The House on Via Gemito by Domeico Starnone

The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone

Italian Fiction

Original title – Via Gemito

Translator – Oonagh Stransky

Source – Review copy

When the longlist was announced for the Booker International this year, I wished I HAD FINISHED THIS BOOK. I am a reader who sometimes struggles with books over 400 pages these days as I haven’t always had the patience to get through a long book. So I had asked for this as Starnone from the lovely publicist at Europa as it appealed to me. He is often thought as a possible name for that question that crops up an lot who is Elena Ferrante, as he lives and has spent most of his life in Naples. But his wife is also considered another writer who could be her. So this is one OI had wanted to read. But when I started reading this book last year, it wasn’t grabbing me. I just maybe wasn’t in the mood for it, even when. In reading it this time, it may need a closer, slower reading. But I liked the world he painted of Fwedrfi and his dreams of being a painter

Because, although he was a railroader, he thought about nothing but the exhibition he was preparing. And indeed, when he was good and ready, he came home, shut himself in, told the station that he had rheumatic fever, gastritis, or any number of other ailments, and spent his time painting line signals, junc-tions, sidetracks, cattle cars, railyards, depots, and railheads. I remember each and every one of his paintings: my grandmother, brothers, and I slept in the same room where he painted, the dining room, where his monumental easel stood surrounded by his paintbox and canvases. I used to fall asleep staring at those visions, they seemed beautiful to me; I wish I could find them.

The apartment and his dads world

The t tile refers to the small APartment in which Fedri is a railway clerk. But he is also a dreamer who dreams. He is the lost artist just waiting to be discovered. A man sat at times driven to get his dream, but along with this, this is the violence and effect of a man set on the dream of being a painter. The book’s first part is told from the point of view of his son Mimi and the -pressure of living with a man whose dream will never happen you feel. What we also get along in the family saga is the city itself. In his Porse, Starnoine paints the town if only his character was as good with his brush as his prose. He is a man who is trying, alongside his painting, to climb the ladder of being a rail worker. This is a man drawn to drink but also a man that had a lost dream and we see that it is at heart the story of a father and son and the Naples of the post world war two era. Fathers and sons do not want to be their fathers. This story is partly based on the writer’s own life. But Mimi hopes for his father to be seen and gain his dreams to make him happier than the drinking bully he is.

My days in Naples flew by. At night I scribbled down a mess of notes and kept saying to myself, tomorrow I’ll go look for The Drinkers. But then the following morning I’d wake up and change my mind: today I want to go back to Via Gemito, to see that railroad-owned building where we lived, and the window that my father looked out of while he painted.

The metro station was less than a hundred meters from my brother’s house. It was easy: all I had to do was descend into the abyss, with its pleasant grey walls and yellow handrails, its red bricks and the smooth black rubber pavement that smelled new, like everything down there, get on the first train, and get off at Piazza Medaglie d’Oro. From there, one morning, I strolled idly to Piazza Antignano, and observed the dilapidated old buildings,loitered aroun the market, no difference after all these years, and slowly made my way to Via Gemito

Naples a;ways in the bacground of the story

There has been an undercurrent of Autofiction in this year’s longlist. This book loosely uses part of Starnone’s childhood. His father was a mildly successful painter. One of his paintings was called The Drinkers, like a painting in the book. This is a son looking back and rewriting his childhood. His working-class father was a tough man who had boxed and was harsh on his son. This is also full of the same city we love from Ferrante. Naples is a place that seems to have a culture of its own whenever I read about it! This made our shortlist but hadn’t gone further in the Booker longlist. Which is a shame I maybe marked it Harshly in our own shortlist scoring round, I just have a feeling I have read it nearly twice I was about halfway through last year and have read it all this year and still it hasn’t grabbed me as I hoped. But if you like a working-class male take on the same city as Ferrante and her characters live in, this is the book for you! Do you ever as a reader have this feeling when you have read a book? I will try his books again. I have a couple on my shelves to read. Have you liked any of his other books ?

Winston’s score – B great in parts, but it just didn’t fully connect with this book

Winstonsdad annual Guesses at the BOOKER INTERNATIONAL LONGLIST 2024 edition

Its that time of year when all us bloggers that love books in translation look into our Crystal ball well in my case what I have read in the whole 9 of the 12 books I have picked will be ones I have read  and 3 are books that I hope to read.

I start with The end of August by Yu Muri the tales of a century of Japanese Korean history told through a pair of marathon runners grandfather and granddaughter in Morgan Giles stunning Tranlstion. This is one of the two I really hope make the longlist.

Star 111 by Lutz Seiler Translator Tess Lewis is the other book I have longed to see on the longlist. It is set during the Berlin War and partly based on the writer’s own life at the time and also his parents’ life at the time, as he stayed in the East and they headed west.

