30 covers for #WITMONTH An Italian reborn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My last cover for this series of post is an example of a writer being rediscovered and this is one in recent years has seem a revivial and that is the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg.THis is a collection of short essays by the late Italian writer that has seen a number of her books reissued in the last few years. I reviewed this book here.

One hundred year of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One hundred years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Columbian fiction

Original title – Cien años de soledad

Translator – Gregory Rabassa

Source – Personal copy

I said this was this year read-along for Spanish lit month. I got out my copy which isn’t the one I read but a later edition I read it from the library as I did most of my books in my late teens the little Library in Alnwick was a great gem. I am not much of a rereader but I decided to go back and cover this as it has been five years since Marquez passed he is still the giant of the Latin American boom. I dod wonder if I would find it as engrossing as I did when I read it all those years ago sometimes my not wanting to reread is a wanting to avoid the disappointment of a book seeming less on second reading.

MAny years later, as he faced the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendia was to rememeber that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe house, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormus, like prehistoric eggs.The world was so recent that many things lacked names and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point

The stunning opening of the book as some one on twitter sad maybe the best !!

I then set off to the strange village of Macondo and to the founding family of that Village the Buendia family. The village is an island or is it that is the point of the book it is a family history but a lot of the book you see each generation as similar or as a pale copy of the previous in a way the use of similar names in fact in most generations the same name Aureliano is a name a family name that crops up in the second generation after Jose Arcadio Buendia the founder of the village, in fact, the opening lines is his son and the closing lines is another Aureliano in a more modern Macondo. The village seems to want to avoid moving forward the solitude of the title is the village it ways each generation is a subject to some family intermarrying first cousins etc. Each generation also has a beautiful and alluring female Remedios, Santa Sofia, Remedios the beauty (another recurring name !). A band of visiting gypsies that bring the great inventions of the day and whose lead dies but comes back to the village.pilar that lived for 140 odd years after sleeping with some brothers. These all add to the mystic and strange feeling of the whole place being caught in a revolving door of time.

During a pause in the caresses. Jose  Arcadio stretched out naked on the bed without knowing what to do while the girl inspire him. A gypsy woman with splendid flesh came in a short time after accompanied by a  man who was not of the caracan but who was not from the village either, and the began to undress in front of the bed. Without meaning to, the woman looked at Jose Acradio and examined his magnificent animal in respose with a kind of pathetic fervour

The women in Marquez’s book always seem similar as thou remembered from his own past

So was it worth rereading well yes I loved it like I did the first time I know some people get lost with the names and generations but I let flow over me like a river and just drift with Marquez prose for me, the book is full of him as a writer? I have cover five of his book before on the blog. The pace Macondo is a veiled version of his home town of Acacataca part of the history mirror-like the arrival of the fruit company something that happened itself in the village. A beautiful woman well this is maybe where he will fall down at some point in the future as Marquez loved to describe beautiful women in his books I often feel he is describing the same group of young women from his teen years over and over again. Then there is the revolving sense of the village and this is something that seems more distant now than it did when I first read the book I remember visiting the distant village in Northumberland and the people I picked up for the elderly  day centre known the history of these places back for years and generations like the Buendia family also the way he misses giving technology encroaching on Macondo something that has been lost as the internet and everything it brings has steamrollered that world. It is fair to say yes this book was as good in fact in a way it has changed how I viewed it in the twenty-plus year since my first reading Marquez was a master of what he did

30 covers for #WITMONTH A japanese favourite

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think most readers now stat with Murakami as there first Japanese writer but for me, in the early nineties, it was the novel Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto a book about a woman overcoming her grandmother’s death. I read a number of her books over the years. But when I come to do this list I have seen it has been more than a decade since I read a book by her and I need to add her to my blog. It is sad I haven’t cover her before now as her voice is one I have alway enjoyed.

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

Lithuanian fiction

Original title –  Lietuviai prie Laptevų jūros

Translator Delija Valiukenas

Source = personal copy

I am trying to fill in the gaps for the Peirene books I haven’t read here is another.from their Home in Exile series and a work from  Dalia Grinkevičiūtė she wrote on scraps of paper after her escape and return to her homeland from a Gulag and then buried the book was discovered in a Jar four years after her death. She spent time in gulags first with her family in the war years this is the period covered in the book. Then later on in the ’50s by herself. But also became a doctor on her return to Lithuania. This book is now considered part of the national canon of Lituania.

