I love travelogues. I love classical antiquity. So I really expected to enjoy Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus, an attempt to mix modern lI love travelogues. I love classical antiquity. So I really expected to enjoy Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus, an attempt to mix modern literary reportage with the writings of one of the greatest travelling reporters of all time, Herodotus. Sadly, however, the book was a bit of letdown. The old and new stuff didn't blend well, so the final result, while occasionally poignant and insightful, was a little underwhelming.
Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations. When I bought the book, I was expecting it to be something like Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah, a frightfully erudite book with quotes so absurd that they frequently made me howl with laughter (in public, which was rather embarrassing). Travels with a Tangerine is a very focused author's attempt to follow in the footsteps of Ibn Battutah, visiting the places the great fourteenth-century Arab traveller visited and trying to recreate the experiences he had there. It is a genuinely interesting, genuinely insightful and ever so entertaining book. I naively assumed Travels with Herodotus would be a similar read, only focusing on the places Herodotus described: Persia, Egypt, Eastern Europe, etc. Sadly, Kapuscinski took a different approach. Travels with Herodotus is not an attempt to retrace Herodotus' steps (admittedly a tall order, as Herodotus was probably the best-travelled man of his age, or many another age for that matter). Rather it is a loving tribute to the book Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish foreign correspondent working in Africa and Asia for most of the second half of the twentieth century, calls his greatest inspiration, his main source of sustenance and his favourite travelling companion: Herodotus' Histories. In between recollections of his own travels, many of them beautifully written, Kapuscinski quotes from the Histories, analysing Herodotus' method and explaining how it came to shape his own views of the world and travel reportage. Sometimes the quotes are tenuously linked with places Kapuscinski himself visited or historical events Kapuscinski himself witnessed, but most of the time they seem randomly chosen, with nary an attempt at contextualisation or analysis. In the end, I grew rather weary of this method. I found myself increasingly skipping the Herodotus quotes, not because they were dull (they weren't), but because I failed to see their relevance to Kapuscinski's muddled narrative. I finished the book thinking I would rather have read Herodotus without Kapuscinski's asides, or Kapuscinski's memoirs without his constant digressions on Herodotus. Judging from other reviews of the book, I'm not the only reader who feels this way.
It's a pity Kapuscinski chose such an ill-thought-out approach to his last book, because when he is not losing himself in overambitious homage, he is a fine writer. Travels with Herodotus contains some excellent reportage, most of it dealing with the African countries where Kapuscinski spent a considerable part of his life. Like Herodotus before him, Kapuscinski is an objective reporter who seldom judges the people he meets (even when they rob him). Also like Herodotus, he has an eye for telling detail, recounting small stories as well as monumental ones, and often instead of monumental ones. His Socialist background adds an interesting touch. And he does really understand the subjects he is dealing with. On the rare occasions when he does go into analysis, he makes interesting observations on life and politics in developing countries, observations of which Herodotus himself would be proud. Unfortunately, however, most of the analyses and anecdotes recounted in Travels with Herodotus are too fragmented and disjointed to be truly memorable or insightful. They focus so much on isolated moments in Kapuscinski's travels that they fail to provide an insight into the greater picture. There are some great anecdotes in the book, but since they don't really go anywhere, they ultimately leave the reader unsatisfied. I myself ended up feeling that I would have liked to read more about Kapuscinski's time in the Sudan than merely his recollection of a Louis Armstrong concert he attended there, and more about his experiences in civil-war-era Congo than just his nerve-racking meeting with two soldiers who walked up to him all menacingly, only to humbly ask him for a cigarette. I also would have liked to read more about his experiences in 1960 Egypt (which was just then in the grips of an anti-alcohol campaign) than his nervous attempt to get rid of an empty beer bottle while being watched by people who might well be police informants. Because as evocative as these anecdotes are (they are!), they don't tell the whole story of the place and the age, nor even a tenth of it. They are fragmented impressions -- interesting and well-written, but fragmented nonetheless. In short, I guess I'll have to read some of Ryszard Kapuscinki's other books to find out why he is considered one of the greatest reporters of the twentieth century. I'm sure he has written books in which he does go into detail, sticks to the topic at hand and really reports, rather than leisurely recounting disjointed memories. Unfortunately, Travels with Herodotus isn't one of them.
As for Herodotus, I'll obviously have to reread his Histories, for whatever the shortcomings of Travels with Herodotus, it did most definitely whet my appetite for more Herodotus.
All Quiet on the Western Front (or, to give it its German title, Nothing New in the West) has been hailed as the best war novel ever, and it's easy toAll Quiet on the Western Front (or, to give it its German title, Nothing New in the West) has been hailed as the best war novel ever, and it's easy to see why. World War I is described in such vivid non-glory in its pages that you are sucked into the story straight away and stay there for the next two hundred pages. It is obvious that the author, Erich Maria Remarque, had first-hand experience of the things he writes about; the details are so right and authentic-sounding that they couldn't possibly have been wholly made up. Needless to say, the ring of authenticity adds quite a punch to the reading experience, elevating a good war story into an absolute classic of the genre.
