Dancing Mad God

I finished a relatively modest nine books this month, including one standalone short story, but six of those were for my Black History Month reading topic, another two by women, and three in German, one in Portuguese (which I read twice!).

• O avesso da pele — Jeferson Tenório
• Secret Lives and Other Stories — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
• Driftglass — Samuel R. Delany
• Iowa — Stefanie Sargnagel
• Mist, die versteht mich ja! — Florence Brokowski-Shekete
• Die schönste Version — Ruth-Maria Thomas
• Red Dust Road — Jackie Kay
• Slow Time Between the Stars — John Scalzi
• Under Our Skin — Joaquim Arena

Starting with that one: I finished O avesso da pele at the beginning of the month after a long pause, then listened to the audiobook to get a better idea of the whole. It’s an odd book, written in the second person addressing the narrator’s recently-murdered father. The narrator himself is strangely sketchy (clearly to put the focus on the father, but he’s not completely transparent), while the father’s tale is an effective balance of personal and political (though as it makes clear, everything is political). The core of the book is the chapter detailing the father’s experiences of being targeted by the police, which is Bolañoesque in its remorselessness.

The last book I read is also originally in Portuguese, and oddly has almost the same title: Under Our Skin (Debaixo da Nossa Pele). Even more focused on race, this is a non-fiction account of the family and wider history of the Cape Verdean writer on the one hand, coupled chapter by chapter with his search for traces of the former slave population in southern Portugal. The historical sections were often eye-opening (notably the former slave who went on to gain a doctorate in the Netherlands for a work defending slavery), while the travelogue sections are evocative of a dying society. The use of racist terms in the text, again clearly intentional, is something I want to find out more about in the Portuguese in Translation discussion next month!

Staying in Africa, Secret Lives and Other Stories is an early collection from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, with all that one might expect — the stories are powerful, but simplistic in comparison with his later work.

Red Dust Road and Mist, die versteht mich ja! are an intriguing pair of memoirs: Jackie Kay was born in Scotland to a Nigerian father and Highland mother, and immediately adopted, while Florence Brokowski-Shekete was born to Nigerian parents in Germany (and so was Nigerian), but was brought up by a foster mother and only adopted as an adult. Kay’s book focuses on her tracing of her birth parents and discovery of the Nigerian side of her family, whereas Brokowski-Shekete concentrates on her childhood in small town Germany and brief, unhappy stay in Nigeria.

Race is less explicitly a topic in Driftglass (a re-read, but from so long ago that much of it seemed new); these are again quite early stories, and variable in quality, but the 60s visions of the future are entertaining. Points also for use of “coolth”.

A mini-project this month was catching up with some of the Deutsche Buchpreis long- and shortlisted books: Iowa was great fun, in a somewhat terrifying way; Sargnagel’s ironic persona is possibly the only sane way to deal with the weirdness of a liberal arts college surrounded by darkest rural Iowa, and she plays the role perfectly:

Ich respektiere Religiosität. Allerdings respektiere ich sie auf dieselbe Art, auf die ich kleinkinder respektiere, wenn sie mir in der Sandkiste einen „Kuchen“ anbieten. Ich schaue anerkennend, agiere so, als würde ihre Fantasie auch in meine Realitaet Eingang finden, und lächle wohlwollend von oben herab.

The footnotes from her travelling companion Christiane Rösinger add another ironic layer to the whole thing.

I accidentally found a great Cottbus writer on the longlist: Die schönste Version takes place in an unnamed town which is suspiciously similar to these parts. Starting with an incident of domestic violence, Thomas leads the reader forwards and backwards to show the effects and the causes (spoiler: the causes are all of German society). At the centre is a sympathetic portrait of the realistically imperfect main character, whose personality comes through brilliantly in the narrative voice. Speaking of voice, the audiobook is excellently performed by Lili Zahavi.

Lastly, a tidger: Slow Time Between the Stars is one of a series of standalone short stories, which covers millions of years in a very modest number of pages. That’s pretty much the point of the story, and this is a great way to experience drifting at high speed in interstellar space.

Next stop is France, in the company of Barthes, Ernaux, probably Perec….

