

Cusk peppers her sentences with lyrical, breathtaking descriptions, most notably of the landscape. She sustains interest through the potency of her pronouncements and deliberations. Almost every other sentence invites contemplation. This is a compelling work in which words need to be savored, read, and re-read for their piercing insights about life, relationships, and identity.

Highly recommended.

Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad

Ibn al-Sai, translated from the Arabic by Shawkat M. Toorawa

Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad by Ibn al Sai, translated from the Arabic by Shawkat M. Toorawa, provides a fascinating glimpse into the words and deeds of the consorts of caliphs over a five-hundred-year period. The earliest consort is Hammadah Bint Isa, the wife of Caliph Mansur (she died around 780 C.E.); the latest is Shahan, the consort of Caliph al-Muntasir (she died around 1254 C.E).

Ibn al Sai was a literary scholar, historian, and librarian. Born in Baghdad, his dates are 1197-1276 C.E. With unfettered access to official archives of the caliphate, Ibn al Sai wrote history books of which only few fragments have survived. Consorts of the Caliphs is his only work to survive in its entirety.

To compile this work, Ibn al Sai poured over archives and meticulously recorded the chain of oral transmission to authenticate his biographical research concerning each of the 39 women included in his work. There are anecdotes about the women, their personal narratives, poems, and charitable donations. The exorbitant amounts paid to purchase them are recorded, as are the precious gems and copious gold coins they received when called upon to compose a pleasing impromptu poem.

Consorts were referred to as wives, concubines, or slaves. But these were not slaves in the traditional sense. These women were well-respected and loved. Some were wealthy, owning palaces and wielding enormous influence with the caliphs and their sons. They were accomplished poets and singers. Many frequently surpassed their male counterparts in impromptu competitions in poetry and singing, earning the respect of the court. Some endowed law colleges; established lending libraries from their personal collection; funded the building of bridges and the reparation of infrastructure; and gave generously to the needy, especially women and children. Their deaths were mourned; their funeral services were frequently led by caliphs.

These brief biographical sketches shatter stereotypes and challenge the notion that the consorts of the caliphs were one homogenous, sexually exploited group of women. They were intelligent, articulate, resourceful, influential, witty, accomplished, talented, respected, generous, and loved. They had distinct personalities and assumed a variety of roles in the caliphs’ courts. To read about them and to hear them speak in their own voices through their poems going back 1,200 years is nothing short of fascinating. And what makes this work even more astonishing is that nearly 1,000 years ago, an Iraqi male scholar recognized their importance and diligently and methodically conducted and documented research to preserve their legacy for posterity.

This scholarly edition, produced by the editors of the Library of Arabic Literature, includes an introduction explaining methodology, maps, family trees of the caliphs, footnotes, a thorough index, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

Highly recommended as an invaluable resource for shining a light on the consorts of the Abbasid caliphs.

Shadow

Karin Alvtegen; translated by McKinley Burnett

Shadow by Karin Alvtegen, translated from the Swedish by McKinley Burnett, is a gripping, page-turning mystery in which the crime is not revealed until late in the novel. The novel grapples with the following questions: How far are you willing to go to preserve your humanity? How far are you willing to go to protect what is yours? What price are you willing to pay to retain public acclaim? The answers are shocking.

The setting is Stockholm. A four-year-old boy is abandoned in an amusement park. He carries a note: “Take care of this child. Forgive me.” No explanation is given.

After that cryptic opening, the narrative jumps forward three decades. Marianne Folkesson, a social worker, is tasked with sorting the belongings of the recently deceased ninety-two-year-old Gerda Persson. Marianne searches for names of relatives and friends to notify them of the death. She finds books stacked in the freezer by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Axel Ragnerfeldt. The books have personal hand-written dedications to Gerda, signed by the author. A place to start, she thinks, and begins her enquiries.

Marianne learns Gerda was the long-time housekeeper of the Ragnerfeldt family. She later learns Gerda has named a Kristoffer Sandeblom as her sole beneficiary. But when contacted by Marianne, Kristoffer claims he has never heard of Gerda Persson and has no idea why he is named in her will. Kristoffer conducts his own investigation in an effort to solve a mystery plaguing him all his life. Who is he? Who are his parents? And why did his mother abandon him at an amusement park when he was four years old? The mystery thickens.