All Quiet is a short book, but remarkably complete. All the aspects of trench warfare are there -- the excitement, the tedium, the horror, the pain, the fear, the hunger, the dirt, the loss, the sense of alienation, the awareness that you may die any minute, and last but not least, the realisation of the futility of it all. All Quiet has a pervasive sense of futility, an initially unvoiced but later fully expressed question of 'Just what is this war all about, and why am I putting my life on the line for it? What could be worth such a sacrifice?' The answer is, obviously, nothing, because if this book has one message, it is that war is awful and young men ought not to be forced to fight them. This is not a book which glorifies the war effort, or portrays soldiers as heroes. It is not a book which tries to justify Germany's involvement in World War I. In Remarque's own words, it is 'an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war -- even those of it who survived the shelling'. As such, it is brutal and confronting, but in the best possible way. Anti-war fiction has seldom been this effective, or this memorable for that matter.
All Quiet tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a young man who gets talked by an idealistic teacher into joining the German army fighting World War I in Belgium. In short, business-like sentences, Paul tells the reader about his experiences in and around the trenches, plus those of his similarly duped classmates, all of whom end up dead. All Quiet does a brilliant job of evoking the strain of being at the front, providing vivid descriptions of the horrors of night-time shelling, being caught in no man's land, the smell of gangrene in the hospital, etc. Reading the book, you get a good feel for what it must have been like to be a soldier in World War I. Remarque does not spare his reader. He not only tells you what it's like to hide from the shells that are coming your way, but also what it feels like to crawl through a recently dug cemetery where shells have just exposed some body parts, and what it's like to crawl deeper and deeper beneath a coffin so that it will protect you, 'even if Death himself is already in it'. He tells you what it's like to hear friendly voices after having been stuck in no man's land for what seems like an eternity, and what it's like to have an unscratchable itch because there are lice underneath your plaster cast. He tells you what it's like to stare longingly at the picture of a squeaky clean pretty girl when you're absolutely filthy yourself and crawling with lice. He tells you why you need coarse and black humour to deal with the horrors of war, and why you need girls, or at least fantasies about girls. He also tells you what it's like to talk to the parents of a soldier who has died a horrible death. And last but not least, he shows you the aftermath. All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrates quite unequivocally how scarred the soldiers emerged from the trenches, because, as one of Paul's classmates says halfway through the book, 'Two years of rifle fire and hand-grenades -- you can't just take it all off like a pair of socks afterwards.' It shows how alienated the veterans of trench warfare felt from those at home, who could not for the life of them understand what it was like to experience the things they were going through. I guess this was the most powerful part of the book for me -- the part where Paul goes home and finds that he cannot communicate with his family, that he cannot possibly share the horrors of his recent experiences with his loved ones, because (1) they wouldn't understand, and (2) he does not want to upset them any more than their concerns for his well-being have already done. With chilling accuracy, Paul describes how empty his war experiences have made him feel. War, he says, brutalises soldiers, turning them into human animals, to the point where they have nothing to live for, as their former interests, dreams, tenderness and the future have all 'collapsed in the shelling, the despair and the army brothels'. His sense of desolation and isolation is so exquisitely rendered that by the time his leave is over and he has to return to the front, you find yourself agreeing with his classmate Albert: 'The war has ruined us for everything.'
As you can probably tell from the above, I had a strong reaction to All Quiet on the Western Front. From the sparse but effective prose to the expert way in which Remarque builds up the final two deaths, I just loved the book, responding to it unreservedly, jotting down astute observations and sharing passages from it with my boyfriend, who is a World War I buff. I felt like I was experiencing the boys' emotions with them, the good ones as well as the bad ones. I was shocked, horrified and repulsed when Remarque wanted me to be, but also got a few chuckles out of the book, because all the bad stuff really makes the good moments the boys experience stand out. I loved the male camaraderie which occasionally drips off the pages. I loved the descriptions of the little acts of vengeance the boys enact on those who have wronged them, as well as the few moments of genuine happiness they experience at the front, such as when they eat a stolen goose, raid an officers' supply depot or make their way to some girls they are not supposed to visit. These events are drawn so vividly and have such a genuine feel of relief and excitement about them that it's hard not to get drawn in. Mostly, though, I just sympathised with the boys, asking with them why war is necessary, and whether those who wage wars on others have any idea what they're doing to the men who fight the wars for them. I think All Quiet on the Western Front should be compulsory reading for every leader who has ever considered going to war. The fact that the book is eighty years old and deals with events which took place nearly a century ago does not make its message any less valid today.
