Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014 - The Shadow Jury announces the winner

In 2014, for the third year in a row, Chairman Stu gathered together a group of brave bloggers to tackle the task of shadowing the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.  It's not a task for the faint of heart - in addition to having to second-guess the strange decisions of the 'real' panel, the foolhardy volunteers undertook a voyage around the literary world, all in a matter of months...

On our journey around the globe, we started off by eavesdropping on some private conversations in Madrid, before narrowly avoiding trouble with the locals in Naples.  A quick flight northwards, and we were in Iceland, traipsing over the snowy mountains and driving around the iconic ring road - with a child in tow.  Then it was time to head south to Sweden and Norway, where we had a few drinks (and a lot of soul searching) with a man who tended to talk about himself a lot.

Next, it was off to Germany, where we almost had mussels for dinner, before spending some time with an unusual family on the other side of the wall.  After another brief bite to eat in Poland, we headed eastwards to reminisce with some old friends in Russia - unfortunately, the weather wasn't getting any better.

We finally left the snow and ice behind, only to be welcomed in Baghdad by guns and bombs.  Nevertheless, we stayed there long enough to learn a little about the customs involved in washing the dead, and by the time we got to Jerusalem, we were starting to have a bit of an identity crisis...

Still, we pressed on, taking a watery route through China to avoid the keen eye of the family planning officials, finally making it across the sea to Japan.  Having arrived in Tokyo just in time to witness a series of bizarre 'accidents', we rounded off the trip by going for a drink (or twelve) at a local bar with a strangely well-matched couple - and then it was time to come home :)

Of course, there was a method to all this madness, as our journey helped us to eliminate all the pretenders and identify this year's cream of the crop.  And the end result?  This year's winner of the Shadow Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is:

The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

(translated by Philip Roughton, published by MacLehose Press)

This was a very popular (and almost unanimous) winner, a novel which stood out amongst a great collection of books.  We all loved the beautiful, poetic prose, and the developing relationship between the two main characters - the taciturn giant, Jens, and the curious, talkative boy - was excellently written.  Well done to all involved with the book - writer, translator, publisher and everyone else :)

Some final thoughts to leave you with...

- Our six judges read a total of 83 books (an average of almost fourteen per person), and ten of the books were read and reviewed by all six of us.

- This was our third year of shadowing the prize and the third time in a row that we've chosen a different winner to the 'experts'.

- After the 2012 Shadow Winner (Sjón's From the Mouth of the Whale), that makes it two wins out of three for Iceland - Til hamingju!

- There is something new about this year's verdict - it's the first time we've chosen a winner which didn't even make the 'real' shortlist...

Stu, Tony, Jacqui, David, Bellezza and Tony would like to thank everyone out there for all their interest and support over the past few months - rest assured we're keen to do it all over again next year :) 

Guest Post by Jacqui Patience - The Corpse Washer - Sinan Antoon (translated from the Arabic by the author) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

One of the Shadow Jury for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Jacqui Patience, does not have her own blog. SHe has been guest writing on other judges blogs and today she is reviewing "The Corpse Washer" here on Messy Booker. My own review can be found here. Please welcome Jacqui to my blog and hopefully she can guest post here in the future.

The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon

Translated from the Arabic by the author

I’ve been reading this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist (along with a group of book bloggers chaired by Stu) and Tony has kindly invited me to share my thoughts on one of the longlisted titles.

The Corpse Washer is narrated by Jawad, the youngest son from a Shi'ite family living in Baghdad. Jawad’s father (like his father before him) washes and shrouds corpses prior to burial and he expects his youngest son to learn this time-honoured ritual in order to continue the family’s calling. At an early stage in the novel, we follow the young Jawad as his father takes him to the mghaysil (washhouse) for the first time to learn the basics of the trade. Jawad’s first task is to observe his father and Hammoudy (his father’s assistant) as they attend to the ritual of cleansing and shrouding bodies. In an extended section covering several pages, Antoon describes Jawad’s introduction to the mghaysil with grace and humanity:

It was a bit smaller than I had imagined it. The scents of lotus and camphor wafted through the air, and I felt the humidity seeping into my skin. He closed the door behind us and went inside ahead of me. The first object that struck my eyes after we crossed the hallway and entered the main room was the marble bench on which the dead were washed. Its northern part, where their heads would rest, was slightly elevated so that the water could flow down. The mghaysil was more than six decades old, and many generations of our family had worked in it, including my grandfather, who had died before I was born. (pgs. 14-15)

As the young Jawad grows up, he becomes reluctant to continue the family’s vocation. He has a talent for art, aspires to be an artist and chooses instead to study at Baghdad’s Academy of Fine Arts. But events in Baghdad intervene and impinge on his dreams; years of economic sanctions under Saddam Hussein’s regime, followed by the American invasion and occupation of Iraq take their toll:

After weeks of bombing we woke up one morning to find the sky pitch black. The smoke from the torched oil wells in Kuwait had obliterated the sky. Black rain fell afterward, colouring everything with soot as if forecasting what would befall us later. (pg. 61)

Jawad feels trapped in a place where ‘even the statues are too terrified to sleep at night lest they wake up as ruins’. His father dies (along with his brother who is killed in the Iran-Iraq war) and it becomes virtually impossible for him to find alternative work, or to leave Iraq for the matter. As the casualties of the Iraq War continue to mount, Jawad returns to the mghaysil to maintain the ritual of washing and shrouding. Death is a dominant presence in the narrative, and our protagonist seems unable to escape its shadow:

Death is not content with what it takes from me in my waking hours, it insists on haunting me even in my sleep. Isn’t it enough that I toil all day tending to its eternal guests, preparing them to sleep in its lap? Is death punishing me because I thought I could escape its clutches? If my father were still alive he would mock my silly thoughts. He would dismiss all this as infantile, unbecoming to a man. Didn’t he spend a lifetime doing his job day after day, never once complaining of death? But death back then was timid and more measured than today. (pg. 3)

Antoon augments this effect by showing us how a combination of mind-numbing insomnia and horrific nightmares haunt Jawad by night. These distressing dreams punctuate the narrative, and in this example he’s visited by and old man with long white hair and a long white beard - once again, death is a recurring theme:

Wake up, Jawad, and write down all the names! I think it very odd that he knows my name. I look at his eyes. They are a strange sky-blue colour, set deep into his eye sockets. His face is laced with wrinkles as if he were hundreds of years old. I ask him flatly: Who are you? What names? He smiles: You don’t recognise me? Get a pen and paper and write down all the names. Don’t forget a single name. They are the names of those whose souls I will pluck tomorrow and whose bodies I will leave for you to purify. (pg. 26)

The Corpse Washer is a powerful and very moving book. The narrative’s timeline moves backwards and forwards as Antoon shows us snapshots of key moments in Jawad’s life, almost like a series of vignettes. It’s a story of a young man’s choices in life, his dreams and ambitions and his family’s expectations. And it gives us an insight into the pain and sorrow of living with the inevitable death and destruction that come with war.