I finished reading ten books this month — just four for my usual diversity goal of women/POC, but eight for my monthly reading topic (LGBT+), three in German, and two (2) in Portuguese.

• Kleinstadtnovelle — Ronald M. Schernikau
• Das Geständnis der Löwin — Mia Couto, tr. Karin von Schweder-Schreiner
• The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House — Audre Lord
• Night Side of the River — Jeanette Winterson
• Um milhão de finais felizes — Vitor Martins
• The Death of Vivek Oji — Akwaeke Emezi
• Der bewegte Mann | Pretty Baby — Ralf König
• Shuggie Bain — Douglas Stuart
• Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai — Gonçalo M. Tavares
• The Female Man — Joanna Russ

Starting with the LGBT books, Kleinstadtnovelle was fascinating. In one respect predictable — the theme of parochial intolerance is exactly what one might expect from the title — the form is initially startling; a stream of consciousness, modernist experience of a gay teenager’s life, with Brechtian kleinschreibung (appropriate for an author who was one of the last emigrants from West to East Germany).

The other German book was my graphic novel of the month, Der bewegte Mann | Pretty Baby. It’s an absolute hoot! The book is a two-parter, telling the story of a (mostly) hetero guy who gets mixed up with a (mostly) gay group, and König takes every opportunity to take the mickey out of both sides. It was also splendid for my knowledge of (80s gay) German slang.

Possibly the best thing about The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House is the title; not that there’s anything wrong with the book, but it is a fantastic title which perfectly summarises a large part of the message. This is a short collection of texts (mostly speeches) by Lorde, and the oral context allows her great rhetorical opportunities, which she’s happy to take:

There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.

Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees.

There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.

The Female Man is of a similar time, and is as explicit in its engagement with 70s feminism, but this time in the context of a sci-fi romp. Russ has great fun with the narrator as a character in the book, and the constant shifts in voice and narrative style create a sometimes bewildering, but highly enjoyable patchwork:

SOMEBODY ASIDES ME IS GONNA RUE THIS HERE PARTICULAR DAY.

‘I know,’ said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.

Little did she know that there was, attached to his back, a drowning-machine issued him in his teens along with his pipe and his tweeds and his ambition and his profession and his father’s mannerisms

The Death of Vivek Oji takes place in a very different setting: (small-town?) Nigeria, where a group of young, closeted LGBT people forms around the title character. L G B and T threads all feature in the story, which, set alongside the central investigation of Vivek’s mother, show the importance of not making assumptions.

Shuggie Bain takes place in another now-remote place: the outskirts of Glasgow under the onslaught of Thatcherism. The grimness of the setting and the events is often hard to take, but the central section’s portrayal of Shuggie’s alcoholic mother is very powerful. The social attitudes are also a useful reminder that despite current political horrors, there has been substantial progress in the last few decades.

Night Side of the River does not generally focus on sexuality, though one could draw a parallel with binary distinctions in terms of reality/the paranormal. The paranormal aspect of the stories I had no problem with, but Winterson’s own experiences of the paranormal are interspersed with them, which I found highly irritating (simultaneously credulous and wishy-washy).

The first Portuguese book also fits into the project: Um milhão de finais felizes is the second book I’ve read by Vitor Martins, and it’s very similar to the first. In this case, the protagonist is a teen aspiring-writer with a dysfunctional and homophobic family background. The plot is low jeopardy, mostly just ambling along in the amusing company of him and his friends, which was a pleasant way to spend some time.

The other Portuguese book, Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai is very enigmatic and suggestive: details are deliberately omitted, and there isn’t any conventional plot development. Once one is aware of that and provided one accepts is, there’s a lot to enjoy here: the protagonists meet interesting characters and discuss philosophical ideas in what I imagine is a higher-class Paolo Coelho-manner.

Finally, a re-read, also from the Lusophone world: I enjoyed Das Geständnis der Löwin much more than I had the first time. Now that I had some idea what was going on, I could see much better the relationships between the characters and different aspects of the plot, and the incorporation of Mozambican cultural ideas (helped also by the discussion which the Portuguese in Translation club held with the author and English translator).

