This day, certain persons on whom I am dependent affect to restore me to liberty. As if they had ever deprived me of it! As if it were in their power This day, certain persons on whom I am dependent affect to restore me to liberty. As if they had ever deprived me of it! As if it were in their power to snatch it from me for a single moment, and to hinder me from traversing, at my own good pleasure, the vast space that ever lies open before me! They have forbidden me to go at large in a city, a mere speck, and have left open to me the whole universe, in which immensity and eternity obey me....more
A perfectly dramatic short story in which a man learns the difference between opportunism and monomania. The vehicle for this psychological exploratioA perfectly dramatic short story in which a man learns the difference between opportunism and monomania. The vehicle for this psychological exploration? Chess, of course, which our unnamed narrator aptly describes thusly:
...a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras...
Those black and white squares are enough to drive a man mad.
I was really drawn in by the central relationship of this novel. Two friends and rivals who love and despise each other in equal measure, locked in a I was really drawn in by the central relationship of this novel. Two friends and rivals who love and despise each other in equal measure, locked in a constant cycle of fighting and making up. I love stories of complicated friendships, barely-concealed hatred, dependency that keeps two broken people together. It's ugly and frustrating, but damn is it delicious and fascinating reading.
Anna herself—the titular best friend—was a great, complex character: stubborn, manipulative, charismatic, labile, needy, impassioned. The kind of person you hate to be around but love to read about.
Everything surrounding these two characters was less successful. The political elements felt navel-gazey. The secondary characters didn't add much substance. And Maria's own journey of memory and art was underdeveloped. I like Michalopoulou's prose and I think she has a wonderful talent for crafting genuine human relationships among flawed characters. I just wish those characters had more to do here than simply travel from city to city, read books, fight, and fuck each other's boyfriends.
I really enjoyed this collection of stories. The flap copy describes the running theme as women's "thwarted attempts at intimacy", and I think that's I really enjoyed this collection of stories. The flap copy describes the running theme as women's "thwarted attempts at intimacy", and I think that's a pretty good way to put it. Marriage is thoroughly skewered in My Husband, as every story shows a new and horrifying way that miscommunication, contempt, disgust, despair, or fear can cause a couple's (or a family's) downfall.
There's a deep psychological fissure at the heart of each of these stories. A husband's cruelty, a wife's overweening vanity, a mother's deep distrust of her own young son. They're all well-written but not ornate, just very elegant and sleek pieces of fiction, chilling and unsettling.
Children, friends, and, of course, the reader are all caught up in the wake of these black-hole couplings, and you'll probably find yourself glad (as I was) that this is such a short book.
Just because a man has been created on the Equator some mad people regard him as a slave, others as a god. Where lies the mean? Where the middle way?
DJust because a man has been created on the Equator some mad people regard him as a slave, others as a god. Where lies the mean? Where the middle way?
Deceptively slender at only 169 pages, Season of Migration to the North is not an easy book. First, because its central narrative—the life story and confession of Mustafa Sa'eed—is chopped up and told in pieces, and it's not until the final pages that the full picture is clear. Second, because it deals with difficult topics in a frank, often brutal way: racism, fetishisation, colonialism, women as property. You won't find simple condemnations of moral evils here; characters are steeped in them, entangled in them.
But it's important to distinguish between depiction of a worldview and an author's endorsement of said worldview. I think too many readers today fail to make this distinction, and it's a crucial one for a book like this.
Salih's writing is beautiful, and it fares well in the hands of translator Denys Johnson-Davies. There's a chapter set in a convoy travelling across the scorching Sudanese desert that perfectly captures the disorientation, frenzy, and almost metaphysical terror of a trip across an endless, baking desert wasteland. And there's a murder scene that's like no other I've read, exquisitely rendered and strangely gorgeous.
