Two new countries for the blog

Gone are the days when I got a lot of new places to read books  from its every few months I tend to add a couple of countries. So when  I  the last week I have two new countries arrive it is.worth a   celebration   First up from Turkmenistan a former Soviet republic in middle Asia is The tales of Aypi A group  of fishermen try to change their lives after state wants to take their lives they have to fifit to keep their place in the world . The writer him was banned in Turkmenistan and has lived in exile since the mid 90s 

the second book is also from a former Soviet republic Estonia . The book follows a tribe through the eyes of a young man part of this hunter gather tribe . As a new tribe with new style of living tries to change their.worl

French rhapsody by Antoine Laurain

French Rhapsody by Antoine Laurain

French fiction

Original title – Rhapsodie française,

Translator – Jane Atiken and Emily Boyce

Source – review copy

Well two french novels in a week and the second here is the third book by Antoine Laurain I have reviewed I enjoyed the two earlier books the presidents hat and red notebook  Both of which have a similar nostalgic feel to this book. His earlier books have won two prizes . this is his third to be translated to english.

Paris 12 September 1983

Dear Holograms

We listened with great interest to the five track demo you sent us at the beginning of the summer. Your work is precise and very professional, and although it needs quite a bit of work , you already have a sound that is distinctive. The track we were most impressed by was “Such stuff dreams are mad on ” You have managed to blend new wave and old wave whilst adding you own rock sound.

Please get in touch with us so that we can organise a meeting

Best wishes

The letter Alain got telling him of Polydor like their demo now to find the other band member , I live the song title just out of the 80’s

The book has a clever framing device like his two earlier books a starting point to the past in a way in this case it is a letter that had been deleivered thirty years earlier, but had fallen behind something in the letter box and wasn’t discovered to the house had repairs done the letter was to ALain Massoulier and was a reply from the record label Polydor saying that they loved the demo from  the band he was in The holograms and now this is 30 years later and the various members of the band have long since lost contact so Alain goes on a journey to reunite the band and bring them to polydor 30 years late for their one chance .But where have the Band gone Alain is now a settled but maybe not happy GP others he decide to do the 21st century thing and google them , he has vague ideas but what are they the other three guys and one woman well one is one the verge of being the biggest french leader another was an artist that last big piece was a 25ft brain (that rein me of Jeff Koons for some reason ) , another was in the movies and the last in the rising voice of the far right french . This is a story of paths we take in life how could five people in a group end up so far apart and what would have happened if the letter had arrived well that is a twist in the story waiting 30 years to be told .

Who is JBM ? asked the front page of Le Figaro above a photo of the businessman. He had grey hair now, almost white at the temples, but still the same melancholy expression, the same cat-like smile. His hands were clasped in front of him and you could see the domed blue cufflinks . This photo must have been taken at conference .He looked as if he were listening attentively to something or someone

JBM a fellow Band member but has taken a very different path to his old band mate .

Laurain has a real eye for capturing the past this time with the music and memories and stoking the fires in ones own mind I was on the edge of a band , well hung out with them and suggest a few ideas after this book I was left wondering what had happen to them. Laurain captures that band time but also he has shown how one point can lead to so many different points how five people’s lives can take such drastic paths into art, politics , movies sort of , being a face in the crowd and being the cheerleader of a baying crowd in a way each could have been the other but they weren’t and it shows how fracture modern France can be at times. Another gem from a wry fun writer that in this one will make you think what if I had that letter or piece of Take hart or poem published

Have you read any of his book ?

Moscow in the 1930’s by Natalia Gromova

Moscow in the 1930’s by Natalia Gromova

Russian fiction

original title – Последняя Москва.

Translator – Christopher Culver

Source – review copy

Well its a second visit to the Russia this woman in translation month , This time we have a historic novel about writers. Natalia Gromova is from a russian military family , she has lived in Moscow since an early agee and got a job at 16 working in the state historical library whilst finishing her studies , she has work for the Soviet encyclopedia in the past but since the mid 90s has been writing books that she use the historic archives to put together historic novels from original diaries , letters and articles of the time .

Alexander Fyodorovich served Russian literature like a priest: literature had completely replaced religion for his generation. But neither literature nor culture , as it became clear later, could save them from the chaos of revolution and then all ugly realities of Soviet life. many of these high-born gymnasium teachers and university professors looked at the complex issues of society and politics with disgust, and the consequences of this naturally fell on the heads of their children, who swept into the maelstrom of history.

