The Strays - Emily Bitto - Stella Prize 2015, Dublin Literary Award 2016

Today is a National public holiday in Australia, the 26^th of January being “Australia Day”, the date marking the arrival of the first fleet into New South Wales and the raising of the British flag at Sydney Cove by Governor Arthur Phillip. For the indigenous people of this country it is a controversial date, for obvious reasons, and linking the nation to an event in New South Wales as well as to our convict past have also been mooted as reasons to change the date. My blog is dedicated to literature though so I won’t debate the merits of the date here, I’ll simply dedicate this week to Australian books.

The Stella Prize is an annual literary award first established in 2013 for Australian women writers across all genres and gives a $50,000 prize each year. It is named after author Miles Franklin, whose full name was Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin. On 9 February 2016 the longlist for the 2016 Stella Prize will be announced, one of the guest presenters being 2015 Stella Prize winner Emily Bitto.

Melbourne has a very rich art history, and the scene in the 1930’s is described by “Hels” at melbourneblogger.blogspot.com

When Robert Menzies (later Prime Minister) proposed the form­at­ion of an Australian Academy of Art, Melbourne modernists were con­cerned that their departure from conventional artistic practice would be marginalised. Their fears seemed confirmed when Menzies opened the Victorian Artists' Society show in April 1937 and singled out for attack a wall of modernist paintings. A deb­ate ensued in the press: Adrian Lawlor compiled the resulting copy in a booklet entitled Arquebus. Leaders of the modernist group, inc­lud­ing Lawlor and George Bell, formed the Contemporary Art Society 1938.

Herbert Vere Evatt M.P (later Leader of the Labour Party) be­came involved as an approving observer and occasional public advocate. At an exhibition opening in June 1937 Evatt urged Australian galleries to show more modern paintings. He drew a strong rejoinder from James MacDonald, a cultural conservative who had served as art director in New South Wales before moving to the National Gallery of Victoria; “Australian art galleries simply did not like modern art, and it should not be hung in public at all”, said MacDonald

The novel “The Strays” set in 1930’s Melbourne and more specifically the art scene dabbles into these themes and the politics of “modern” art at the time. From the Prologue we know that our narrator, Lily, and Eva have not seen each other for thirty years, at some stage their relationship had broken down, there was the death and prior to the breakdown the two had a very strong bond. Eva is the daughter of a famous Australian artist Evan Trentham. The novel then moves to Part 1 “The Switchgate” and 1930, where Lily and Eva first meet at primary school and we then learn of their blossoming relationship;

What drew Eva and me together was our shared sense of imagination. Hers were formed form rich materials, mine from poor; hers developed over endless hours in the exotic garden kingdom she inhabited with her sisters, mine over hours alone. But the end result was the same, and each recognised it in the other.

Readers of Elena Ferrente’s Neapolitan Novels will find a very similar relationship here between Eva and Lily, one with a dominant partner;

There is no intimacy as great as that between young girls. Even between lovers, who cross boundaries we are accustomed to thinking of as the furthest territories of closeness, there is a constant awareness of separateness, the wonder at the fact that the loved one is distinct, whole, with a past and a mind housed behind the eyes we gaze into that exist, inviolate, without us. It is the lack of such wonder that reveals the depth of intimacy in that first chaste trial marriage between girls.

Chaste, and yet fiercely physical. Eva and I were draped constantly about each other’s bodies. We brushed one another’s hair. We sniffed each other’s armpits and open mouths and nodded if they were free from staleness and sweat. We lay about the garden, one head on the other’s stomach. We became blood sisters, pricking our fingers solemnly with a pearl-ended hat pin and pressing the red seed pearls of blood that sprang out of the dainty wounds against each other, grinding them together to that the mingled blood would squeeze back in to the tight-walled body and we would be part, each, of the other. We lay on the sun bed after school and took turns at tickling one another’s arms, running our fingertips as lightly as possible over the skin so that goosebumps rose up and a delicious shiver ran down the arm and along the spine.

Very much like Lila in Ferrente’s works we have Eva setting the agenda, even though there is the influence of the art movement parents. The art commune and bohemian lifestyle all comes to life with Bitto’s clear prose, the 1930’s art scene in Melbourne as clear as if I was reading a history of the modern school at the time. Through the junior years we move to a coming of age story, from childhood to adulthood:

She’s leaving me behind, I thought. I felt tricked. With Eva, I had given no thought to the world of adulthood that awaited us. But she had crossed some secret threshold while I was facing the other way, absorbed still by the childish fantasies she had cultivated for us: our talk of travelling the world together; of having a salon in Paris or on the Riviera, where all the famous writers and artists were; of becoming artists ourselves, marrying exotic European strangers and always living close to one another; of how, when our husbands died, we would move together into a great crumbling mansion and be visited by amazing people from around the world. Now, I saw so clearly that all of that had been a silly game. She had a lover, presumably, while I did not even truly know what this vague and glamourous term entailed. She had become a woman, with no thought to warn me that I should be packing away my own childhood, dismantling it piece by piece like a rotten tree house, and preparing myself for the new world.

Whilst a novel with a “mystery”, the death revealed in the prologue, this work is primarily about female relationships, single girls, relationships with their own mother and other’s mothers, motherhood and the female bond that entails. A book that works on a number of levels and a fine addition to the Dublin Literary Award longlist. As a debut novel I look forward to reading more of Emily Bitto’s works in coming years and am looking forward to hearing her speak in a couple of weeks at the 2016 Stella Prize Longlist announcement – I am hoping that there is at least one indigenous work on the list, fingers crossed.

The Giraffe's Neck - Judith Schalansky (translated by Shaun Whiteside) - 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

I’m torn!! Not the first time this has happened, and possibly won’t be the last, however with this month being “Women In Translation Month”, the angst is a little more to the fore. This month I want to do my best to highlight the richness, diversity, depth of fiction (and poetry – but more on that later) available for your reading pleasure, as well as highlighting the fact that women only represent approximately 30% of writers translated into English. So what to do when you come across a book you simply don’t like? I have a few options available to me:

1. Don’t write a review. This is at times my preferred option, and I have used this on a number of occasions simply to avoid being critical of a writer or translator or publisher. In fact I have stopped receiving review copies from one publisher as they must believe I don’t read their books; I actually do but don’t like them!!!
2. Write a review and only point out the highlights of the work. This approach is not my style; I don’t want people thinking every book I read is a four or five star rated piece.
3. Go “hell for leather” and rip the book to shreds, again, not my style (although I have been quite forceful with my reviews on a couple of books, both best sellers and there are supporters of this approach); or
4. Just point out why I don’t like it. Soft option I suppose

So I’m going the soft option here, I’m sure this work has a number of supporters, and given it made the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist earlier this year, there are supporters from the literary world.

In school I did not study biology, in fact my bent towards the sciences was extremely limited, so when people speak of Charles Darwin, I think evolution and survival of the fittest. When somebody mentions “annidation” or “monoculture” I have no idea what they are talking about, so when pages in a fiction novel has these words as headings, my eyes glaze over, my head gets closer to my shoulders (ie. My neck disappears) and my eyes scan across the page taking little notice of the words in front of me.