Honourable mention also to two LGBT books I didn’t finish in time: On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong, and of course Der Zauberberg.

Next month is Black History Month (UK/Ireland edition), which I’ll be celebrating with mostly German (Afro-Deutsch) history and other literature.

A productive month (not much work!) — 13 books finished, all but two by women/POC, 8 for #WITMonth, 5 in German, one re-read in Portuguese, 2 books of poetry, and one graphic novel.

• Frauen, die die Kunst revolutioniert haben — Valentina Grande and Eva Rossetti, tr. Britta Köhler
• Quinze dias — Vitor Martins
• Against Healing — ed. and tr. Emily Jungmin Moon
• Lichtverhältnisse — Helga Königsdorf
• Ich bedaure nichts und Alles schmeckt nach Abschied — Brigitte Reimann
• Alle Toten fliegen hoch: Wann wird es endlich wieder so, wie es nie war — Joachim Meyerhoff
• The Long Form — Kate Briggs
• The Sun-fish — Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
• Vertical Motion — Can Xue, tr. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping
• Mild Vertigo — Mieko Kanai, tr. Polly Barton
• The Years — Annie Ernaux, tr. Alison L. Strayer
• Wednesday’s Child — Yiyun Li
• DAVE — Raphaela Edelbauer

Starting with the women who were actually in translation, Vertical Motion was a bit of a disappointment. I was very hopeful based on what I’d heard about her, and the title story is a banger, very Kafkaesque in taking an absurd premise, then developing it rigorously. Unfortunately many of the other stories read more like dream sequences, with no internal logic. As so often with Chinese literature, the translation is poor (neither of the translators seems to be primarily either a writer themselves or a translator by profession), especially with dialogue:

“Your absurd argument boggles my mind!”

“What can I do? To be precise, all I’m doing is grumbling about the status quo.”

Against Healing was much more successful: it’s a short (3 poems each from 9 authors) survey of modern Korean women’s poetry. “Body poetry” is a big theme, for example in the great first poem, In Order not to Rot after Death.

I also very much enjoyed the third book fom Asia, Mild Vertigo. Subtly brilliant, this book takes us into the mind of a woman trying to cope with the tedium of being a Tokyo housewife. Inconsequential conversations and manic regurgitaitons create a brilliantly unsettling effect.

The Years is untypical Ernaux, short, but epic. Instead of focusing on one event, she uses her whole life to show French society and the development of its ideas over the course of the post-war period. The book is full of ironic jabs, often at herself (“she”):

“she copies down sentences that tell one how to live, which have the undeniable weight of truth because they come from books”

“On Saturdays, girls in white veils lined up to be married, giving birth six months later to robust ‘premature’ babies.”

“It was normal for goods to arrive from all over the world and freely circulate, while men and women were turned away at the borders. To cross them, some had themselves locked into trucks, inert merchandise, and died asphyxiated when the driver forgot them in a Dover parking lot under the June sun.”

Translated from Italian into German, Frauen, die die Kunst revolutioniert haben is an interesting partner to Against Healing with its body art. Stretching the term “graphic novel”, it’s an illuminating short read and sent me off to find more about each of the artists: Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Ana Mendieta, and the very spiky www.guerrillagirls.com .

Three untranslated WIT (still count, going by the odd-sounding, but fair enough “official rules”): first two from East Germany. Lichtverhältnisse is a diverse collection of stories, ranging from absurdist humour (East Germans causing uproar in heaven) to the elegaic (e.g. the splendid final story, Der Rummelplatz). Ich bedaure nichts und Alles schmeckt nach Abschied dates from slightly earlier, being Reimann’s diaries from the central period of her life (mid to late 60s), as she became a literary star while working in a power plant and living in a council house. She’s infuriating, but wonderfully passionate about love, politics, and books.

Lastly, DAVE is an inconsistent, but enjoyable scifi romp. As a dystopia centred on the development of AI, it’s obviously timely, though the info-dumps are often wearing, and some passages are, as with Can Xue, perilously close to dream sequences. In the end though, it more or less makes sense, and by that stage the reader is ready to understand the beginning. As for why the book is called DAVE, I had to ask the internet for that one.

