Dancing Mad God

I finished 11 books this month: nine for my theme of the month (non-fiction), and seven by women/POC, three in German, and one in Portuguese.

• Mekka hier, Mekka da — Melina Borčak
• What is Mine — José Henrique Bortoluci, tr. Rahul Bery
• There’s a Monster Behind the Door — Gaëlle Bélem, tr. by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
• Diário de uma volátil — Agustina Guerrero, tr. Marcelo Barbão
• The Use of Photography — Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, tr. Alison L. Strayer
• Your Utopia — Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur
• Das Neutrum — Roland Barthes, tr. Horst Brühmann
• Eine Arbeiterin: Leben, Alter und Sterben — Didier Eribon, tr. Sonja Finck
• Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires — Tim Mackintosh-Smith
• The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy — Ursula K. Le Guin
• Free — Lea Ypi

A couple of sub-themes popped up accidentally: four of the books are French (if one includes Réunion), and two have cancer as a main topic. So I start with The Use of Photography, an odd but surprisingly rewarding book in which Annie Ernaux (and her lover) write about their relationship, based on photographs of the piles of clothes they removed before having sex (as she writes, “I don’t expect life to bring me subjects but rather unknown structures for writing.”). Ernaux simultaneously explores a contrasting aspect of her physicality, her treatment for breast cancer during this period. It’s intriguing to see her choice of carpets and mules, but the real wonder is her ability to transform this very specific time and space into universally significant art.

The other cancer text is one of the reasons for my choice of topic, What is Mine, which was the subject of the Portuguese in Translation book group. Bortoluci writes about his father, a Brazilian truck driver of the 1970s and ’80s, now also dealing with cancer. To make it even more Ernauxian, Bortoluci is a first-generation graduate and academic, culturally separated from the world of his father. He conveys brilliantly the epic side of the father’s life, in a time when truck drivers were like Brazil’s cowboys opening up the wild west, while drawing out the parallels between the cancer and the rapacious development encouraged by successive governments in the country.

Another French book was the other spur for the theme: Das Neutrum is the second of the three series of lectures Barthes delivered at the Collège de France and published in note form. I confess to feeling I’d tied one hand behind my back by deciding to read it in German: most of the day to day topics were accessible enough, but I did struggle with the more abstract aspects. It wasn’t always clear to me exactly how each of his sub-topics related to the idea of the neutral, but the overall theme of nuance and avoiding binary oppositions was very attractive and is obviously very relevant today. More more thoughts from myself and other readers, see the Bluesky posts for #AContinuation25 .

Eine Arbeiterin: Leben, Alter und Sterben is another French book in German, also dealing with ageing and dying, and also by an academic who escaped — not too strong a word in this case — his working class origins. As in Returning to Reims, Eribon is brilliant at combining an unflinching look at his own experiences, and his own failings, with a philosophical and social analysis of the themes involved. I’m now impatient to read Foucault, Beauvoir, and the other authors he discusses.

The only novel this month was the last French book, There’s a Monster Behind the Door, left over from last month’s International Booker theme. It’s a very colourful portrait of life on Réunion, where the actual story is a very shoogly hook on which to hang the descriptions. These are sometimes excellent:

Of course, his mother had been a girl, as had his grandmother and his wife too – to some extent – but that didn’t mean that history should repeat itself. ‘Thundering typhoons!’ he swore, wiping his arms. A pit bull, fine; a baby giraffe, fine; a three-legged horse or big cockroach, fine … but a girl! It’s like rearing a child who’s not right in the head! And all because they had wanted to save twenty francs on an ultrasound!

sometimes not:

this murmur violently plunged me into an arid and unknown atmosphere in which a dense plume of sadness arose in small wafts

but the enthusiasm of the writing was enough to keep me happily reading.

I still read a short story a day this month, and finished Your Utopia. Mostly satirical SF stories with a social aspect, I was grateful for the author’s note at the end which explained the genesis of some of them. The humour is rather broad and there are some uncharacteristic translation flubs from Anton Hur; Cursed Bunny might have been a better place to start with her.

Non-fiction SF, The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy is fantastic. The idea of a book of essays is often off-putting, but Le Guin’s are always clever, funny, and thoughtful:

The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. “You must change your life,” he said.