Alvtegen’s characters are realistically drawn, distinct, and well-crafted. The surviving members of the Ragnerfeldt family are an unsavory bunch. Axel’s middle-aged son is a philandering alcoholic. His mother is cold-hearted, self-absorbed, and arrogant. His long-suffering wife is miserable in her marriage. Except for Marianne, all the characters are haunted by personal demons which are revealed through their flashbacks and interiority.

An abandoned four-year-old boy, a Nobel Prize winner and his family, the death of their nine-two-year-old housekeeper thirty-five years later. These are seemingly disparate threads. Alvtegen develops each thread along parallel lines, moving back and forth in time, and alternating between threads. Eventually, all the threads converge. The connection is unveiled. A series of lies, deceptions, thefts, and infidelities are revealed, culminating in a horrendous crime buried for thirty-five years.

Alvtegen skillfully builds the suspense, layer upon layer, with the narrative taking many unexpected twists and turns. She delves into back stories and drops clues until the pieces gradually fall into place to reveal the full extent of the horror. She adroitly explores the long-term impact of crimes, of decisions rippling with lasting repercussions, and of childhood trauma. She clothes it in a spell-binding, dark mystery that keeps one guessing until the very end.

Highly recommended.

Swimming Home

Deborah Levy

The opening pages of Swimming Home by Deborah Levy establish an atmosphere of impending disaster. Kitty Finch is behind the steering wheel, driving recklessly while telling her passenger she loves him. Her passenger is nervous and regrets sleeping with her. With that ominous prologue, we go back in time to the beginning of the week.

The setting is a tourist villa in Nice, France. Joe is on holiday with his wife, Isabel, and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Nina. With them are Isabel’s friend, Laura, and her husband, Mitchell. They wake up on a Saturday morning to find a woman floating in the swimming pool. Isabel dives into the pool to retrieve the woman who has, presumably, drowned. But the woman is not dead. Her face surfaces from the water, gasping for breath. Enter Kitty Finch. She emerges from the pool, stark naked.

What follows is a week in which the characters exhibit signs of depression and dysfunction. Joe, a poet, is haunted by a childhood trauma of being smuggled out of Nazi Poland as a five-year-old. His parents and two-year-old sister did not survive the Polish death camp. Isabel is a war correspondent haunted by images of carnage and dismembered bodies. Laura and Mitchell are shop owners who are losing their business. Nina is torn between her parents. And Kitty Finch is a certifiable manic depressive who is off her medications. Invited to stay with the group, she becomes the focus, weaving in and out of conversations while exhibiting frenetic behavior.

The characters clothe their personal demons in a restrained, external veneer. Kitty is the only character who fully exposes her demons and vulnerabilities, both physically and mentally. She is also the only character who spends much of her time prancing around in the nude.

Deborah Levy generates an atmosphere fraught with tension and dripping with a sense of menace. The plot, carefully and methodically constructed, leads to its inexorable and shocking conclusion. Levy moves through the characters revealing the extent of their depression through their interiority. The elusive Kitty flits among them, and despite her unpredictable mannerisms, she, alone, has insight into Joe and Isabel. Kitty has intentionally injected herself into the group for a purpose. It is not until the end of the novel that her purpose is revealed.

This is a compelling read with fleshed out, memorable characters, and an intricate plot which unfolds in precise, spare, and suggestive language. Shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, this short book packs a powerful punch.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Kathleen Rooney

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney celebrates the life and achievements of Margaret Fishbank, a 1930s highly successful advertising copywriter known for quirky, offbeat, and humorous poems. In the Author’s Note, Rooney describes how delving into Fishbank’s archives inspired her to create her fictional character, Lillian Boxfish.

It is 1984 on New Year’s Eve. Eighty-five-year-old Lillian Boxfish decides to walk along the streets of her beloved Manhattan to have dinner at her favorite restaurant as she has done every New Year’s Eve for decades. Wearing her mink coat, brightly colored lipstick, and with a hat perched on her head, Lillian heads out undeterred by the seamy streets of Manhattan or the possible dangers lurking around each corner.

