Dancing Mad God

I finished nine books this month, four for my extended SFF/POC theme, eight by women or POC, a modest two in German, and one in Portuguese.

• The Rosewater Insurrection — Tade Thompson
• O último ancestral — Ale Santos
• The Seekers — Gautamiputra Kamble, tr. Sirus J. Libeiro
• The River Has Roots — Amal El-Mohtar
• The Collected Stories — Grace Paley
• Im Herzen der Katze — Jina Khayyer
• Die Holländerinnen — Dorothee Elmiger
• The Wind Whistling in the Cranes — Lidia Jorge, tr. Margaret Jull Costa and Annie McDermott
• Bleak House — Charles Dickens

The Rosewater Insurrection is the second in a trilogy, and I read the first so long ago that my memory was extremely hazy, but the story was distinct enough that it wasn’t a problem. Things got very strange very quickly, the individual oddities nicely complementing the gradually emerging backstory. My only real quibble is that as in the first book (one thing I do remember) the sexual politics was sometimes questionable; I likstened to the audiobook, which had well-distinguished, if sometimes exaggerated voices and accents.

The Seekers is a short, and very distinctive collection of stories in the Ambedkarite tradition, so Buddhist and anti-caste elements are prominent. Again slightly suspect gender politics (the stories generally feature a rather submissive woman following and learning from a man), but very much redeemed by the fairytale atmosphere (as the helpful introduction points out, influenced by Buddhist jataka stories).

Fairytale is also the dominant mode in The River Has Roots, a novella (with attached short story which I think is even better). Much more politically sound, with gender-fluid fairies, there’s a satisfying story in few pages, along with some lovely details in the writing.

The last of the SFF/POC books is O último ancestral, which combines SF and fantasy elements in a way that reminded me of C. T. Rwizi. This isn’t quite as good (there’s a lot of pseudo-spiritual verbiage, and irritating tropes such as battle scenes where the antagonists intersperse their blows with declamatory conversation), and I won’t be reading the rest of the series. There was just enough to keep me reading to the end, at least.

My two German books were both Deutscher Buchpreis nominees this year. I had to buy Im Herzen der Katze because of the title, but predictably actual cats were thin on the ground. It’s essential a fictional travelogue, with no real plot beyond what is necessary to convey the life of women in Iran, which it does do rather well. There’s an odd conjunction of infodumps (such as where the characters have a conversation about the literal meaning of Iranian month-names, and one feels compelled to run through all twelve), and some very effective characterisation (especially the opening video call between the narrator and her mother).

Die Holländerinnen, winner of the prize this year, would have been better read in text than as an audiobook: it takes the form of a lecture in which the the speaker narrates a South American adventure, while going off on a maze of tangential sub-stories, all tending to a general theme of alienation — all very Herzogian. Now I have some idea of what it’s about, I definitely need to relisten, and the speaker does do a good job of highlighting the structure whenever the framing story resurfaces.

Grace Paley’s The Collected Stories was a reread — I think my third time through the whole volume. Some stories I’d forgotten completely, but the texture of the writing is unmistakable. It’s a wonderful (and wonderfully odd) world to immerse myself in every few years.

The last two books were group reads of a sort. The Wind Whistling in the Cranes was the last Portuguese in Translation group book for the year; I messed up my timing completely, starting well in advance but far too slowly, and at first I found it hard to get into it. I did pick up the pace later, if not in time to finish before the discussion, and as I began to understand the central character of Milene, it all started to make more sense. I’m not sure it had to be quite so long, but it’s a very powerful read.

Lastly, Bleak House (by my token white male) was an interesting new experience for me: the pace was kept up with daily comments from Yiyun Li about the day’s chapter(s), and discussion was (without the opportunity to go really in-depth) on Substack. I think I’d read it before — I certainly started it — but much of it was a complete surprise to me. Yet more dodgy sexual politics (an accidental theme this month), and the characters are not quite the best of Dickens, but it’s full of splendid bits along the way.

The December plan is for non-fiction, mainly because I want to read Dorothy Richardson’s letters in preparation for the next Pilgrimage read-through next year….

I finished a modest eight books this month, five as part of my month’s topic of POC SF/F (plans went slightly agley due to excessive employment and being distracted by the Deutscher Buchpreis longlist). Seven by women/POC altogether, three in German, none finished in Portuguese (another fairly long one on the go). Plus one standalone short story, which I won’t count.