Next up are two choices from Machlehose Press. First is Vengance is Mine by Marie NDiaye. is bout a middle-aged lawyer who is hired by someone she used to know to try a case, and as she does, the past becomes clearer. Translated by Jordan Stump Then we have Wound by Oksana Vasyakina. It is the tale of a daughter taking her mother’s ashes back to her mother’s village in Siberia. As she is doing so, she looks back on her life. It is one of the first openly lesbian novels in Russian. Translated by Eliner Alter

Next and Epic prose novel from Sweden Ǎdnan by Linnea Axelsson Translator Saskia Vogel is the tale of two Sami Famlies through the 20th century shows how there world has changed. Also be a great to see and indigenous writer on the longlist.It has the feel of a epic told in verse could be told around the campfire.

Off to Italy its been a while since an Italian book has been on the longlist and I loved this novelisation of a true life event The city of the Living by Nicola Lagioia translatror Ann Goldstein pulled apart the events that lead to the death of Luca Varni was killed by two men similar age to him in a planned murder that looks at the darker side of masculinity and being male in Modern Italy.

I love to support small presses, and one of my favourites in the last couple of years is Three Times Rebel Press. They have been bringing out thought-provoking books for the last couple of years. The Dear Ones by Berta Davila. This is a powerful little novel about motherhood and struggling with motherhood when you have a child but then have an abortion. Translated by Jacob Rogers

The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr translator Lara Vergnaud this is part road novel part look at being an African writer in France also use a real novel that was accused of plagrism and has also just come out as a starting point when a writer reads the imagined novel that was withdrawn and goes on the hunt for the writer. I hope this makes the longlist ine I really connected with as a reader.

About uncle by Rebecca Gisler  Translator Jordan Stump. This has been my favourite Peirene for a long while and follows a family looking after an odd war veteran and his odd habits about family and what happens when one member need all the other to look after him.

Now my three I haven’t read with a quick explanation why

The annual Banquet of the Gravediggers Guild by Mathias Enard translator Frank Wynne

Just about to start this hard say why I haven’t got to it as it is translated by one of my favourite translators Frank Wynne and Enard ois a writer I love to read.

Anomaly by Andrej Niokladis Translator Will Firth  Lets hope this is out from Peirene a new publisher for his works he is a writer I have long championed and have met he has also done a piece for this blog. He is one of the best writers from Central Europe at the moment

Lasstly is a Nobel winner The children of the dead by Elfriede Jelinek Translator Gitta Honegger is meant to be her greatest book I have read a couple by her so am looking forward to this one.

The city of the living by Nicola Lagioia

The City of the Living by Nicol Lagioa

Italian non-fiction

Original title -La città dei vivi

Translator – Ann Goldstein

Source – review copy

I was sent this after I reviewed another true crime work from Europa Daniella wonder what my taker one this would be as it is very different from The missing word that Europa had all brought out. This is a work from one of the best current writers in Italy Nicola Lagioia had started out studying law but then became an editor and ghostwriter. He eventually published his first novel in 2001  this is his fifth novel I would have called it a non-fiction novel but it is about a violent crime where two young men tortured and killed another man on the outskirts on Rome the sheer violence of the crime and the people involved sent shockwaves through Rome what he does here is try to take apart the three lives at the centre of the crime.

MF: Let’s meet at 11.00 at my house? You’ll get the stuff? I’ll pay you back, obviously.

MP: I thought you’d take care of everything tonight. This time I can’t spend and the other time it was 7 or 8 hundred.

MF: O.K., but I can’t spend more than 150.

MP: Give me the address again.

MF: Via Igino Giordani 2. When you’re there call me.

WhatsApp exchange between Manuel Foffo and Marco Prato three days before the murder.

The message leading up to the crime between the two killers

Luca Varani was a mechanic but how  he got involved and end up dead at the hands of these young men THEY had initially hired him as he was a male prostitute on the side and were going to rape him. But then events got w=twisted. But that all happens later in the book. This is a story that lifts the lid on modern culture the world of social media and how one appears online. It is about how we identify ourselves sexually these days in an ever changing world of views and how we live. The two killers are a successful events manager Manuel Boffo and his mate a uni dropout and maybe the most troubled character in this story, Marco Prato. Boffo is a straight male his friend is a crossdresser and bi but the book digs into the three characters’ life Luca the victim had been in a relationship and had this secret Whart he does is get to the heart of the families and friends of the three men and looks at what brought them to this horrific crime. How they are bent and twisted by class and the society they live in and how this act is like a sudden burst of pent-up violence built up over the years. He talks with one of the killers. this is how in one of the most beautiful cities in the world there is a darker side to those living there.

 

Crimes of this type, in which the accomplices hadn’t known each other for long, almost all followed the same outline. Not three, not five, not eight. Two was the recurring number. A dominator and a dominated. A manipulated and a manipulator, even if the roles were often interchangeable. It was a matter of individuals who, on their own, were unlikely to have committed the crime for which they ended up in jail almost without realizing it. We weren’t dealing with serial killers. In theory, they were normal people.

“But in the end what is the truth about Luca Varani’s private life? And Foffo’s and Prato’s?”