As she strolls, she reminisces about her life—her arrival in Manhattan, her success at R. H. Macy’s which eventually led to her being the highest paid advertising woman in America, marriage, motherhood, divorce, and subsequent nervous breakdown. Her journey back in time includes some of the historical highlights of twentieth century America, including prohibition, AIDS, and rap music.

Lillian’s eye for detail is commendable. She observes various landmarks along the way, decrying some of the changes in her once familiar environment. She pauses in front of buildings, recalling their significance. Here is the first apartment she shared with her good friend, Helen. This is the restaurant where she has celebrated New Year’s Eve for decades. And here is where she and her husband ate their last meal together while finalizing their divorce.

Lillian does more than just walk and reminisce. She interacts with strangers, engaging them in conversations prompted by her insatiable appetite to learn about people and their experiences. Strangers reciprocate with a solicitous concern for her welfare as an elderly woman traipsing alone at night on the streets of Manhattan. Her eye for detail enables her to home in on their personalities. That same eye for detail knows the nooks and crannies of Manhattan, its past and present, its good and bad. Through Lillian’s eyes, the city comes alive, basking in her love.

Unfolding in the first-person point of view, Lillian’s voice is delightful, funny, energetic, piercingly honest, and sparkling with an acerbic wit tempered with generosity and kindness toward those in need. She is charismatic, charming, entertaining, and can talk herself out of almost any sticky situation. But she is not without flaws, which renders her a more believable character.

What makes Lillian Boxfish such a delight is her appetite for life, and her sheer determination to walk the streets of her beloved city, undaunted and unafraid. Eighty-five-year-old Lillian Boxfish will not let anyone or anything deter her from doing what she loves best. And for that she deserves our praise. And for crafting an endearing portrait of an unforgettable octogenarian, Kathleen Rooney deserves even greater praise.

Highly recommended.

The Arsonists' City

Hala Alyan

The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan is a multi-generational family saga about a Lebanese/Syrian family. The patriarch is Idris Nasr, a Lebanese, married to Mazna, a Syrian. Their three children are Ava, Mimi (Marwan), and Naj (Najla). Apart from Naj who lives in Beirut, the family all live in America. Set mostly against the backdrop of a Lebanon emerging from sectarian tensions and civil war, the novel covers a span of about 40 years. The focus is on Mazna and her adult children. Their challenges and personal demons are gradually revealed through temporal shifts and locations alternating between Damascus, America, and Beirut.

The novel opens in 1978 when Zakaria, a young Palestinian refugee, is murdered in Lebanon in an act of sectarian revenge. The novel goes back to 1965 to introduce a young Mazna in Damascus, an aspiring actress with dreams of becoming a Hollywood movie star. Through a mutual friend, she meets Idris in 1978 who becomes totally besotted with her. And through Idris, she meets Zakaria. The three become involved in a love triangle when Mazna and Zakaria fall passionately in love and make plans for a future together. Their love affair comes to a screeching halt with Zakaria’s murder.

Shortly after Zakaria’s death, Idris is accepted in medical school in California. He proposes to Mazna with lures of Hollywood fame. A broken-hearted Mazna accepts his proposal, resigning herself to a marriage with a man she does not love. Forty years later when Idris decides to sell the Beirut ancestral home he inherited from his father, he causes a family uproar. The family converges in Beirut to hold a memorial for Idris’ father and to protest the sale of the home.

In this character-driven novel, Alyan excels in creating authentic, believable, and multi-dimensional characters beset with sibling jealousies and rivalry, marital bickering, simmering resentments, petty squabbles, thwarted aspirations, and ongoing deceptions. The ebb and flow of their relationships as they push away from one another or pull toward one another realistically capture the complexity of family dynamics. Each character is fully fleshed out, unique, flawed, and realistically drawn. The dialogue is natural with its pauses, hesitations, things said, and things left unsaid. Secrets buried for forty years bubble to the surface. Added to the mix are first and second generation struggles with issues of forced migration, displacement, fractured identity, questions of belonging, assimilation, and loss of homeland.