• Am Samstag gehen die Mädchen in den Wald und jagen Sachen in die Luft — Fiona Sironic
• Cursed Bunny — Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur
• Das gute Übel — Samanta Schweblin, tr. Marianne Gareis
• The Space Between Worlds — Micaiah Johnson
• Die Ausweichschule — Kaleb Erdmann
• Frankenstein in Baghdad — Ahmed Saadawi, tr. Jonathan Wright
• Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions — Nalo Hopkinson
• Bandigoat — Rakesh Khanna (ed.)
• Red Letter Day — Winifred Burton

Starting with the project books, The Space Between Worlds was one of my highlights of the year: a parallel world SF story with a twist, where the marginalised in society have acquired an unusual niche. The multiple worlds (in several senses) give Johnson space to explore political and philosophical ideas through a fascinating set of characters.

Frankenstein in Baghdad was my only other project novel. The premise is fascinating: what better place for a creature made from spare body parts than post-invasion Baghdad? The sleazy world of booze and prostitutes (not sure how realistic) which most of the characters inhabit is also eye-opening. It dragged a bit at times, when the creature seemed to be roaming around to no particular purpose, but it reached a satisfying conclusion.

There were also three collections of short stories: Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions contains mostly rather slight pieces in terms of plot and character, but it’s Hopkinson’s voice which is the thing. The Jamaican vernacular was lovely to immerse myself in once a day.

The second collection, Bandigoat, arrived just in time to finish on Halloween. Again mostly short pieces by writers from various parts of India, the standout for me was the concluding The Legend of Rani Grace, which combines a satisfying plot, sweet characters, and a tremendous fairytale mythic power.

The third, Cursed Bunny is a belter. On the body/folk horror/SF spectrum, these stories sometimes gave me the impression that I’d always known them, which I take as a good sign, but they’re also rooted in Chung’s own very sound politics.

I don’t count Red Letter Day as a book, because it’s a standalone story (and I read it in the early hours of All Saints’ Day), but it deserves a brief mention: silly but fun, it’s worth 20 minutes of your time. Also, the Asasabonsam family helped me to understand the villainous Asanbosam in O último ancestral, a Brazilian SF/F book which I didn’t manage to finish in time).

Then the three books in German: Das gute Übel is by Samanta Schweblin and therefore a guaranteed banger. The often longish short stories give room for the plots and characters to develop, especially in the wonderful Das Auge in der Kehle (seemingly a riff on Carver’s A Small, Good Thing).

Finally, I read two of the Deutscher Buchpreis shortlist (the winner, Die Holländerinnen, hopefully this coming month): Am Samstag gehen die Mädchen in den Wald und jagen Sachen in die Luft has of course an outstanding title, and the rest of the book is pretty good. It’s in a near-future, climate-fiction mildly dystopian setting, but it’s real issue is with the social dystopia which we’re already in the middle off. One nice super-Bechdel feature: all the characters just happen to be women, and the only romantic relationships are lesbian.

I liked Die Ausweichschule even more: an autofictional novel about a young author trying to write about a school shooting he experienced as a child, there’s a lot of humane humour in the book, especially in the Setzian dialogue.

Next month looks a bit messy, but should be mainly a mix of more POC/SFF and O Canada (there being a two-book overlap between the two). I’m also spending quite a lot of reading time on the APS group read of Bleak House, so we’ll see what happens.

I finished 11 books in September, 8 by women/POC, seven of those for my Black writers monthly topic, with three in German and one in Portuguese.

• Zwei Herren am Strand — Michael Köhlmeier
• Jubel und Schmerz der Mandelkrähe — Jurij Koch
• One Boat — Jonathan Buckley
• Whites Can Dance Too — Kalaf Epalanga, tr. Daniel Hahn
• Roots — Alex Haley
• Black — Tobias Taitt and Anthony Smith
• Requiem Moon — C. T. Rwizi
• I Heard What You Said — Jeffrey Boakye
• Não fossem as sílabas do sábado — Mariana Salomão Carrara
• Grenzenlos und unverschämt — May Ayim
• Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa — Rachel Zadok and Helen Moffett (ed.)