I loved this passage about how literature took over religion in some in the 30’s

Moscow in the 1930’s is set during those pre war years of Stalin rule , we are drawn into a world of house and place that arent there anymore .This stitches together the diaries of writers like Olga Bessarabova, Vavara Grigiryena  are the two main sources for this work  well-known and now even forgotten to paint a picture of a world of writing at the time the friendships . People like Maria Belkina a well-known writer in her time but now forgotten to us in english. I loved the way Natalia brought us behind the doors of these writers as they discuss the works of the day and the writers Bulgakov who at the time was working on his own masterpiece that was set also in Moscow the Master and the Margarita during the 30’s .Daniil andreyev is another character who is in the story he was even in the book arrested by Stalin it turns out a lot of his great works were destroyed by The state secret police .

The more I read , the more colourful a picture I got of an old Moscow home . There were more than enough of these in the past. TO a degree, these Moscow homes were literary figures in themselves: fro the Rostovs happy home on Provarskaya street in War and Peace to the home of Gromeko family on the Arbat in Doctor Zhivago. Here the doors were always wide open, the house would teem with guests, a number of relatives would be resident, and holidays would be regularly celebrated, with Christmas festivities for children and adults

In her diary, Olga Bessarabova described the Dobrov home in the same way

An open door for the writer of the day to spend time with Olga and her family .

This is one of those books you need a notebook next to you as you read to note the names of the writers mention and their works . I did this and then looked to see what is available not much but I still have some to check out further Andreyev for example his later book roza mir , rose of the world came out in the late 90’s. Natalia Gromova brings a long gone Moscow to life , this is one of a number of books she has written using the same technique of real diaries and setting as a frame for her novels .I found this compelling if a slow read so much to absorb makes it a book that I will be rereading and discovering again.

 

Constellation by Adrien Bosc

Constellation  By Adrien Bosc

French fiction

Original title – Constellation

Translation – Willard wood

Source – review copy

I again go back to France as I seek to move the total of books reviewed on the blog from France towards the hundred mark with this the 80th french book reviewed , from a rising star of french fiction . He has set up the publisher edition Sous-sol a very succesful French publisher. This was his debut novel it made a number of longlist and shortlist of major french prizes when it came out and I also noted when it arrived that it was one I felt , I would love as it remind me somewhat of the fellow french novel windows on the world  that also followed  a group of people after a major event.

The passengers are strapped in , Marcel Cerdan jokes with Jo Longman, while Paul Genser stares fixedly out of the pothole. Ginette Neveu clasps the case containing her two violins , A stradivarius and Guadagnini – a week ago she only owned one. At the front of the aeroplane, their seat harnesses clinched, the cockpit crew prepare for landing

The violin in piece later turned up in pieces by the Azores

 

Constellation follows the 48 people who where on an Air France plane a Lockhead Constellation from Paris to New york one of those wonderful post war planes all silver and gleaming like the cover of the book . The plane has to stop at the Azores to refuel this is where the plane had crashed. What Bosc does here is tells the post war years through those 48 people in little pen pictures of them all. From five Basque shepherds that are trying to get to the new world to make a new life for themselves following a path that many Basques did at that time. Then there is a boxer on the way to a title fight in America, a former lover of Edith Piaf . Then the story that touch me most is that of a Ginette Niveau a child prodigy on the violin now an adult she is heading to america to perform as her career is on the p Piaf’s lover also on the flight Marcel Cerdan lover Piaf said afterwards she and him would have travelled a thousand miles to Her Neveu . Then we see the pilots story of the war years, then the man who brought Disney merchandising to europe that meant every child had chance for mickey mouse on their wrist.

Only world war II slowed Disney’s rising power. THe company built on its popularity by taking part in the war effort. On July 14, 1942, the studios – in collaborations with Lockhead aircraft (The company that would build the constellation) – released a cartoon on the techniques of riveting aeroplanes,, an instruction manual in the form of a short animated film, Four methods of flush riveting , aimed at the governments civilian contractors.

Disney’s war years through there war films is just a small hiccup in their eventual rise to a mega company they are today .