The Corpse Washer certainly deserves its place in the IFFP longlist; I particularly liked Antoon’s portrayal of Jawad’s relationship with his father and the scenes set in the mghaysil (which has the calm atmosphere of a haven within the tumultuous city). As with many of the books I’ve read this year, it took me to a different place, another world.

The Corpse Washer is published in the UK by Yale University Press. 

Revenge - Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

To be honest I really don’t know how to start this review, or actually how to write this review. I toyed with the idea of a long homage to Karl Ove Knausgaard and writing a diatribe about the importance of writing a decent review, interspersed with coffee and cigarette breaks as I contemplate the style. I thought the raw emotional style would suit, then I decided that actually that would fit better with an emotive work.

I toyed with comparisons to Ogawa’s “The Diving Pool”, her dark, bleak musings on human frailties, death, decay, the human form and its fragile state. Then I realised this is a stand-alone work and I’m judging it on its contribution to this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize list. I didn’t compare Karl Ove Knausgaard to volume one, I didn’t compare Jon Kalman Stefansson’s “The Sorrow of Angels” to “Heaven and Hell” and their recent works are part of a larger release (both being part two of longer bodies of work). So if I didn’t do that why on earth should I compare Ogawa’s work to an earlier release of hers, one which isn’t even related?

Does this introduction get me any further in the quest to review Ogawa’s latest work? Not at all, should I have another cup of coffee, contemplate it and start again?

I know the reason for my struggle, it lies in the fact that I wasn’t overly blown away by the eleven stories in this collection. That’s not to say I don’t think it is a good work, I just think they were formulaic. Clever? Yes. Memorable? Maybe. Enjoyable? Sort of. Worthy of inclusion on the shortlist for the Prize? In my opinion, no. You watch it take out the main gong now I’ve said that.

Ogawa gives us eleven interconnected tales. Gothic in style and content. Each story contains references to decay (generally fruit), whether it be the strawberries on a cake, kiwi fruit, ageing bodies, decrepit abandoned buildings. Each story contains references to the weather – in some it is stifling hot, others it snows – so we know these interconnected stories happen over all seasons, but the mystical quality alludes to them happening concurrently. Each story is a first person narration, and almost a-sexual, a couple of times I found myself startled that the narrator was in fact male (or vice versa) sometime into the story. And of course each story contains some sort of macabre death, carrots that grow like the form of human hands and we discover there’s a body in the garden which has had the hands hacked off, people who are living with their heart outside of their ribcage are done away with in a hospital, lovers feuds, children – why list them all? There’s eleven.

This is where I thought this was a lesser work, it is as though Ogawa had a set of cards, each with a theme (death, decay, weather etc.) wrote up eleven different approaches, shuffled them and wrote the stories, sure to include each theme and at least one reference to another story. Even the mundane becomes subjects for her musings:

Now, you may be wondering why I get so excited. You may be thinking that a bag is just a thing in which you put other things. And you’re right, of course. But that’s what makes them so extraordinary. A bag has no intentions or desires of its own, it embraces every object that we ask it to hold. You trust the bag, and it, in return, trusts you. To me, a bag is patience; a bag is profound discretion.

Please don’t take my views as being critical of this work, it is a fine collection of Edgar Allan Poe (esque) style works, with the macabre always bubbling in the background of each story. A museum of torture implements? But we have the human frailties are uncertainties all bubbling along too:

As I walked, I recalled, one by one, all the times I had ever been rejected. This process had become something of a ritual with me since my husband’s affair had started. I would unearth memories, beginning in childhood, of places and occasions when someone had hurt me. In that way, I believed, I would see that my pain was due not only to my husband but to the cruelty of countless others besides. I found it somewhat comforting to think that his coldness was in no way special or unique.

If you haven’t read anything by Ogawa before this would be a nice introduction to her mysterious world of evil. Personally I thought the longer form of three stories taking up 55 pages each in “The Diving Pool” allowed deeper exploration of the human frailties, the slow mood of decay and death. The shorter works seeming pressed to put all those themes onto the page.

This wasn’t in my top six books from the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize long list for the above reasons. Not saying this is a bad work, or one that is flawed, I just thought she has written better material.

The Mussel Feast - Birgit Vanderbeke (translated by Jamie Bulloch) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

Pardon my ignorance here, but how can a “modern German classic” one that “won the most prestigious German-language literature award, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize”, that was first published in 1990 and “has not been out of print since”, one that has “been translated into all major European languages”, take 23 years before somebody picks it up, translates it into English and releases it in Britain? What is going on here?  Surely such honoured works don’t just slip into oblivion for English readers? It does make you think, “How many untranslated masterpieces are sitting out there?” I could go into the merits of the Best Translated Book Award that doesn’t restrict their winner to being “alive” but may be another time. I should simply thank the independent publisher Peirene Press for bringing this work to life in English. www.peirenepress.com

The 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize features a number of short works and “The Mussel Feast” is yet another. Weighing in at 105 pages and 13 paragraphs (yes that is not a typo the book has thirteen paragraphs) it is a work that you feel you could knock over simply in one sitting.