One of the main reasons for the choice of topic was (as usual) the Portuguese in Translation novel for this month, Whites Can Dance Too. It’s highly educational for those such as myself who are ignorant of Angolan dance music, specifically kuduro; the book and youtube have made me less ignorant, even if it’s not quite my thing (but I recommend watching e.g. The Sound of Kuduro by Epalanga’s group, Buraka Som Sistema — it sounds like the end of the world). I did have some reservations about the novel, especially the stilted dialog (often info-dumping), and the sexualisation of the female Norwegian police officers.

While on Lusophone books, I’ll pause to mention Não fossem as sílabas do sábado, which was my Portuguese re-read. It’s an absolutely stunning book, from the opening scene to the ending which I’d forgotten, but which is an excellent conclusion to a novel which takes place almost entirely in the narrator’s flat. Carrara’s long sentences are brilliantly structured, and the audiobook (read by her) is perfectly suited to bring out their emotional power. Up among the best books I’ve read in any language.

Back to Black writers, and Roots took up an interestingly central role in my reading: not just because I spent a lot of time listening to it, but also because it was namechecked in two other books I read, showing its influence in 80s Black British culture. It is much too long — I found the African section the most interesting as the least familiar, though the American part is also interesting on the relations and accommodations made between slaves and slave-owners. The second half rambles a lot, but despite the flaws this is a big book in every sense.

The first of those namechecking books was Black, an autobiographical graphic novel. This being the 70s and 80s, there’s a lot of darkness around, illustrating the point several of the month’s authors make about the assiciation of blackness with negativity in European/Anglo-Saxon culture. Visually, Smith takes the opportunity to show the Black skin and literal and moral darkness of the environment in a thought-provoking way:

The second, and another audiobook read by the author, was I Heard What You Said. It’s an interesting counterpoint: Boakye grew up in a similar period to Taitt, but in a much more nurturing environment, and spends most of the book discussing his experiences as an English teacher in British schools. It’s another book that could have been a bit shorter — it gets repetitive towards the end — but Boakye is engaging and especially interesting for fellow teachers.

I started Requiem Moon some time ago, and it was initially confusing to get back into, with a big cast, and lots of political intrigue. But as with the first book in the series, the African-SF-fantasy setting was interesting enough to recapture my attention, and the latter part of the book in particular is a rollicking rollercoaster. I’ll be reading part 3, ideally in one go.

My short stories this month were Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa: not all Black authors, but I think enough to count. Only two duds, which is good going, and some — e.g. Wednesday’s Delight, and The Girl with Three Faces — were very good. As the subtitle mildly hints, not all of the pieces are really short stories, some reading more like excerpts from novels, but with expectations suitably adjusted this was a nicely-varied collection.

Finally for Black authors, Grenzenlos und unverschämt is a collection of various non-fiction pieces by May Ayim, covering some of the same ground as each other and her other texts. It would be a good introduction to her non-fiction work, and I found the account of her studies to be a speech-therapist particularly engaging. One incidental positive is being reminded how bad racism was in Germany in e.g. the early 90s, which puts the current horrors into some perspective.

Two other German books: I read Zwei Herren am Strand because Köhlmeier was longlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis, though he didn’t make the shortlist. This is one of his earlier books, based on the real-life relationship between Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill, but firmly transmuted into fiction. I had to keep interrupting my reading to check whether particular details were real or not, which I think is a sign that I was sufficiently involved. The scene with Hitler and Churchill meeting in the toilets is excellent!

Jubel und Schmerz der Mandelkrähe was interesting not just because it’s an account of places which I (mostly) know; it’s also interestingly-written, with poetic flights on top of the factual basis. It’s not cheerful — both Mandelkrähe and the humans have more Schmerz than Jubel — but even the descriptions of what has been lost contribute to preservation.

Finally, One Boat was interestingly subtle — I kept waiting for something dramatic to happen, but it’s more an opportunity to think about memory and reality — hoary topics, but deftly handled. It’s one which I’d like to read again, now that I know how to read it.

On to next month, which is SF/F by POC, mostly because I had some which I didn’t manage to fit into this month. Since choosing the theme, I’ve discovered that October is also Black Speculative Fiction Month, and I’d like to tie it into the British Black History Month too.

I finished 12(ish) books this month, 11 by women/POC, and 10 of those for #WITMonth. 5 in German, and one in Portuguese.