“In a nutshell, “The Giraffe’s Neck” features Inge Lohmark, our protagonist, an ageing teacher of biology at the Charles Darwin High School in East Germany, in an area which is slowly losing its population. The obvious “survival of the fittest” analogy is possibly part of the repartee. (Possibly using the word “analogy” in a review of a book about “biology” is a bad choice – I’m not going to change it though).

In short, sharp, regimented prose the feel of East Germany is meant to be displayed. This is a characteristic I did not like in Julia Franck’s “Back to Back” (translated by Anthea Bell)  nor have I become a fan since:

It just wasn’t worth it, dragging the weak ones along with you. They were nothing but millstones that held the rest back. Born recidivists. Parasites on the healthy body of the class. Sooner or later the dimmer bulbs would be left behind anyway. It was advisable to confront them with the truth as early as possible, rather than giving them another chance after each failure. With the truth that they simply didn’t meet the conditions required to become a fully-fledged member of society. What was the point of being hypocritical? Not everyone could do it. Any why should they? There were duds in every year. With some, you could be happy if you managed to instil a few fundamental virtues. Politeness, punctuality, cleanliness. It was a shame they’d stopped giving out citizenship grades. Hard work. Cooperation. Contribution. Proof of the shortcomings of the present educational system.

Every second page contains a heading in the top right hand corner, alluding to the content, for example “menopause”

How tired she was all of a sudden. Sit down. Just for a minute. Rest her head against the wall. In the mirror above the washbasin part of her head. Her forehead. Her wrinkles. Her hairline, the hair grey, for over twenty years. Deep breaths for a few minutes. The blue-green tracksuit in her lap. Legs bare, cheesy pale, as if there hadn’t been a summer. Her palms felt cool on her thighs. The warmth surged up in waves. To her head. Over her eyes a flicker and suddenly sweat. A textbook hot flush. But it wasn’t in a textbook. They didn’t actually learn about that. No one told them about the body’s second transformation. Creeping renaturation. Atrophy of the uterus. Discontinuance of the period. Dry vagina. Faded flesh. It was only ever about blossoming. Autumn. My goodness. Yes, it was autumn. Rustling leaves. Where would a second spring come from now? The idea was ridiculous. Bringing in the harvest. Fetching in the fishing-nets. Thanksgiving mood. Anticipation of the pension. Evening of life. Mists and mellow fruitfulness. But where did that weariness come from? The weather, or the first day of school?

As mentioned there is quite possibly a linkage to the headings and a biological sequence, surely this has more to offer than the idea that a school, an ageing teacher are now simply too slow for the modern world and can no longer survive. But not having any background in species, the thin thread of a monther who has no relationship with her husband, who has lost her daughter overseas and who categorises her students as “feral”, “colourless”, joyless” or having “no prospect of improvement” is too skeletal for my tiny mind.

Having said that, the book does contain a few lucid moments:

In the old days, the children were supposed to be brought up to be progressive, peace-loving people; now they were to be free. And freedom was nothing but an insight into necessity. No one was free. And no one was supposed to be. Even the compulsory schooling was nothing but a state-organised deprivation of freedom. Concocted by the education minister’s conference. It wasn’t about communicating knowledge, it was about getting the children used to a regular day and the dominant ideology of the moment. That meant an assurance of dominance. A few years of supervision to prevent the worst. Gymnasium as a way of keeping them quiet until they reached maturity. Good citizens. Obedient underlings. A constant supply for the pension system.

As mentioned above this work was longlisted for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (along with four other German works) and I as part of my Shadow Jury duties it was a book which fell through the cracks (you try reading fifteen works in a month!!!). Fortunately it is not a book I would have listed in my top six for the year, and personally I have it at the bottom of the pile (along with a couple of others). If you know a bit about Charles Darwin, or you enjoy East German tales prior to the wall coming down (although this was written in 2011) you may enjoy this a little more than me. Nice artworks throughout though, and relevant to the text, just don’t know why they’re there, because our author can draw too?

1914 - Jean Echenoz (translated by Linda Coverdale) - 2015 Best Translated Book Award

A translation award wouldn’t be a translation award without at least one European war story on the longlist. This year the British based Independent Foreign Fiction Prize had a number of World War stories including the winner, Jenny Erpenbeck’s “The End Of Days”. Having read thirteen on the twenty five longlisted titles from this year’s USA based Best Translated Book Award, Jean Echenoz’s “1914” is the first European world war story I have come across!!!

As the title gives away our story is dedicated to World War One and with a French author, it is not that complicated, it is the story of the French!!!

Our short tale opes with Anthime taking a cycling break on a windy afternoon, strapped to his bicycle is a large book. Whilst out, the bells toll to herald the beginning of the Great War but due to the howling wind it takes Anthime sometime to hear them. Rushing back to the village, unbeknown to Anthime, his book falls aside, open on Chapter 2, Book 4 of Victor Hugo’s “Ninety-Three”, “they have ears but they hear not”. Arriving at the town square he meets another of our characters, Charles, who informs him “it won’t last longer than two weeks at most.”

And the next morning, they all found themselves at the barracks. Anthime had arrived there quite early, having joined his fishing and café comrades along the way: Padioleau, Bossis, and Arcenel, that last mumbling complaints about celebrating the occasion too long into the wee hours the night before, stirring up haemorrhoids and a hangover. Padioleau, slightly built, a touch timid, thin-faced with a waxy complexion, had nothing of the sturdy presence of a butcher’s boy, even though that was, in fact, his profession, whereas Bossis, not content with possessing the physique of a knacker, actually was one. As for Arcenel, he was a saddler, a craft that presupposes no particular habitus. In any case, each in his own way, these three took a great interest in animals, had seen lots of them, and were going to encounter a great many more.

And so our story introduces the fellow volunteers. Our other main character is Blanche, for whose heart both Charles and Anthime compete.

This is a story with shallow explanations, leaving a lot to the reader’s imagination, short anecdotes covering complex situations, such as Blanche going to meet the local doctor:

To the general practitioner she explained her situation, showing him her figure under her clothing, and the exam did not take long. Palpation, two questions, diagnosis: definitely, declared Monteil, you are.

As our inner sleeve explains this is not simply the story of six characters, it is the story of the war itself, with villages abandoned by the young men, the harsh living conditions, the trenches and the fear all deftly sketched to recreate an event of one-hundred years ago.

This slog lasted all autumn and became so routine that by the end they’d practically forgotten they were marching. Which wasn’t that bad, after all, one kept busy that way: the body mechanically set in motion left one free to think about something else or more often plain nothing, but the procession had to halt when the war seized up in the winter. What with all this advancing against one another until both sides found themselves unable to extend their positions, it had to happen: everything froze in a standoff during a serious cold snap, as if troop movements had suddenly congealed all along the great line from Switzerland to the North Sea. It was somewhere along this line that Anthime and the others found themselves paralyzed, bogged down in a vast network of line trenches tied together by communication trenches. This whole system, in principle had been initially dug out by the army engineers, but also and above all by the soldiers, since the spades and picks they bore on their backs weren’t there just for show. And as time passed, by trying every day to kill the maximum possible of those across the way plus crawl forward the minimum number of yards the high command required, that’s where they plowed themselves under.

Without giving too much of the story away, we do have the usual injuries, deaths, executions after a court martial and of course the rats and lice. This work has a distant observation of the action, almost clinical in observing the effects of the war on our cast, there is no room for sentimentality and a mood of detachment pervades throughout. A short work, this addresses the events of 100 years prior in a way we not often see in historical fiction, not a family saga, nor presenting the political views of the protagonists, this is a welcome addition to the European world war genre.