I’m touching something. It feels like cold iron. I’m lying on my back …. How beautiful … the sunlight …and the shadow

I am aware tgat a phase of my life has come to an end, a line dran underneath it. Another i beginning, uncertain and ominous. Twenty four people lie nearby. Asleep? who knows? Each of them has their own thoughts. Each is leaving behind a life that ended yesterday. Each has a family, relatives, friends, They’re all saying goodbye t their loved ones. Suddenly the train jolts. Something falls from the upper bunk No one is asleep now. Silence I dress hurriedly- I have to say goodbye to Kaunas

The opening as she is on the train heading she doesn’t know where

The book follows Dalia her mother and her older brother as the family is wrenched out of their home in Kanuas and deported by the regime as she joins a lot of fellow Lithuanians on a train covered so no-one knows where they are going. The journey last weeks as they are spilt in to groups as they are sorted and divide. The conditions on board  are horrid on board. They have dreams they are heading to America but end up by a river and in some wooden huts trying to keep together sing national songs they get wood from the forest and try to get by but this is shortlived now on a barge they finally reach the Artic and the tundra is a  wasteland freezing as they are dressed in the clothes for a Baltic summer and now have to work building a fish processing factory. Hundreds die that first winter but Dalia manages to get through. This is very hard work as they live in simple jurt with next to no clothes as the winter draws in and those around her start to fall apart she has a overwhelm spirit of hope that shines through her words As we see the dark underbelly of the Soviet regime and how it tried to break the people from the Baltic states.

I look around and am chiled to the bone. Far and wide, tundra, naked tundra, not a sprig of vegetation, just moss as far as the eye can see. In the distance, I notice something tat looks like a small hill of crosses. We learn that these are the graves of the Finns. Two weeks ago, they were brought in from Leningrad already debilitated as a result of the blockade, starved and suffering from typhus, and now they are dying, suddenly, I’m gripped by rear. What if this becomes a “death Zavod” rather than a “fish zavod” ? I hear the steamer sound ger horn and start to move, manoeuvring our empty barges through a maze of rafts .

They arrive on the island and the horror of this world faces her the line about the crosses in just twoi weeks is chilling !!

it is great when works like this are found that pay testament to the hardship of the Soviet-era regime. It is like a Soviet Anne frank they both share that hope of spirit that gives them such hope for the future no matter how horrific their present is. The Gulag has been well documented in the work of the great Russian writers Solzhenitsyn and Kochergin A day in the life and Christened with crosses are two powerful works. I covered Midnight in the century by Victor Serge that followed another writer being in Exile. The world she wrote about is so well written the biting cold the fish factory being built the starving the being looked down on by locals on the island that view these prisoners from around the soviet states as underlings. Powerful work and so thankful it survived discovery from the KGB.

30 covers for #WITMONTH Central America today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to cover as much of the world as I could in these 30 covers so today we have A autobiography by a great writer from El Salvador it follows the life of a Nicaraguan female guerilla during the war in that area. It followed her life from a good home to the events that lead to her becoming a guerilla fighter. I am a compulsive book buyer I buy books all the time more than I will ever read I do clear a lot out every couple of years but this leads to gems like this I reviewed this last Spanish lit month after having it a couple of years.

30 cover for #WITMONTH A Lviv family

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I now near the end of the covers for #WITMONTH and here is a book I felt should have  made the man booker list It is hard there have been a number of great Polish novels recent year this tale of generations set in Lviv the Ukraine town that in the past has been part of Poland and is frequent city in Polish and Mittel European fiction  from Joesph Roth in Radetzky march. It is the birthplace of Sci-fi writer Lem and the poet Herbert and is called the Paris of Ukraine now but is known for its rich literary history.