When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

The modern literary cliché is: Bad people are interesting, good people are dull. This isn’t true even if you accept the sentimental definition of evil upon which it’s based; good people, like good cooking, good music, good carpentry, etc., whether judged ethically or aesthetically, tend to be more interesting, varied, complex, and surprising than bad people, bad cooking, etc.

This is a varied collection mostly of speeches and introductions to some of her books, but they’re well-selected to show their common themes (particularly, a justification for SF to be treated as seriously as other genres). Several decades on, it’s safe to say there’s been some progress, but not enough to make the book irrelevant.

The last German book this month, Mekka hier, Mekka da is an entertainingly potty-mouthed guide for Germans on how to be less racist. Once again, a very timely subject! Borčak draws particularly on her own experience as a Bosnian in Germany, concluding with a chapter on genocide which is particularly important given the continuing German support for the genocide in Palestine.

Palestine unsurprisingly features heavily towards the end of Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires; the book was written in 2019, so its conclusion is a fascinating illustration of how things have changed since then — occasionally for the better (Assad), but overwhelmingly not. There’s much more to Arab history than that, of course, and this is a very entertaining as well as informative account. Often both are combined, as when we find out that Arabic has words for each space between the different fingers for the hand, and for the droppings of different species of birds. The author frequently refers to his own life in Yemen as illustration (he’s since been forced to leave), but his enthusiasm and understanding of the people are clear throughout this unavoidable long book. He’s very fond of alliteration and rhyme, both in his own prose and in his slightly questionable poetic translations, but it all keeps things moving along splendidly.

Diário de uma volátil wasn’t a great choice, I have to say — I wanted a non-fiction “graphic novel” in Portuguese, which this is, and it was nice to read something with minimal support, but the book itself (an Argentinian cartoon Bridget Jones, essentially) was not really for me.

The last book of the month, Free, is fantastic. It brings home what life was like in the last days of communist Albania, amazingly close in space and time, but incredibly distant socially and economically. With poetically good timing, Ypi synchronised her teenage years with the unstable years which followed, with losses of innocence on all sides. There’s a great balance of humour and affection, along with the unavoidable darkness.

Next month is another finishing-off month: Animal Joy (Nuar Alsadir), which I didn’t quite finish for this month, is a cracker, and I have lots of others which I was enjoying, but paused with for one reason for another. I may also extend “finishing off” to some series….

I finished nine books in April, five as part of my International Booker Prize monthly theme. Seven by women/POC, three in German, and one re-read in Portuguese.

• Ancestral Night — Elizabeth Bear
• Über die Berechnung des Rauminhalts I — Solvej Balle, tr. Peter Urban-Halle
• Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir? — Martina Hefter
• A Leopard-Skin Hat — Anne Serre, tr. Mark Hutchinson
• Under the Eye of the Big Bird — Hiromi Kawakami, tr. Asa Yoneda
• Perfection — Vincenzo Latronico, tr. Sophie Hughes
• Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai — Gonçalo M. Tavares
• Out of Time — Samira Azzam, tr. Ranya Abdelrahman
• Deine kalten Hände — Han Kang, tr. Kyong-Hae Flügel

For the IBP theme, I concentrated on the longlisted books from this year, and the first of these was Über die Berechnung des Rauminhalts I (obviously not the longlisted translation). It was also the best. It starts with a mystery — a woman in a house seems to be hiding from the man who lives there too — then follows the psychological effects of the fantastic premise. The repetition in the middle section did occasionally drag, but that’s fair enough as it’s the point, and I was very much caught up again as the ending approached. Though only the end of volume one of a projected seven….

A Leopard-Skin Hat is a portrait of a woman, often reminiscent of Anne Weber’s Kirio as it focuses on its one central character. The tone is generally darker, but Serre does have fun with the role of the Narrator, who (apparently) tells the story in the third person. What seems mere eccentricity at first is revealed as something more as the book progresses.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird was also mysterious, and remained quite mysterious at the end. It’s composed of related stories, and much of the interest lies in working out how they connect. I will need to re-read to get a better grip on that.

Perfection was of particular interest as it’s largely set in my backyard of Berlin, and the city (or a nightmarishly perfect version of the city) plays a central role. The first pages are very hard going — again, deliberately — after which the book unfolds well with just the right amount of satirical distance.

Finally, one book by former winne Han Kang: Deine kalten Hände. It’s a very odd one, with a not obviously necessary prologue and epilogue sandwiching the tale of a misogynistic sculptor’s relationships with two women. I did like the descriptions of the art, though not enough to recommend the book wholeheartedly.