This complex, multi-layered novel grips the reader from the first pages of its riveting prologue depicting a revenge murder to the last pages depicting the resiliency of the Nasr family bond. Alyan’s finely drawn characters, intricate storytelling, masterful pacing, and sparkling prose attest to her skill as an accomplished writer well-deserving of the accolades she has received.

A compelling family saga. Highly recommended.

The Children of Jocasta

Natalie Haynes

The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes is very loosely based on the Theban plays of Sophocles. As Haynes acknowledges in her Afterward, she plays “fast and loose with the myth,” deviating in significant ways from the Oedipus/Antigone myth.

The novel shifts back and forth between two timelines, two perspectives, and two story lines. It opens with the first-person point of view of Ismene as the youngest child of Oedipus and Jocasta. Her mother is dead; her father is exiled; and her two brothers, with the assistance of their uncle Creon, rotate annually for the kingship of Thebes. Ismene’s story is replete with palace intrigue, including attempted assassinations; treason; the deaths of her two brothers; and the clandestine burial of Eteocles, the brother accused of treason. Ismene’s story ends with her heading to Corinth to seek her father.

The second timeline takes place years earlier. It unfolds in the third person-point of view with a focus on Jocasta. She is a fifteen-year-old betrothed to King Laius. Hers is an unhappy marriage that includes the presumed still-birth of her first child. After Laius’ death, Jocasta becomes queen, marries Oedipus, and has four children. Her thread ends with her death. The plague, known as “the reckoning,” plays a prominent role at the end of Jocasta’s reign.

Poetic license grants an author the right to modify a myth as he/she sees fit. But Haynes’ deviations are so significant that the novel bears little resemblance to the original. The Sphinx is transformed to a gang of armed robbers who attack travelers. Ismene, not Antigone as in the original, defies Creon and buries her brother. And Haynes’ decision to assign nicknames to the children is a jarring deviation. Ismene is Isy; Antigone is Ani; Eteocles is Eteo; Polyneices is Polyn; and Haemon is Haem. The incongruity of these nicknames leaps off the page, posing an unnecessary and baffling disruption.

The most problematic issue is with deviation from the very essence of the myth. The crux of the Oedipus myth hinges on incest and the discovery of the incest. Haynes chooses to reduce the incest to a mere rumor with no definitive proof. Oedipus summarily dismisses the rumor, attributing it to a wicked, old woman’s desire for revenge. Jocasta doesn’t dismiss it quite so readily, but she hangs herself without ever confirming its truth one way or the other. By casting doubt on the incest, Haynes has effectively stripped the myth of its reason for being. The unwitting incest forms the essential core of the story. Without it, the story of Oedipus, Jocasta, and their troubled progeny loses its dramatic intensity.

Haynes is to be commended for giving voice to Jocasta and Ismene and centralizing their experience. She succeeds in capturing palace life and the hustle and bustle of the city market in vivid, sensory detail. But the work suffers from lengthy expositions—too much telling and too little showing. The characters are underdeveloped, uninteresting mouthpieces. The dialog is strained and doesn’t flow naturally. The shouting match between Eteocles and Polyneices borders on the farcical. And by diminishing the incestuous relationship between Jocasta and Oedipus to nothing more than rumor-mongering, Haynes has obfuscated the very core of the myth and deprived it of its very essence and considerable power.

The Remainder

Alia Trabucco Zerán; trans. Sophie Hughes

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes, is set in Chile after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship and the restoration of democracy. It focuses on three individuals whose parents were allies involved in the struggle to overthrow the dictator. The chapters alternate between the first-person narrative of Iquela, the young woman whose mother was one of the anti-Pinochet activists, and the rambling stream of consciousness of her quasi-sibling and childhood friend, Felipe, whose father was killed for his political activities. Weaving in and out of both narratives are drug-induced hallucinations that blur the lines between what is real and what is imagined.

The novel opens with a 1988 flashback as a young Iquela recalls the gathering in her home on the day the radio announcer declared Pinochet had lost the election. There is tension in the room with Hans, a German, accusing Iquela’s father of being a snitch. Iquela doesn’t fully understand what is happening. She is more concerned with emulating Hans’ daughter, Paloma, who is a few years older than her.