Our story starts with our young (teenage?) narrator, via a monologue, explaining the process of cleaning mussels, because they’re having a feast, a celebration for their father as he’s about to return from a business trip. “We would always have mussels to celebrate a special occasion” but her and her mother don’t “care for them much”. On the surface a simple feast preparation for a normal family (there is a brother) about to celebrate the father’s potential promotion and his home-coming. Just like a mussel, strong, solid, shiny on the outside, resilient.

But soon our monologue reveals the true darkness of the family, the mussels begin to open. We are slowly led into the bleak world of a “normal family” that has moved from the East and settled in West Berlin. Even the pot that contains the mussel feast has a tale. As our night unfolds, and the ritual hour of the home-coming passes and hours tick away we slowly peel back the layers of this “proper family”:

We no longer liked being a proper family, as he called it. In truth we didn’t see ourselves as a proper family. Everything in our lives revolved around us having to behave as if we were a proper family, as my father pictured a family to be because he hadn’t had one himself and so didn’t know what a proper family was, although he’d developed the most detailed notions of what one was like; and while he sat in his office we played at being this, even though we’d far rather have let our hair down than be a proper family.

As the monologue continues we are drawn further into the horrors of this family unit, the omnipotent father has still not arrived but their uncomfortableness of him being all knowing, all seeing restricts their openness. As the hours tick by the special Spatlese starts to take effect and the revelations speed up, the honesty also opens up and the horrors become more revealing. Time seems to speed up too. The fully open mussels are now there for all to see, in all their resplendent colour, but because of the time, they’re ruined.

This is a moving and bleak tale of emotional and domestic violence, of manipulation and creation, a story where I had to double take and think…“have I ever said anything like that”? Dad’s come home from a long hard day, he just needs a bit of a rest…..

My father talked to my mother about his week at the office, whereas my mother didn’t talk to my father about her week at school, because the office was important and worth more than school.

The impressions that parents behaviour, actions and words makes on young children is all to the fore here, simple acts like discussing the next holiday are shown to be power struggles and with a domineering father in charge there is only going to be one outcome.

I don’t want to reveal too much of the family interactions and the opening up as the hours tick by and there is no father at the feast, I want to leave that startling unravelling to you as a potential reader. But I dare you to not be moved by the innocence, the acceptance of abnormal behaviour, and the reluctance to address it.

A book written just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, it shows the relentless ambition of the Eastern bloc settlers, their shame of their past, their need to create a “proper family”, what it means to keep up appearances at all costs, the relentless pursuit of promotion and the emotional and physical neglect that comes as baggage. A very moving book indeed.

Another amazing work that’s appeared on the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize long list (and now on both the Shadow Jury and the official shortlist) this is a book that every parent should read, even if it makes you simply think about the impact your day to day interactions with each other has on the children.

The Sorrow Of Angels - Jon Kalman Stefansson (translated by Philip Roughton) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

As per my usual habit, I try not to read others reviews of books before I post my thoughts. I’d rather not be distracted by their views, comments or relationship with a work. Of course this can be to me detriment as at times I completely miss some of the subtle nuances, themes, sub-plots and more. So please bear with me if I’ve completely misread this novel and other (more scholarly types) have already pointed out a better version of my take on this book.

“The Sorrow of Angels” is Jon Kalman Stefansson’s second work in a trilogy, following on from “Heaven and Hell” and is a simple tale of “the boy” following Jens the postman on a journey to deliver the mail, they are “on their way to a place that constantly seems to be retreating.” Jens “flourishes nowhere but far from human habitation; far from life, in fact”, a man who broods and prefers silence. “The boy” lives in the world of words, poetry and the power of speech, "a person who holds a pen and paper has the possibility to change the world".

‘The Sorrow of Angels’ is simply angels tears which manifest as snow, snow storms, blizzards, purity, treacherous ravines, glaciers, iced tracks, cold, raging icy seas and more, and besides the boy and the postman the other main character here is the snow…the sorrow of the angels. This is a beautiful book, as delicate as a snowflake but also as treacherous, it contains the mysteries of humankind. Up numerous mountains, their journey is an arduous one. Am I right in assuming this is an Icelandic “Purgatorio” (Dante’s second work in “The Divine Comedy”)? Our two characters are travelling through the seven levels of suffering and spiritual growth? The work does have the purgatory feel, where our characters are neither in hell nor heaven, the chorus is the dead, they are led by ghosts but to their safety? 

At 300 pages plus a journey of two characters up mountains and through constant snow storms, on the surface seems like an arduous journey for the reader. There are fleeting visits to outposts, where people have shackled down for the winter, and the breaks in their journey to defrost and drink coffee (and occasionally talk of poetry, for the boy that is) are the parts where their deeper human qualities are slowly peeled back. But as soon as you’ve settled into a small, warm shack in the wilds of Iceland you’re picked up and hauled out into the raging snowstorms once again, as Jens continues his long journey to deliver the mail.

My review would seem as though this is a difficult work, but it is not, it a wonder to savour, a standout of writing and style that drags you into the territory, a world where every step can reveal a gem, for example three separate short quotes:

Yes yes, never underestimate humankind, there's extraordinarily little that it can't ruin

What is responsibility; to help others so much that it damages one's own life? But if you don't take the step towards another, your days will ring hollow. Life is only easy for the unethical; they do quite well and live in big houses.

Of what other use is poetry unless it has the power to change fate? There are books that entertain you but don’t stir your deepest thoughts. Then there are others that cause you to question, that give you hope, broaden the world and possibly introduce you to precipices. Some books are essential, others diversions.

A novel that lingers between Heaven and Hell, death and living, that laments on the dead, the missing, the holes left behind. This is a deep and all consuming work.

Death brings no contentment: if such a thing exists, you’ll find it in life. Yet there’s nothing as underestimated as life itself. You curse Mondays, rainstorms, your neighbours; you curse Tuesdays, work, the winter, but all of this will disappear in a single second. The plenitude of life will turn to nothing, to be replaced by the poverty of death. Awake and asleep, you think about the little things that lie far from the essence. How long does a person live, after all; how many moments does one have that are pure, how often does one live like electricity and light up the sky? The bird sings, the earthworm turns in the earth so that life doesn’t suffocate, but you curse Mondays, you curse Tuesdays, your opportunities decrease and the silver within you becomes stained.