Transfer window by Maria Gerhardt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transfer window by Maria Gerhardt

Danish fiction

Original title – Transfervindue

Translator – Lindy Falk Van Rooyen

Source – review copy

Maria Gerhardt was a Lesbian icon, Dj she was known as Djuna Barnes, she was called the Queen of the night. She was a judge for a while on the Danish X factor. She started a Magazine and wrote three novels that all dealt with her Breast Cancer this was her last book and came out a few days before her death to cancer. This is Nordisk latest books. This seems the perfect choice for my last Women in translation book. I have posted my 30 covers and maybe not done as many reviews as I usually do but feel I taken part more than other years.

The further I fell, the cleaner our place had to be; our books were colour-coordinated, our music was sorted, nothing depressing, please, and our beffing from Egypt was always washed and ironed. Where we’d acquired such tast, I really don’t know. The terrace cane chairs were scored on an auction, likewise, the saucers with a label. Stuffed butterflies danced on the display in the corner cabinet There was not a fault to be found in our French mirrored wardrobes, and nothing but my bare toes adorned our white pigment floors. Monday mornings saw me submerged in a tub with marble lion feet, the black moroccan soap within my reach. The only hitch was my psyche, my sickness and a sprinkle of ah from our fireplace.

A utopia but is it or just a waiting area for death ?

This is an unusual book told in very short vignettes some longer passages. We have a female narrator her life story is a mirror of the writer her self. But this is a parallel universe in the future. She lives in a large Hospice this hospice occupies part of what is Copenhagen now and is run by New age Nuns that grow cannabis for the patients. This Hospice come town in itself has no music, but they can relive there lives through VR booths and they have Juice bars and health food shops instead of the coffee and bars they usually have. This other life she lives away from her friends but reliving her past as the present and future have drawn in as time gets short.  A world she lives in with her fellow patients seem perfect but there is always that clock ticking in the background.

We are given such healthy food to eat. farmers arrive with their produce from Samso, Hven and Amager. Tuborg Harbour looks like a food market in Bangkok, every day of the week. I decide to go for a vegetable juice, I choose to sit out in the sun. This is what grown-ups do; this is how to take care of yourself. The difference is that I din’t have to wash up, and I don’t have to deal with the oesky pulp.A lady in her sixties with a sullen face and crutches jumps the queue. Aruckus about the lack of fresh beetroot juice ensues. I give her a cold stare. “take it easy, lady,”I say, “I’m just here for the sugar”.

The world is healthy as they try to keep them healthy !

This is a very short book 90 pages but as most of them are small vignettes it is probably only fifty pages I love the idea of the city as a hospice the other space within the city of Copenhagen I had seen this done before in the Danish film Allegro that had a part of its character past trapped in a part of the city called the zone here we have a woman dying in the present reliving her past via VR in  a hemmed of community in this city. An autobiographical work of a weird future utopia that is really a dystopia as we see a writer facing death by escaping into this world of community hospice but still in the world she wrote having to face the future which like the book itself is short. It is a heart-wrenching work and a perfect example of my love of what make small publishers so valuable in the world of translated fiction a book like this is such a perfect example!

 

30 covers for #WITMONTH A Dane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have already featured a book from Nordisk books but here is there latest and I will be reviewing it tomorrow so not going say much other than the writer passed away not long after this her third novel came out.

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I now move to Dalkey Archive they bring out a lot of books in translation. This is from the Afrikaans writer Ingrid WInterbach , she has also published books under the pseudonym Lettie Viljoen. This book follows a lexicographer who has moved to Durban to do a book on lost Afrikaan words. On her arrival, her home is broken into and collection shells she has spent a lifetime putting together are gone the police don’t seem bothered so she sets out to investigate her self the book deals with love, loss, and obsession it says. Have you read it

30 covers for #WITMONTH A Slovenian fonz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There have been three collections in the Peter Owen world series this is from the Balkan collection. Jela Krečič is the wife of the well known Slovenian thinker Slavoj Zizek. She is a philosopher and journalist best known for an in-depth interview with Julian Assange. I really liked the way she chooses a male character as the lead in this novel as I said in my review that Matzaj the main character was a Slovenian Finz a charismatic character as we follow his ins and out with various women. Her is my review