Years later, Iquela is on her way to pick Paloma up from the airport. Paloma’s mother has died, and her daughter is honoring her wish to be buried in her native Chile. But a volcanic eruption diverts the plane carrying her mother’s body to Argentina. So Felipe, Iquela, and Paloma rent a hearse to retrieve her mother’s corpse for burial in Chile.

It is the telling of this simple plot which makes it a compelling read, earning it a place on the short list for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. The chapters are numbered in reverse order, beginning with chapter 11. The numbered chapters consist of Felipe’s rambling stream of consciousness. He sees dead people everywhere and has assigned himself the task of counting the corpses so the number tallies with the official death toll with no remainders. His narrative is haunting, confused, and confusing. It unravels as one sentence, pages long. Felipe’s instability is reflected in violent acts and obsession with gore and death.

Alternating with Felipe’s numbered chapters are Iquela’s chapters, indicated by a parenthesis, as (  ). Her narrative is more conventional and easier to understand even though it is peppered with flashbacks. Iquela constantly dips in and out of the past as if it has never left her. She is haunted by her mother’s constant reminders of the past and is burdened by her mother’s refrain, “I want you to know that I do all this for you.”

The faltering children of former activists, a city smothered in ash, the ubiquitous presence of corpses—real or imagined—and the search for a missing corpse powerfully evoke the complexities of a traumatic, inherited past. The fractured narrative, lyrical diction, vivid imagery, and powerful symbolism capture the trauma experienced by the children of militants. Haunted by their parents’ past activism, the protagonists are the remainders, burdened with the corpses of the past and seeking a way to bury them.

A compelling narrative capturing the long-lasting trauma of military dictatorships on subsequent generations.

Jane Austen: Her Life

Park Honan

Through extensive research of diaries, letters, and memoirs by Jane Austen and her family, Prof. Park Honan paints an all-encompassing portrait of Jane Austen and her times in his biography, Jane Austen: Her Life. This 400+ page biography includes family trees, a bibliography, extensive notes, and an index.

Prof. Honan does more than just delve into Austen’s personal life. He explores the social, cultural, political, and economic climate of her time and traces the influences on her writing. He argues it was her family, especially her brothers and her sister Cassandra, who had the greatest influence on her work. She was an astute observer of people, frequently incorporating their words and mannerisms into her writing. And she was an avid reader. As a young woman, she was shy in the presence of strangers, enjoyed parties and balls, but was not averse to making snide remarks about people with whom she had little respect or tolerance. She was happiest when surrounded by family and a close circle of friends.

By situating each of her novels in its social and cultural context, Prof. Honan provides valuable insight into Austen’s work. He analyses her novels and traces some of the words and ideas articulated by her characters to those of real individuals with whom she interacted or whose works she read.

This is a thoroughly exhaustive study of Austen—perhaps, a little too exhaustive because Prof. Honan includes copious details and meandering digressions, many of which have little relevance to either Austen’s life or her work. For example, he delves into extensive details about Britain’s war with France, including several pages of information about various sea battles. He provides lengthy genealogies of even the most minor characters who briefly made Austen’s acquaintance and who had no obvious influence on her life or her work.

Flooded with copious amounts of information, the reader has to sieve through what is relevant and what is of little or no significance to Austen’s life. This is unfortunate because there is much to be admired in the study. But the inclusion of tedious and lengthy details which have no bearing on Jane Austen or her work detract from an otherwise informative biography.

Recommended with reservations.

The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

Herta Müller; translated by Philip Boehm

The Fox was Ever the Hunter by Herta Müller, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, is translated from the German by Philip Boehm. It takes us to late 1980s Rumania, just before the fall of the dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. The focus is on four friends: Adina, a teacher; Paul, a physician; Clara, a factory worker; and Ilie, a soldier. Pavel, working for the secret police, infiltrates the group when he becomes Clara’s boyfriend.