Though they're little more than brief sketches, the characters in the village are vibrant and three-dimensional. Mustafa Sa'eed is a fascinating figure, one who'll be difficult to get out of your head (the same effect he has on our unnamed protagonist). Born with a mind "as sharp as a knife," he travels to England to reclaim the role of conqueror by embracing the stereotype of the "dark, mysterious African man," letting women fawn over him because they could hear the "rustling of the rainforest" in his voice, despite being from a desert village in the Sudan surrounded mostly by sand and scrubland. He is an obliterating force. His vanity and rage paints a damning portrait both of British paternalism and the enduring effects of colonialism—he's both villain and victim, and I think there's no better way to end this review than with one of his speeches. It's long, but a perfect crystallisation of the themes of brutality, postcolonial identity, and domination you'll find in this book. Emphasis mine.
...I, over and above everything else, am a colonizer, I am the intruder whose fate must be decided. When Mahmoud Wad Ahmed was brought in shackles to Kitchener after his defeat at the battle of Atbara, Kitchener said to him, "Why have you come to my country to lay waste and plunder?" It was the intruder who said this to the person whose land it was, and the owner of the land bowed his head and said nothing. So let it be with me... The ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say "Yes" in their language. They imported to us the germ of the greatest European violence, as seen on the Somme and at Verdun, the like of which the world has never previously known, the germ of a deadly disease that struck them more than a thousand years ago. Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of the poison which you have injected into the veins of history. I am no Othello. Othello was a lie.
I had no idea what this book was about when I bought it, but it turned out to be a subject of great interest to me: how native religions, customs, andI had no idea what this book was about when I bought it, but it turned out to be a subject of great interest to me: how native religions, customs, and stories are preserved after colonisation.
The four linked tales in this book tell the story of, well, a story—the story of Kibogo, a prince who sacrificed himself to end a deadly drought and was brought up to heaven. When the whites come to Rwanda and attempt to convert its citizens, the story and worship of Kibogo, along with other practises—gris-gris, rain-makers, spirit healers—are prohibited by the church. Some people go along with this, taking their baptism to mean the end of these ancestral rituals, but most just practise them more quietly, at night rather than in the daytime, at home rather than in public. And when another hellish drought threatens the country, the memory of Kibogo's sacrifice might be the only thing to end it.
With the passing of time, the story of Kibogo warps, becomes fused with the story of Akayezu and Mukamwezi, a Christian seminarian and a pagan sorceress, themselves embodying the tension between the old and new in Rwanda. Together, they dare to reframe the Bible not as a tale of Jesus' death, ascension, and imminent return—but Kibogo's. They're called mad, and vanish into thin air during a vicious storm.
And just when the village on the hillside thinks the story of Kibogo is lost to time, remembered only by old men who are on death's door, a European professor visits, asking about Kibogo, wanting to know as much as possible about the legend, and wanting to record it for posterity.
Kibogo is a slim but memorable tale of heritage, memory, and intangible cultural wealth, told in Mukasonga's clear and lyrical style that evokes stories told around hearthfires and secrets passed down from generation to generation.
What an interesting little book. It's the plot of a melodrama without any of the other hallmarks of a melodrama—huge confrontations, hysteria, emotionWhat an interesting little book. It's the plot of a melodrama without any of the other hallmarks of a melodrama—huge confrontations, hysteria, emotional resolution. Stripped down to its barest parts, the story becomes pure tragedy, a stark reflection on the ways women are used by men, maybe even without men realising, which is all the more tragic. We witness this terrifying generational cycle of women becoming attached to men—sometimes this means falling in love, sometimes this simply means marriage—and becoming completely subsumed by them, and then, once the men become bored by the fact that they've made their wife into a reflection of themselves, they cheat on her, then leave her for another woman. That other woman then marries him and the cycle starts anew.
I often find introductions unnecessary, but the brief introduction by Kate Zambreno here is actually a perfect complement to the story. I don't have much more to add to what she says:
I read this novel with something resembling a rapturous grief, as if I couldn't believe this consciousness had finally been rendered in literature, the consciousness of so many women familiar yet unknowable, no longer muted, not saturated with sanctimony but alive, alive with rage transmuting disdain into hilarity by sheer force, alive with intense paroxysms of sadness.