Honourable mention to two books on the IBP longlist which I haven’t finished yet: There’s a Monster Behind the Door (Gaëlle Bélem, tr. Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert), and the mighty (and mightily weird) Solenoid (Mircea Cărtărescu, tr. Sean Cotter).

Ancestral Night is a fun space opera clearly influenced by the Culture (complete with ship names), but in a somewhat lighter vein. Spacegoing cats, afthands, and interstellar seahorses make it a very enjoyable read.

Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir? was unfairly overshadowed by the circumstances of its winning the Deutscher Buchpreis, but it’s a really good book. The seemingly light main story is cleverly given weight by the mythological overtones, and the protagonist is highly engaging. The audiobook performance by Inka Löwendorf is particularly good, especially in the treatment of the internet chat sections.

Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai was yet another enigmatic book, even a second time through. The audiobook (especially choice of voices) is rather eye-opening, but the wacky characters we meet along the way are extremely memorable.

Finally, I started Out of Time for my Read Palestine month, and finally got round to finishing it. Azzam tends to spell things out more than I would like, but they’re fascinating stories, particularly their depiction of less reported sides of the country (Palestinian Christians and the wealthy middle-class frequently feature).

So, on to next month. There are some novels still to finish, and I’ll keep up my daily stories, but otherwise May will be non-fiction month. Time to make some progress with my white Fitzcarraldi.

I finished nine books in March, five as part of my monthly topic — SF/F. Half by women/POC, just two German, and on Portuguese. A quiet month, but several are still in-progress!

• The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas — Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, tr. Flora Thomson-DeVeaux
• The Tombs of Atuan — Ursula K. Le Guin
• Não Fossem as Sílabas do Sábado — Mariana Salomão Carrara
• A Buyer’s Market — Anthony Powell
• Monde vor der Landung — Clemens J. Setz
• Das Einhörnchen, das rückwärts leben wollte — Walter Moers
• Absolution — Jeff Vandermeer
• The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4 — Mahvesh (ed.)
• The Autistic Brain — Temple Grandin and Richard Panek

One of the distractions from my planned topic was the first Portuguese in Translation book club work, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. I’d read the old translation (Epitaph of a Small Winner), but I got a lot more from it this time — I’m not sure how much because of the translation itself, but the translator’s notes and introduction were enlightening on the satirical aspects. Normally we talk to the author and translator in the meetings; this time the author was unfortunately not available, but Thomson-DeVeaux made up for it.

Another distraction was A Buyer’s Market, part two of A Dance to the Music of Time. I didn’t like it as much as the first book — the snobbery and racism got a bit wearing — but it is interesting to see the characters beginning to develop.

The third non-project book was my highlight of the month: Não Fossem as Sílabas do Sábado. I chose it almost at random, but I was blown away: it starts with a crisis brilliantly positioned on the edge between tragedy and farce, then traces the consequences over the subsequent decade. The author uses the long sentences which seem to be characteristic of Portuguese particularly well, shaping them to reflect the disorder in the narrator’s life.

My non-fiction book for the month was The Autistic Brain, which spans the divide between popular science and self-help guide reasonably well. The audiobook format made some of the scientific descriptions a little wearing, and the focus on more extreme cases of autism restricted the practical application of much of these sections, but the later sections are considerably broader (often going beyond autism itself).

The Tombs of Atuan is one of the reasons I’d chose the SF/F topic: not for this book in particular, but because I wanted to read more of Le Guin. The second Earthsea book, it follows on from the first only indirectly, which I appreciated as some more subtle world-building. There’s an afterword by Le Guin with some interesting comments on the gender roles, which are still rather of its time.

There were also a couple of book I’d started earlier which this was a good opportunity to finish. Absolution is the fourth book in the Southern Reach trilogy, slotting in as a not quite necessary, but still fascinating prequel. The earlier sections in particular would make more sense on a second reading, so a re-read of all four is on the cards. Full marks also for the design of the book, especially the house centipedes.

One book which I really took too long over is Monde vor der Landung, which I’d been listening to in small chunks since last year. It’s only quasi-SF, being fiction about pseudoscience, gradually darkening in tone as Germany progresses from the 20 to the 30s and early 40s. I became much more involved with the story as it went on, and the destination came into sight.