Personally I was a little surprised that this didn’t make the shortlist of the Best Translated Book Award, as there are a couple of other works on that shortlist which I feel is slightly inferior. Maybe the impact of the size (only 109 pages) or the war theme distracted the judges, however a work I would recommend to any reader who enjoys the historical novel and especially European war fiction.

Talking to Ourselves - Andres Neuman (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia) - 2015 Best Translated Book Award

I wonder whether, perhaps without realizing it, we seek out the books we need to read. Or whether books themselves, which are intelligent entities, detect their readers and catch their eye. In the end, every book is the I Ching. You pick it up, open it and there it is, there you are.

In 2013, Andres Neuman’s “Traveller of the Century” made the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Best Translated Book Award and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award lists. Therefore his latest work to be translated, published in Spain as “Hablar Solos” in 2012, “Talking To Ourselves” was one work I “sought out”, and making the longlist of this year’s Best Translated Book Award, raised it higher in my “to be read pile”.

Our work is written in three voices, Lito, Elena and Mario, each in the first person and in alternating chapters. Commencing with ten-year-old Lito, we learn of his journey with his dad in a truck. His dreams are basic, video games, driving and bonding with his father now that he’s all grown up.

We then move to Elena, Lito’s mother, who reveals her fear for her child being away, on the road, her concerns and the truth behind the roadtrip as well as her angst towards her husband Mario.

I’ve just called Dr. Escalante. I made an emergency appointment so that he can tell me about Mario’s physical state and whether he will really make it through this trip. We should have consulted Dr. Escalante before deciding anything. Perhaps Mario knew what the answer would be, and that’s why he was against it from the start. He kept telling me it was a personal matter, not a medical one. What was I supposed to do, drag him there? But I think that now at least I am within my rights to see Dr. Escalante on my own. I want to know exactly how he found him during the last checkup. I’m going to ask him to be absolutely honest. I suppose I must have sounded quite anxious, because he’s given me an appointment tomorrow morning at eleven.

The staff room is not far away, so I’ll make the most of it and go there to prepare the language resits. They are still some way off, but not working drives me crazy. I’m afraid there are two kinds of alienation: one is the exploited worker’s, the other that of the worker on holiday. The first has no time to think. The second can only think, and that is his sentence.

I’m still waiting for Mario to reply to my message. I feel hot and nervous at the same time. I need to scratch my body hard all over, until I’ve peeled away something I can’t quite put a name to. I don’t like it when Mario answers the phone while he’s driving. And so I am in his hands. It is me he is throttling as he grips the steering wheel. He turns it. And he is wringing my neck. Enough. I won’t continue this diary until I receive his message.

I won’t continue this dairy until I receive his message.

I won’t continue this dairy until I receive his message.

I won’t continue this dairy until. At last, at last.

We then move to Mario’s “dairy”, he is recording a monologue for Lito, slowly revealing his anguish of his impending death.

Our story is very distinct in the three different voices, with Neuman’s skill at revealing different emotions, different tones, syntax, levels of maturity and their future plans a real feature here.

…a question kids only ask themselves for real, and then we sick people ask it again: is it okay to lie?, is it okay to be lied to?, a healthy grown-up won’t even give it a thought, the answer seems obvious, right?, we learn to tell lies the same way we learn to talk, they teach us how to talk and then how to be quiet, I don’t know, like when you play football, for example, first you kick the ball and then, unless you’re stupid, you learn not to kick it, to move around tricking the other players, kids lie too, of course, I lied all the time when I was a kid, but, what I’m saying is, until you get to a certain age, you think it’s wrong, that is the difference, I don’t think we grown-ups are any worse, you know?, every kid contains the beginnings of a possible son of a bitch, this much I know, it’s just that kids, and perhaps we adults are to blame for this, start by dividing the world into good and evil, truth and lies, the only time it’s okay for them to lie is when they’re playing, then it’s allowed, so kids become grown-ups when they play, sort of the opposite of us parents, we play so we can be kids again, well, and then you grow up, and you lie and are lied to, and it isn’t wrong, until one day, when you’re sick, you begin to worry again about lies, you worry about them every time you talk to the doctors, your wife, your family, it’s not a moral question, it’s,, I don’t know, something physical, deep down you’re scared stiff of the truth, but the idea of dying with a lie scares you even more, lies help us to carry on living, don’t they?, and when you know you aren’t going to carry on, you feel they’re no use anymore, do you know what I mean?

Through three simple tales, told through the eyes of three family members, with minimal interactions outside of their own family circle, the subjects of parenthood, fears of a premature death (from both Mario himself as well as Elena’s fears of being a single parent) and the basic day to day interactions and distrust of a family unit are all bubbling along.

Using the three different styles, Elena writing a diary, Mario dictating his and Lito simply thinking the voices all ring true:

We sit down at some plastic tables. There are old people and kids with dogs in the square. I’m pouring with sweat but super happy. Dad coughs. I order a Coke with a slice of lemon, He asks for a bottle of mineral water. And he takes and allergy pill. I drink my Coke in one go. I ask dad if I can order another. I’m sure he’ll say no. He doesn’t like me having too many fizzy drinks. But this time he says yes. Mum would be angry. Dad keeps coughing. He tells me the air in Salto Grande is full of pollen, I tip my glass. The ice cubes bounce off my nose. I imagine I’m a spaceship and they’re meteorites crashing into me. Is there ice in space? Or is space made of ice? I saw a documentary about glaciers the other day. But if so, then how do spaceships fly? My tummy is full of bubbles. My tummy could do with a drill. I burp and laugh. I ask if we’re leaving yet. Dad says he prefers to stay here a bit longer. I fold my arms. I’m starting to feel bored. I look around. I see a poster with the Internet sign. I ask if I can go, Dad can’t see the poster I’m pointing to very well. He looks at all the people around us. He hesitates. He tells me on no account to go off anywhere else. He’ll be watching the door. And he gives me a few coins. Cool! He’s soft today.

This was a work I thoroughly enjoyed and was surprised it didn’t make the shortlist for the Best Translated Book Award and not knowing if it was entered for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize I will not comment on its eligibility for that award, nor the merits of this work above so many others on that longlist.

As per “Traveller of the Century” our work contains numerous literary references so you can delve further and further into Neuman’s psyche simply reading the bibliography at the end of the book. With twenty three books referenced, from Bolano, to Javier Marias, Kenzaburo Oe to Chekhov or even Margaret Atwood or Helen Garner our author is certainly widely read!!!

Andres Neuman is one writer I will continue to seek out from here on in. As the opening quote states, I’ll be seeking out the books I want to read!!!

The End Of Days - Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Susan Bernofsky) - 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

In 1990 ‘The Independent’ launched the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize to honour contemporary fiction in translation within the United Kingdom. It only lasted six years before being suspended, however it was revived in 2001 after Arts Council support, with the Award being made in 2002 for a work published in 2001, and in 2011 Booktrust took over the administration of the award, however the “independent” was retained. So we have had nineteen award winners since the award started and to date it has been won by nineteen male writers.

