The Prague Cemetery – Umberto Eco - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 - IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2013

Where do you start when attempting a review of a novel by a leading member of the semiotics family, a writer of well-studied academic texts and a person who weaves history and medieval studies into his works?

You probably don’t start anywhere as anything you’d write would pale in insignificance against his master hand. Umberto Eco’s latest novel is no different from the ones that came before, you actually feel dumb when reading it as how could a single human mind know so much?

“The Prague Cemetery” is set in Nineteenth Century Europe and is introduced by someone who refers to one of the upcoming characters as the narrator, we have comments on what the reader should be doing, one (or is it two?) people writing the diary we are reading and slowly revealing the rise of anti-Semitism, all through conspiracies and forgeries across various countries and major historical events.

Let us imagine conspirators who come from every part of the world and represent the tentacles of their sect spread throughout every country. Let us assemble them together in a forest clearing, a cave, a castle, a cemetery or a crypt, provided it is reasonably dark. Let us get one of them to pronounce a discourse which clearly sets out the plan, and the intention to conquer the world….I have known many people who feared the conspiracy of some hidden enemy – for my grandfather it was the Jews, for the Jesuits it was the Masons, for my Garibaldian father it was the Jesuits, for the kings of half of Europe it was the Carbonari, for my Mazzinian, companions it was the king backed by the clergy, for the police throughout half the world it was the Bavarian Illuminati, and so forth. Who knows how many other people in this world still think they are being threatened by some conspiracy.

Did anybody understand that? Whilst confusing and challenging, the writing is superb, and there are great passages where you become lost in the structure:

Through his years in Turin, his experience in Sicily and his first years in the most disreputable backstreets of Paris, he had gained sufficient experience to recognise the born criminal. He did not share the views which had begun to circulate at the time that all criminals were supposed to be runtish, or hunchbacked, or hare-lipped or scrofulous or, as the celebrated Vidocq had suggested (and Vidocq knew a thing or two about criminals, not least because he was one himself), were all bow-legged. But they certainly presented many characteristics typical of the coloured races, such as lack of body hair, small cranial capacity, receding forehead, well developed chest, highly pronounced protruding jaw and cheekbones, squint-eyes, swarthy complexion, thick curly hair, large ears, uneven teeth, as well as emotional indifference, exaggerated passion for carnal pleasures and for wine, lack of sensitivity to pain, laziness, impulsiveness, improvidence, great vanity, passion for gambling and superstition.

There are great engraved artworks scattered throughout making it a pleasurable book to hold, feel and experience, but all up I made it 214 pages in (from a possible 437) when I realised that my reading had slowed and although enjoying the style and the plot, it was also becoming too much hard work. So back to the bookshelf it went.

So there you have it, a miniature review (if one at all) and novel number 2 for the year that I didn’t complete. I’m now going to tackle the 2012 Man Booker Prize long list – leaving the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize to languish for another couple of months.

Alice - Judith Hermann - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 - IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2013

We've all read numerous novels that deal with the subject of death, however as we know most of them present it in a nostalgic form or a reflection on one’s life or the hardship facing those dealing with the inevitable. It is rare to come across one that treats the subject as a common thread throughout, the ways we deal with it, the feelings, the avoidance of the topic.

Enter “Alice”, more a collection of five short stories than a novel - the sections are titled “Misha”, “Conrad”, “Richard”, Malte” and “Raymond”. Each story has Alice as the linking character and each story’s title being the name of the person who dies. Interestingly all male characters!

This is a bleak, dark, but at the same time enlightening (if that is possible) work. Death is presented as it would generally occur, visiting a person in hospital who is dying from cancer, helping a friend who is looking after a housebound invalid though their last days, out and about and talking one day, gone the next or even suicide. All of these subjects get a clinical viewing from Judith Hermann.

If you like your novels to be embellished with enough peripherals to take your mind away from the reality of death, then this one probably isn’t for you. Even though it does contain some quite vivid descriptions and passages of routine life (drinking a beer, walking through the park, stacking a dishwasher) those sections specifically target the futility of the characters involved and their inability to address the elephant in the room – the dying person.

They brushed their teeth. Standing next to each other at the sink on a blue towelling mat, in front of a mirror that had gold and silver shells glued to its frame. They saw each other in the mirror, their different faces.

Misha would like this, Alice thought, to see us like this. He’d be very happy, he’d say, Well, you see? – He knows. He’s got to know.

Good night, Alice said. Sleep well, Maja.

Yes, Maja said, good night. You sleep well, too, Alice.

Of course the title character Alice is the lone common thread, along with various descriptions of insects (which I must admit I didn’t get), and her relationship with each of the dying, or dead, characters is also a common theme. To such an extent I did wonder if the fifth story would link the whole together. No spoiler though so I won’t be telling you if that happens or not.

We’ve set a date for the funeral. In three weeks.

And what if Richard hasn’t died by then, Alice asked.