• The Book of Disappearance — Ibtisam Azem, tr. Sinan Antoon
• Nachdenken über Christa T. — Christa Wolf
• Pantopia — Theresa Hannig
• Das große Heft — Ágota Kristóf, tr. Eva Moldenhauer
• Heart Lamp — Banu Mushtaq, tr. Deepa Bhasthi
• Portalpettai — Avakkai and Chukka
• Im Spiegelsaal — Liv Strömquist, tr. Katharina Erben
• Child of All Nations — Irmgard Keun, tr. Michael Hofmann
• Besuch bei Zerberus — Anne Weber
• Love in the New Millennium — Can Xue, tr. Annelise Finegan Wasmoen
• A Sunny Place for Shady People — Mariana Enriquez, tr. Megan McDowell
• Jesusalém — Mia Couto

Starting with the women in translation (per the “rules”, not all actually in translation, but not originally written in English): The Book of Disappearance, first published in 2014, anticipates the current (phase of the) genocide, so could hardly be more politically relevant. As a novel I found it slightly disappointing though: Azem is sometimes excellent at conveying the Israeli as well as the Palestinian perspectives, but the central Israeli character was for me totally unconvincing, which is quite a problem.

Heart Lamp is another book partly overshadowed by its politics: this is an India of institutional cruelty to women in particular, as well as other people and animals. As literature, the much-noted Kannada flavour to the language is enjoyable, while the stories themselves are variable: the elements of the fantastic in e.g. High-Heeled Shoe were highlights for me.

(Parenthetically, Portalpettai was written in English, so not technically eligible, as well as being tiny in word count, but it’s an interesting pendant to Heart Lamp re: South Indian women. It’s a very whimsical Area X, not even really a story, but a fun few minutes. The epub was illegible on my computer and minuscule on my ereader, so getting the pdf for a computer would probably be wisest.)

Nachdenken über Christa T. is short but knotty. It’s reminiscent of her later Kindheitsmuster in its gradual archaeology of a life, but in this case of the narrator’s friend rather than herself. I think Kindheitsmuster is better, but this is still a fine book. The fluidity with which Wolf slips between different times and reflections on them can be demanding to follow, so I read the text after listening to the audiobook, and got a lot out of both.

Pantopia was a fun, easy read, combining Utopian politics with AI that does more than generate slop. One could quibble with specific plot points in both areas, but it’s entertaining and thought-provoking, which is a pretty good combination.

Das große Heft was fantastic — entertaining and disturbing in best fairytale fashion, but in the modern(ish) world. It reminded me in that respect of another semi-French writer, Anne Weber, which is a recommendation in itself.

That prompted me to read Besuch bei Zerberus — quite early Weber, and really one for the hard-core Weberians (such as me). It’s a very slippery meditation on the border of life and death (later explored more extensively in her phenomenal Tal der Herrlichkeiten), set against the writer’s relationship with her father (which makes more sense if you’ve read Ahnen). Read all those first, then maybe come back to this one!

Also nicely related to Das große Heft, Child of All Nations is again the Nazi period seen through the eyes of a child, in this case the daughter of a Roth-Mann-style refugee. The darkness and innocence are interestingly balanced; the whimsy can occasionally be overpowering, but the moments that ring true are very good. Here, for example, she starts brilliantly, then makes it too neat for me:

I saw some wonderful flower shops, and some of the flowers looked almost like lilacs – maybe they were lilacs. Unfortunately I couldn’t smell them through the plate-glass windows. But women walked past me with wafts of scent, and I quickly did some magic: I looked at all the lilac-like flowers in the shop window and at the same time I smelled what the women wafted at me – and suddenly I had lilac and May and my mother. I kissed the window, and so I kissed her.

Im Spiegelsaal, a non-fiction “graphic novel” (graphic essay, perhaps) is classic Liv Strömquist: a feminist discussion of beauty and celebrity in modern society, with lots of good jokes translated into wonderfully slangy German:

There’s a lot of text, but even that’s wittily handled:

Love in the New Millennium was my latest attempt at Can Xue. I didn’t hate every moment of it — the Nest County chapters were relatively calm — but novel length dream sequences are not for me. I’m done with her for a while, I think, having dutifully waded through a novel and a story collection.

Finally, A Sunny Place for Shady People is an instructive contrast with the Can Xue: normally horror is some distance from my bag, but in most of these stories Enriquez limits the weirdness to one irruption, then traces the consequences for the otherwise realistic story very effectively. A great finish for the month.