This year four of the final fifteen books were by women, last year it was four as well, however two of them made it to the final six works. It has been a similar tale throughout the history of the award with women sadly under represented. This year the females have a lone work on the shortlist, and it is “The End of Days” by Jenny Erpenbeck (she was longlisted for her book “The Book of Words” in 2008 and made the shortlist in 2011 with “Visitation”), all of her works on the lists being translated by Susan Bernofsky.

Our novel opens with a very small child, just born, taking her last breath and dying. We have the impacted lives voices telling their emotional tales. Due to the premature death, the husband wife relationship cannot bear the strain and they go their own separate ways, him to America:

When it’s his turn, he’s brought into the examination room and told to undress completely. He doesn’t understand the instructions in English, but even after an interpreter translates them for him, he doesn’t move. Have the Americans lost their minds? Or do they really think of it as a second birth when you set foot in their country? In any case, his examinations at the Technical University in Vienna – which certainly weren’t easy – had gone differently.

Come on they say, meaning: Hurry up.

There’s no help for it: More naked than he ever stood before his wife, he must now, like it or not, stand here in the light and present himself to an entire group of doctors. If only you could know in advance where the path you choose freely will lead. His coat and clothing are meanwhile being disinfected, when he gets them back after the examination they are crumpled. Shame, then, is the price one pays for this life of freedom, or is this itself the freedom: that shame no longer matters? Then America really must be Paradise.

This early section deftly plays on your emotions, it draws you into the shattered world of the players, the wife, the husband, the grandmother. It is a world destroyed by a child’s death.

But what if one of the parents had thought to grab a handful of snow and put it on the child’s chest, forcing it to breathe again? The story would be reimagined. Could there be a different outcome?

In between the “Books” (five in number) there is an “Intermezzo” where the story of the child is changed, generally due to a very minor event, causing the whole future of events to be profoundly different (or are they?). Book Two imagines the life of the young girl, but does she die a tragic death as well, only to have an “Intermezzo” and a different sequence of events occurs.

Set in pre-World War Two Vienna, through the War, into Stalin’s Moscow and onto a recent Berlin, this work also addresses Germany through extremely turbulent times. Our longlist this year had a large representation of German works (Daniel Kehlmann’s “F”, Judith Schalansky’s “The Giraffe’s Neck”, Stephanie de Velasco’s debut “Tiger Milk” and Timur Vermes’ “Look Who’s Back”) – possibly too many for my liking, making it a little top heavy for one language and country.

Addressing a raft of human issues, from refugees, to underground meetings, from prostitution, to loving relationships, from birth to death:

A day on which a life comes to an end if still far from being the end of days.

We have references to Goethe, more specifically “Iphigenia”, who was saved from death but not in her homeland. And if I was writing a thesis, I’d probably research that work and the parallel’s here, but I’m not, I’ve got more translated books to read!!!

Book three overs to a detailed explanation of our protagonist (the girl who dies on page one or thereabouts) and her joining the Communist Party of Austria, a reverse explanation whilst she is living in Russia, writing to get her citizenship. What pile will her application end up on, the one for the firing squad? Such random events determining our existence.

Generally I like to put a few different quotes from works into my reviews, however with this work, I believe you need to fall into the flow of the story and the style of the writing as you read it, and to quote sections from later parts would destroy the context and the emotional train that took you there.

Personally I found the clinical Stalinist section a little too removed (so it did as it set out to do???) as each reimagining of a life melds your mood into a different shape and form.

I’m going out on a limb here (or am I???) this book is by far the stand out work of the 2015 official shortlist, and in my mind Erpenbeck will be the first female writer to win the award – about time!!! One from twenty? Hey judges you got a bit of catching up to do!!!

PLEASE NOTE: After publishing this post, it was pointed out to me that there was a "lost" winner of the 2001 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and it was taken out by a female. The work was "The Alphonse Courrier Affair" by Marta Morazzoni. Although the shortlist was provided to me from a blog (a reliable one at that) this win is probably confirmed by "The Guardian of 13 October 2001" which stated "The Alphonse Courier (sic) Affair, winner of numerous awards, including this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize."

Therefore may Jenny Erpenbeck become the second female winner of the prize and may she not be "lost" to history.

You do know what that means for this crazy reader, don't you? I'm going to have to find a copy of Morazzoni's work and review it!!!

Ohhh- and I've updated Wikipedia to reflect the win. No longer a "lost" winner.

Tiger Milk - Stefanie De Velasco (Translated by Tim Mohr) - 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

To move from a centenarian who is writing her memoirs about World War One in a florid style to teenage youth in Germany who mingle in the streets, plan their next alcohol infused outing can only mean one thing, I am exploring the literary lists of some translation prize.

Read number eight from the 2105 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist takes me to Germany and the debut novel from Stephanie De Velasco.

The sun streams through the window and the tiny dust particles float in the air like in outer space, weightless, without a care in the world, they’ve got nothing else to do in life other than fly around and then gather into a dirty pile. From the perspective of the universe, like Herr Wittner always says, the earth is no different than a speck of dust. Who knows, I think, maybe the particles here in this room are planets and we’re just too big and stupid to see the life living there and all the stuff happening there, bad stuff and beautiful stuff, who knows, that’s the way it is with the earth after all which is nothing more than a speck of dust, a rotten speck of dust full of blood and shit.

Our story is narrated in the first person and follows the escapades of two renegade teenagers, our narrator, Nini, and her best friend Jameelah, an Iraqi immigrant attempting to make Germany her home (this is a minor sub-plot in the novel which I believe is only used to tie up a few loose ends).

Nini and Jameelah drink a homemade concoction of alcohol and milk, disguised in a flavoured milk container, hence the title of our novel, as they discuss losing their virginity, talk about "real love", work the streets selling tricks, smoke dope and generally talk about inane topics such as their boyfriends.

Pfff, someday, says Jameelah. Now, right now they are happy but someday they’ll split up. People like that think life is like Play-Doh, that you can make anything out of it, but someday life will rip them apart and this morning in their garden will be mothing more than a memory, a memory so painful that they’ll wish they never even experienced it. Someday they’ll cry the hardest over the moments that made them happiest. Those idiots still believe in the idea of good.

Our anti-heroes (they are not heroes by any stretch of the imagination), are your usual, down on the world teenagers, they feel isolated, they know the world just doesn’t understand them, they are on the brink of adulthood and cannot understand how they can ever be like those ancient crusty people around them, their parents. Their future is full of hopelessness and things only get worse when they perform a naked love ritual only to end up witnessing a murder.

Our work scratches at an explanation of why our narrator Nini is so angst ridden, but as it is through her eyes we need to decode this ourselves:

Mama lays on the sofa basically all the time. Most of the time her eyes are closed, but when I come home she sometimes opens them and asks, where were you. When she opens her eyes she always looks horribly tired, like she’s just arrived from some faraway place and only flopped down on the sofa here in our living room by blind luck. I don’t think she’s really looking for an answer to her question. Me on the other hand, I’d love to know where she was, where she always goes behind her shuttered eyelids, all those hours she spends alone on the sofa. Mama’s sofa is like a remote island she lives on. And even though that island is in the middle of our living room, a thick haze obscures it from view. You can’t dock on Mama’s Island.

As a work which explores the emptiness and pain of being a teenager this is a genuine voice, it captures the inanity of their “dramas”, it highlights the usual “young adult” problems and exposure, whilst ignoring the bigger life issues that are going on around them (the family issues, refugees, roles in ethnic families as examples), therefore being very self-centred as a teenager would be. Yes a genuine voice.