I loved the way Bosc sitch together fact and fiction from Niveau a well-known person so her life is fact to that of the lowly five Basques who have left their village in search of the new world. Then the modern world from Kay Kamen and the birth of merchandising to coming to America to box or perform . This is a collection of lives just as europe was getting on it feet caught in an air crash that end their lives but we see the paths they were taking and what France and the real world was like at that time a nice slice of historic fiction for those who like me aren’t always the keenest on historic fiction.

A temporary sojourn and other stories by Nasreen Jahan

A temporary sojourn by Nasreen Jahan

Bangladeshi Fiction

Original title –

Edited by Niaz Zaman

Translators – various

Source – review copy

I was sent this via a fellow blogger Chelsea McGill who blogs from the globally curious  and lives in India . The collection she sent me is from one of the best known Bangladeshi writers Nasreen Jahan , she joined the Chander hat a national organsation for children organisations in 1974 and was at this time also encouraged to writer short stories which eventually got published in a daily paper in Bangladesh. She has written novels and short stories and also a number of prizes including the Bangla prize.

Kader Ali had cleaved the boy in two with his axe and fled the village in a frenzy. By the time he reached the riverbank at the end of the river, it was past sundown. An unpredictable wind was blowing, sometimes motionless and dead, sometimes they lash at you so hard you’re startled. In this unruly state of nature the river waters are in a fix. Fortunately a pitch darkness has defended or else this behaviour of the wind on her anchal waves pulling in one way and baring the other would have caused the river to fail miserably in keeping herself decent.

A temporary sojourn opening passage

The stories in this collection all for me had an eerie feel to them a collection of tales of low lives and people on the edge of life.A husband in the title story kills his son because he feels his wife hasn’t really become a muslim after they married. Elsewhere a mother and daughter fall out over the daughters lover the mother has deformed legs this remind me some what of Maugham characters in of human bondage only with the roles shift in sexes. Other stories head into Marquez and magic realism with cattle thief clashing with the vultures and elsewhere animals turning up. These are stories of everyday Bangladesh where we she how hard life is for the woman there and how often they are let down by the males around them. A refreshing collection of stories from a new name for the blog and new country for the blog.

A vulture is perched between the outstretched legs of the dead cow that had been lying on Nayar Char for sometime. It is jumping about like a new-born calf.

Kutubuddi is watching from a distance. There is not a single soul in sight anywhere. The sky seems to have descended on the Char like the breast of a white cow. Today Kutubuddi is a skilled hunter. his feet are [added like a cat;s. Indifferent to the thorny bushes that are scratching him and drawing blood he creeps forward

Man and Vulture get to it over a dead cow in the story Vulture , I felt this had a large echo of Marquez in it.

When I started winstonsdad these are the books I wanted to review the rare gems those books that show how yes these stories are set in Bangladesh but also the stories could remind you so much of the people we see every day on Jeremy kyle being at the bottom is hard wherever you are but this also shows how strong the woman are in Bangladesh for me this is also a perfect books for woman in translation month. Yes some of the translations are maybe raw and the voice isn’t the same as it is when one translator does a short story collection but it is also refreshing to see so many translators that can translate Bangladeshi fiction into English eleven in all. Many thanks for Chelsea for sending it to me .Have you read any books from Bangladesh.

Bottom’s dream or Nightmare or is it Jam and Jerusalem Epic reading options

I saw earlier today a post on conversational reads That Scott Esposito had posted a picture of this year maybe most awaited amoung die hard translated fans and that is the epic Bottom’s dream by Arno Schmidt , whom I reviewed earlier this year one of his shorter books The egghead republic. But Bottom’s dream is a whole different kettle of fish a book that in the german editon a folio size 1348 page book. To give you a glue of how huge this book is here is a video of the german edition being flicked through

The book follows the struggle of  a german translator in translating the works of Edgar Allen Poe into english and is also influenced by the wordplay James Joyce used in Fnnegans wake.Well Dalkey Archive and John E Woods the  translator , who has spent years working on it. Welll 2,250,000 words is a lot as Scott point out 4 times theat of War and Peace. Add to that is the cost at 50 pound it will be an investment, but also a talking point for many years to come. Then if that isn’t enough I have also an eye on this book Jerusalem by Alan Moore

A book that follows 6000years of history in his home town of Northampton . He said in an interview there was chapter influenced by Jame Joyce , Samuel Beckett and Noir as the tale of this town is told by 12 characters .This is also a 1,000,000 word novel and has a three vol editon coming out also in sept . So I have a battle of epic reads to try and read . Which of these two epic novels grabs you ?

