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RE-VISITED (NOT FULLY RE-READ - SEE COMMENTS BELOW) DUE TO ITS LONGLISTING FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE

Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent publisher (their words) specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays �.. it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language . Their novels are (my words) distinctively and beautifully styled, with plain, deep blue covers and a "French-flap" style ....

And that serves as something of an introduction to this novel ........ distinctive, at times beautiful styled, but also very French - a winner of the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious French literary prize - but perhaps a novel less designed obviously appealing to non-French speaking literary tastes (it was shortlisted for but did not win the 2017 Man Booker International Prize).

Ostensibly the set-up of this novel is that it is set over a single night of insomnia, as Franz Ritter (an Austrian Musicologist, suffering from an unnamed, but he believes, serious illness) thinks back on his various travels and researches in the Middle East and in particular his (at least on his side) obsessive relationship with a French academic, Sarah.

In practice this book is more of a Sebald-esque meditation on the Middle East (particularly Syria, Iran and Turkey), on Orientalism, and the relationships and interactions of Westerners (archaeologists, writers, musicians, academics) with that area over the last few centuries.

Sarah’s central thesis (one which explicitly rejects Edward Said’s “Orientalism�) about this relationship is that:

What we regard as Oriental is in fact very often the repetition of a ‘western� element that itself modifies another previous ‘Oriental� element, and so on � the Orient and the Occidental never appear separately, they are always intermingled, present in each other and ..these words � Orient, Occidental - have no more heuristic value than the unreachable directions they designate.

The actual conceit of the novel is very weak � Ritter’s feverish thoughts seem to allow him to reproduce details both of his own adventures and (even more unlikely) various historical episodes in encyclopaedic (and often also tedious) delay including with reproductions of articles and documents, which are sometimes excused by Ritter apparently getting up to look at them, but which at other times are unexplained.

At times also the book turns effectively into a non-fictional book or perhaps more of some form of cultural essay or doctoral thesis � and, it has to be said, a poorly organised and at times tedious one. I found at times myself sympathising with Ritter’s own thoughts

What an atrocity to think that some people find dreaming pleasant .... It's so tiresome

And only wishing he would have followed through on an early resolution

I'll try to reduce my thoughts to silence, instead of abandoning myself to memory

However overall, I found that on a first read I was just about able to skim read the more tedious passages and instead join Ritter in abandoning myself to his memory: to the overall impressions he creates both of the cities in which he stays (Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra, Tehran, Istanbul, Vienna); to the complexities and depths of his relationship with Sarah (an aspect which grows in strength as the book progresses and particularly as we understand the ambiguities of Sarah’s reciprocal feelings).

On a second read - I realised that this is a book to be dipped into, to lose oneself in one of Franz's digressions for 15 minutes just before sleeping makes a wonderful digression ..... but trying to read it conventionally and serially is challenging (despite its conceit of it taking place over a single night). Perhaps in this way the novel mirrors a night of insomnia and fever, drifting between chains of association.

The book increases in power due to its topicality � much of Ritter and Sarah’s early travels are in areas of Syria which Ritter is now aware are at the heart of the Syrian civil war and ISIS’s atrocities and this adds added urgency to the attempts to really understand the Orient.

Sarah talked to me about her thesis …�. , Hedayat, Schwarzenbach, her beloved characters; about those mirrors between East and East that she wanted to break, she said by making the promenade continue. Bring to light the rhizomes of that common construction of modernity. Show that “Orientals� were not excluded from it, but that, quite the contrary, they were often the inspiration behind it, the initiators, the active participants, to show that in the end Said’s theories had become, despite themselves, one of the most subtle instruments of domination there are: the question was not whether Said was right or wrong in his vision of Orientalism; the problem was the breach, the ontological fissure his readers had allowed between a dominating West and a dominated East, a breach that by opening up a well beyond colonial studies, contributed to the realisation of the model it created, that completed a posteriori the scenario of domination which Said’s thinking meant to oppose. Whereas history could be read in an entirely different way, she said, written in an entirely different way, in sharing and continuity. She spoke at length on the postcolonial holy trinity � Said, Bhabha, Spivak; on the question of imperialism, of difference, of the 21st-century, when, facing violence, we needed more than ever to rid ourselves of the absolute otherness of Islam and to admit not only the terrifying violence of colonialism but also all that Europe owed to the Orient � the impossibility of separating from each other, the necessity of changing our perspective. We had to find, she said, beyond the stupid repentance of some or the colonial nostalgia of others, a new vision that includes the other or the self. On both sides.

Overall a flawed novel but an important and, if approached in the correct way, ultimately enjoyable one.