I have a pebble in my shoe, I kind of like it when I have a pebble in my shoe. It’s like someone’s there, like someone’s accompanying me through the world. I can play with it if I get bored, roll it around with my big toe, round and round like a circus horse being paraded around the ring. I don’t know why, but when I have a pebble in my shoe I never feel like I’m alone.

However this was a voice I did not enjoy, this is not a bad work by any stretch of thinking, but in my mind it is a shallow one, just like our two main characters. There is no motivation, there is no future, there is no explanation, it is a wandering around from event to event. And the timing felt all wrong, an event which is very immediate (approaching the immigration department the next day) suddenly seems to lose focus and crop up at what feels weeks, months later. This is no “Even The Dogs” by Jon McGregor, which explored the depths of young age addiction, this is a “Disney” version, even if it does contain “controversial” subjects such as teenage prostitution.

Although not a novel I would revisit, this is a skilful work as it enters the world of a self-obsessed teenager and gives her voice, a voice I personally did not like, but who would like a teenage daughter like Nini? Probably more a book for teenagers themselves than a feature on the list of a literary award, I think it will be hard pressed to make it through to the shortlist. But again, an assured debut.

The Dead Lake - Hamid Ismailov (translated by Andrew Bromfield) - 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

The “epigraph” for “The Dead Lake” tells us that “between 1949 and 1989 at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site (SNTS) a total of 468 nuclear explosions were carried out, comprising 125 atmospheric and 343 underground blasts. The aggregate yield of the nuclear devices tested in the atmosphere and underground at the SNTS (in a populated region) exceeded by a factor of 2,500 the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the Americans in 1945.”

Hamid Ismailov was born in Kyrgyzstan and moved to Uzbekistan as a young man before fleeing to the UK at age 40 because of his ‘unacceptable democratic tendencies’. Our novella was originally written in Russian in 2011 and formed part of Peirene Press’s “Coming-of-Age: Towards Identity” series from 2014. I have reviewed the other two Peirene Press works “The Blue Room” and “Under The Tripoli Sky” here too.

Our novella is set in Kazakhstan during the nuclear testing period and follows the “coming of age” of Yerzhan, a twenty-seven year-old man trapped in the body of a twelve year old. Unlike another Kazakh novel I reviewed here a little while ago, “The Captain of the Steppe”, our story here really evokes the landscape, the endless horizon’s and the massive skies. Through lyrical prose, mixing folk songs, music descriptions and poetry interludes the barren place really comes to the fore throughout:

For anyone who has never lived in the steppe, it is hard to understand how it is possible to exist surrounded by this wilderness on all sides. But those who have lived here since time out of mind know how rich and variable the steppe is. How multi-coloured the sky above. How fluid the air all around. How varied the plants. How innumerable the animals in it and above it. A dust storm can spring up out of nowhere. A yellow whirlwind can suddenly start twirling round the air in the distance in the same way that women spin camel wool into twine. The entire, imponderable weight of that immense, heavy sky can suddenly whistle across the becalmed, submissive land.

Our tale is narrated by an unknown traveller, on the train, who comes across our “hero” Yerzhan as they pull into a stop and he alights the train to play the violin and sell refreshments, he then explains his macabre tale of how a grown man can have a child’s body. Amazingly I found myself thinking of the recently completed and reviewed “Zone” by Mathias Enard, as we have references to the Nuclear Test site being referred to as the “Zone” (capitalised) as well as our complete story taking place during the course of a train journey. The rhythm of a long journey also coming through in the language structure.

Steppe roads, even if they are railroads, are long and monotonous, and the only way you can shorten the journey is with conversation. The way Yerzhan told me about his life was like this road of ours, without any discernible bends or backtracking. His story ran on and on, just as the wires outside the window ran from post to post, accompanied by the beat of the wheels’ hammering. He recalled his distant childhood running back and forth between his house and Aisulu’s house. Not only to look at the still-speechless beauty, whose ear he had nibbled in token of an early engagement, but mostly for the sake of his uncle Shaken’s glittering metal objects. Shaken used to disappear on his work shifts for months at a time. He worked somewhere in the steppe. But more about that later. Just as we shall talk later about Shaken’s television, which he brought back from the city.

As there are only two families living in Yerzhan’s village the characterisations are small, however that does not mean the characters are thinly veiled, the donkey is a character, the silent grandmother’s, the musical instruments, but most of all we learn of Yerzhan’s love for Aisulu, and how that is destroyed by him visiting and swimming in the waters of “The Dead Lake” – surely enforcing his deformities:

Towards evening Uncle Shaken took the children to the Dead Lake. ‘Don’t drink the water and do not touch it,’ he told them. It was a beautiful lake that had formed after the explosion of an atomic bomb. A fairy-tale lake, right there in the middle of the flat, level steppe, a stretch of emerald-green water, reflecting the rare stray cloud. No movement, no waves, no ripples, no trembling – a bottle-green, glassy surface with only cautious reflections of the boys’ and girls’ faces as they peeped at its bottom by the shore. Could there possibly be some fairy-tale fish or monster of the deep to be found in this static, dense water?

Is this some kind of Russian Brother’s Grimm tale, set during the nuclear arms race, when testing to become “better than the Americans” was the excuse? We have horned devils, we have wolves (literally and symbolically), we have geese, we have bedridden grandmothers, spiritual healers and more. Although a very short work, it is not a shallow work, one that can be read on many levels and of course we have the existentialist angst:

After all, he had already lived through everything that is given to a man – the warmth of family, the happiness of love, the infatuation of hopes, the bitterness of disappointments, the music of the soul and the fear of oblivion.

Masterful in construction as our narrator creates alternative lives for Yerzhan, lyrical in the description of the steppe (so much so I want to visit), and revealing in the simple lifestyles being destroyed and full of angst, but again full of joy of the simple pleasures, such as the celebration of music or the joy in cleaning one’s hair. Another revelation by Peirene Press and a worthy inclusion on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist. 

Look Who's Back - Timur Vermes (translated by Jamie Bulloch) - 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

Over the last few years I have read a substantial amount of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize short and longlists as well as works from the USA based Best Translated Book Award amongst others. However I must admit, this work is the most satirical, but at the same time disturbing, that I have come across from those lists. Whilst not highbrow, nor difficult to read, it poses a number of paradoxes whereby you feel uncomfortable at your own laughter.

“Look Who’s Back” introduces Adolf Hitler to Berlin in the year 2011. Our narrator is the Fuhrer himself, suddenly awake and very much alive very close to a news stand in central Berlin. He is accepted by the news vendor, who offers lodging in the stand as he sees the possibility of the Fuhrer appearing in television comedy programmes. Of course Adolf finds the new world a very different place, to start with Germany is being run by a woman, there are “Turks” everywhere and technology is simply unexplainable. For example the array of television programmes:

The picture was of a chef, finely chopping vegetables. Unbelievable! Having developed such an advanced piece of technology, all they could feature on it was a ridiculous cook. Admittedly, the Olympic Games could not take place every year, nor at every hour of the day, but surely something of greater import must be happening somewhere in Germany, or even the world! Shortly afterwards a woman joined the man and provided an admiring commentary on his knife skills. My jaw dropped. Providence had presented the German Volk with the wonderful, magnificent opportunity for propaganda, and it was being squandered on the production of leek rings. I was so furious that I could have hurled the entire apparatus out of the window, but then it occurred to me that there were many more buttons on the little box besides the simple on/off one. So I pressed number two. The chef vanished at one, only to be replaced by another chef, who was grandiosely discussing the differences between two varieties of turnip. This one had a floozy standing next to him too, who marvelled at the pearls of wisdom that fell from the lips of the “Turnip Head”. In irritation I pressed number three. I had not imagined the modern world would be like this.