In the early Victorian era, sensation novels—books that made you really feel things, like horror or suspense or elation or, god forbid, lust—were ofteIn the early Victorian era, sensation novels—books that made you really feel things, like horror or suspense or elation or, god forbid, lust—were often viewed with suspicion, if not downright disdain.
See, I have this theory that we expect every book to be a sensation novel these days. It either makes us feel or it’s boring. But does the dichotomy have to be that harsh? And The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a perfect case study because, judging by the reviews on here, it left many people shrugging, since its concise writing and sedate narration don't really evoke emotion. And I agree with that. I didn’t feel very much reading this. But I don’t think you’re supposed to.
This is such an oblique book—you kind of have to come at it sideways—read so far between the lines that an entirely different story emerges—and you realise the lack of emotion is like a windowpane separating you from the story, while at the same time giving you a better view of the situation and protecting you from any stray debris or birdshit. It’s like watching a telenovela on mute. Which is similar to how I felt reading Maria Judite de Carvalho’s Empty Wardrobes, which describes dramatic events that are left softened and muted by several years of raging about them, reflecting on them, and ultimately deciding that they no longer matter.
On a completely different note, The Woman in the Purple Skirt does a fantastic job of depicting housekeeping. The unique combination of voyeurism and drudgery that comes with cleaning the places where people live. And I would know; I was a housekeeper once. And I do mean once—for one single day. Like the titular woman’s short-lived hospitality career, mine too was ill-fated.
A gorgeous, powerful, and utterly unique book about isolation, the ties that bind (or don't bind) us to family and homeland, and the ways we so often A gorgeous, powerful, and utterly unique book about isolation, the ties that bind (or don't bind) us to family and homeland, and the ways we so often find ourselves recreating familiar emotional dynamics—even if that manifests in an abusive relationship with a talking cat.
Statovci not only perfectly captures the immigrant experience, but smartly uses symbolism to dive deep into the fear, guilt, and self-loathing of his protagonist, Bekim. I was captivated by Bekim, a chronically lonely, anxious, neurotically neat university student who feels so isolated from other people he starts to seek fellowship in animals. He's an enigma that slowly unfolds as the story progresses, and I think Statovci does a wonderful job at gradually showing us all the faces of this character, moulded as he is by the experiences of his Kosovar parents.
It's rare that a book this layered is also this readable—and a debut to boot? Pajtim Statovci is the real deal.
I take no pleasure in rating Baho! two stars. As the first Burundian novel translated into English, it broke new ground, and ultimately I'm glad I reaI take no pleasure in rating Baho! two stars. As the first Burundian novel translated into English, it broke new ground, and ultimately I'm glad I read it.
I appreciated the witty gender critique, that the men of the village wanted to string up an accused rapist not out of moral outrage but because rape bypasses the courting period and is therefore a threat to the established social order. But for such a short novella, not even 100 pages, it felt aimless. I didn't resonate with any of the characters; and if Rugero was gong for a sort of "modern myth," he lacked the folkloric cadence and charm of something like Kibogo. This one just fell flat.
Energetic, passionate, and bold, The Days of the Rainbow is a dramatisation of the 1988 Chilean national plebiscite that ended General Pinochet's fiftEnergetic, passionate, and bold, The Days of the Rainbow is a dramatisation of the 1988 Chilean national plebiscite that ended General Pinochet's fifteen-year dictatorship.
It features a relatively small cast of characters, alternating chapters between the viewpoints of Nico Santos, a high schooler whose father is "disappeared", and Adrián de Bettini, an advertising agent who is hired to lead the campaign for anti-Pinochet vote. This gives a good view of both the personal and the political, the micro and the macro—the fear and loneliness of a boy left fatherless, the pressure and paranoia of leading the opposition vote in a plebiscite called by a military dictatorship. Can a fifteen minute ad spot really overturn fifteen years of terror and oppression?