My only writer with testicles was Mia Couto: Jesusalém was a toughie, which is why it took me almost two months to finish. He is another of those authors who gives me a much-needed sense of perspective on the size of my Portuguese vocabulary, while there was one chapter in particular that was at first so lacking in context that I could only plod through a few pages at a time. Things picked up again though, and I enjoyed the blend of the bizarre and the familiar from my own time in Mozambique. The sexual politics is sometimes disturbing, though that could be attributed to the realities of the setting rather than the author.

I’ve declared September Black month, for no particular reason. I’ve already started a couple of chunky books, and my provisional list is getting longer by the day….

I finished ten books this month, six for my slightly patronising topic of “sound Americans”, five by women/POC, three in German, with one graphic novel. No Portuguese, because I’m working through a big one. 🙂

• Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative — Arnold Weinstein
• Liberation Day — George Saunders
• The Music of Chance — Paul Auster
• Als lebten wir in einem barmherzigen Land: — A. L. Kennedy, tr. Ingo Herzke and Susanne Höbel
• Starter Villain — John Scalzi
• City of God — Paolo Lins, tr. Alison Entrekin
• Paying the Land — Joe Sacco
• Jahr der Wunder — Louise Erdrich, tr. Gesine Schröder
• Weisse Wolken — Yandé Seck
• Men Explain Things to Me — Rebecca Solnit

Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative is sort of a book — a collection of lectures distributed as an audiobook, and I spent 30 hours listening to it, so I’m counting it. (I haven’t included it in my good Americans total because I don’t know enough about Weinstein’s politics). His analyses of the various works are always interesting, whether or not I’d already read them, and he’s spurred me to seek out some of those that were less familiar (especially the poetry). There’s an odd lack of novels, but since that’s already the field I know best, I’ve no objection to that.

The first project book, Liberation Day was classic George Saunders: stories which are initially often mystifying, but soon enough make a sense which combines satire and warm-heartedness to great effect. The title story was a particularly highlight, and the audiobook as a whole had excellent performances.

The Music of Chance was also typical Auster, other than having relatively little connection with New York. Road trips, chance (obviously), and a descent into absurdity are all present. The wall at the centre of the story is a perfect symbol of so many things that one can understand the protagonist’s growing obsession with it.

Starter Villain was the first actual novel I’d read by John Scalzi, though I’ve followed him partly for political reasons on social media for years. It’s a great romp, with lots of double dealing, and enjoyable characters (not all human). Now I need to read some of his real science fiction!

Men Explain Things to Me is another book I felt I already knew through social and other media, but it was good to go back to where mansplaining started (as it were). Solnit is sometimes a little too fixated on Solnit, but the essays collected here are always a pleasure to read and, importantly these days, reasonably hopeful.

My last two project books coincidentally deal with native American societies: Paying the Land is a graphic novel about Sacco’s trip to Canada’s Northwest Territories, and is accessibly enlightening on the different groups and their approaches to reconciling their traditions with the modern (or western/Anglo, or perhaps something else) world. Sacco’s interviewees come across as rounded characters, showing the power of the format he uses:

I read Jahr der Wunder (The Sentence in English) in translation because I happened to have it, and found it fascinating — again, particularly regarding the lives of modern native Americans, this time in Minnesota. The central ghost story is overlaid with the current events of 2020 (Covid, of course, and I hadn’t registered that the murder of George Floyd took place there and then). The combination of the two made me feel a bit queasy — whether trivialising the real events or giving undue weight to the ghost story — but putting that aside, the charismatic characters kept me turning the pages.

Again coincidentally, Als lebten wir in einem barmherzigen Land is another “Covid novel” (though much more than that) which I read in translation. Interestingly it had two translators, each working on sections written from the point of view of a different character. Kennedy’s righteous anger over the British government’s Covid failings rather overshadows the more central plot point of the Spycops scandal and its effects on the victims, but the book is well worth reading for this aspect alone.

The third German novel, Weisse Wolken, is reminiscent in its set-up of Jackie Thomae’s Brüder, which I read some time ago: two children (here sisters) of a Senegalese father and German mother grow up in Germany, though here thanks to some murky plot-tweaking the siblings have both parents in common, and have a substantial age gap, which Seck uses to show their different generational attitudes. These sometimes seem a little exaggerated (the older sister knows rather less about racial politics than me, despite being a therapist), but the development of the characters is involving. It might have been better to read as text than as an audiobook, as I found it tricky to work out who was who at first.