Lastly, two books of short stories. Das Einhörnchen, das rückwärts leben wollte is another wonderfully-produced book, with a tactile cover and excellent illustrations in the typical Moers style. These stories work particularly well for the reader who’s already read the other Zamonien books (there are non-critical, but fun references), but would also be a good introduction for someone starting to explore the continent.

Finally, The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4 covers an admirable geographic range. One or two of the stories are astonishingly bad, most good, and some excellent (shouts to Vajra Chandrasekera, who I already knew, and Haralambi Markov, who’s a new discovery).

Next month is International Booker month, so I’ll hopefully read the three longlisted novels I possess, plus some by other authors who’ve been short/longlisted over the years. I’m also back on Barthes, though I’m not going to be finishing Das Neutrum next month….

I finished 11 books in February, 8 as part of my Nordic reading month. Only 5 by women/POC, because of the two Jon Fosses (maybe I can count him as one); three in German, one in Portuguese.

• Fair Play — Tove Jansson, tr. Thomas Teal
• Macbeth — William Shakespeare, ed. A. R. Braunmuller
• As doenças do Brasil — valter hugo mãe
• The Details — Ia Genberg
• Nordic Visions — Margret Helgadottir (ed.), tr. various
• Kirio — Anne Weber
• Ich ist ein anderer: Heptalogie III – V — Jon Fosse, tr. Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
• Trilogie — Jon Fosse, tr. Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
• Fruit of Knowledge — Liv Strömquist, tr. Melissa Bowers
• A Doll’s House and Other Plays — Henrik Ibsen, tr. Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik
• The Fish Can Sing — Halldór Laxness, tr. Magnus Magnusson

Starting in the north, Nordic Visions was a great survey, including speculative fiction writers from across the region. The highlight for me was The Wings that Slice the Sky by Emmi Itäranta, a feminist retelling of the Kalevala stories (“Sometimes a woman has no choice but to turn into an enormous bird of prey”). I remembered just enough to enhance the experience, then spent some time with Sibelius while in the mood.

Fair Play sits somewhere betwen being a novel and a collection of stories, being made up of episodes in the lives of Jonna and Mari, a couple who strongly resemble Tove Jansson and her partner. It’s lightly written, and though Ali Smith’s probably right in saying that there are hidden depths, I didn’t personally find it went beyond being entertaining.

West to Sweden and The Details, which is similarly simple in some ways — it’s written in an oral style, and there are,

people filing in and out of my face in no particular order. No ‘beginning’, and no ‘end’, no chronology, only each and every moment and what transpires therein.

Here it does build into something impressive however, as the narrator details four of her significant relationships, with a brilliant twist in the last chapter.

Staying in Sweden, and Fruit of Knowledge is fantastic: a non-fiction graphic novel (as it were), taking us on a tour of the female genitals throughout history. It’s educational and hilarious and terrifying in roughly equal measure, which makes it a pretty good book.

West to Norway, and the two main reasons for my choice of monthly topic: A Doll’s House and Other Plays includes An Enemy of the People, which I wanted to read as theatre homework. It’s the only one of the plays which I’d read before, though only this time did I realise how problematic Stockmann is. Reading the four plays together was a good introduction to the common themes that preoccupied Ibsen.

The other spur for the theme was wanting to read more Fosse, though I only managed two of the three I’d planned. Ich ist ein anderer: Heptalogie III – V is the second part of the Septology as it appears in audiobook format, though it’s not clear if the third part is ever going to appear. I do hope so, as the German narrator is fantastic. The writing style is always on the verge of the absurd, but von Pufendorf carries it off wonderfully. The story is essentially the same as in the first part, though we find out a little more about Asle’s past, but the atmosphere inside his head is the main attraction.

Trilogie was surprisingly different, with plot twists keeping the reader off balance. Like Aliss at the Fire, although it’s short, it has an epic feel to it, and the tripartite structure works very well.

Finally, one long-standing feature of my TBR list, and representing Iceland, The Fish Can Sing, surprisingly translated by Magnus Magnusson. I’d expected something completely different (craggy poverty, heroic suffering); what I got was ludic absurdity reminiscent of Flann O’Brien.

he had no other news to offer than that it was splendid weather for mice that day; and when that was agreed, he would hasten to add, “Yes, and it’s no worse for eagles”.