One more German book, Alle Toten fliegen hoch: Wann wird es endlich wieder so, wie es nie war is the second part of Joachim Meyerhoff’s autofictional series. As with the first volume, most of the book consists of amusing anecdotes about his childhood (living in the grounds of a psychiatric institution led by his father). The latter chapters become increasingly dark, however, with several crises unsparingly, but movingly told.

The Portuguese book of the month was again a re-read, partly as an audiobook: Quinze dias. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the narration, but that’s a minor issue.

I read two books which I describe as WIT-adjacent: The Long Form is not in translation, but Briggs is a woman translator (or “lady translator”, as she ironically has it in her other book, This Little Art). This is an outstanding novel about motherhood, living together, keeping going, and … the novel. A real novel of ideas, it comes with a bibliography worth reading in itself, and which added several more books to my TBR pile. Wednesday’s Child is by Yiyun Li, a Chinese-American who could hardly be more different from Can Xue: the stories reminded me of Alice Munro, with their focus on small-town life and motherhood. Li returns repeatedly to themes from her own life (most obviously Chinese immigration to the US, and suicide), which is hard to dissociate from the work itself.

Finally, the second poetry book (second successive from Ireland): The Sun-fish was, I must admit, often beyond me. The more accessible poems were often beautiful (In the Desert), and there were enough lines and phrases to keep me going, but I’ll need to try it again later.

Next month’s theme is LGBTQ (etc.): I’m already making some more progress with Der Zauberberg, but it won’t be finished….

I finished ten books in July, eight as part of my project for the month — Ireland — five by women/POC, three in German, one in Portuguese.

• Small Things Like These — Claire Keegan
• Irisches Tagebuch — Heinrich Böll
• Collected Stories — Bernard MacLaverty
• The View From Here — Sara Berkeley
• Old God’s Time — Sebastian Barry
• A palavra que resta — Stênio Gardel
• Reichlich spät — Claire Keegan, tr. Hans-Christian Oeser
• The Long Game — Aoife Moore
• The Magician — Colm Tóibín
• Empusion — Olga Tokarczuk, tr. Lothar Quinkenstein and Lisa Palmes

Starting with Ireland, The Long Game is an account of Sinn Fein’s journey from an adjunct of the IRA in the early 70s to being in or near government on both sides of the border. There’s an inevitably large cast, which can be wearying at times, but overall it’s a very readable introduction to the party — Moore makes it clear how weird it can be from her introductory note on sources onwards. The central, contrasting figures of Adams and McGuiness are fascinating.

The Magician is the second Colm Tóibín I’ve read (after Brooklyn), and I still can’t say I’m a fan of his rather flat style. I also thought he doesn’t have a real solution to the problem of a novel about a real-life person, where the story necessarily follows more or less random events. The portrait of Mann as a well-meaning but generally terrible paterfamilias is psychologically convincing, but again the inconvenient facts (in this case the large number of children, who I found hard to keep track of, never mind differentiate) gets in the way.

Old God’s Time is a complete contrast: Barry’s style is spectacular, and he’s not afraid of turning it on even at emotional high-points:

The style meshes well with the story, as the reader is left to deduce what the reality is below the surface brilliance. Some aspects (the Chekhovian gun!) were rather heavy-handed, but that’s a minor niggle.

I’ve been reading Bernard MacLaverty’s Collected Stories for a while, and finished them at just the right time. A lot of the stories have similar themes — childhood and small-mindedness in particular — so I wouldn’t want to read too many together. Throughout, though, there are wonderful descriptions:

“her mouth slightly smiling, yet not smiling — the way a mouth is after smiling.”

“After the bright sunlight it was gloomy inside. It smelt of old and cat.”

“the sneeze as the automatic doors opened and closed.”

The View From Here was another hit — a collection of poetry by an Irish adopted-American, spanning both countries. It struck a perfect balance for me between the comprehensible and the thought-provokingly opaque:

“fierce-eyed, animal soft”

“our shadows crouch like insects and although the screens tell us all trains will be on time it’s hard to be alive.”