Finally, City of God was the latest Portuguese in Translation discussion group book. It’s moderately long (400-odd pages, apparently edited down from about 600), but feels longer because it’s so episodic. Rather like with Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, it’s mostly a series of acts of violent depravity, which numbs the reader with repetition. Again as with 2666, that’s presumably deliberate, but it did make it slow going for me. There’s more humour in this case (rather like a Brazilian Trainspotting). The slang and local references make it difficult to translate (and the discussion with Entrekin and Lins was illuminating on this), and inevitably a lot is lost when rendering it into a generalised English.

Next month is August, and so Women in Translation month (mostly).

I finished ten books in June: eight for my poor excuse for a monthly theme (“finishing off books I’d already started”), six by women/non-binary/POC, one in Portuguese, and a measly one in German. That makes a nice round sixty for the first half of the year.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong
Every Short Story 1951-2012 — Alasdair Gray
The Acceptance World — Anthony Powell
Animal Joy — Nuar Alsadir
Se deus me chamar não vou — Mariana Salomão Carrara
Star Songs of an Old Primate — James Tiptree Jr.
Illuminations — Alan Moore
Lili is Crying — Hélène Bessette, tr. Kate Briggs
The Space Machine — Christopher Priest
Proxi — Aiki Mira

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was a classic example of a book to get stuck on — I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but the poetic drifiness of the style didn’t oblige me to pick it up again. The second half, which I read this month, did pick up the pace as the love story takes the central role. I recently read a review of Vuong’s new novel which incidentally skewers the weaknesses of this one quite accurately, but despite those failings (basically, being precious) there was enough here to justify finishing.

Every Short Story 1951-2012 took a while both because it’s big (900 plus pages), and by the nature of the short-story collection beast. Gray generously includes most of the novel Something Leather, as it’s composed of separate stories. It’s fair to say that the early stories tend to be better: most of Unlikely Stories, Mostly is excellent, especially the Five Letters from an Eastern Empire, while the later ones tail off alarmingly (as Gray typically says himself in the final story).

The Acceptance World is the third of the Dance to the Music of Time: my plan of one a month stretched to one every two months, as I decided that a little Powell goes quite a long way. At this point the characters now seem to be in their mid-thirties and behaving much as they did in the first book, which may be a failing, or may be a deep truth about human nature.

Turning to an absolute cracker, Animal Joy is better than you’d imaging a psychotherapist writing about becoming a clown to be. Alsadir is great at blending her own experiences with an impressive range of reading; in particular, each story or idea infects her writing with particular phrases which she can then use like leitmotifs to elegantly recall and combine them as she reaches the climax of each section.

Se deus me chamar não vou was my Portuguese book of the month, by one of my new favourite writers. This is a slightly whimsical tale of bisexuality as observed by an 11-year-old girl, which gives it a refreshingly unprejudiced simplicity.

Illuminations is essentially another short-story collection, but I paused it when I came to the novel about the comics industry which takes up most of the second half, just because it didn’t fit my usual story-per-day routine. It’s monstrously self-indulgent, as usual for Moore, but that’s no problem: seeing what he’ll do next is part of the fun.

The Space Machine went on hiatus just because I ran out of time to finish it before moving on to my next month’s topic. Priest has great fun with his cod-Wells style, playing with the incongruities between modern sensibilities and those of the setting and narration. The ending ties things together in an unexpected but satisfying conclusion.

Proxi was the only German book I finished, mostly because it took a long time to finish itself. It’s a very strange book, with the odd-threesome central characters definitely one of the pluses. Other parts of the writing are much clumsier, especially the repetition of the same few made-up words which introduce most lines of dialogue. Mira does do a good job of writing a post-apocalyptic landscape which nevertheless has its own beauty and life.

Of the new books this month, Star Songs of an Old Primate came on Ursula K. Le Guin’s recommendation, which it more or less justified. The sexual obsessions are very much of their time, and Tiptree seems to have been much better at setting up stories than ending them, but I will at least read more of her.

Finishing on a high, Lili is Crying is the much-awaited new translation by Kate Briggs, as well as (for most of us) an introduction to Hélène Bessette. This is a short, but mighty poetic novel, which reminded me especially of Anne Weber’s books with its hybrid format and shadowy but characterful narrative voice. A couple of Bessette’s novels have been translated into German, so I might have to go and explore those.

Next month is back to a proper theme, and one which seemed necessary in the light of recent events: based Americans. Fortunately, it turns out there are plenty!

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….