SPOLIER ALERT (if you’ve read Dante’s Purgatorio, the correlation I’ve put below covers a very very broad sketch of this novel but it may detract from the plot it contains, so be warned).

Here’s my take on this being the Icelandic version of Dante’s purgatory:

Introduction – We have Jens and the boy meeting at the village, where the boy reads Hamlet and Othello to the blind sea captain. (Dante and Virgil head out to the base of the Mountain of Purgatory)

Ante-Purgatory – Jens and the boy row around the mountain of Kirkjufjall to Vetrastrond (Dante and Virgil meet a pagan Cato on the shores of Purgatory)

The Proud – Our heroes meet a farmer, his wife, three children and a cow

The Envious – They meet Jonas the Postmaster of Vetrastrond (a superior of Jens)

The Wrathful – Jens and the boy traverse the mountain with a mare simply called “The Grey” potentially falling off a precipice

The Slothful – They meet a farmer who wipes sleep from his eyes “you’re supposed to go there, and he points due north, as showing them the way to Hell.”

The covetous – The reach Reverend Kjartan (need I say more)

The gluttonous – They come across a family who feeds them seabirds, coffee, herbed prridge and more coffee and are asked to transport a coffin to the nearest consecrated ground “a dead woman who smells like smoked lamb and the spirit of Christmas”

The lustful – Their final mountain where they finally talk of love, of what is right, what Jens needs to do.

Will they “defeat the dark storm inside” them? Will the make it to the summit of humanity? The earthly paradise?

A masterful work, one that can describe a snow storm in numerous ways, but a novel that delves into the depths of humanity, of life, of afterlife and so much more. An absolute revelation for me, another Icelandic classic. Can’t wait for book three – Paradiso?

Brief Loves That Live Forever - Andrei Makine (translated by Geoffrey Strachan) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

The last two Russian novels I have read, “Double Negative” by Ivan Vladislavic and “Captain of the Steppe” by Oleg Pavlov were both heavy on the metaphor, bleak, stark novels that spoke of gulags, highlighted the exploitation of human rights and delved into the machinations of totalitarianism and the associated regime. Therefore I must admit I approached Andrei Makine’s “Brief Loves That Live Forever” with trepidation. Would I be presented with yet another stark, bleak, heavy novel that almost transports you to a gulag with no hope of escape?

I was in for a massive surprise, a refreshing and poetic journey through the communist machine.

The fatal mistake we make is looking for a paradise that endures. Seeking pleasures that do not grow stale, lasting attachments, embraces with the vigour of lianas: the tree dies but their enveloping tracery continues verdant. This obsession with what lasts causes us to overlook many a fleeting paradise, the only kind we can aspire to in the course of our lightning journey through this vale of tears. These often make their dazzling appearance in places so humble and ephemeral that we refuse to linger there. We prefer to fashion our dreams from the granite blocks of whole decades. We believe we are destined to live as long as statues.

This is a complex and beautiful work, we follow our first person narrator from his post World War 2 life in an orphanage through to old age as he reflects on those brief moments where he has experienced “love” the magical times where the mundane and the structured is lost, if even for a fleeting moment, those times he cherishes forever.

The status of free lovers was on a par with that of vagabonds, thieves, dissidents. Which was mot mistaken: love is in essence subversive. Totalitarianism, even in the mild form ou generation knew, dreaded the spectacle of two beings embracing and escaping its control. It was less the prudishness of a moral order that the nervous tic of a secret police, refusing to admit that a tiny part of existence can lay claim to its personal mystery. A hotel room became a dangerous place: the laws of the totalitarian world were flouted there by the pleasure two people gave one another, with scant regard for the decisions of the latest Party Congress.

Throughout this novel we have the history of Communism in decay and the associated musings on the charades and corruption, however the escape from this world through memories, and cherished memories of love at that, is the beautiful theme throughout. To use a young boy trapped under a May Day parade structure as a metaphor for the façade is one example of how masterful writers can turn bleak subjects into poetic journeys:

My terror was so profound that, within this prison-like captivity, I must have glimpsed a more immense reality concerning the country I lived in, whose political character I was just beginning to grasp, thanks to snatches of conversation intercepted here and there…Much later the memory of this metallic straightjacket would make me think of my compatriots’ despair in the face of ubiquitous censorship and police control and, above all, the impossibility of leaving the country, breaking through the armature of the Iron Curtain. All across that vast territory the same grandstands, the same slogans from loudspeakers, the same leaders’ portraits. And beneath all the terraces, identical steel traps with no way out. I was not yet familiar with the concept of a “totalitarian regime”. But the intimate sensation of what could be experienced in one took hold of me at that moment, in the chill bowels of that symbolic structure…

Andrei Makine even though being born in Siberia, writes in French and this may have some influence over the fact that I just adore his style. A previous winner of the Prix Goncourt (for “Le Testament Francais” ) and with works translated into over 40 languages he is definitely a writer I would like to savour more.

The reflections of the small moments in our lives that only become significant once they’re gone, the endurance of simple beauty or observing someone touched by love, the realms and depths we will travel for love are all rolled up here. But not in a mystical manner like some novels can present the subject but more as a mirror from an old man looing at the momentous occasions throughout his life.

One of my favourites from the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Long List, a revelation and an absolute pleasure in being able to transport myself to the world of love under strict control…

“Love…” an incredulous voice murmured within me. Everything was provided for in the ideal society: enthusiastic work by the masses, incredible advances in science and technology, the conquest of space, taking man into unknown galaxies, material abundance and rational consumption, linked to radical changes of attitude. Everything, absolutely everything! Except….

Ten - Andrej Longo (translated by Howard Curtis) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

Next up for review is another collection of short stories on the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize long list. This time we head to Milan in Italy for the seedier side of Naples. And a short review for a short collection of short stories.