This is a biting satire on our current world, our current beliefs and politics, the inanity through the eyes of someone who has the power to speak his mind, but also has been “missing” for 65 or so years. As Herr Hitler grasps the opportunity to again rise to power he becomes a television hit, a you-tube sensation, and his “hits” far exceeding Charlie Chaplain. The propaganda machine is again in full swing, although Adolf has some biting words for the modern day media:

3. I was reported to be dead. They said I had committed suicide. In truth I do not recall having discussed this contingency – purely theoretically – with my confidants, and my memory was definitely lacking a few hours of what had been a terribly difficult time. But, in the final analysis, I only needed to look at myself to see the facts.

Was I dead?

We all know, of course, that to make of our newspapers. The deaf man writes down what the blind man has told him, the village idiot edits it, and their colleagues in the other press houses copy it. Each story is doused afresh with the same stagnant infusion of lies, so that the “splendid” brew can then be served up to a clueless Volk. In this instance, however, I was prepared to be somewhat lenient. So rarely does Fate intervene this strikingly in its own workings that even the smartest of minds must find it difficult to comprehend, let alone the mediocre intellects serving our so-called opinion sheets.

Writing this review I would rather not be accused of “intellectual gobbledygook” along the lines of a “Potemkin-like retrospective which behind the apparent refraction of neo-fascist monostructures suggested the vehemence of an ardent please for pluralistic  or direct democratic processes” as our protagonist, Herr Hitler, is subject to when the critics come calling on his television appearances. Looks like I best be keeping this simple.

Our novel contains a gamut of scathing material from the use of leaf blowers, to mobile technology, the internet, women with broad hips, Oktoberfest, leather shorts, shopping and of course Jews. The whole time you laugh and cringe or cringe then laugh or simply laugh at the acute observations of our current society, politically incorrect? Yes? But to what end?

It is always exhilarating to watch our business leaders take fright. When the deal appears sufficiently tantalising, they hurry over with beaming smiles, scarcely able to throw enough money at you. When everything goes well, they are at the front of the queue to increase their share, suggesting that they would have borne the whole risk. But the moment something look perilous, they are the first to foist this lucrative risk onto others.

So in 2011, a television star (although everybody thinks he is being comic), a worldwide you-tube sensation, what is Hitler to do? Start his own propaganda machine of course, he can’t influence or manipulate the current media (or can he?) so what better way to fight them than to have his own website.

The current infatuation with “fifteen minutes of fame”, reality television programs, instant recognition for little input is all brought to the fore as Adolf Hitler becomes a political commentator all over again, with a multitude of followers. Even the no-name blonde starlets of the week get a lambasting.

The work is littered with wonderful snippets: “We contested the Olympic Games in 1936 along these lines and, as I have read, they recently tried to copy this overwhelming propaganda triumph in Peking, with very favourable results.”

I thoroughly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the incorrectness to the bitter satire, the mirror upon a taboo subject, the manipulation of the populace and the simple unnerving belief in the character’s ideology. Is it a work that will stand the test of time? Possibly not. Is it entertaining? Of course. Will it elicit hate? Of course. Will even reading and reviewing it elicit a flurry of comments? Possibly. Should it in the 2015 IFFP? Depends on what sort of media campaign the publisher can drum up I suppose!!!

F a novel - Daniel Kehlmann (Translated by Carol Brown Janeway) - 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

In 1980 the world was introduced to the “best selling toy”, the Rubik’s Cube. Now surely you’ve all heard of it? The six sided cube which has an internal pivot mechanism, with nine stickers on each of the six sides. You mix it up, and attempt to get the white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow all aligned on their correct sides. I could go all weird on you now and explain that the white is opposite the yellow…blah blah blah. Basically a six sided puzzle will possibly suffice for an opening foray.

“F” by Daniel Kehlmann is a puzzle too, however it contains a character who is obsessed by the cube, enters championships, talks about his progress and carries the optimal solution to another level. But wait, there’s more, our novel contains six sections (are they the six sides to the cube?) but only four main players…yes four.

Our work opens in the third person with the father Arthur taking his three sons, Martin (who didn’t know his father until he was seven years of age, and lives with his mother) and twin boys Eric and Ivan (who live with Arthur and his current partner) to a hypnotist’s performance. A façade?

Arthur doesn’t believe in hypnotism, however both Ivan and himself are called on stage, Ivan has his hands stuck together, but it is the sceptic Arthur who goes onto the stage, appears to have a normal conversation about his life ambitions, who appears to fall under the spell of the “Great Lindemann”. He drops the children home, empties the bank account and promptly disappears. He sends a telegram, one; he’s fine, two: don’t look for him. Yes he’s fine.

We then move many years into the future to the first person narrative of Martin, who reveals that his father is now a famous novelist, the author of “My Name is No One”, a novella about a young man called “F”:

Is My Name Is No One a merry experiment and this pure product of a playful spirit, or is it a malevolent attack on the soul of every person who reads it? No one know for sure, maybe both are true.

The opening sets up an old-fashioned novella about a young man embarking on his life. All we know about his name is its first initial: F. The sentences are well constructed, the narrative has a powerful flow, the reader would be enjoying the text were it not for a persistent feeling of somehow being mocked. F is put to the test, he defends himself, fights, learns, wins, learns more, loses, and develops as he moves on, all in the grand old manner. But there is a sense that no sentence means merely what it says, that the story is observing its own progress, and that in truth the protagonist is not the central figure: the central figure is the reader, who is all too complicit in the unfolding of events.

Slowly but surely the little discrepancies accumulate. F is home, looking out at the rain, puts on a jacket and cap, takes his umbrella, leaves the house, wanders the streets, where it isn’t raining, puts on a jacket and cap, takes his umbrella, and leaves the house, as if he hadn’t just done that already. Shortly after that a distant relative appears, who has already been registered in a subordinate clause as having died ten years ago, an innocent visit to the fair by a grandfather and his grandson turns into a labyrinthine nightmare, and a piece of clumsiness on F’s part with major consequences is would backward until it clearly never happened. Of course this all leads to the construction of theories. Very slowly there comes a dawning sense of comprehension, then the realization of being on the brink, and then the story breaks off – just like that, without warning, right in the middle of a sentence.

Yes dear reader, you are going to be complicit in this story, you have been pre-warned, the plot may not follow a normal linear course, and there could be unexplained events, maybe even a fairground which is a labyrinth nightmare. This will questions your fortitude.

Back to Martin, he’s now in the clergy, he tells us about his choice of vocation, he still plays with his Rubik’s cube, he still lives with his mother, he has had no lovers, and he’s a puzzle and a conundrum just like his toy. He also has no faith, basically he’s a failure.