Wakolda by Lucia Puenzo

 

Wakolda by Lucia Puenzo

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Wakolda

Translator – David William Foster

Source – Library book

Well I said the next stop of my woman in translation journey would be Argentina. Lucia Puenzo was part of the Granta best young Spanish writers edition a few years ago. She has won number of awards for her film work, she is a film maker as well as a writer. This novel is also a film she made with the english title the German Doctor, which was a feature at Cannes film festival when it came out . This strangely is also the second novel I have read this year about germans in Latin american after the second world war.  the other being Affections by Rodrigo Hasbun.

That day, mixture of sodium cholride and magnesium nitrate, injected with infinite patience into each eyeball, would change forever the course of science. The mass sterilization, the vivisections, the frustated attempts to change skin and hair colour using subcutaneous injection and even the night on which he thought he had finally succeeded in joining the veins of two twins to create a Siamese twins, only to find them a few hours later gasping like fish out of water – all his failures would be forgotten if he could manage to change the colour of the eyes of this child

The opening lines a chilling look at the man and what he did in the past !

As I said in the first paragraph the book revolves around an escape German from the second world war in this case it is a more famous German than in Rodrigo Hasbun book the escaped german in this story is Josef Mengele himself the man known as the angel  of death during his time as a doctor at the Auschwitz death camp . This is 1960 and Jose has settled in Bariloche a place that a number of Nazis have lived since the war in relative quiet from the rest of the world . Jose wants to carry on his work , that of trying to find the perfect human being. This leads him to a family that have all the qualities he is looking for except their daughter Lilith who has a growth defect . Add to that her mother is now expecting twins and the doctor had previously worked with twins in Auschwitz where he sewed two together like siamese twins to see what happen, but in this case he is fighting to keep them alive as the net is closing around him. We see most of the action through the eyes of the young girl who has a doll called Wakolda that Jose gave here.

Her father occupied the following pages , alongside her brothers , alongside her brothers, also surrounded by numbers and measurements.

she read Homo siriacus

she came last

Her illustration had more details than the others: measurements of almost all her bones, the circumference of her head notations in German, number and more numbers, calculations along with results, a list 0f illnesses … feeling a lump in the pit of her stomach, she gathered up the arms and legs of her doll. She left the dagger , the ring and the notebook where she’d found them. she climbed out the window after making sure that everything was exactly as she’d found it .

Jose notes about lilith  she finds in his office

This book is a clever take on fact and fiction Josef Mengele did spend time in Argentina after the war. This is imaging what would have happened had he decide to hide and carry on what he did it is a story of what is right and wrong in Ethics and how far people will go in the pursuit of perfection. Again as I have found in a number of latin american novel in recent years is the use of the child narrator from Andres Neuman to Marcelo Figueras .Lilith would have died in Auschwitz but here she has grabbed Jose by why she is here as part of what is otherwise a perfect aryan family what is the cause of her in this perfect family.

Have you a favourite novel about nazis on the run ?

Her Father’s daughter by Marie Sizun

Her Father’s daughter by Marie Sizun

French Fiction

Original Title – Le Pere de la petite

Translator – Adriana Hunter

Source – review copy

Well I have another choice for woman in translation month and this is from one of my all time favourite publishers Peirene press ,  they also publish my favourite book by a female writer in Translation Stones in a landslide. So every book by them is usually a gem. Marie Sizun is an example to every one that it is never to late to start writing she taught literature for many years but it wasn’t till she turn 65 and this her first novel came ou in French. She has since written Seven novels and a Memoir.

It’s a winter afternoon in the kitchen of the apartment. They’re both there, the mother standing doing her ironing, a tall figure, and beside her the little girl, sitting in her special chair. They’re not talking at the moment. the child is thinking about what her mother has just said. On the radio a few minutes ago there was some news, news about the war , as usual. When the announcement ended, her mother switched off the radio and still ironing, said something like “your poor little daddy “… or perhaps ” When your poor little daddy comes home ” … offhand like that.