Andrej Longo’s collection is (of course) ten short stories each loosely based on one of the ten commandments. The first being “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me”, is where we first meet the “Mafia” boss Giggino Mezzanotte and understand the influence he has over the City:

And from out of the dark comes Giggino Mezzanotte. All dressed up and smiling away. With his polished shoes and his jacket thrown over his arm. Along with two half-naked women, and bodyguards like mountains.

He puts his hand on my elbow, calm as anything.

‘Everything OK, son?’ he says.

The guy with the mirrored glasses puts his knife in his pocket. His two friends do the same. Without a word they go back inside the club.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” is the story of a failed tenor singer who let the high and fast life take control and his cocaine habits forced him to cross the bosses. Of course there are dramatic consequences. “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” covers the lonely life of a woman who only sees her partner on Tuesday’s, due to his long working hours. “Honour thy father and thy mother” is a heart wrenching tale of the youngest son dealing with an invalid parent.

“Thou shalt not kill” is a father’s lament over the damaged relationship he has with his young seven year old son:

I don’t know how much a seven-year-old really understands. Je nodded and gave me a big hug. And as he was hugging me, with his heart beating fast inside his chest, I could feel the cold gun pressing into my thighs, and I realise I couldn’t do anything more for him. My one hope was that he never became like me. My only hope.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery” is a young girls horrific tale of her relationship with her father, “Thou shalt not steal” a confession by a young boy who can not talk to his friends about a crime he has committed. “Thou shalt not bear false witness” a stolen Mercedes, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife” the story of a young bride to be on the morning of her wedding and finally “”thy shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbour’s” where three young hooligans steal a car and then pay the consequences.

As you can probably gather, the ten stories are interlinked with the seedy side of Milan being the flow throughout. Short, sharp prose that is easy to read, this is a collection that can be read in a single sitting. At 150 pages and with large spacing and short paragraphs this is a brief encounter with Andrej Longo’s work. All of the stories are tight and I like the flow of connections by styling them to come from various angles (parent, child, hoodlum, victim etc.). Personally I don’t think it will be a collection that I’ll recall reading in 12 months time, and one of the usual criticisms I feel for the shorter genre is that I just start to engage with a character and they’re gone, and in this case that happened all too frequently. Overall an enjoyable but light read, nothing that offended me, but a collection  I feel won’t make the short list just given the strength of other works this year.

The Iraqi Christ - Hassan Blasim (translated by Jonathan Wright) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

Could you possibly imagine Gabriel Garcia Marquez being in Iraq? The magic realism spun into stories containing assassination attempts, decrepit hospitals, insurgents kidnapped and other Iraqi atrocities.

Hassan Blasim’s “The Iraqi Christ” contains 14 short stories set in Iraq or Finland or in some cases I don’t know where (it’s not important).  The title story itself (The Iraqi Christ) is about a soldier who can predict the future and as a result is given the nickname “Christ”, of course he is one of the most popular members of the regiment, leading people away from sabotage or air raids. However what choice does he make when having to choose between his own life and that of a loved one?

Like “The Corpse Washer” from the same prize list, we are transported to the heart of Iraq, a country under siege:

My voice was reminiscent of the city’s own symphony of mediocrity, the soulless, broken music produced by the machine of life: those sounds they have spattered us with shamelessly since childhood; their symphony that starts squeaking early in the morning, in shopping centres, banks, universities, hospitals, parliament buildings, bars and restaurants. The sounds of human ignominy. They’re incapable of loving each other so how can they understand out love for them? I felt that my mind was packed with sounds – the voices on buses and trains, the noises in planes and ships, the sound of domestic disputes, insults, abuse, the whistle of bullets, shouting, screaming, weeping, the chants of environmental protesters. Applause at the Peace Prize award ceremony at a time when new wars are breaking out in new hotspots, the sound of cars crashing, car bombs exploding, the cars of thieves, an ambulance, a bank truck loaded with bundles of banknotes, a fire engine. The sounds of mosques and churches, of Friday sermons and homilies, of group sex and glass breaking, sounds coming in the right ear and sounds going out the left ear. If we were deaf creatures – us and those humans – perhaps the world would be less painful. There are only two kinds of sound that are good for bringing about peace: the songs of the forest and music.

But unlike “The Corpse Washer” this is filled with fantasy, we have a story about a person who falls into a hole only to meet a djinni  (an Arabic supernatural creature) and the corpse of a Russian soldier from the Russian/Finland wars. We have a rabbit which lays an egg, a barfly returning home to find a wolf in his 4^th floor apartment, a group who can make knives disappear (and only one who can make them reappear). This is magic realism with a touch of agro.

Two years ago I was assigned to read books in order to find out what the knives meant, and I soon came to the idea that the knives were just a metaphor for all the terror, the killing and the brutality in the country. It’s a realistic phenomenon that is unfamiliar, and extraordinary game that has no value, because it is hemmed in by definite laws.

This collection of short stories is not an easy read, with metaphor throughout and if you don’t have a full appreciation of the horror and brutality that is Iraq some of the nuances could be lost (I’m sure there is a level that I completely lost). But this is an amazing collection, taking the shocking and the Kafkaesque style and throwing it in the face of a horrific war. If magic realism is your style then I can’t recommend this collection highly enough, another amazing Arabic work set in Iraq – I’m privileged to have come across two magnificent works in one year from what is becoming a very solid list of translated fiction.

The Corpse Washer - Sinan Antoon (translated from the Arabic by the author) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

The world of translated literature allows you to transform your thinking, learn about other cultures, expand your horizons and more. It is a magical place where the cost of an airfare need not be sought as for a few dollars you can be in Poland one day and Israel the next. My latest journey took me to Iraq through the stunning tale of a young Shi’ite who would studies to become a sculptor but also works with his father as a mghassilchi, a body washer, the ritual of cleansing and shrouding the Shi’ite corpses that about in Bagdhad.

We follow our narrator Jawad through his first experiences at the mghaysil (the washing temple), to university to study fine arts, his loves and the catastrophic changes that he must undergo as a citizen of Iraq whilst the regime of Saddam Hussein is toppled. This is a horrific tale, one that takes you to places where you never thought you’d have to go. A short history of the occupation:

We were in front of the main gate. American soldiers were stationed at the monument and had turned it into a barracks. Concrete blocks and barbed wire barricaded the gate and soldiers with machine guns stood guard. Armoured vehicles and Humvees were parked inside along the path that led to the monument itself.