I can swear on oath that while I was growing up I never heard the word “happiness” except on the lips of a crazy woman who lodged in the mid-loft with us for a time and who is not mentioned again in this book….

The comedy brilliantly offsets some moving passages about the grandmother in particular:

I was almost grown up before it ever occurred to me, quite accidentally one day, that she might perhaps have a life story like other people. What I have to tell about her here is really how little I knew about her….

… it was not until after I was fully grown that I noticed her sufficiently to feel that I really saw her. Suddenly one day I simply felt that she was probably closer to me than anyone else in the world, even though I knew less about her than anyone else and despite the fact that she had been in her grave for some time by then.

My other German book of the month was Kirio; I didn’t like it as much as Weber’s other work, but considering how good her other stuff is, that’s still well worth reading. The main feature here is the style, with a mysterious narrator calling in other witnesses to take over the story at different points, and larding her general chattiness with English phrases for no very obvious reason.

Also stylistically interestinng is As doenças do Brasil, where valter hugo mãe take the bold step of presenting the early years of the Brazilian colony through the eyes of native villagers. As he explains in his afterword, he’s aiming for poetic effect rather than attempting anthropological accuracy, and in this he definitely succeeds. The language is Portuguese, but not as we know it, with unexplained assumptions and terms which the reader is left on their own to figure out, sci-fi style.

Lastly, there’s not much that needs to be said about Macbeth (technically a re-read, because we did it in school). I read it to go along with the continuing Oxford webinar series, which had a great discussion with Gregory Doran.

Next month is SF/F, ridiculously broad, but it allows me to cover a few books which have been knocking insistently on the door….

I finished ten books this month — eight by POC/women, five for my month’s project of South Asian writing, and three in German. No Portuguese this time, but I’m well into a good one.

• Kinder der Befreiung — Marion Kraft (ed.)
• Unser Deutschlandmärchen — Dinçer Güçyeter
• The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste Speculative Fiction. — R. T. Samuel, Rakesh K., Rashmi R.D. (ed.)
• The Saint of Bright Doors — Vajra Chandrasekera
• Eating Sugar, Telling Lies — Kuzhali Manickavel
• Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But… — Gogu Shyamala, tr. various
• Tom Jones — Henry Fielding
• Victory City — Salman Rushdie
• Tintenherz — Cornelia Funke
• A Question of Upbringing — Anthony Powell

Starting with the South Asians, the main trigger was The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste Speculative Fiction, which I’d sponsored as a kickstarter and was happy to see appear in my inbox at the start of the month. It’s a wonderfully mixed bag: normally when one says that, it’s a criticism (and yes, the quality was variable, and not everything was my bag of tea), but the variety here is very much a feature. There are translations from many Indian languages as well as stories written in English, which helps to ensure the wide range of experiences represented despite the rather niche-seeming title. Melonhead by Nabi H Ali, and Pruning Neurons (Esther Larisa David) were two of my highlights.

Also appearing in the Blaft book was Gogu Shyamala, but I liked the stories in Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But… much more. The structure takes some getting used to, resembling oral storytelling rather than the more obviously crafted “short story” one is used to, but they are a fascinating look at a very alien culture. It often felt like science fiction, where the strangeness of the characters’ thinking is part of the appeal. The pleasing bafflement was also an effect of the translations including many untranslated Telugu words, which are explained at the back of the book in a glossary (not easily accessible on kindle), but I was happy to let wash over me. (I do have a problem with the very formal register used for some of the translations, but let’s not be picky.)

The other main spur for the topic was The Saint of Bright Doors, which I’d already bought and had been reading about for quite a while. It’s an extraordinary book — Chandrasekera takes the plot on some big swings, the ever-expanding prison camp and the big twist near the end being particularly effective. Like all the best fantasy/magic realism, the weirdness is always a way of writing about the real world and possible real worlds too; this is what a book should be.

Chandrasekera put me on to Kuzhali Manickavel in his acknowledgments, so another thing to thank him for. Eating Sugar, Telling Lies is a short story, but it leaves enough unexplained (and that’s quite a lot) to give the impression of something much more substantial. Again the surreal is rooted in economic and social injustices which give bite to the satire.

Last instalment for my South Asian trip was Victory City, and it was OK. As in all the post Satanic Verses novels I’ve read, the characters are very cartoonish; that’s not necessarily a problem — cartoons can be fantastic — but it does limit the scope for depth of character and ambivalence. It’s all quite enjoyable, but reading it alongside the Chandrasekera highlighted the gulf between the two in terms of ambition and energy.