A note on the Vintage English translation: Brian Murdoch's translation is good but a bit sloppy at times, especially in the second half of the book, where he occasionally uses German-sounding grammar and makes a few typos. It also sounds a bit too British for my taste, to the point where I occasionally had to remind myself that I was reading about German soldiers, as they all sounded so terribly English! I would have preferred a slightly less 'placeable' translation, but really, that's a minor complaint. By and large, Murdoch did a good job. Next time round, though, I think I'll read the book in the original German....more
Perhaps I've been desensitised to horror and suffering because there is so much of each on TV. Perhaps I've simply read a few too many accounts of lifPerhaps I've been desensitised to horror and suffering because there is so much of each on TV. Perhaps I've simply read a few too many accounts of life in concentration camps, early Australian penal colonies and Chinese laogai for my own good. Whatever the reason, I have to admit that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's largely autobiographical account of life in the Soviet gulag, didn't impress me much initially. About a quarter into the book, I was experiencing a powerful sense of, 'Is that all? Is this the worst thing that ever happened in the gulag?' You see, the classic status of the book (the fact that it is considered the must-read account of life in the gulag) had led me to believe that One Day in the Life would be a hair-raising story of terror and cruelty, an indictment of human brutality and dehumanisation if ever there was one. Instead, it turned out to be a fairly cheerful and occasionally dull story about a man who optimistically works his way through what turns out be, on the whole, a pretty good day by labour camp standards -- a day on which the guards treat him relatively well, he gets a little more soup than usual, and so on. So I was a little underwhelmed. I'm not proud to admit it, because I know it sounds callous, but there it is.
And then a strange thing happened. I started thinking about the book, wondering why Solzhenitsyn had chosen this particular format -- why he had chosen to focus on a good day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, rather than a more dramatic bad one. And I came to the conclusion that he had done so precisely to make his readers ask that question, to make them think of what a bad day in a Soviet labour camp would have been like, and then to turn that image over in their minds, realising that that really would have been horrible. Because that kind of involved thought -- the kind where you use your imagination and write a scenario of your own -- is bound to stay with you longer than a catalogue of horrors all spelled out for you. At least, that's how it works for me. By turning the possibility of a worse day than the one described in the book over in my mind, filling in all the gaps and supplying all the details myself (Solzhenitsyn helpfully provided some clues to send my mind in the right direction), I created a more indelible picture of life in the gulag than any gore-riddled account of Solzhenitsyn's could have provided me with, a picture that has stayed with me ever since. I suspect that was Solzhenitsyn's intention, but perhaps he was just being honest and describing things how they really were, because exaggerating them would only have resulted in claims of 'it wasn't really like that', thus invalidating the effect of his story.
Anyhow, whatever Solzhenitsyn's motives, I ended up admiring his restraint. I liked that he resisted the urge to write a spectacular and sensationalised account of life in the gulag, cramming ten years' worth of misery into one day in an inmate's life for greater dramatic effect. I also ended up appreciating his hero, Shukhov, who refuses to give in to despair and plods along in the knowledge that his only chance of survival lies in adapting to his circumstances. Shukhov works hard at his survival, scheming and planning and providing for himself in all the right ways. Such is his will to survive that I came away from the book with a powerful sense of admiration for this hardy character, who may or may not be Solzhenitsyn himself. I also found myself wondering on several occasions what I would do in Shukhov's position -- whether I would succumb to the harshness of my situation, like certain fellow prisoners of Shukhov's, whether I'd fight those in power at the risk of being broken by them, or whether I'd 'growl and submit', like Shukhov, licking arse and abandoning some of my principles while hanging on to others, purely with an eye to survival. As far as I'm concerned, any book which makes me assess my own values, principles and attitude towards life is a good one, so yes, from that point of view (as well as a few others) I would consider One Day in the Life a success.
That is not to say, however, that I think it's a brilliant book. I don't. While I admire Solzhenitsyn's ability to share a situation with his readers and convey willpower and resourcefulness in the person of his eminently practical protagonist, I'm not overly fond of his writing style, mostly because he has an annoying trick of inserting his protagonist's thoughts -- unidentified as such -- into an otherwise impersonal and objective third-person narrative. Take this paragraph, for instance:
In a corner near the door an orderly sat lazing on a stool. Beyond him, like a bent pole, stooped Shkuropatenko -- B219. That fathead -- staring out of the window, trying to see, even now, whether anyone was pinching some of his precious prefabs! You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!
Clearly, the 'You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!' is a Shukhov thought, as is the preceding sentence. I have no trouble recognising them as such, but I do find the way they are inserted into the mostly third-person narrative jarring. Solzhenitsyn does this a lot. He constantly switches from the first person to the third person, occasionally going from 'he' to 'we' to 'they' to 'I' in the space of mere paragraphs. Towards the end of the book, his use of alternating points of view became so muddled that it actually made me groan. So you can imagine I was a little surprised when I read in the introduction to the book that Solzhenitsyn was regarded a great stylist by his Russian peers. Personally, I beg to differ on that score, but not without admitting that, yes, One Day in the Life is an impressive book, as well as an important one. It may not be as spectacular as I expected it to be, but its remarkable optimism and life-affirming quality make it worthy of its reputation....more
One of the things I like best about the great nineteenth-century Russian authors is how they can have their characters say outrageously grandiose thinOne of the things I like best about the great nineteenth-century Russian authors is how they can have their characters say outrageously grandiose things without making them sound ridiculous. Such are their characters' passions and romantic ideals that they get away with statements which in Western European or American literature would draw a guffaw from the reader. Take, for instance, this violent outburst by Andrei Kovrin, the schizophrenic hero of Chekhov's story 'The Black Monk':
'I was going out of my mind, I had megalomania, but I was bright and cheerful, even happy. I was interesting and original. Now I've grown more rational and stable, but I'm just like everyone else, a nobody. Life bores me... Oh, how cruelly you've treated me! I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!'