Their country is no longer theirs, the memories of beautiful places, alleys where you can buy books, markets and monuments all a living hell. But through all of this Jawad manages to find love, he explores the beauty in the squalor:

The lake’s beauty was gripping. Its balmy blue was therapeutic, especially for a soul thirsting in the harshness of the desert day and night. Its shore was covered with calcifications that looked like cauliflowers with cavities carved by the salts the filled the lake’s waters forming a wall on all sides.

But the predominant character here is death. A corpse washer looking into death’s face each and every day. The recurring horrific nightmares, the severed bodies, the young, the innocent all meeting a brutal end.

“I called the police and told them a man’s corpse was out there on the street, that they had to pick it up before dogs ate it. The said, ‘We can’t do it. We don’t have enough personnel.’ Can you believe it? But I should’ve known. If we, the living, are worthless, then what are the dead worth?”

Or:

I put a swab of cotton into the hole the bullet had bored in the man’s forehead and another swab into his nostrils. I had already put swabs between his buttocks and inside his anus. I prepared to shroud him.

So matter of fact. The work of the mghassilchi slowly encroaches upon Jawad, taking away his drawing and sculpture, taking away his dream of leaving Iraq for Syria or Jordan or even better somewhere in Europe. The violence rips apart his family, his assistance at the mghaysil. His life is predominately death. Suicide bombers, chemical weapons, torched oil wells in Kuwait, hidden weapons of mass destruction?, the ordinary citizens caught up in such devastation:

The restaurant that Abu Ghayda’ had co-owned on the road to al-Taji military camp had been bombed by the Amricans at the beginning of the war. He used to joke that the hot spices and pickled mango he used in his falafel sandwiches were at the top of the Pentagon’s list of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the world. He and his partner repaired the restaurant and reopened it four months later, but business was slow. That area had become a battleground for the Americans and the armed men who attacked them. Abu Ghada’ lost everything and was forced to close shop.

After spending a year unemployed, he read ads for well-paying jobs at the Ministry of Interior. He went to Nusoor Square early one morning and stood in line to register his name. A suicide bomber standing in line with all the others blew himself up. By the time Um Ghayda’ got to the hospital, Abu Ghayda’ had shut his eyes forever.

This is a disturbing and moving work, to humanise the horrors of the Iraqi wars, to plot a nation’s history and turmoil through the eyes of a dealer in death is a masterful stroke. The politics is also played out throughout and it is seemingly done with little bias by being so poetic, but at the same time matter of fact (however I’m sure someone will point out that I’ve missed some persecution in there).

A very worthy novel on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Long List and, for mine, one that surely makes it through to the next cut.

Exposure - Sayed Kashua (translated by Mitch Ginsburg) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

Sayed Kashua has a weekly column in the Israeli news source “Haaretz” as well as being the creator of one of Israel’s most popular sitcoms “Arab Labour”. Living in Jerusalem this novel (translated from the Hebrew) is set there and has two distinct threads.

Alternate parts switch between the third person narrated tale of a nameless wealthy lawyer (always referred to as “the lawyer”) and the first person narrated story of an alienated social worker who drifts through his days and spends his nights earning extra income by being a live in carer for a comatose Jew, “Yonatan”.

“The lawyer” visits a bookshop on a weekly basis buying the “book of the week” that was featured in the local media and occasionally buys a second hand “classic” but to maintain appearances always asks the store attendant to gift wrap these purchases. One day he buys a second hand copy of Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata” (a first person narrative describing a husband’s jealous rage that leads to him killing his wife), inside he finds a love letter, written in his wife’s hand. He is also besieged by jealous rage and decides to hunt down the book’s previous owner, simply known by an inscription on the title page, “Yonatan”.

Our social worker, Amir Lahab, is socially awkward, was brought up in an isolated village by his single mother and wants to leave his low Arab lifestyle behind. His work for the disabled Yonatan brings him in contact with alternative music, classic literature and photography – he spends his nights rebuilding Yonatan’s past by rummaging through his things. A better life could await Amir, who bears a striking resemblance to his patient Yonatan, if only he could steal the other’s identity.

Our novel contains a large number of sections devoted purely to what it is like to be an Arab in Jerusalem:

Lawyers, accountants, tax advisors, and doctors – brokers between the noncitizen Arabs and the Israeli authorities, a few thousand people, living within Jerusalem but divorced from the locals among whom they reside. They will always be seen as strangers, somewhat suspicious, but wholly indispensable. Without them who would represent the residents of east Jerusalem and the surrounding villages in the Hebrew-speaking courts and tax authorities, against the insurance companies and the hospitals? Not that there is any great lack of doctors, lawyers, or economists among the east Jerusalem Arabs, but what can be done if, more often than not, the Israeli authorities do not accept their credentials? A higher education from somewhere in the West Bank or from another part of the Arab world does not suffice in Israel; a whole slew of supplementary material and a battery of tests, the vast majority of which are in Hebrew, are required. A few of the east Jerusalemites actually push through the gruelling Israeli accreditation process, but the lawyer also knew that many of the locals preferred to be represented by someone who was a citizen of the state of Israel. He, so the lawyer felt they thought, was surely more familiar with the workings of the Jewish mind and soul. He, they believed, could not have attained his position in life without connections, kosher or otherwise. Somehow, in the eyes of the locals, the Arab citizens of Israel where considered to be half-Jewish.

Personally I found these “political rants” a distraction, it is fine to give us context and a time and place for our character’s actions but the relentless preaching about Arabs vs Jews, the life in the villages etc. became a tad tedious.

Splitting the novel into a first person and third person narrative was also a distraction. Interestingly this novel also appears under the title of “Second Person Singular” and that is probably a better title than the reference to Amir’s and Yonatan’s black and white photography and the play on “exposure” for the lawyer to find the true story of his wife’s love letter.