Part of the Irish theme turned out to be a mini-Claire-Keegan-fest: I’d been expecting to love Small Things Like These, but I was underwhelmed — perhaps I expected too much. As a few others have mentioned, there’s a Christmas Carol feeling to the portrayal of the family in particular, which I found hard to take. I much preferred the story which I read in translation, Reichlich spät (So Late in the Day), which has a well-judged balance of comedy and horror as we get to know the protagonist.

The last Irish-themed book, Böll’s Irisches Tagebuch, was not quite what I expected: rather than a diary, it’s a collection of sketches based on his experiences, which he then compiled into book form. Again there’s a delicate balance, in this case between realistic descriptions of the poverty which was still widespread at the time (the 1950s), and an appreciation of the humour and warmth of the population, which only occasionally veer into sentimentality. A tramp paying a chip shop-owner twenty shillings to cover the excessive helping of vinegar another customer had appropriated was a particular highlight, combining both elements beautifully.

One last semi-accidental link: Empusion continues the Thomas Mann theme, referencing/parodying Der Zauberberg in a tale of tuberculosis, sexism, and the paranormal. It’s very weird, and I need to think more about it, but it’s well worth a read, and the twist at the end is very much of the zeitgeist!

Lastly, A palavra que resta is another one I’ll need to come back to, in this case mainly for linguistic reasons. It’s written largely in a stream of consciousness style, in northeast-Brazilian dialect, which did not make things any easier. With the help of a great discussion at the Portuguese in Translation book club I understood enough to enjoy the book, and picked up some interesting new vocabulary. There’s also a big thematic overlap with the Tokarczuk….

August, as usual, is Women in Translation month, though there are some others I need to fit in too. I have a long shortlist.

I finished a modest eight books this month, four from my month’s project of “finishing off”, one reread in Portuguese, a modest two in German, and five by women/POC. And since it’s the middle of the year, that makes a total of 57 books, 23 in German, 31 by women/POC, seven in Portuguese (though that includes rereads).

• Raízes do amanhã — Waldson Souza et al.
• Vernon Subutex 1 — Virginie Despentes, tr. Frank Wynne
• Kindheitsmuster — Christa Wolf
• Moon Palace — Paul Auster
• The First Wife — Paulina Chiziane, tr. David Brookshaw
• Rude Girl — Birgit Weyhe
• Thomas Cromwell — Diarmaid MacCulloch
• Alle Toten fliegen hoch: Amerika — Joachim Meyerhoff

As with The Seagull last month, I read Vernon Subutex 1 as preparation for a trip to the theatre. The comparison was fascinating: the play gained a lot from the experience of the performance, especially as music and cinema are central themes, while the novel includes a large narrative element sacrificed in the adaptation. In both, there’s a fine balance between tragedy and comedy.

One particular advantage of the performance of Vernon Subutex was that Vernon was played by Joachim Meyerhoff, who I’d also seen in The Seagull. I enjoyed seeing how he could play both characters in very similar ways, with a particularly good comic style to his voice and timing. Having found out that he also writes, I listened to his reading of the first part of his autobiographical sequence, Alle Toten fliegen hoch: Amerika. The same manner made it a pleasure to listen to, and again there’s a balance between the bulk of the story (comic tales from his year in Laramie, Wyoming) and a central tragedy.

Star book of the month was undoubtedly Kindheitsmuster. It’s a big book in every sense: page count (hence the need to finish it off this month), but also the themes of the Wolf-like protagonist’s childhood in Nazi-era eastern Germany, and the author’s return on a visit to what has become Poland in the 70s. The narrative conceit is that the child is always referred to in the third person, and the author in the second; the book cannot be completed until she manages to reconcile the two in the first. What could be a formal gimmick turns out to be extremely effective.

I started listening to Moon Palace when Paul Auster died, and though I liked the beginning very much, got distracted by other projects. There are similarities with Kindheitsmuster: strong parallels between the author and narrator, and a strong overall form. In this case the form is provided by various strokes of fate, which strike in Dickensian style, which I found rather alienating, but there are still plenty of wonderful things in the novel (the protagonist reading through his furniture made from crates of books, and the description of a trip to see a painting, in particular).