Personally, I love that kind of stuff when it fits into the story, but I can see how a less romantically inclined reader might roll his eyes and go, 'Yeah, you tell 'em, buddy. Right on.' Russian characters have that effect on some people.
Of course, Kovrin is not just any character. He's an academic on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Advised by a doctor to take a break, he travels to the Crimea to visit an old friend, but doesn't actually stop working. Soon he gets so overworked that he begins to see and have ardent discussions with a black monk others can't see. A gothic and somewhat haunting tale exploring the relationship between genius and insanity ensues. Both Kovrin and his friend Pesotsky are manic, but Pesotsky's mania takes a more socially acceptable form than Kovrin's. Chekhov (who had hallucinations about a black monk himself and, like his hero, died at a young age because he kept working while suffering from TB) leaves it up to his reader to decide which of the various kinds of madness depicted in the story is worse. With its expert characterisation and oppressive mood, 'The Black Monk' is a good story, intense and compelling and quintessentially Russian. It's Chekhov at his best, and Chekhov at his best will never get old.
The second story in the volume, 'Peasants', is equally grim but more realistic. It centres on a man who, suffering from bad health and no longer able to support his family, travels from Moscow to the countryside village where he grew up, only to find that his parents have too much on their minds to look after him and his family -- a hard-drinking son, a slutty daughter-in-law, taxes to pay, and so on. And of course the local council is to blame for everything, because it wouldn't do to blame the vodka, would it? 'Peasants' paints a bleak picture of a society torn asunder by poverty and alcoholism. It rings true, and probably was -- Chekhov was a dcctor, and as such met many poor people. I don't think it's Chekhov's best story, but it's very readable, albeit depressing. Then again, I don't think anyone reads Russian literature for the cheer it brings to people's lives....more
Are there countries in the world which are more likely to produce depressing literature than others? If so, Russia must be pretty much top of the listAre there countries in the world which are more likely to produce depressing literature than others? If so, Russia must be pretty much top of the list. I have yet to read a Russian novel which ends well for all the protagonists. I can only think of a few in which things end well for even a few of the protagonists. And Dostoyevsky of course loves his tragedies. The Idiot is one of them. While it's not as tragic as, say, Crime and Punishment, nearly all of its protagonists come to a sticky end, and as always, they meet plenty of drama and intrigue on their way there. And it's all classical Russian drama and intrigue, which is to say it's full of passion, obsession, sudden mood swings, tantrums and hysterical fits. In short, The Idiot is a book full of histrionics, but I love it, because for one thing, there's something grand about all those huge emotions, and for another, Dostoyevsky is such a good writer that he gets away with making his characters behave like Greek gods. Every time I read a book of his, I come away wishing he had written his own version of Greek mythology. I'm sure it would have been an astonishing read.
As for the book at hand, it's a book about society -- more specifically, about a modern society that is so corrupt and materialistic that a good man simply cannot survive in it. In The Idiot, that good man is Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, who has spent most of his life in a Swiss hospital because of his epileptic fits, and now returns to the country of his youth. Although many people call him an idiot, Myshkin is not actually stupid; he is just innocent and naïve, and likely to forgive those who have trespassed against him as he is sure they meant no harm. Needless to say, there are those who dismiss him as an inconsequential figure or try to take advantage of him, but he also wins over a lot of people with his innate goodness and refusal to think ill of others. He's a Christ-like figure, but was Christ allowed to live in the society he lived in? He wasn't, and neither, sadly enough, is Myshkin, one of Dostoyevsky's more likeable protagonists. Because Russia, to which Dostoyevsky devotes some choice paragraphs, is too jaded for people like him -- too corrupt and too, well, Russian.
But The Idiot is not just a novel about a corrupt society. Ultimately (and this is probably why I like it so much) it's about love. About the different ways in which people love each other. About loving out of pity. About loving against reason. About mad, obsessive, possessive love. About angry love. About humiliating love. About corrupting love and the fear of love. About the things people do for love, the mistakes they make in the name of love, and the love they simply fail to notice because their eyes are directed elsewhere. At the heart of the book is a fascinating love triangle (or is it a quadrangle? or even a pentagon?), which makes it incredibly romantic despite all the ugly stuff that is going on at the same time. It doesn't have a happy-ever-after ending, but there's something terrifically grand and romantic about the ways in which the various lovers end, and I like that. It's realism with a dose of Romanticism with a capital R, and it works.