The narrative consists of a series of staccato images designed to create an atmosphere of oppression, fear, and paranoia. The effect is cumulative as Müller builds layer upon layer of fragmented depictions of a population suffering from malnutrition, hunger, poverty, corruption, distrust, betrayal, and constant surveillance. The children are malnourished and disfigured, their hands covered with warts, their teeth black. They are taught to be cautious at a young age. One child tells Adina his mother warns him about the pervasive presence of drawers with listening ears to be found even in trees and fences. The natural environment assumes a quality of foreboding. The town’s poplar trees are variously described as menacing. Pollution and industrial waste run rampant. The animals are so hungry a cat will devour her own young.

The atmosphere throughout is surreal. There is no respite in sleep because even dreams are the stuff of nightmares. The characters speak in whispers, observe events in silence, and go through the motions of living. They are numb to suicides; to the sound of shots fired at someone trying to escape by swimming across the Danube; to the ever-watchful eye of the secret police; to disappearances and interrogations; to a man with a hatchet blade lodged in his skull; and to Ceausescu’s larger-than-life image leering at them from every corner.

The central image is the fox rug in Adina’s apartment. She comes home to find someone has severed the fox’s appendage. One day a tail is cut off; another day, it’s a hind leg; and then it’s a foreleg. The goal is to intimidate her by letting her know the security service has unfettered access to her apartment and that she and her friends are under surveillance. Big Brother is everywhere. And Big Brother is watching her.

This collage of fractured images, fragments, bits and pieces of daily life coalesce to form a haunting and terrifying portrayal of Romania under the Ceausescu. The constant shifts and disjointed narrative work to present life from all its splintered angles until a totality of the experience emerges. While the style and content make this a challenging read, the effort is worth it for those interested in understanding the spiritual, moral, and physical suffocation of life under a brutal dictatorship.

The One that Got Away

Zoë Wicomb

The One that Got Away by Zoë Wicomb is a collection of twelve short stories set in South Africa and Glasgow. The stories depict characters at crossroads either because of a change in circumstances or because they have a choice to make while straddling two cultures.

Confronting questions of identity, the characters explore where they came from and their contentious relationship with the past. They delve into the nature of their connections with spouses, friends, and family, as well as their social and cultural environment. The stories include a man who feels at a loose end; a woman who abandons her responsibilities as wife and mother by refusing to leave her bed; a pair of former high school friends discovering they now have little in common; a young girl navigating her life in Glasgow; a cleaning lady who steals a scarf; and a man returning a library book. A character in one story may turn up as related to or connected with a character in another story.

Several of the stories rely on the stream of consciousness technique, so it can be confusing to distinguish between a person’s thoughts and what is actually happening. The stories are uneven, some being stronger than others. All explore questions of identity and cultural belonging. Wicomb shows identity as a fluid construct. How and where we locate ourselves is in constant flux in an ever-changing world. Her stories capture a moment in time in which her characters discover something new about themselves, about their relationships, and about the world around them. They seem to be in a liminal or in-between phase in which the old ways of thinking and doing have lost relevance, but new ways have yet to materialize. The conclusions to her stories are open-ended, and, just as in real life, resolution remain elusive.

A thought-provoking collection of short stories.

Miss Iceland

Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir

Miss Iceland by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon, is a subdued, quiet novel about three close friends who are frustrated misfits in society. The setting of the novel is Reykjavik in 1963. The first-person narrator is Hekla, a young, talented writer named after a volcano. She leaves the family farm to pursue her literary dreams in Reykjavik. Her two close friends in Reykjavik play a prominent role in her life.

Hekla’s friend, Jón John, is harassed for his homosexuality, marginalized by society, and perceived as a criminal and pedophile. His dream of being a theatrical costume designer is thwarted. The only work he can find is on fishing trawlers where he suffers from sea sickness and constant harassment by the ship’s crew for being gay. He graciously welcomes Hekla into his home, buys her clothes, sews her outfits, confides in her, encourages her to write, makes no demands on her, and embraces her as a soul mate.