I’ve been reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s biography of Thomas Cromwell for more than a year — I unwisely chose to read it in the kindle app on my phone, which wasn’t conducive to getting immersed in it. In the meantime I’ve finished Hilary Mantel’s trilogy, which helped as a reference point as I reached the final stages of Cromwell’s career (normally it might go the other way). After the long struggle, once I’d started to make progress it all went much more smoothly. As a book, it wasn’t the easiest read — inevitably there’s a large cast involved, which was not easy to keep track of, though the author helpfully points out when we’ve met someone before. The occasional flashes of humour were also very welcome.

With the last finished-off book, we turn to Black and Portuguese writing: The First Wife is an engrossing story of polygamy in Mozambique. Chiziane’s style is very florid, with similes piled on similes — not completely my thing, but it certainly creates an effect. Some of the details of Mozambican marital culture were also eye-opening.

My Portuguese re-read — and first Portuguese audiobook — was Raízes do amanhã, a collection of Brazilian Afro-futurist stories. Not all great writing, but fun.

Finally, graphic novel of the month was Rude Girl, which was unlike anything I’d read before. Enclosed in a framing story of how Weyhe came to write the book is a fictionalised biography of a Caribbean girl in Chicago, who copes with racism, abuse and poverty while embracing literature and the skinhead movement and eventually moving to Germany. It’s intercut with her own reflections on Weyhe’s retelling — as told by Weyhe.

Coming up: I’m starting the second half of 2024 with Ireland, plus (hopefully) a Thomas Mann mini-project….

A short month, with just eight books completed, but I managed to squeeze in my four German, one Portuguese, one graphic novel and one reread. The theme: sci-fi!

• Melek + Ich — Lina Ehrentraut
• Expect Me Tomorrow — Christopher Priest
• Grenzwelten — Ursula K. Le Guin (Autor), tr. Karen Nölle
• The Book of All Loves — Agustín Fernández Mallo, tr. Thomas Bunstead
• Der letzte Europäer — Martina Clavadetscher
• Europe in Winter — Dave Hutchinson
• Eine unberührte Welt Band 1 — Andreas Eschbach
• Raízes do amanhã: 8 contos afrofuturistas — Waldson Souza et al.

The graphic novel, Melek + Ich, was a great discovery. The back cover promised romance, SF, double identities, queer relationships, and narcisissism, all of which it delivered on. The art style was suitably grungy in its dive bars and messy flats, while bringing out the character(s) of the protagonist(s) effectively. The SF element was extremely soft, but consciously and amusingly so (“I happen to have invented a portal to parallel worlds”-style).

Grenzwelten combines two of Le Guin’s Hainish cycle: 1972’s The Word for World is Forest (this part was a reread for me), and The Telling from 2000. Both have a tendency to didacticism, especially in their loving portrayal of the traditional cultures on the respective worlds, but there is enough depth to the characters to keep them engaging.

Der letzte Europäer is a short play about a dog and a protective robot tussling over the last European of the title. It’s in Clavadetscher’s typical sort-of-verse style, though I found it much more obscure than her Knochenlieder. Now that I have some idea what was going on, I’d like to reread it before too long and see how much further in I get.

My search for actual German SF prose took me down several blind alleys: Der grüne Planet (Kai Focke et al.) is a collection of climate fiction short stories, some good (one about a generation ship which lands on a planet abandoned after a climate catastrophe had a nice line in grim humour), some (climate denialist) bad enough for me to stop reading. I get enough both-sidesing from the media already. Vakuum (Phillip P. Peterson) wasn’t awful, but too conventional and middle of the road (especially in its portraya of women) for me to want to invest the time to finish it. I ended up with Eine unberührte Welt Band 1 from the reliable Andreas Eschbach: Swabian humour put to good satirical use, especially in the story about government bureaucracy taking over the literary world.