Both of our protagonists here are filled with self-doubt and are constantly questioning their own self-worth:

Maybe at some point he really would come across what they called a soul mate. Maybe now that he was older, more organized, more aware of his wants, more in control of his thoughts, he would be able to discern between temporary lust and sustainable love. Maybe now he would be able to find a woman he could sleep next to every night, maybe he would feel the warmth of her body seeping into his bones, granting him a tranquillity he had never known. The lawyer saw before his eyes a faceless woman, but he knew she had the face of an angel and she slept peacefully in his arms, her face smooth, a happy sheen across her cheeks. He imagined them sleeping harmoniously together, completing one another in their sleep, too, wrapped in a comfortable embrace, moving their bodies with complete synchronicity, always fitting together. For a moment he felt a rush of warmth in his heart. Maybe all of those romantic poets were right? Maybe he shouldn’t have been so dismissive of their words? Maybe he shouldn’t have been so sceptical of what was clearly a sublime sensation?

Maybe this, maybe that, I tell you this novel contains a truckload of “maybes”. Personally I found the story rather implausible, it reads like one of Sayed Kashua’s soap opera plots. I can see the movie rights being bought up and a mystery thriller edge being added for a blockbuster release. All good and well if your reading choices are the “best seller” lists, but this is on a list for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, a Prize I thought showcased the writing skills and translating skills throughout the globe.

An easy read, that has a nice ending but not a novel that will make the short list of this award for mine (you watch it will probably win it!!!)

A Meal in Winter - Hubert Mingarelli (translated by Sam Taylor) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

The author blurb in my edition of “A Meal In Winter” states “Hubert Mingarelli is the author of numerous novels, short story collections and fiction for young adults.”, and the flow of this simple story has a “young adult” feel - although of course the subject matter of WW2 atrocities is probably not young adult fare.

A very simple tale of three men (our narrator, Bauer and Emmerich) who avoid the rostered killings in a "German Nazi concentration camp in German-occupied Poland” and take to the road to find “one of them”. This story is closer to a short story than a novella even, my edition running to 138 pages with decent line spacing and short chapters, I’d hazard a guess at approximately 100 pages of reading.

We were all used to it, we knew what to expect, and yet the cold always came as a shock. It seemed as if it entered through your eyes and spread through your whole body like icy water pouring through two holes. The others were already there, lined up and shivering. While we found our places among them, they hissed at is that we were arse-holes for making the whole company wait like that. We said nothing. We got in line. And, when everyone had stopped shuffling their feet to get warm, Graaf, our lieutenant, told us that there would be more arrivals that day, but late probably, so the work was scheduled for the following day, and that this time our company would be taking care of it. I had the same thought as everyone else: was that all? Couldn’t he have told us that inside?

Two other features permeate this book throughout. The bitter cold and hunger – hence the title of the book. The solid ice, the deep snow, the fact that they can’t even smoke without numerous protective layers, throughout the story there are references to the bitterness. The hunger is stalled by smoking, shrinking back to one’s own thoughts and finally preparations for a simple broth – although lighting a fire to cook the meal is a challenge in itself.

The hunger made me dizzy, and the cold hurt my bones, but I was now thinking that today would end up being even better than my tram dream. I went back to the house with my spirits raised by these thoughts, and when I entered they rose even higher, because the temperature was now above zero.

Our three soldiers find a captive and take him to a hovel to spend the night before returning to camp with their captive. They are joined by a local Pole and they then start questioning the “moral implications of their murderous mission and confront their own consciences”.

I found the simple language of this story refreshing, the distance and moral implications of their roles in exterminating Jews chilling, the justification for their actions and the way they deal with such of course disturbing. A very short and sharp look into the Holocaust using a simple setting and a single meal as the stage for more personal reflection. The silence is described, the inner machinations of our narrator’s mind (as well as his assumptions of his companions) and the “how can I live with myself” moments are clear and concise.

A short review this time for a very short book. Probably not a contender for the main prize due to the brevity (a similar criticism I had of Colm Toibin’s “The Testament of Mary” on the Man Booker Prize list), that doesn’t mean it can’t be “the best work of fiction” I just think a little more meat in the soup may have helped.

Back to Back - Julia Franck (translated by Anthea Bell) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

What can I do? I can’t do anything. What do I want? I don’t want anything. What am I? I’m nothing. Ella was crying.

I’ve been dwelling over this review for four or five days. What do I write? I can’t write anything. How do I explain my silence? I can't say anything. To me this was a most harrowing journey. And I’m not talking about the subject matter here.

Narratively it’s quite simple, we have siblings Ella and Thomas, unloved by their sculptor mother Kathe, being left to fend for themselves weeks at a time at a really young age, and highly dependent upon each other, their father has been long gone. They live in East Germany and no end of turmoil comes into their lives.

Ella shook her head. She didn’t remember much, but she did remember that she had lied. For herself and for Thomas. She had said their father tossed her up in the air. But that was nothing but her made up picture, she saw a man tossing a little girl up in the air. So it couldn’t be true. If it had been her, she wouldn’t see the little girl in her memory, she would feel the dizziness of being whirled around, she would remember her father’s arms. But there was no such memory. Only a physical memory of being in the way. Her body, what Ella was and would be, was in the way. I was in their way.

Our main protagonist here is Thomas, he dreams of a future, even if that will never be realised, Ella plainly just exists and their mother is building a new future under the regime, where everybody is “equal”, she sculpts the heroes, but is incapable of loving her own children. Ella is consistently sexually abused and raped by the lodger (who works for the “party”), she sleeps under her bed, Thomas although younger finishes school before her and is bullied in his new job breaking rocks (on the path to becoming a geologist) and more and more and more.

I thought the structure of the novel, the stripped back language, the intermittent poetry, the bare bones of a structure was a sculpture taking place. I thought maybe the characters represented East and West Germany. I thought there was references to Shakespeare. I thought so much, but nothing was delivered.