Hekla’s other friend is Ísey, a frustrated writer. Ísey is married, has a young baby daughter, and is pregnant with her second child. Being a wife and mother consumes her time and stifles her creativity. She is lonely and alone with her baby all day long, finding little inspiration in life. She maintains her sanity by writing imaginary conversations with strangers and recording imaginary events. Hekla provides a much-needed reprieve from her friend’s humdrum existence by showering her with library books, treats, and adult conversation.

And then there is Hekla, a gifted writer who has to combat virulent sexism. She is expected to adhere to societal norms by either becoming a wife and mother like Ísey or a sexually exploited play toy. She rejects both roles. As a talented female author, she struggles to get published in a male-dominated literary world and submits some of her work under a male pseudonym. Her relationship with her poet/boyfriend ends when he learns she is a talented writer.  

The characters are well-drawn and authentic; their frustrations expressed in clear, unadorned language. The strength of the novel lies in Hekla’s voice. She maintains the tone of an emotionally detached observer, never getting upset or revealing her thoughts. Although she sympathizes with her friends’ predicaments, she doesn’t get entangled with their fate. She doesn’t judge, condemn, or criticize. Her voice is firm, straightforward, and droll. She is unruffled by the upheavals in her friends’ lives, by her jealous boyfriend, or by the harassment from male patrons while working at her waitressing job. She refuses to compromise herself, her focus being on her creative output.

The novel ends on an ambiguous note. A volcanic eruption is creating a new island, suggesting new beginnings and a transformation of the status quo. But it also ends with Hekla suggesting her former boyfriend submit her manuscript under his name to increase its chance of publication. He agrees and claims the book as his own. One wonders how much change the status quo has undergone since, once again, another man is appropriating a woman’s work.

At a time in which homophobia and sexism run rampant, this quiet, poignant tale shows the role of friendship in diminishing alienation, supporting creativity, and encouraging self-fulfillment.

Recommended.

The Lost Soul

Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones; illustrated by Joanna Concejo

In the short story/parable, The Lost Soul, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Joanna Concejo, Olga Tokarczuk, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, offers a profound meditation on finding inner peace. The text is minimal but inspirational.

A man wakes up one morning to experience an existential crisis. Feeling empty and experiencing a loss of identity, he is diagnosed with a case of lost soul. His doctor explains people are so busy running from one place to the next that their souls are unable to keep up with them. He advised finding a quiet place and waiting patiently for his soul to catch up. The man follows the doctor’s advice and waits until he is reunited with his soul. Finding inner peace and attentive to the natural beauty around him, he buries instruments of time and travel and enjoys life at a leisurely pace to accommodate his soul.

This very simple but beautiful story invites reflection. Enhancing the text are the finely detailed, monochromatic drawings of Joanna Concejo. Her illustrations are intricately drawn with pen and pencil. Shading is used to great advantage, whether to reveal the skeletal branches of a tree, the delicate petals of a flower, the windblown grass, the wooden floorboards in the cottage, or the wavy locks of hair on a head. All are shaded in greys and blacks with the occasional burst of green from a plant. Splashes of color are introduced once the man reunites with his soul. The final pages are plush with greenery and flowers to reflect the serenity that comes with slowing down, breathing deeply, and smelling the flowers.

With illustrations that feast the eyes, this is a charming parable for young and old, alike.

In the Country of Men

Hisham Matar

Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men unfolds in the first-person voice of nine-year old Suleiman living in Gaddafi’s Libya and struggling to make sense of the events disrupting his life. Whether it is through his omnipresent, larger-than-life images or through the brutal actions of his revolutionary army and secret police, Gaddafi’s presence haunts the pages of the novel.

Suleiman witnesses the escalating horrors of living under a brutal dictatorship. The father of his best friend is arrested by the Revolutionary army, beaten and kicked before being swept away to an unknown destination. The father later appears on television “confessing” his crime of treason. He is publicly executed at a sports stadium to the resounding cheers of the crowd. Not long after, Suleiman’s father is arrested. He returns home so badly beaten and bruised that Suleiman doesn’t initially recognize him, thinking a monster is sharing his mother’s bed. Eventually, Suleiman’s parents decide to get him out of the country for his own safety. He is sent to Egypt where he completes his education and becomes a pharmacist.