January was the end of one stage of the ongoing Kate Briggsathon, in which we read Tom Jones. It was interestingly different from what I’d expected: the essayistic introductions to each book were mostly interesting as well as readable (when he wasn’t being mock heroic), and the plot itself was much tighter than I’d expected (I’d envisaged a series of unrelated picaresque adventures, but everything was quite tightly focused on the central love story). A good example of the long form with only a very slightly saggy middle.

This month was also the start of another group read, of A Dance to the Music of Time. I wasn’t sure whether I’d continue, but I liked A Question of Upbringing enough that I think I will, though the discussions clash slightly with the Shakespeare webinars I also plan to do. The poshness of it was grating at times, especially in the narrator’s (or author’s?) attitude to Widmerpoole and Quiggan, but as with Proust I found it less of a problem than I’d expected. The process of Jenkins looking back at his younger self and watching himself dimly understand things was fascinating.

Turning to the German books, I started Kinder der Befreiung quite a while ago, and finally got round to finishing it before I had to return it to the library. I liked it a lot more than that sounds — the life writing sections were very interesting on life in post-war Germany, and often inspirational on how the German-Americans on both sides of the Atlantic got by. The academic parts were never too dense. I still haven’t read Farbe bekennen, which I’ve been circling round for a long time, but soon….

Unser Deutschlandmärchen is a novel about the experiences of Germany’s most obvious minority group, the Turkish Gastarbeiter and their families. It’s very similar to Vatermal (Necati Öziri), which I also read recently, distinguished mainly by the poetry/song sections which I didn’t really appreciate (probably because I listened to the audiobook, and I’d need to spend more time reading them to process them properly).

Finally, Tintenherz is one of those classic German children’s books I need to catch up on (though this particular one post-dates my youth anyway). The bibliophilia (reminiscent of Walter Moers) is right down my alley, and though the book is far too long (almost 20 hours for an audiobook which isn’t really packed with incident), it picks up well towards the end. I don’t have an urgent need to read the sequels yet, though.

February is Nordic month, partly in the hope that there will be some proper winter to accompany the books, and also to make some progress with my Jon Fosse backlog. Lots of alcoholic spiritual darkness to come.

I finished approximately eleven books this month (counting a series of standalone stories as one): seven by women/POC, and seven also as part of project sacre bleu, my exploration of French literature.

• Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach — Nnedi Okorafor, Falling Bodies — Rebecca Roanhorse; The Long Game — Ann Leckie; Void — Veronica Roth
• A Girl’s Story — Annie Ernaux, tr. Alison L. Strayer
• How to Live Together — Roland Barthes, tr. Kate Briggs
• The Black Incal — Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius, tr. Justin Kelly
• The Long Form — Kate Briggs
• Antichristie — Mithu Sanyal
• Ahnen — Anne Weber
• Contos de Lima Barreto — Lima Barreto
• Schnell, dein Leben — Sylvie Schenk
• Life A User’s Manual — Georges Perec, tr. David Bellos
• Returning to Reims — Didier Eribon, tr. Michael Lucey

Starting with those stories, I was inspired by reading the Scalzi story last month to continue with four more in the series (all by women). The Okorafor confirmed my judgment that I don’t need to read more of her, which is a plus, while the other three were all at least enjoyable. Void was the standout for me, combining an interesting premise (non-instant interstellar travel) with a satisfying murder mystery.

Other non-French books included Antichristie (Deutscher Buchpreis nominated and by the splendid Mithu Sanyal, both good recommendations), which was an absolute hoot. Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who and the dead queen Elizabeth all play substantial roles, but at its core this is a book about the Indian independence movement and the role in it of Vinayak Savarkar (new to me). It’s a bit overlong, with a few too many time travel gags, but generally great fun as well as educational.

My short stories and Portuguese book for the month were the Contos de Lima Barreto, which I found rather hard-going. Linguistically they were I think a bit antiquated — good for my vocabulary at least, if I ever come across the words again — and in terms of the content also quite dated. They’re satires of a particular period in Brazilian history which I didn’t find particularly grabbed me from my perspective today.

The Long Form was one of two re-reads, this time as part of the group read of Briggs and Barthes. Reading it along with the other book was a great experience, really bringing out the way that Briggs explores the ideas in Barthes and uses them to devlelop the story.