Well, you already know the ending. But what's entertaining is the journey. It's such an unlikely story, but it's true; a dictatorship falling prey to its own hubris, its own desire to legitimise itself as a democracy and dying in the end from that selfsame democratic impulse, the will of the people. There's a sense of immediacy to Skármeta's prose which is electrifying. This is at once a love letter to Santiago, a parable about the fragility and power of democracy, and a portrait of the chaotic and hopeful days that spelled the downfall of Pinochet.
If the No won...
Actually, he couldn't conceive of a future beyond the No. It felt weird to think that this was only one step on the way to something bigger. This insignificance, his rainbow, his handful of images, Alarcón's waltz, deep down, they were... everything.
The crowning moment of his life.
Let others worry about the future. He—he raised a fist and kept it in the air when an acquaintance greeted him from the other side of the line—wanted only to enjoy the present. The eternity of this precise moment.
Back when I was first starting my Global Challenge, trying to find a book for each country, I asked my boyfriend which book I should read for Ukraine,Back when I was first starting my Global Challenge, trying to find a book for each country, I asked my boyfriend which book I should read for Ukraine, considering he and his family are Ukrainian. He lent me this one. He'd never read it, but he liked Serhiy Zhadan—he listened to his music and had met him once or twice (for a fairly large country, Ukraine is also pretty small, if you get my meaning). So I took the book and proceeded to not read it for several months.
Then Ukraine was invaded. My boyfriend's family imploded; friends and relatives were in peril, suddenly a week without texts wasn't just someone forgetting to write, it was something terrifying, something so much bigger. They worked to send supplies and aid over. We went to protests and fundraisers. And, for several more months, I didn't read this book.
I don't know what finally made me open it up, but I'm glad I did. In Voroshilovgrad—the title itself referencing the Russified name of a place now called Luhansk—Serhiy Zhadan writes of a Ukraine which is at once living and dead, simultaneously dying and being resurrected. He describes broken asphalt and train tracks that go nowhere, wandering dogs, endless wheat fields and sun-bleached negatives where portraits of Lenin once hung. It feels wrong to say this is eerily prescient, presaging the now-nearly-obliterated state of many of these places in Eastern Ukraine since the war began... It feels wrong because all of this really started long before 2022 or 2014 or even 1991, and so in a way Zhadan is observing the past just as much as he is telling the future.
I've been vague about what Voroshilovgrad actually is, and it's basically a Ukrainian odyssey, a road novel where the road just keeps bringing you back to the place you were trying to leave. There is an overarching narrative, but it's very loose, and you find yourself caring less and less about it as the story moves along: the real meat here is the series of surreal episodes our main character Herman experiences. A midnight soccer match with ghosts, a wedding at a village of Stundist smugglers, a drink of cognac with a psychopathic capitalist, an auspicious birth in the middle of the steppe. It is, by turns, contemplative, hilarious, mysterious, erotic, tense, depressing, and absurd.
The writing here is superb. Really, really wonderful. Zhadan is a master of simile.
Here is how he describes taking shelter in a building during a rainstorm: "...as if we were diving into a tin cookie jar while kids happily drummed on it with sticks."
Or his description of the desolate cornfields: "...yellow cornstalks that swayed in the wind like hangers in an empty closet..."
And this lovely sentence about a man entering a house where the main character has been cooped up for a while: "There was fresh air nestled into his leather jacket, as though he had come carrying scraps of an October morning in his pockets."
Just wonderful. I should mention the translation, though. It is, in the broad strokes, magnificent—perfectly representing Zhadan's expansive, textured, visual prose—but sloppy in the details. Missing punctuation, duplicate words, and omitted phrases are common. There are a few sentences that are totally botched and garbled beyond comprehensibility. Deep Vellum is an indie publisher and a nonprofit and I respect their mission (and in fact I did buy two more books from them after I finished this) but come on guys, hire a copyeditor, please!
This book kind of sucks. I’m sure it’s very interesting to those who love philosophy and are willing to endure novels which are actually treatises witThis book kind of sucks. I’m sure it’s very interesting to those who love philosophy and are willing to endure novels which are actually treatises with flimsy characters inserted to make them easier to sell, but I found it meandering and bitter....more
...it is remarkable that at the time everything seemed so normal. Women came to pray to me for the health of their children, the king came to worship ...it is remarkable that at the time everything seemed so normal. Women came to pray to me for the health of their children, the king came to worship me, people came from all over the world to see me, and huge crowds came out to see me at Indra Jatra, yet it just seemed part of my childhood.