Our next section is “Family”, where we have Arthur recounting numerous generations of his family tree (nearly all male), questioning how he has come into being, based upon a raft of coincidental events, a plethora of inconsequential tales. That is our lot in life….fate???

Our fourth side to the cube in Eric’s voice, “Duties”, he is now an investment “guru”, who has defrauded his biggest client. He is a meticulous dresser, highly medicated, a professional presenter but lost on the inside. He is pursued by his own demons. This section reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho”, without the serial killing, just fraud and fear.

On my way to my study I pass the open door to the salon. Ligurna, our Lithuanian made, greets me looking tragic. I not to her and hurry on past. A year ago in a moment of weakness I slept with her. Unfortunately it happened not in the kitchen or on my desk but in the master bedroom in our marriage bed. Afterward Ligurna searched carpet and bedside table like a skilled detective for hairs, eyelashes, and any other traces: nonetheless I was afraid for weeks that she could have overlooked something. Since then I’ve only spoken to her when it’s unavoidable. I can’t throw her out, she could blackmail me.

I sit behind the desk, swallow two tranquilizers without water, look at the Paul Klee, look at the Eulenboeck on the opposite wall: a canvas covered with a collage of newspaper cuttings, with a crushed Coca-Cola can and a teddy bear glued in the middle. You have to go right up close to realize that it’s all trompe l’oeil. The bear and the can aren’t real, not are the bits of newspaper; it’s all painted in oils. If you examine the cuttings with a magnifying glass, you see they’re all art criticism about collages.

We then move to Ivan, Eric’s twin brother, and a section titled “Beauty”. We learn of his career as an art critic and then dealer, his string of lovers, before ending with his homosexual relationship with the artist Eulenboeck, his further meeting with the hypnotist the Great Lindemann, and his hidden secret, he’s a forger.

The lights in the subway shrink, become a single patch, then disappear. Beauty has no need of art, it has no need of us, either, it has no need of witnesses, quite the opposite. Gaping observers detract from it, it blazes most brightly where no one can see it: broad landscapes devoid of houses, the changing shapes of clouds in the early evening, the washed-out grayish red of old brick walls, bare trees in winter mists, cathedrals, the reflection of the sun in a puddle of oil, the mirrored sky-scrapers of Manhattan, the view out an airplane window right after it’s climbed through the layer of clouds, old people’s hands, the sea at any time of day, and empty subway stations like this one – the yellow light, the haphazard pattern of cigarette butts on the ground, the peeling advertisements, still fluttering in the slipstream of the train, although the train itself has just disappeared.

By having numerous voices and protagonists, our writer is able to approach a broad range of concepts, from things such as beauty through to the complexities of living with a family.

Our final section (side six of the cube) is “Seasons”, this is Eric’s daughter’s voice, but in the third person and it is split into three chapters. The flowering apple tree (spring), the falling leaves (autumn) and snow (winter) – where is summer? Another part of the puzzle? In this section our hypnotist reappears at a side-show, now working as a blind tarot card reader. That is surely fraudulent?

We also have a reference to a written work “Family” which is actually a section in this book we are reading, we also have (in Ivan’s section) the father Arthur returning to visit his son and his lover, he is asked what he is currently working on, poetry, fiction?

“Probably going to be another detective novel. A classic locked-room mystery. For people who like riddles.”

“So is there a solution?”

“Of course! But nobody will find it. It’s very well hidden”

“Is that the case with Family too?”

 “No. That’s a story in which the solution really is that there’s no hidden solution. No explanation, and no meaning. That’s the whole point.”

“But that’s exactly what it’s not! Or rather it is, but only if you tell it in a way that makes it so. Every existence, if you look back on it, is made up of terror. Every life becomes a catastrophe if you summarize it in the way you do.”

This is a wonderful work, playful, thought provoking, smart, humorous, enjoyable and a modern day fable.

So what about the title? “F”? We have Family, fraud, faith, forgery, fate and fake or does the conundrum contain funny?

Note – I’ve added my own little edge to my review – every paragraph (excluding the quotes) ends with a word starting with “F”!!!

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel) - 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

‘Talent might be ephemeral,’ Haida replied, ‘and there aren’t many people who can sustain it their whole lives. But talent makes a huge spiritual leap possible. It’s an almost universal, independent phenomenon that transcends the individual.’

Great segue for Murakami’s latest instalment “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage”, a master who is this year’s favourite to win the Nobel Prize (5/1 at Ladbrokes), this novel selling one million copies in the first week of publication in Japan, atop the best selling book list at Book Depository, debut at number 4 on the New York Times Best Seller list and obviously more. A book, whichever way you look at it, will be critiqued long and hard around the globe. So has Murakami sustained his talent?

Before him lay a huge, dark abyss that ran straight through to the earth’s core. All he could see was a thick cloud of nothingness swirling around him; all he could hear was a profound silence squeezing his eardrums.

Welcome to the world of Tsukuru Tazaki, the purest form of his name meaning “create”, however our Tsukuru is of the simpler form, he “makes” or “builds”. A shadow of a man who was destroyed many years before when his four closest school friends suddenly cut him off without explanation. His friends all having colourful names, Aka = red, Ao = blue, Shiro = white and Kuro = black. Together they make an “orderly, harmonious, intimate place”.

Without overstating things, this is a book about names:

First he was given a name. Then consciousness and memory developed, and, finally, ego. But everything began with his name.

But it is also a book about color (why does the English publication insist on the US spelling? Excruciating). For example Shiro, whose name is white, is described as follows:

The Yamaha grand piano in the living room of her house. Reflecting Shiro’s conscientiousness, it was always perfectly tuned. The lustrous exterior without a single smudge or fingerprint to mar its luster. The afternoon light filtering in through the window. Shadows cast in the garden by the cypress trees. The lace curtain wavering in the breeze. Teacups on the table. Her black hair, neatly tied back, her expression intent as she gazed at the score. Her ten long, lovely fingers on the keyboard. Her legs, as they precisely depressed the pedals, possessed a hidden strength that seemed unimaginable in other situations. Her claves were like glazed porcelain, white and smooth. Whenever she was asked to play something, this piece was the one she most often chose. ‘Le mal du pays.’ The groundless sadness called forth in a person heart’s by pastoral landscape. Home-sickness. Melancholy.

For me, this section paints the purity of white, the cleanliness, the peacefulness. Although “luster” [URGH ANOTHER AMERICANISM] – I’ll stop with that now – not the writer’s fault.

Our protagonist Tsukuru has reached a point in his life where he needs to resolve the past, he has just begun a new relationship and without understanding what happened all those years ago he will never be able to fully let himself go, emotionally.

A novel which explores a number of the human “sins”, for example, jealousy:

Jealousy – at least as far as he understood it from his dream – was the most hopeless prison in the world. Jealousy was not a place he was forced into by someone else, but a jail in which the inmate entered voluntarily, locked the door, and threw away the key. And not another soul in the world knew he was locked inside. Of course if he wanted to escape, he could do so. The prison was, after all, his own heart. But he couldn’t make that decision. His heart was as hard as a stone wall. This was the very essence of jealousy.

No spoilers in my reviews so you won’t know how Tsukuru fares with his journey away from his exile and back towards his school friends, whether he finds out why they cut him off, was it because he wasn’t a colour? Or how his years of pilgrimage transpire.