As always, Dostoyevsky's characterisation is superb. His naïve hero is pitched against a fabulous cast of sophisticated nobles, desperate wannabes, highly strung concubines, passionate schoolgirls, mad stalkers, dramatic nihilists, and so on. Many of the characters are larger than life, yet you somehow believe them, because let's face it, Russia is the kind place that could spawn these people, isn't it? By and large, the characters are well drawn, and if many of them are either unsympathetic or a tad capricious, so be it. There is enough passion, grandstanding and back-stabbing going on between them to keep things interesting, and plenty of twisted love, too.
The only thing I dislike about Dostoyevsky (and the one reason why I'm not giving The Idiot five stars) is his tendency to go off on tangents just when something exciting is about to happen. In The Idiot, he relates the events of an evening, tells us that the hero will have a secret and obviously important meeting with the girl he loves in the morning, and then, rather than relating the events of the next morning in the next chapter, proceeds to spend four chapters (some sixty pages altogether) telling the reader what happens at the Prince's house late at night, none of which has anything to do with the upcoming meeting with the girl. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who felt cheated there. Other than the tangents, though, Dostoyevsky is a superb writer, and The Idiot is as fine an example of classic Russian literature as you're likely to find anywhere (provided you like long dialogue and slightly mad characters). I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could, but in the absence of half stars, four will have to do.
(And for those of you who care about translations: I read the Bantam version by Constance Garnett and was quite happy with it.)...more
Like every European teenager who takes French at secondary school, I was supposed to read Madame Bovary when I was seventeen or so. I chose not to, anLike every European teenager who takes French at secondary school, I was supposed to read Madame Bovary when I was seventeen or so. I chose not to, and boy, am I glad I did. I couldn't possibly have done justice to the richness of Flaubert's writing as a seventeen-year-old. Moreover, I probably would have hated the characters so much that I never would have given the book another chance. Which would have been a shame, as it's really quite deserving of the tremendous reputation it has.
Madame Bovary is the story of Emma Rouault, a mid-nineteenth-century peasant woman who has read too many sentimental novels for her own good. When the hopeless romantic marries Charles Bovary, a country doctor, she thinks she is going to lead a life full of passion and grandeur, but instead she gets stuck in a provincial town where nothing ever happens. Hell-bent on some escapism and yearning for someone who understands her romantic needs, Emma embarks on two adulterous affairs, plunges herself into debt and ends up very badly indeed, leaving behind a husband who might not have been the dashing hero of her dreams but who most certainly did care about her.
Madame Bovary is most famous for its portrayal of an unfulfilled woman, and indeed it's Emma's ennui and desperate need for romance that the reader will remember. They are described so convincingly that it's hard to believe the author was a man rather than a woman. However, Madame Bovary isn't all about one woman going through life dreaming and breaking down every time reality catches up with her. Like other great classics of realism, it's about society – about the social mores and conditions which instil certain kinds of behaviour in people and then punish them for it. Flaubert's depiction of Emma's provincial village (a haven of all that is base and mediocre) is painstakingly detailed and realistic. It's a wonderfully vivid and well-observed account of life in mid-nineteenth-century rural France, where people go about doing their jobs, conducting illicit affairs, gossiping behind each other's backs, ruining each other financially and generally leading lives which are far from exalted. Flaubert's portrayal of his characters is unabashedly vicious and misanthropic, but such is the quality of his writing that you forgive him for taking such a dim view of humanity. There are descriptions in the book (the seduction at the market, the club-foot operation, the endlessly prolonged death from arsenic poisoning) which rank among the best things nineteenth-century realism has to offer – gloriously life-like scenes which make you feel as if you're right there in the thick of things, watching things happen in front of your horrified eyes. And if the whole thing has a tragic and deterministic slant to it, well, so be it. That's realism for you. At least Flaubert has the decency to grant his heroine a few sighs of rapture before her inexorable demise. For it may be a realist novel, but it has some genuinely romantic moments of passion and drama (cab ride through Rouen, anyone?), and is all the better for it.
Ultimately, how you respond to Madame Bovary depends on your own susceptibility to romantic notions. If, like Emma Bovary, you're prone to dreams of passion, beauty and perfection, and yearn to feel and experience rather than being stuck in a dreary life in a village where nothing ever happens, chances are you'll be able to relate to Emma and thus see the genius of Flaubert's depiction of her. If, on the other hand, you think that such romantic escapism is a lot of sentimental, self-indulgent claptrap (which it is – that's the tragedy of it!), you probably won't be able to relate to Emma at all, and therefore won't much appreciate her as a tragic heroine. As for myself, I'm definitely in the former camp. If I'd been Emma, I probably would have walked into the same traps that she does. I would have fallen in love with the one neighbour who seems to understand my need for intensity, I would have gone through the same mad cycle of repentance, dissatisfaction and making the same mistakes again, and I probably would have spent a bit too much money in my quest for soul-affirming experiences, as well. My ruin wouldn't have been as complete as Emma's, but it would have been fed by the same dreams and desires. Oh, yes. So don't let anyone tell you Madame Bovary is an old-fashioned creature whose dilemmas are no longer relevant to modern readers. There are plenty of people in modern society who are as much in love with romance itself as she is, and not just women, either. And as for discontent, how many people today aren't dissatisfied with their lives because they don't match the glamorous/exciting lives they see on TV? And how many people today don't rack up huge debts because the magazines they read have led them to believe that they're entitled to more than is within their means? Replace 'sentimental novels' by 'TV', 'movies' and 'magazines', and all of a sudden Emma's cravings won't seem so outdated any more. Quite the contrary; they're as timeless and universal as they ever were. That's the hallmark of a classic – it speaks to us from across a century and a half and shows us ourselves. We may not much like the picture of ourselves, but it's pretty powerful all the same.