This slim volume contains the recollections of Rashmila Shakya, who served as Royal Kumari of Nepal for eight years as a child. Kumari is the human incarnation of the goddess Taleju Bhawani, the patron goddess of the Newar people of Nepal, and it is an ancient tradition enshrined both politically and religiously that every several years, a young Newari girl is chosen to live apart from her family and is worshiped as a living goddess. This happened to the author at four years old.
As fascinating as I found this memoir, I wish it dove deeper into certain things. I understand that Rashmila was a child when she was Kumari and so her memory and analysis of her experiences will be shallow at times, but the whole thing seemed maddeningly surface-level. This may also be a result of my unfamiliarity with Nepali culture; though Rashmila does go out of her way to explain some things, like the origins of the Kumari tradition and the workings of the Nepali school system, she makes passing remarks about things like caste and certain superstitions that I really wanted to know more about.
Moreover, I never felt like I got a good idea of Rashmila's personality. She doesn't describe her personal life or internal world very thoroughly. The language is very simple and straightforward, mostly just telling events sequentially without much analysis, and this may be a result of how this book came to be. The cover says it is "by Rashmila Shakya as told to Scott Berry," and though we get a brief afterword from Berry describing how he met Rashmila, the process of how they wrote this remains vague. Is he just a translator? How much did he editorialise, if at all? Is this an oral history laid down on paper? I don't know the answers to any of these questions. So I'm not sure at whose feet to lay my critiques.
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed learning about Kumari from the eyes of someone who lived it, and I think what I found most interesting about the tradition is the religious syncretism—the Shakya caste, from which most Kumari are chosen, is Buddhist, but Kumari is the incarnation of a Hindu goddess. So in addition to serving as a national symbol, Kumari brings together two religions and functions as a point of great pride for both. Some of the holidays and festivals Rashmila describes show a very fascinating fusion of Hinduism and Buddhism, at least in the Kathmandu Valley, that I'd love to read up on further.
This one is quite bad. It’s meandering and convoluted, not helped by an ornate translation by Charles Cotton. Montaigne moves from solitude to husbandThis one is quite bad. It’s meandering and convoluted, not helped by an ornate translation by Charles Cotton. Montaigne moves from solitude to husbandry to death to meta-philosophy with no real bridges between his underdeveloped ideas. It’s a real slog....more
This is less about cannibals than it is about barbarity, using cannibalism as a sort of prolonged analogy by which to discuss it. I would describe “OfThis is less about cannibals than it is about barbarity, using cannibalism as a sort of prolonged analogy by which to discuss it. I would describe “Of Cannibals� as a cross between Montaigne’s usual type of philosophical essay and a sort of proto-anthropological study wherein he recounts the way of life of an anonymous New World people (now known as indigenous Brazilians). Montaigne is surprisingly clear-eyed here, fairly divorced from the condescension of his day which would’ve painted these people as base savages—in describing their customs, traditions, and view of the world, he exhorts us to look hard at our own habits and social stratification, cloaked as they are in the veil of “modernity,� before we presume to judge these occasional cannibals who seem to be getting along just fine.
”We may then call these people barbarous, in respect to the rules of reason: but not in respect to ourselves, who in all sorts of barbarity exceed them.�...more
I have a soft spot for novels told from the perspective of an adult narrator looking back on the events of their childhood. I think there's a mixture I have a soft spot for novels told from the perspective of an adult narrator looking back on the events of their childhood. I think there's a mixture of wistfulness and cynicism there that can be really potent when done right. Nathacha Appanah's The Last Brother is a great example of why this microgenre works: it's a tender, poetic, quietly moving meditation on the meaning of youthful ignorance as seen through the eyes of a seventy-year-old man who has loved much and lost even more.