The first French book, then, and one of the main reasons for the month’s topic, was How to Live Together. Slightly off-puttingly at first, Barthes doesn’t organise his material as part of an argument, instead presenting each topic in alphabetical order. The advantage of this is that the readers can fill in the blanks themselves, and I did find myself thinking about his ideas not just while reading the Briggs novel, but with the other books this month as well.

The other reason for the monthly topic was that I was going to two plays adapted from French memoirs. The first, A Girl’s Story, was the second re-read, and I loved it just as much the second time. Ernaux looks at her past self with just the right balance of empathy and estrangement to present a convincing portrait of “the girl of ’58”.

She is an outsider, as in the novel by Camus that she reads in October, galumphing, moist and sticky amidst the pink-smocked girls, their well-bred innocence and unsullied sexes.

But what is the point of writing if not to unearth things, or even just one thing that cannot be reduced to any kind of psychological or sociological explanation and is not the result of a preconceived idea or demonstration but a narrative: something that emerges from the creases when a story is unfolded and can help us understand — endure — events that occur and the things that we do?

It is the absence of meaning in what one lives, at the moment one lives it, which multiplies the possibilities of writing.

Returning to Reims is a fascinating counterpoint to the Ernaux: Eribon is from a similar region of northern France, working class, but with the added complication (for the time and place) of being gay. The hook for the book is his return to the region after his father’s death, out of which he tells his own story of leaving his class and embracing his sexuality, seen through the lens of Bordieu’s and Foucault’s ideas. The intellectual discussions are illuminating, and added several books to my TBR list!

There is a way in which my daily life is now haunted by Alzheimer’s — a ghost arriving from the past in order to frighten me by showing me what is still to come. In this way, my father remains present in my existence. It seems a strange way indeed for someone who has died to survive within the brain — the very place in which the threat is located — of one of his sons.

Selection within the educational system often happens by a process of self-elimination, and that self-elimination is treated as if it were freely chosen: extended studies are for other kinds of people, for “people of means,” and it just happens that those people turn out to be the ones who like going to school.

People know that things are different elsewhere, but that elsewhere seems part of a far off and inaccessible universe. So much so that people feel neither excluded from nor deprived of all sorts of things because they have no access to what, in those far off social realms, constitutes a self-evident norm.

Even the very word “inequality” seems to me to be a euphemism that papers over the reality of the situation, the naked violence of exploitation. A worker’s body, as it ages, reveals to anyone who looks at it the truth about the existence of classes.

An interest in art is something that is learned. I learned it…. An interest in artistic and literary objects always ends up contributing, whether or not it happens consciously, to a way of defining yourself as having more self-worth.

This observation of Sartre’s from his book on Genet was key for me: “What is important is not what people make of us but what we ourselves make of what they have made of us.”

I’ve had a copy of Life A User’s Manual for perhaps 30 years now, and finally got round to reading it. It turned out to be the perfect time, as it went particularly well with the Barthes. Like the Zola novel “Pot Luck” which Barthes discusses, the book is set in a Parisian apartment building, with chapters set in each room in turn telling the stories of the occupants and their relationships. It toys with the reader’s patience at times (there are many, many descriptions of the furniture and pictures in the various rooms), but it juxtaposes these with plenty of fun stories. The central thread draws the book together in a satisfying way.

Graphic novel (ish — part 1 of 6) was The Black Incal; also French-ish, (written by a Chilean, but drawn by the French Mœbius). While reading, I realised that it’s basically The Fifth Element (not a bad thing), which turns out to have been the basis of a legal saga.

Finally, another good pair, this time of French-German/German-French authors. Ahnen is an exploration by Anne Weber of her great-grandfather’s, and to a lesser extent other ancestor’s lives. In a recurring theme for this month, there’s a blend of story and ideas which she carries off well, though I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as her fiction.

Schnell, dein Leben is intriguing: written in the second person, present tense, it certainly involves the reader very directly (enhanced, not entirely advisedly, by the style of the audiobook’s narration). The story itself is based heavily on various coincidences, but its exploration of recent history is timely.

Next month is basically Palestine (building on #ReadPalestineWeek), though I may divert into Arabic/Middle East more generally if it all gets too much. Also starting the group read of Tom Jones, and I may finish volume 1 of Der Zauberberg in the anniversary year….

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….