I'd give the book four and a half stars if I could, but alas. In the absence of half stars, four stars will have to do, with the assurance that it's well worth another half. ...more
This book has garnered so many five-star reviews and deals with such important subject matter that it almost feels like an act of heresy to give it a This book has garnered so many five-star reviews and deals with such important subject matter that it almost feels like an act of heresy to give it a mere four stars. Yet that is exactly what I'm going to do, for while Night is a chilling account of the Holocaust and the dehumanisation and brutalisation of the human spirit under extreme circumstances, the fact remains that I've read better ones. Better written ones, and more insightful ones, too.
Night is Elie Wiesel's somewhat fictionalised account of the year he spent at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It's a chilling story about his experiences in and between concentration camps, his gradual loss of faith (he was a very observant Jew who obviously wondered where God was while his people were being exterminated), and his feelings of guilt when he realised that his struggle for survival was making him insensitive towards his dying father. It's gruesome, chilling material, and I felt very quiet after having read it. Yet I also felt vaguely unsatisfied with the book. I wanted more detail. I wanted fleshed-out writing rather than a succession of meaningful one-line paragraphs. I wanted less heavy-handed symbolism (the book very much centres on troubled father-and-son relationships, to echo the one central Father-and-Son one) and more actual feeling. I wanted a writer (and a translator) who knew better than to call an SS officer 'an SS'. And most of all, I wanted a less abrupt ending. I wanted to ask Wiesel what happened in the immediate aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald. I wanted to ask him what happened to his leg, on which he marched for several gruesome days just days after having undergone an operation, and how he picked up the pieces afterwards, and why on earth his two eldest sisters, who died in Auschwitz as well as his mother and younger sister, never warranted more than a single mention. The latter was an example of seriously shoddy writing, I thought.
Perhaps my questions were answered in the original version of Night, which never got published. In his introduction to the new English translation of Night, Wiesel mentions that the book as it is today is a severely abridged version of a much longer Yiddish original called And the World Remained Silent. I think I can see why the original wasn't published (quite apart from the fact that the world wasn't ready yet for concentration camp literature, the few quotes provided in the introduction make for heavy reading). The abridged version definitely seems more readable than the full-length one, and does an admirable job getting the facts across. Even so, I think the publishers might have gone a step too far in abridging the book to the extent that they did. No doubt the very brevity of Night is one of the reasons why it's so popular today, but personally, I would have liked to see a middle road between the original (detailed) manuscript and the incredibly spare barebones version sold now. Don't get me wrong, the abridged version is effective, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the Holocaust for people with short attention spans. I prefer Primo Levi and Ella Lingens-Reiner's more complete accounts of life in the camps myself, not to mention several Dutch books which sadly never got translated into other languages.
But still. Night is an important book, and one that deserves to be widely read. In fact, one that should be widely read, by people of all ages and nationalities, to prevent nightmare like this ever happening again. ...more
A year and a half ago, while making long bus journeys in Anatolia, I read Orhan Pamuk's The New Life, which is about a young man making long bus journA year and a half ago, while making long bus journeys in Anatolia, I read Orhan Pamuk's The New Life, which is about a young man making long bus journeys in Anatolia. I found the Turkish bus system to be a lot safer than Pamuk describes it, but other than that, I recognised a fair bit, and loved the power of Pamuk's descriptions. I could easily see why the man was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize, although I ended up being somewhat underwhelmed by The New Life.
The New Life is a road novel-cum-metaphysical thriller which tells the story of Osman, a student who reads a mysterious book that changes his life. He becomes so obsessed with the book that he sets out to find its secret, together with a girl whose life has also been significantly altered by the book. Their quest leads them on a trip through the Turkish hinterland, but most of all through some sort of metaphysical realm where things soon stop making sense, or rather make far too much sense. You be the judge.
The New Life is not an easy book, and those who read it expecting a straightforward novel will be very frustrated. It's not really a novel, but rather a postmodern parable that sort of turns back on itself in the end. After a promising, spell-binding beginning, Pamuk loses himself in philosophical asides and metaphysical abstractions which are beautifully written (and beautifully translated) but seem to lack a plot. The increasingly obscure and surreal middle part of the book is fairly hard to get through. It contains beautiful and occasionally hypnotic descriptions of Anatolia (a part of the world which is very much torn between East and West), and paints an interesting picture of amateur detective work, obsession, the role that books can play in one's life and the particular joys of travelling with someone you love but are not in a relationship with, but the story as a whole just won't gel. The ending is intriguing again, but my main impression after finishing the book was that several chapters could have been left out without any damage to the book. It's basically a Borges story drawn out over 300 pages, and while it certainly has its merits (Pamuk is an excellent writer when he stays focused on his story), the final effect is of it being a bit... much.