The later is the truth her world is about to change .

There is a memoir feel in my view to this book given that Marie her self was born in 1940 the story in Her father’s daughter which sees a little girl she her world shift after her father arrives home after the second world war. We see the pre father time when in their small apartmnet the child called France is the centre of the mother’s world as she is called My darling by the mother. Of course the world shifts once the father is back in the fold and the child feels as thou she has lost her position in the world to the father. To her the Father was a mythic being in a way having not seen her till she was four and this is what she wants him to become again. As sh opens up to the father a secret is revealed and this will yet again change the dynamics of this relationships.

The child may now have a father but, on the other hand, she might as well no longer have a mother. Because as if by magic her mother is reduced to being a docile wife to her husband, his sweetheart, his servant. Perhaps she no longer feels like it . Beside, indications have been made that she should limit her displays of affection towards her daughter, she should stop sitting her on her lap as she used to, and stop using any excuse to address her with that idiotic “my darling”

The world she knew is about to collapse around her when her father wants to change her relationship with Mum.

What Marie Sizun has done is taken a story that happened a hundred times in a hundred places around the world at this time and that is the return of the lost father figure to the family fold and the child France point of view is told and that is one many children would have had at the time the one of wanting to reject the father figure and for the house to return to normal. Marie Sizun has captured the world so well through a childs eye that innocent way of seeing the world before our thoughts get to grey where we see the world in black and white and in good and evil. Another gem from Peirene and another great book for Woman in translation month . Next time I will be in Argentina and another world war two touched tale.

Have you a favourite book about family returning home  ?

I’ve 99 novels and Anthony burgess isn’t one of them

Well I’ve  spun on Jay Z’s lyrics  in the title of this piece I’ve long wanted to get hold of the book by Anthony Burgess the best 99 novels in English since 1939 . As a fan of Burgess own work , but also aware that he was quite the cultural commentator back in the day.I felt his choice of 99 novels maybe an interesting list to look at and to work through.I often say I want to try to add a few English novels and as I am of the opinion that nothing of any weight has been written since Burgess passed this looks like the list for me .The bold ones are books I own. I have read a number as well.

• Party Going, Henry Green
• After Many a Summer, Aldous Huxley
• Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
• At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien
  

  1940

• The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• Strangers and Brothers (to 1970), C. P. Snow(most of these I have )
  

  1941

• The Aerodrome, Rex Warner
  

  1944

• The Horse’s Mouth, Joyce Cary
• The Razor’s Edge, Somerset Maugham
  

  1945

• Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

• 1946

• Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake
  

  1947

• The Victim, Saul Bellow
• Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
  

  1948

• The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
• Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley
• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
• No Highway, Nevil Shute

• 1949

• The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
• The Body, William Sansom
  

  1950

• Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper
• The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg
  

  1951

• A Dance to the Music of Time (to 1975), Anthony Powell 3 of 4 collect vols 
• The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
• The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (to 1969), Henry Williamson
• The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
  

  1952

• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
• The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy
• Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor
• Sword of Honour (to 1961), Evelyn Waugh
  

  1953

• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
  

  1954

• Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
  

  1957

• Room at the Top, John Braine
• The Alexandria Quartet (to 1960), Lawrence Durrell
• The London Novels (to 1960), Colin MacInnes
• The Assistant, Bernard Malamud
  

  1958

• The Bell, Iris Murdoch
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe
• The Once and Future King, T. H. White
  

  1959

• The Mansion, William Faulkner
• Goldfinger, Ian Fleming
  

  1960

• Facial Justice, L. P. Hartley
• The Balkans Trilogy (to 1965), Olivia Manning
  

  1961

• The Mighty and Their Fall, Ivy Compton-Burnett
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• The Fox in the Attic, Richard Hughes
• Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White
• The Old Men at the Zoo, Angus Wilson
  

  1962

• Another Country, James Baldwin
• An Error of Judgment, Pamela Hansford Johnson
• Island, Aldous Huxley
• The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
• Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
  

  1963

• The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark
  

  1964

• The Spire, William Golding
• Heartland, Wilson Harris
• A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood
• The Defence, Vladimir Nabokov
• Late Call, Angus Wilson
  

  1965

• The Lockwood Concern, John O’Hara
• The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark
  