It is understandable why this is a best seller, a new, and more approachable work, from a master, an intriguing plot and a masterful weaving of a simple story. However to be honest I found a few things quite frustrating, the amount of references to Tsukuru being unable to form a lasting relationship became tedious, I think I understood that after the fifth mention, but to call it out twenty or thirty times?? And in reality this is quite a shallow work, it begins with such promise and the palette of colours could be melded together quite nicely exploring the clarity and purity of blue, the rage and masculinity of red, the shade and despair of black and how Tsukuru (the “creator”) blends them all together.

For new Murakami readers this is a nice introduction to his work, and if you enjoy it I suggest you look at his other works (don’t jump straight into 1Q84 though), and I have a distinct feeling for Murakami fans this may be a little disappointing. But then again I may have missed the point, but as someone said to me today, maybe there is no point?

PS – The stickers inside are pretty cool though.

Our Lady of the Nile - Scholastique Mukasonga (translated from the French by Melanie Mauthner) - 2015 Best Translated Book Award

“You know we Tutsi never reveal our secrets, Veronica. We’re taught to keep our mouths shut. We have to, if we want to stay alive. You know what our parents tell us: ‘Your tongue is your enemy.’ If you think you’ve got a secret to share, you can trust me. I can keep a secret.”

Welcome to the world of the Tutsi and a book which reveals their secrets.

The Tutsi, from Rwanda, a race where in 1994 an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 Rwandans were killed – 20% of the population and 70% of Rwandan Tutsi’s were killed in a planned genocide. And now we have the novel “Our Lady of the Nile” exploring the situation in Rwanda at the time, and giving the Tutsi a literary voice. Scholastique Mukasonga was born in Rwanda in 1956, being displaced at four years of age to the polluted and under-developed Bugesera district of Rwanda. She fled to Burundi and in 1992 settled in France. In the aftermath of the genocide of the Tutsi she learned that 27 of her family members had been massacred. This book is her first novel, following on from her autobiographical “Inyenzi ou les Cafards”. A winner of the Renaudot Prize, the Ahamadou Kourouma Award and the French Voices Grand Prize this is a novel you should read to expand your horizons and learn more about a secret tribe.

Our story takes place in the all-girls school (or lycee) of “Our Lady of the Nile” a school high in the mountains where the source of the Nile can be found.

It’s a girls’ lycee. The boys stay down in the capital. The reason for building the lycee so high up was to protect the girls, by keeping them far away from the temptations and evils of the big city. Good marriages await these young lycee ladies, you see. And they must be virgins when they wed – or at least not get pregnant beforehand. Staying a virgin is better, for marriage is a serious business. The lycee’s boarders are daughters of ministers, high-ranking army officers, businessmen, and rich merchants. Their daughters’ weddings are the stuff of politics, and the girls are proud of this – they know what they are worth. Gone are the days when beauty was all that mattered. Their families will receive far more than cattle or the traditional jugs of beer for their dowry, they’ll get suitcases stuffed full of banknotes, or a healthy account with the Banque Belgolaise in Nairobi or Brussels. Thanks to their daughters, these families will grow wealthy, the power of their clans will be strengthened, and the influence of the lineage will spread far and wide. The young ladies of Our Lady of the Nile know just how much they are worth.

This is also a place where the Tutsi attend, and we have stories of the school photos being taken down as the portraits have been slashed or marked with question marks, the people either dead or missing. Our story follows a group of the school girls, Gloriosa and Modesta, girls of non-Tutsi influence and Virginia and Veronica Tutsi and Immaculee a friend but not Tutsi. Whilst the plot is a simple tale of girls attending school and their daily tribulations (and brushes with extreme situations) it is the under lying story of the exploitation and fear of the Tutsi which is our plot here.

We may have situations where French volunteer teachers, sent by the military, who have long hair “He’s a hippie,…the young people in America are all like that now”, but it is the discussions amongst the students where the real revelations occur, the Rwandan culture, for example the various ways their families cook bananas, the myth of rain: “No need to fetch water because we make banana-leaf gutters to catch the rain. We can shower and do our washing at home. We spend our time roasting corn as we roast our feet. But be careful, if the cob bursts and the kernels fly that attracts lightning.”

We also have the mysterious Fontenaille, who lives high in the mountains, a European entranced by the history of the Tutsi, the tribe who “had kept their cows, their sacred bulls, and their noble bearing, their daughters had kept their beauty. But they had lost their memory.”

This is a simple tale but an amazing revelation, as each page is turned we are hearing the memory of the Tutsi, we are learning more and more of the people who were subjected to genocide, however it is all set in a simple location of a girl’s boarding school. We have the day to day tribulations, the young girls starting the menstrual cycle, what it is to be female in Rwanda:

“That’s my blood. It’s how you become a woman. Every month I’ll be shut up in my room. Mommy told me that’s how it is for women. She takes the straw I’ve soiled, and at night she burns it, secretly. Then she buries the ashes in a deep hole. She’s scared a witch doctor might steal it for his evil spells, and our fields will wither, and my sisters and I will become infertile because my first menstrual blood that could put the whole family at risk.”

We also have the history of Rwanda as told through the tales of young girls:

“Now, listen to me. I went to the swamp, the great endless swamp of Nyabarongo, on your behalf and for the Queen’s umuzimu. There’s no path; if you step into it and sink, you’ll be walking forever and never get out. But I know how to reach this little hut, not just any hut, even though it looks like a hunter’s shelter, it’s the House of the Drum. You can’t see the Drum when you enter the hut, for it’s buried, deep down in the earth beneath you. It’s Karinga, the Drum of the kings, the Drum of Rwanda, the Root of Rwanda: it holds all of Rwanda in its entrails. Have you ever heard Karinga roar? Now, when Karinga rumbled – for Karinga wasn’t beaten like any other drum, Karinga rumbled of its own accord – the whole of Rwanda heard it, they said that everything under the sun heard it, women suddenly stood still, leaning on their hoes, men’s hands froze above their beer jug, unable to plunge the straw in, the hunter pulling back the string of his bow couldn’t release his arrow, the shephers playing his flute lost his breath, cows forgot to graze, and mothers to breastfeed their babies. When Karinga ceased rumbling, it was as if the country awoke from some great bewitchment. No one could say for how long Karinga had thundered. Karinga’s enemies pursued him and sought to burn him, so Karinga buried himself in the earth. His enemies looked for him but never found him. Perhaps Karinga will surge forth from the earth one day. Nobody knows when. But buried in the ground, he still watches over Rwanda, for no one has been able to expose the contents of the drum’s belly. Even I don’t know. Nobody has seen Karinga’s heart. It’s the secret of secrets.”

There is so much more in this innocent tale of high school girls, Rwanda’s history, the fables, the fate of the Tutsi, visits from the Queen of Belgium to the school (colonialism gone rife) and tales of the Rwandan President giving up his daughter to the childless royals from Belgium, stories of witches, fortune tellers, potions and poisons, gorillas being looked after by a mysterious white woman.

An amazingly simple tale but one which opens up the heart of Rwanda, the humanising of the genocidal tale, the political angst and the mythology surrounding the families. Thanks to Archipelago Books for bringing this novel into English, a new audience has been found to ensure the forgotten Tutsi of Rwanda still have a voice, and a rightful place. Part of their secrets are revealed, and what a multi-layered complex set of secrets we are fortunate enough to take part in.