Expect Me Tomorrow was Christopher Priest’s own venture into climate fiction. That element of the story is skilfully addressed, combining clearness about the actual events with an appreciation of why it could have looked different at the time of one strand of the story (that being the early 20th century). The obligatory Priestian twins link it to a true-life crime story, via a very ropey SF element which the flat prose manages to make believable. A good book to say goodbye to Priest with.

The other English-language novel, Europe in Winter, was the main reason for my choice of the month’s topic. I’ve been reading the Fractured Europe sequence in slow motion over several years, but Europe in Winter didn’t fit in with any of my recent themes. Now it set the theme, and it was great to dive back in to the world. In each book Hutchinson seems to take the story at least 90 degrees from where it was before, but our friend Rudi is always there to be our guide. This time he also repeated a scene word for word from the first book, which was a bold move, but justified for the story and also for being a fantastic scene. I was a bit slow reading the book because I kept reading bits out to myself, which I take to be a good sign.

The Book of All Loves is another Fitzcarraldo book, and keeps up that publisher’s tradition of boundary-pushing/oddness. The book has alternating sections: a catalogue of loves is interspersed with delphic statements from a pair of post-apocalyptic lovers; then there follow parts of a narrative about pre-apocalyptic lovers in Venice. I found this much the most interesting (due to the presence of a story), while the other parts were reminiscent of the Calasso-esque Eurowhimsy which I find attractive for a few pages, but then don’t finish.

Finally, Raízes do amanhã is a collection of Afrofuturist stories; I’d hoped that some would be from Lusophone Africa, but they’re actually all Brazilian. Like Melek + Ich, the SF elements are disarmingly super-soft: the inhabitants of a favela build a space station; the narrator’s aunt builds a time-machine, etc. Another common element is that of “spiritual sci-fi” — lots of vibrations, reminiscent of Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argus books. My woo-ometer was tested at times, but there was enough variety for me to enjoy almost every story in the book.

Next month is another Lusophone month: a few books which will be covered by the Portuguese in Translation group this year, plus a graphic novel from Portugal and whatever else comes my way….

A good start to the year: I finished eleven books this month, six by women/POC, four in German, one in Portuguese — all according to plan. My project for the month was to read Fitzcarraldo authors (not necessarily Fitzcarraldo editions) — eight of the eleven were part of that. My other longer-term plan is to read Europe, or at least the EU — this time I covered:

• Germany
• Sweden
• Poland
• Italy
• France

and non-EU Norway and UK. (Accidentally all but one of the books are either translated or in languages other than English).

• Clemens Meyer über Christa Wolf — Clemens Meyer
• OpOs Reise — Esther Kinski
• The Singularity — Balsam Karam, tr. Saskia Vogel
• Anos de chumbo e outros contos — Chico Buarque
• Anna In — Olga Tokarczuk, tr. Lisa Palmes
• Die Geschichte der getrennten Wege — Elena Ferrante, tr. Karin Krieger
• The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild — Mathias Énard, tr. Frank Wynne
• What Have You Left Behind? — Bushra al-Maqtari, tr. Sawad Hussein
• Minor Detail — Adania Shibli, tr. Elisabeth Jaquette
• A Shining — Jon Fosse, tr. Damion Searls
• The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones — Neil Gaiman

Starting with the true Fitzcarraldi, The Singularity (by Kurdish Swede Balsam Karam) is just out, and is a perfect blend of content and form. The Prologue was somewhat off-putting — it doesn’t hold your hand by gently introducing you to the characters — but it establishes the link between the two protagonists who are respectively the focus of the first and third main sections, while the second is based on the intersection of their experiences. This part in particular uses formal innovation very effectively to show the connection between the two, while the anonymisation gives the book a universal significance.

The “Middle-eastern Women” sub-project continued with What Have You Left Behind? (Bushra al-Maqtari, Yemen). I started this a while ago, but had to read it in short stints; as the back cover says, it’s “As difficult to read as it is to put down”. It’s composed, Svetlana Alexievich-style, of testimonies from relatives of victims of the war in Yemen (now worsened by British and American bombing, which is one of the factors that prompted me to finish it). It’s absolutely remorseless: both sides in the conflict target civilians indiscriminately, and each testimony ends with the full names and ages (typically young) of the victims. While each victim’s story ends in much the same way, what stands out is the diversity of their lives before they were cut short. This humanisation of the victims makes the book worth reading despite the harrowing content.