  1966

• A Man of the People, Chinua Achebe
• The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis
• Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth
• The Late Bourgeois World, Nadine Gordimer
• The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy
  

  1967

• The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan
  

  1968

• The Image Men, J. B. Priestley
• Cocksure, Mordecai Richler
• Pavane, Keith Roberts
  

  1969

• The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
• Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
  

  1970

• Bomber, Len Deighton
  

  1973

• Sweet Dreams, Michael Frayn
• Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
  

  1975

• Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow
• The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury
  

  1976

• The Doctor’s Wife, Brian Moore
• Falstaff, Robert Nye
  

  1977

• How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong
• Farewell Companions, James Plunkett
• Staying On, Paul Scott
  

  1978

• The Coup, John Updike
  

  1979

• The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard
• Dubin’s Lives, Bernard Malamud
• A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
• Sophie’s Choice, William Stryon
  

  1980

• Life in the West, Brian Aldiss
• Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
• How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge
• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
  

  1981

• Lanark, Alasdair Gray
• Darconville’s Cat, Alexander Theroux
• The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux
• Creation, Gore Vidal
  

  1982

• The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies
  

  1983

• Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer

So that is the list it is more than 99 novels aa a number of the books is a series of Novels like the Powell , Williamson and Snow all of which are ten or more novel series. So I plan to work through this over next few years as a challenge. Anyone else like this list ?

Abahn Sabana David by Marguerite Duras

Abahn Sabana David by Marguerite Duras

French fiction

original title –  Abahn Sabana David

Translator – Kazim Ali

Source – title

So a new translation into English from one of the best known French woman writers Marguerite Duras is of course  a good choice for Woman in translation month. Duras is best known for her novel The lover which I reviewed  six years ago . Duras early novels were quite plain and it was to mid way in her career she decide to become part of the french Noveau roman movement , a movement which the writer tries to write a new novel in a new style every time they write a novel.

She is small and slim, wearing a long black dress. Her companion is of medium build, wearing a coat lined with white fur. “I’m Sabana , “she says “this is David. We’re here, from Staadt .”

The man walks slowly towards them.He smiles

“take off your coats.” he says “Please sit.”

They do not answer. They remain near the door

They do not look at him

IThis first meeting between Sabana David and Abahn maybe is a warning for what is to come .

The book takes part over the course of one night and involves four characters . David and Sabana have come to Guard Abahn (A jew) but also under the orders of their boss the cringo. Then later in the evening a fourth man called also Abahn appears after this point the first Abahn is mainly called the Jews by Sabana who is talking about him as David is asleep and she is worried that The Jew will turn on them.Over the course of the night all the problems of the 20th century from Soviet to Nazis have been discussed by the group. Leading to what they are all doing there what  their positions where with in the group and why they have been sent a sort of questioning of meanings and values.Also what happens when Abahn become the Jew when the second Abahn appear the change sparks a change in how he is spoken about !

“Which forest ?” ask Abahn

Tears fall from Sabina’s eyes. She thinks on it

“the forest”

“You don’t know what’s beyond here,” says Abahn. “Where is the forest ?”

she searches her thoughts.

“Where I don’t know. We have to talk about it.”

“The wild forest,” says the Jew.

“Yes” she says, pausing.”Where is it ?”

“Deep within Staadt” says the Jew.

She isn’t crying anymore. She looks at the Jews once more.Her gaze has become somber again, somber and blue.

The forest is in Davids mind as well ” Says the Jew

This talk of a forest for the Jews made me think of the words the Nazis used to disappear Jews inWW2

This is a classic bit of Noveau roman. Duras has drawn on Theatre of the absurd for this piece I was reminded so much of the works of Pinter in particular the birthday party where two characters turn up at a characters house and through the night discuss the power and use of power. This is one of those piece that show power and the abuse of it like in this case the fact Sabana and David have been sent for a dual purpose from the Cringo to Abahn in the Staadt these terms can be interchange with a number of places and political parties within the 20th century. This is what we are drawn to think by  the way  Duras has apart from the dialogue drawn the bare bones of a story over this work leaving us the reader to fill in the parts unspoken or unsaid ourselves. A powerful Novella from one of the best French writers of the 20th century.

Have you read any more books by Marguerite Duras ?