Raj, the narrator, lives in poverty and perpetual sickness in Mauritius, with a kind mother and abusive father who are both wracked by the deaths of their two other sons (giving Raj his titular identity within the family). The island becomes the unlikely prison for hundreds of Jews who are waylaid on their way to Palestine during the Second World War and, completely ignorant to these global events, Raj secretly befriends one of the interned Jewish children, David. It is the sort of simple, wordless, yet immensely deep bond that can only be formed during childhood.
This book is both beautiful and crushingly sad. Appanah gorgeously renders both the internal landscape of a grieving boy and the external landscape of a lush island suddenly ravaged by storms. Somehow seeing the horrors of abuse, starvation, illness, and concentration camps through the uncomprehending eyes of a child makes them all the more tragic. The story is simple—but, I think, all the better for it.
This collection gets off to a rough start, because in my opinion, the first two stories (“The Bounds of Reason� & “A Shard of Ice�) are also the worstThis collection gets off to a rough start, because in my opinion, the first two stories (“The Bounds of Reason� & “A Shard of Ice�) are also the worst. I was feeling very worried about the direction it was headed in (hence why it took me so long to finish this...) but luckily, after those two duds, all the stories that follow are incredibly engaging and well-told.
I’ve added a little mini-review of each story in my progress notes, but as a whole, I think I actually like this better than The Last Wish. That collection was much more fairytale-inspired and as such had a harder time breaking out of its shell to become something original instead of yet another collection of Grimm reimaginings. Sword of Destiny, on the other hand, really feels at home in its world, and its stories feel like fresh premises rather than slight twists on familiar concepts. The best thing it accomplishes is further characterising Geralt: he shines consistently and proves that Sapkowski has created possibly the perfect fantasy protagonist.
My favourite piece is probably “Eternal Flame,� which is much lighter in tone and content than the rest of the stories here but still thoughtful nonetheless. “A Little Sacrifice� is a close second. I find that I tend to enjoy the “one-off� stories more, that is to say the ones that don’t focus on recurring characters or problems which will reappear in future volumes, but general witchery adventures which incorporate and underscore the topics that run through all of these short stories, and the ones in The Last Wish too: destiny, modernity, humanity....more
I wish the fallen angel Arcade had a more satisfying character arc, or was even developed to the extent that characters like Maurice and Gilberte are�I wish the fallen angel Arcade had a more satisfying character arc, or was even developed to the extent that characters like Maurice and Gilberte are—though this is his story, I feel like he’s crowded out by the other characters� dramas, even tangential ones like that of Guinardon and Zephyrine (remind me why they’re here again?). I also felt like the angels� dissatisfaction with Ialdabaoth wasn’t fully examined; they claim he’s a false god but his powers seem real enough, and is him not being the creator of the world really cause to oust him for good?
Still, though, this is an interesting read, and France’s style is consistently engaging. I wish it were a bit longer; I think some added meat would do well to address my critiques, as parts of this felt rushed or even heavily edited down....more
Told with all the dreaminess of Borges and all the madness of Poe, Aura is a neat little novella that plays with concepts of time, obsession, and desiTold with all the dreaminess of Borges and all the madness of Poe, Aura is a neat little novella that plays with concepts of time, obsession, and desire. Think "The Circular Ruins" meets "The Fall of the House of Usher." The narrative is remarkably fluid and unsettling, perfectly capturing the sensation of becoming unglued, unmoored.
This bilingual edition features a facing translation—the original Spanish on the verso and Lysander Kemp's English interpretation on the recto. Kemp's translation is solid, from what I could see; any excisions he made were to keep the English and Spanish texts roughly in line on the page and I don't think any meaning was lost. The only weird thing is that in one instance he translates "tres mil" to "four thousand," but then later the original text switches, when referring to the same thing, to "cuatro mil." So it's probably a [sic] situation where Kemp was trying to rectify an error in the original Spanish. Anyway, facing translations are super cool and this is a great piece for it, as it's short and tight and easily readable in both languages, with its arresting second-person present tense.
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