Whether he is describing the burst of flavor when eating mulberries or the public execution as it plays out before his narrator’s eyes, Matar writes in vivid, immersive description. Suleiman’s observations are recorded in minute details, lending an air of verisimilitude to the writing. But there is disconnect and incongruity between his interpretation of what he sees and reality. He refers to his mother’s “illness” and her “medicine” bottle. In reality, his mother is a drunk who becomes reckless after having too much to drink and who burdens her son with stories of her forced marriage. He perceives the secret police agent stationed outside their home as a reliable friend. He compares the condemned man’s resistance to walking up the gallows to a shy woman’s resistance to being coerced on to the dance floor. His confusion is compounded by the knowledge his parents shelter him from the truth although he doesn’t know why.

Violence, fear, torture, surveillance, house searches, disappearances, gender oppression, and lies are daily occurrences in Suleiman’s life, leaving a lingering impact with far-reaching consequences. His confusion and fear manifest in bouts of cruelty and violence toward others. He betrays a friend’s confidence, physically wounds a playmate, and intentionally tries to drown the beggar, Bahloul.

Through the voice of his nine-year-old narrator, Hisham Matar captures the long-term, debilitating impact on a child growing up under an oppressive regime. Suleiman’s life, friends, and family have all been disrupted by forces he doesn’t understand. As an adult living in exile in Egypt, he feels lost, emotionally distant, empty, and alienated. When he looks back at his childhood at the end of the novel, he recognizes his personal trajectory took the shape it did due to political forces completely beyond his control.

Hisham Matar has produced a compelling first-person narrative of a child’s experience with living under a brutal dictatorship.

The Rain Heron

Robbie Arnott

The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott builds a world with mythic qualities that conveys an ecological message about the importance of reciprocity in human interaction with nature.

The novel is in four parts. Part 0 establishes the mythic qualities of the rain heron and its magical powers to generate and withhold rain. It is designated Part 0 because it happens in a mythic realm, before recorded time when our ancient ancestors lived in harmony with nature and believed in its magical powers. Part 1 introduces Ren, a middle-aged woman who fled a military coup to live in a cave in the mountains. Soldiers, led by the relentless Lieutenant Zoe Harker, discover her hideout and torture her until she agrees to lead them to the rain heron. Part 2 takes us back to Zoe’s adolescence where she witnesses the catastrophic consequences of disrupting the reciprocal relationship with nature. In Part 3, Zoe, whose eye has been gouged out by the heron when she captured it, is on a road trip to take the bird to the animal sanctuary. And Part 4 sees another road trip in which Zoe returns the rain heron to its natural habitat.

This is a world in which climate change occurs rapidly, impacting the livelihood of local villagers. It is also a world in which civilians are fearful of military brutality. Lives are disrupted; villages are vacated; and nature wreaks havoc with the weather. The culprit is humanity’s greed and short-sighted desire to dominate nature. Catastrophe ensues when we assume nature’s resources are unlimited and that we can take and take and take without considering long-term repercussions. Nature can and does retaliate with a vengeance. Our environment becomes impoverished; our traditions are lost; our humanity is diminished.  

After illustrating the disastrous consequences of the human instinct to dominate nature, the novel offers a redemption of sorts. It shifts from third person point of view to first person point of view as the final section unfolds in Zoe’s voice to reveal her atonement and restitution. But her transition from a cruel, heartless lieutenant to a penitent human eager to make amends is not entirely convincing and seems somewhat implausible.

Arnott excels in describing the natural environment in vivid and evocative detail. The vibrant colors of the squid as it sucks human blood is visually striking. The majestic heron’s transformations are breath-taking. The powerful imagery of the natural environment assumes an almost mythic resonance. This blend of myth with reality in which myth has a direct bearing on the internal and external environment is reinforced by Zoe. After losing her eye, she experiences an epiphany. She “sees” the truth, echoing Sophocles’ classical myth of Oedipus in which truth comes at a price. The novel suggests in order to re-establish a balanced relationship with nature and redeem ourselves, we must sacrifice our need for dominance. This entails a recognition of our mutual dependence on nature and our interconnectivity with all that lives.

Recommended.