And yet I look forward to rereading The New Life. Several people have told me the book grew on them upon rereading it, and I believe it. I can easily see this turning into a four-star book upon rereading, now that I know what the story is actually about. I also look forward to reading Pamuk's other works. I've been told that The New Life is his most obscure book, and that the others are actually quite brilliant. I can't wait to read them... ...more
I tend not to care overly much for short stories and novellas, but this 100-page Austrian novella from 1942 is a classic, and deservedly so. A taut psI tend not to care overly much for short stories and novellas, but this 100-page Austrian novella from 1942 is a classic, and deservedly so. A taut psychological drama, it tells the story of a short series of chess matches taking place on board a cruiseship. One of the passengers on board the ship is Mirko Czentovic, the world chess champion. Another is a millionaire who offers Czentovic good money for a match. Needless to say, the millionaire is about to get defeated handsomely when a mysterious passenger steps up and tells him how to save the game. The rest of the story then focuses on that passenger, a completely unknown chess player who turns out to be a former Nazi prisoner who learned to play chess by learning by heart the only book he could find in his solitary confinement, a chess book detailing one hundred famous chess games which he began to play in his head to kill time. In the end, the mental chess games against himself nearly drove him insane and he had to swear never to play chess again. And now the people on board are pressuring him to take on the world champion...
Chess Story (also known as The Royal Game) is a dark story about the struggle for survival and about the power and the feebleness of the human mind. Nothing much actually happens in it except for a few chess games, but the back story of the protagonist's madding isolation, his efforts to occupy and train his mind, and his eventual mental breakdown are rendered vividly and with great psychological detail. The result is a compelling novella which packs a greater emotional punch than many a full-length novel, and which is fascinating even for those who don't know the first thing about chess. ...more
What would happen if Satan were to alight on a modern metropolis like Moscow and wreak havoc in it? That's just one of the questions asked and answereWhat would happen if Satan were to alight on a modern metropolis like Moscow and wreak havoc in it? That's just one of the questions asked and answered in this twentieth-century Russian classic, which is said to have been the inspiration for the Rolling Stones song 'Sympathy for the Devil'.
You can see why Mick Jagger and his cronies would be intrigued by the devil as portrayed in The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov's Satan is not necessarily purely evil; he just punishes sceptics and greedy people, and does so in extremely creative ways. He has a lot of personality, and if that weren't enough, he also has a fascinating retinue of demons and zombies who gleefully go about creating their own brand of creative mischief. The result, as you might expect, is an orgy of chaos in which people get killed, scared out of their wits, humiliated and spirited away, usually in fairly inventive ways. It's hard not to admire Bulgakov's imagination in these scenes; he really does come up with some outrageous stuff, and except for the one chapter in which one of the main characters flies over Moscow on a broomstick, you'll buy it -- even the gun-toting cat who cannot be killed. That's how good his writing is.
It's not all wicked mayhem, though. Interwoven with the main story are descriptions of the last days of Pilate and Christ, which seem a bit disjointed at first but have a strangely beautiful quality. These, it turns out, are chapters from a book written by 'the master', an author (surely an autobiographical representation of Bulgakov himself) whose career has been ruined by the authorities. Soviet Russia is never mentioned in the book (its Moscow has a distinctly timeless flavour), but The Master and Margarita is in fact a surreal parody on what was happening during Bulgakov's lifetime, with Satan carrying out the purges Stalin was carrying out in real life. Among other things, Bulgakov satirises literary life in the Soviet Union, which for him wasn't a tremendous lot of fun. He also defends Christianity (albeit in a way the Church did not really appreciate), which in the atheistic Soviet Union was enough of a no-no that he never even tried getting the book published during his lifetime.
While I greatly enjoyed the panache with which Bulgakov describes the demons' exploits and the various layers he seems to weave into the story, I do have a few quibbles with the book. One is that the author comes up with a tremendous cast of characters, many of whom he leaves just a tad too soon for the reader to care about them. As a result, many parts of the book feel rather episodic, especially in the middle. Furthermore, Bulgakov occasionally lets his imagination get the better of him. Margarita's flight over Moscow was one step too far for me, although I have a feeling it will make more sense to me when I reread the book, which I certainly will at some point.
These are minor quibbles, though. For the most part, The Master and Margarita is a very successful, terrifically original and occasionally funny venture into surrealism with many layers which will undoubtedly make for rewarding rereading. I definitely look forward to rereading it. ...more
A cross between The Silence of the Lambs and a period drama. That's how I would describe Perfume, the great German classic of the 1980s. Basically, itA cross between The Silence of the Lambs and a period drama. That's how I would describe Perfume, the great German classic of the 1980s. Basically, it's an eighteenth-century murder story, except that it doesn't focus on the victims and the hunt for the killer, but rather emphasises the life and times of the murderer, who is an unusual protagonist to say the least.