One, two, three, four, no Seigfried and no Johnny, no one had turned up at Ella’s new apartment in Kopenick on Saturday, no Michael and no Violetta. Eight, nine, perhaps she had only imagined the invitations and never asked anyone out loud, ten. Ella wobbled, regained her balance and went on. Eleven, twelve, around midnight, tired of waiting, she had gone to sleep. Only next day, on Sunday, had she gone to Rahnsdorf to see Thomas. Why didn’t you come? She knew he had the note, he couldn’t talk his way out of that, she had invited him, she’d even put it in writing. Fifteen, sixteen, or had she counted plant number fifteen twice? Eighteen, nineteen. Why hadn’t he come to celebrate and dance with her? Twenty, twenty-one, he usually liked to be with her. Twenty-three. He had tried over the last two months, tried hard with her when she couldn’t remember a figure or a name, let alone a date. Twenty-five. A fire salamander was lying on the rails in front of her, basking in the sun, Ella wobbled again, she didn’t want to alarm the salamander, she got down into the grass and crouched beside the rail, stretched her hand out and waited. The salamander would come. Bubbles in her head, and blue elephants, they didn’t need formulas or correct spelling.

To me this makes no sense, there are unrequired words (of course the next day is Sunday, she’d just referred to Saturday, she can’t remember giving him the note, but of course he’s got the note). And that is just a short example of the whole novel. It is not really stream of consciousness, in my mind it is a mishmash, and with a very simple plot line. Of course tragic but when you have no real depth of character and you can’t associate with any of them it just washed over me.

What part was Thomas trying out? A strong and desperate one? When something felt strange to him he would resort to disguise, to dissembling. Madness never took him in its grasp. The madness was hers alone. Picklydipack shnucklesuck. Magic words, spoken only to herself, with no echo, bringing no happiness. What was he afraid of, what did grief and disgust mean to him?

Apologies here for my lack of understanding, I am sure a number of people will be able to draw parallels to other works, will probably get the metaphor, will probably see the whole Socialist structure. I just didn’t get it and was glad when the final page was turned. Even the poetry had no metre and was a huge distraction.

Not a novel that I’ll be revisiting.

The Infatuations - Javier Marias (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa) - Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014

infatuation  (ɪnˌfætjʊˈeɪʃən)
— n
1.	the act of infatuating or state of being infatuated
2.	foolish or extravagant passion
3.	an object of foolish or extravagant passion

(Collins English Dictionary 10^th Edition)

I’ve put the definition here as all too often the word is mistakenly interchanged with “love”.  Meher Baba, an Indian “spiritual master” explained the difference as such; "In infatuation, the person is a passive victim of the spell of conceived attraction for the object. In love there is an active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love."

Our protagonist in Javier Marias’ “The Infatuations” is Maria Dolz, also known as “the Prudent Young Woman”, a name given to her by Luisa and Miguel Desvern or Deverne. Each morning she takes breakfast at the same café, observing a loving couple from afar but never speaking to them. There is acknowledgment of each other’s presence but no more than that. Our novel opens with Maria discovering that Miguel has been stabbed numerous times and killed, her silent relationship with the couple abruptly coming to an end.

Initially we have musings on voyeurism, for example, have you ever observed somebody and made up a story about their lives? A whole existence made up, a fiction, a creation of your own imagination. Maria had done just that, dwelling on their happiness, their obvious love for each other. But it’s only fantasy.

As a casual observer she has to come to terms with the sudden death of somebody she “knew”:

All this information was published over a period of two days, the two days following the murder. Then the item vanished from the press completely, as tends to happen with all news nowadays: people don’t want to know why something happened, only what happened, and to know that the world is full of reckless acts, of dangers, threats and bad luck that only brush past us, but touch and kill our careless fellow human beings, or perhaps they were simply not among the chosen. We live quite happily with a thousand unresolved mysteries that occupy our minds for ten minutes in the morning and are then forgotten without leaving so much as a tremor of grief, not a trace. We don’t want to go too deeply into anything or linger too long over any event or story, we need to have our attention shifted from one thing to another, to be given a constantly renewed supply of other people’s misfortunes, as if, after each one we thought: “How dreadful. But what’s next? What other horrors have we avoided? We need to feel that we, by contrast, are survivors, immortals, so feed us some new atrocities, we’ve worn out yesterday’s already.”

After another chance encounter with, the now widow, Luisa, Maria passes on her condolences and is invited to meet her at home. There Luisa discusses her grief, her inability to rationally move on from her loss and her lamenting. At that meeting a visitor, Javier Diaz-Varela arrives, he was a close friend of Miguel and is also seemingly consoling the bereaved Luisa. After another chance encounter a relationship begins.

Yes, we are all poor imitations of people whom, generally speaking, we never met, people who never even approached or simply walked straight past the lives of those we now love, or who did perhaps stop, but grew weary after a time and disappeared without leaving so much as a trace, or only the dust from their fleeing feet, or who died, causing those we love a mortal wound that almost always heals in the end. We cannot pretend to be the first or the favourite, we are merely what is available, the leftovers, the leavings, the survivors, the remnants, the remaindered goods, and it is on this somewhat ignoble basis that the greatest loves are built and which the best families are founded, and from which we all come, the product of chance and making do, of other people’s rejections and timidities and failures, and yet we would give anything sometimes to stay by the side of the person we rescued from an attic or a clearance sale, or won in a game of cards or who picked us up from among the scraps; strange though it may seem, we manage to believe in these chance fallings in love, and many think they can see the hand of destiny in what is really nothing more than a village raffle at the fag-end of summer…

Our story is a deep lamentation on death and the transient nature of relationships as well as love. I was briefly reminded of Ian McEwan’s “Amsterdam” (the relationships and the musings on death) or Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending” (making sense of our existence), but this novel contains more than existentialist musings (no criticism of the Booker Prize winners intended), it is a slow lamentation on envy, loss, jealousy, Balzac, “The Three Musketeers” and fiction itself:

It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matter are the possibilities and ideas that the novel’s imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.

A simple linear plot of a chance meeting, a murder, the subsequent investigation and the relationships formed, but something a lot deeper. Using the classical themes of death and love but through the eyes of an observer (Maria always seems to be at a distance even though fully embroiled), a prudent woman at that, we have an exploration of the tenuous grip on life, our relationships and our fickle future. Maria is but a passive victim of the spell of conceived attraction. An infatuation.