Minor Detail (Adania Shibli, Palestine) again has links to current affairs: not only does it centre on war crimes in the foundation of Israel, Shibli was famously disinvited to receive a prize in Germany because of the political implications of her book (as misread by German critics). The first part details, in (again, the only word I can use) remorseless, flat prose, a war crime which took place in the Negev desert in 1949. The second is a first-person narration of a Palestinian women investigating the event, detailing the bureaucratic and violent effects of the apartheid system. The rhymes between the two stories create the book’s lasting impression that everything changes, while everything stays the same.

Returning to Europe, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild (Mathias Énard, France) is an entertaining beast of a novel: almost 500 pages, it centres (“focuses” is hardly the word) on an anthropologist who moves from Paris to western France to study the “natives”. Énard takes this as a starting point to tell the stories firstly of the local people, and (by reincarnation) the history of the area. The central banquet is particularly, and explicitly, Rabelaisian, and represents the book’s extreme of fantasy; the anthropologist’s own story is essentially realistic, but somewhat under-motivated. As with many other works from this otherwise great publisher, there are many proofreading errors, but they’re not such as to spoil the experience.

At the opposite end of pretty much every scale, A Shining (Jon Fosse, Norway) is barely even a novella, but focuses entirely on the perceptions of the protagonist. This ultra-subjectivity just about makes the spiritual experiences possible to swallow for the unreligious reader, but it’s not where I’d recommend starting with Fosse (that would be Aliss at the Fire, for a brief introduction).

Turning to non-Fitzcarraldo Fitzcarraldans in German: Clemens Meyer über Christa Wolf (Clemens Meyer, Germany) is a short, but dense subjective round-up of East German literature, through the medium of Meyer addressing a bust of Wolf at his desk. There were a lot of new names for me, which was an occasional impediment, but Meyer is able to draw brief, rounded portraits of the work and the personalities (especially the personalities — he refers several times to the “soap opera” of the literary world) which leave the reader wanting to read more of their books (especially Wolf’s).

OpOs Reise (Esther Kinski, Germany) is a children’s book — not my usual fare, but I wanted to read something by Kinski, and the premise of a school of pilot whales living their lives off the coasts of Scotland and Essex was intriguing. There’s a satisfying blend of humour and pathos which made it an hour well spent.

Anna In is by Kinski’s former translatee Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), and has been translated by both Kinski and (for this edition) Lisa Palmes. It’s very odd indeed: Tokarczuk retells the Sumerian myth of Inanna in a cyberpunk setting (with hints of Discworld), with multiple narrators offsetting the monumentality which you might expect from a tale of gods and the underworld.

My fourth German book was part three of the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante (Italy) — Die Geschichte der getrennten Wege. It’s a bit shorter and more focused than the sprawling second volume, which was welcome, but as the title implies, we see less of the most obviously interesting character of Lila in this one. Lenu, meanwhile, seems to become more and more amorphous: it’s fascinating to try to judge the reliability of her narration. As with the Gravedigger’s Banquet, I found the main plot twists psychologically obscure, but is this due to Lenu’s or Elena’s storytelling?

Portuguese book of the month was Anos de chumbo e outros contos (Chico Buarque, Brazil). Not easy — the YA-type books I’d read before had somewhat overinflated my confidence, while Buarque has a substantial vocabulary (seeming to include a remarkable number of words for grunting and pushing). I was able to decipher it though, and enjoyed the typical Buarquian touches — stealthy passages of time, bizarre twists, and social engagement.

Finally, graphic novel of the month was The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones (Neil Gaiman, UK — mostly). While it had seemed in the recent volumes that the story had broken down to focus less on on Morpheus and more on side-characters, it turns out that he had a plan all along, and in this bumper issue, (almost) all was tied up. Extra points for high raven content.

Next month is science fiction month. A short one, sadly, but I’ve got some crackers I’d like to get through….