Perfume tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an eighteenth-century Parisian with a unique gift: a prodigiously well-developed olfactory sense which allows him to recognise pretty much any scent or smell. After a childhood full of hardship, he is apprenticed to a perfumier who teaches him all he knows about distilling smells. Unbeknownst to the perfumier, however, Grenouille isn't in it for the fashionable perfumes. Rather than extracting scents from flowers and petals, he wishes to extract smells from living objects -- more specifically, from the beautiful virgins he comes across every now and then, who smell like heaven to him. And so he plies his trade, hoping to learn that elusive trick which will enable him to trap the scents of the lovely young ladies he covets from afar, so that he can create the perfume he really wants -- essence of maiden.
Perfume is a riveting look into the mind of an obsessed man -- a murderer whose immorality and eccentricity put him on a par with Thomas Harris' unforgettable serial killers. As unlikeable and depraved as Grenouille is, you almost sympathise with him. He may be a monomaniac, but his perseverance and creativity and the originality of his quest are such you almost wish him to succeed, or at least to see how far he will get before he gets caught. Suskind does such a great job describing his obsession that you simply keep turning the pages, waiting to see what fate has in store for this horrible yet ever so original murderer.
The writing on display is beautiful. A tremendous lot of research went into Perfume, and it shows. The descriptions of the various perfume-making techniques are rich, detailed and thoroughly impressive. Suskind frequently devotes whole pages to explanations of parfumiers' secrets; it is testimony to the quality of his writing that they never get tedious. He also does a marvellous job evoking the odours of Grenouille's world and the way in which they affect him. With its many powerful descriptions of odours (both pleasant and unpleasant), the book is a veritable smellscape which makes you increasingly aware of the smells surrounding you. However, it is not without its problems. The middle chapters are a bit of a drag and the ending is so over the top that many readers will be put off by it. I was a bit put off by it myself, yet I can see why Suskind went for the grotesque touch. For all its scientific detail, Perfume is essentially a fairy tale, and anything but a strange ending would have been a betrayal. It's weird, but if you read the story as if it were fairy tale, the ending makes sense. It's a fairy tale with a fairy-tale ending, and then some. ...more
I have to admit I don't care overly much for Anna Politkovskaya's writing style. An objective reporter she is not (or rather was not -- she was murderI have to admit I don't care overly much for Anna Politkovskaya's writing style. An objective reporter she is not (or rather was not -- she was murdered a few years after publishing this book); her indignation at the social ills she exposes comes across loud and clear, and she frequently goes so far as to tell her reader to share her indignation, occasionally to the point of being rather insistent. Personally, I would have appreciated a slightly more objective, less cynical approach. That said, there is no denying that Politkovskaya had good cause to be indignant, and her writing succeeds in making the reader share that indignation, or rather pessimism. It's hard to remain optimistic about Russia's future after reading this book. The present doesn't seem to offer much scope for hope.
In Putin's Russia Politkovskaya describes in seven chapters what has happened since Vladimir Putin assumed power in the Kremlin. She starts out by charting abuses in the army, more specifically in parts of the army stationed in Chechnya. This turns into a lengthy and fairly shocking expose of corruption in Russia's legal system, where high-ranking army officers are exonerated from terrible crimes and where the rich and well-connected get away with absolutely outrageous business practices. She then describes poverty in the navy (apparently the commanders working on the world's most expensive submarines are nearly starving to death), the terrible position of Chechen citizens in Russia and the aftermath of the Nord-Ost and Beslan disasters. It all adds up to a rather dreary conclusion: Putin's Russia is an utterly callous and corrupt place which in many regards seems to be regressing into Soviet-style politics and situations. In fact, some things now seem to be worse than they were during the worst years of the Soviet era. I already knew that from the news, but reading Politkovskaya's stories really drove the fact home for me.
As I said, I don't care much for Politkovskaya's writing style, but there's no doubt that she has come up with a convincing, well-researched document here. She quotes many interesting people from all walks of life, has unearthed many legal documents to illustrate her stories and comes up with some wry observations about why certain changes for the better took place at a certain time (usually coinciding with the visit of some foreign dignitary Putin wished to impress) and about the Russian national character in general. It's a bit heavy-going at times, and some of the army stuff drags, but even so it's a powerful indictment of Putin's Russia, always shocking and occasionally quite mind-boggling. ...more
Silence in October tells the story of a forty-something art historian whose wife suddenly goes on a long holiday without him, unannounced. Unsure of wSilence in October tells the story of a forty-something art historian whose wife suddenly goes on a long holiday without him, unannounced. Unsure of whether she has actually left him, and if so, why, the man starts sifting through his memories, remembering their life together and away from each other and meditating on the meaning of, well, pretty much everything. Very little actually happens in the book; it's mostly a stroll down Memory Lane. Introspective, meditative and more than a little self-obsessed, this is not a book for those who don't like navel-gazing, but it's a well-written analysis of married life, the art scene and the mid-life crisis, full of shifting time lines and wry observations, and an interesting journey through one (fairly likeable) man's head....more
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