Oh, by then he’ll have managed that, Margaret said.

They’d discussed the subject two weeks ago; Margaret and Richard had talked about it in front of Alice. Alice has listened. At first she thought it was indecent, unseemly, to be talking with Richard about his own funeral, but instead it turned out to be the natural thing to do. Not unseemly. Richard had said he wanted his friends to carry his coffin, not the gravediggers. No sermon by a minister, no quotations. If the weather’s good, that would please him. Margaret had taken notes on the stationery pad: Whom to call, who should be there, no one should stay away. The food: sandwiches with plum jam, meatballs, and beer.

As you can see from the two short quotes above, this is a stark, tight and fact driven story, to the extent that quotation marks are not used. I could say this is “very Germanic in style” but I haven’t read anywhere near enough German literature to make such a comment. This is an intriguing look at a taboo subject, one that each and every one of us will go through, being treated in a clinical and open manner. For that alone it has to be commended. All up though I much preferred the two previous novels I have read from the same shortlist, “From The Mouth Of The Whale” and “New Finnish Grammar”, however this is still a solid entry on what is turning out to be a very enjoyable reading shortlist. 

From The Mouth Of The Whale - Sjon - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012

One of my all-time favourite Academy Award moments was watching Bjork turn up to perform the award nominated song “I’ve Seen It All” in that famous swan dress - which was apparently auctioned for the charity Oxfam a few years ago. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about you can watch the video of her performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnEJUio2DiE&feature=related . The point of this (besides Bjork being Icelandic of course), is that the song was co-written by Sjon, whose second novel “From The Mouth Of The Whale” was the first from the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist that I tackled. And what an outstanding novel this was.

Even though I know not a word of Icelandic I am pretty confident in announcing a huge “hats off” to Victoria Cribb for an outstanding effort with her translation. The challenge of bringing a tale to life with relentless mid 1600’s references and thoughts is more than admirable.

Our journey opens with a “Prelude” where a person is relaying a tale of bringing home a wild boar with tusks of steel, which had wreaked havoc on the lands of the north. This boar “was without doubt the most savage brute the north had ever snorted from its icy nostril”. Even more so than the wolf that wept tears of milk, the one-footed water hare, the bull elk with the golden pizzle and the queen of the shag-haired trout. He was bringing home the carcass to prove to his father which of his sons laboured hardest to keep the world in check (his brother “never stirred from the all-encompassing paternal abode where they occupied themselves with administrative business”). As our writer gets closer to home he senses unrest and eventually arriving home his father reveals the cause of concern, it is resting in his hand:

Yes, there you lay in His hand, with your knees tucked under your chin, breathing so fast and so feebly that you quivered like the pectoral fin of a minnow. Our Father rested His fingertip against your spine and tilted His hand carefully so that you uncurled and rolled over on to your back. I stepped forward to take a better look at you. You scratched your nose with your curled fist, sneezed, oh so sweetly, and fixed on me those egotistical eyes – mouth agape. And I saw that this mouth would never be satisfied, that its teeth would never stop grinding, that its tongue would never tire of being bathed in the life-blood of other living creatures. Then your lips moved. You tried to say your first word, and that word was: ‘I’.

Our writer is of course Lucifer, and his Father (God) is holding Adam (humanity) in his palm. We then move into four parts of the main novel, Autumn Equinox 1635, Summer Solstice 1636, Winter Solstice 1637 and Spring Equinox 1639 with our narrator Jonas telling his tale from a bleak rock off the coast of Iceland where he has been exiled. A self-taught man of knowledge who is shamed by the general populace even though he can cure female ills, defeat ghosts and explain the mysterious unicorn horns in regal collections. Of course, his learning is his downfall, and you don't have to be Einstein to figure out the Jonas and whale connection.

The novel covers Jonas’ journey of how he came to this barren place, featuring intermittent notes from his journals (of herbs, sea creatures and more) as well as the truly lyrical stories of his past:

Yes, sandpiper, let us not deceive ourselves about the rung we occupy on the ladder of human society…Although you spread your wet wings and capture with them the far-travelled sunbeam, and I can hold up my thumb and forefinger till the moon is pinched between the tips like a pearl, neither of us will be able to hold on to our lucky catch.

My grandfather used to make all the paupers who boarded with him contribute something towards their keep…Much of this was of limited value as the wretched people had small aptitude for anything, but every little counts in a large household; the cat may seem inclined to do nothing but lick her fur but we would be overrun by mice if we hanged her for her vanity.

I’d normally not steal words from the one sentence blurb on the front cover, but a number of them do cover it so well. This is another novel that I am honoured to have stumbled across this year as the lyricism of the prose, the tragic tale and the meaning in almost every sentence led me on a hallucinatory tour into the superstitious minds of Iceland in the 17^th century. I am grateful to “The Independent” for sponsoring such an award (this novel did not win the main prize!) and for giving me the opportunity to discover a new writer and translator of obviously enormous talent.