Yes the real lives of these three is at the heart of this book

Lagioia has hosted a podcast around this crime. This book it is a work of fiction as some parts he has painted in the gaps of what happened. But yes it is hard not to think of Truman Capote, but for me, there was a little bit of a writer like Irvine Welsh here in that darker side of life of being young in the modern world and the violence drugs and aggression that can bring the crime is shocking and the two men at the heart of it just don’t seem the sort to do this horrific killing and I think that is where the book is at it’s best as he goes into the characters the past story of the three. But also the darker underbelly of the city like a Dutch tourist looking for a child. I can see this crime making a great podcast as it is just asks much about the world of social media and image, sexual expression and identity this book is maybe the cream of that podcast taken of the top. I found it interesting and horrific to read but it also lifted the lid on a crime I hadn’t heard of a level of violence with two killers that brought back thoughts of the moors killers to me growing up in the north-west their ghost their crimes where still raw when I was a kid and this is another crime that shocks a city. Have you read this book or heard of this crime ?

Winston’s score – A , a shocking crime looked at in depth and picked apart to get to the heart of why but it becomes a blur of reasons.

 

The Missing word by Concita De Gregorio

The Missing Word by Concita De Gregorio

Italian Fiction

Original title -Mi sa che fuori è primavera

Translator – Clarissa Botsford

Source – Library

I love it when I go to the library and find a gem like this that had passed me by I even get sent the Europa Catalogue and I nit sure how this had passed me by when I looked at it in the library I was grabbed by the mention of Truman Capote’s in cold blood a book I think is maybe the best true crime book as it is the original in many ways. Also by the story behind the book. Concita De Gregorio is a successful Journalist and editor she has hosted an arts and culture show on tv as well. The book is based on the real-life disappearance of twins and she worked with her mother to write this novel of the mother’s story and the loss of her twins.

Dearest Nonna, I’m leaving for Patagonia with Luis next Sunday. We’re going whale watching. Trekking, climbing to the top of the mountains, walking deep into the woods, sitting at the ocean shore all make me feel happy. Minuscule and at peace. Luis makes me feel happy.I’ll introduce him to you one day, I’d love to. You’ll like him. He has eves that laugh and big hands. He can create silence when it’s needed, and then he chooses his words, picks them out, and stitches them together like embroidery. Did I tell you his job is to make cartoons for kids? They’re magical. Did I tell you what he did when I rejected him at first? He gave me an incredible gift, something straight out of a film. I need to look into your sky-blue eyes to tell you, though: I want to see your shy smile while I describe the scene. It’ll be wonderful.

She escapes to South America and writes to her Gran here

Now I consider myself to know snippets of the news from around Europe not everything but have an idea what is going on here and there. So I was surprised that this case and series of events had passed me The story is of the disappearance of Alessia and Livia two twins that had been on a weekend away with their father their parents had split but still lived in the same village. He had taken his daughters away for the weekend and had travelled to Corsica and then threw himself under a train the events of the few days before he is seen with the girls texted his ex-wife. Later he sends a postcard but then when he takes his life the children are nowhere to be seen and this is where the book starts it is Irina the mother of the twins story about how she copes after and is made up of her personal thoughts and letters with her grandmother. her writing to find out of the therapist he had seen but he won’t say anything to her. Then request the girl’s school work . Her journey to find herself after this earth-shattering event. She say late on she didn’t want any more children she is a mother and will always be a mother but she then said how few languages have a word for this happening a mother that has lost there children. This is a heartbreaking tale told with real beauty in the prose.

The missing word

Parents who lose children. Who don’t murder them but lose them. What are they called, how do you say it, who is someone whose child has died? What place do they occupy in history? Missing word, missing word, missing absent. Who eliminated it? When? From all the Italian, French, German, Spanish and English dictionaries. And why?

There is words in other languages Shakol in Hebrew, but I wonder why this word doesn’t exist !!

I am a fan of true-life movies it is one of the few films Amanda and I tend to both enjoy. This book is heart-wrenching but also shows how strong Irina was after all this had happened to her. She was thrust in the spotlight after this had happened and had to escape travel to find herself and meet people that didn’t know her as the mother of the twins. I liked the mixture of styles from personal narrative, list letters. I feel it works as a novel as she has maybe changed things a little. But it still has the power of what happened Irina copes with this event that could have pushed her over the edge and even in the end is a strong voice for the charity Missing Children  Switzerland. AS I said I don’t know how this passed me by as it is such an intense tale of what is a horrific act and aftermath. Have you read this book ?

Winston’s score +a just needs to be read such a powerful work from such a sad true life event.

Whale by Cheon Myeong Kwan

Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan

Korean Fiction

Original title – 《고래》

Translator -Chi-Young Kim

Source – Review copy

I had asked for a review copy of this before it appeared on the Booker longlist, as I had seen it doing the rounds, and it appealed as it sounded a little surreal. It It was selected as a youth-recommended book by the Korean Publishing Ethics Committee, the Korean Culture and Arts Committee as an excellent literature book. It was the debut novel by the writer and screenwriter Cheon Myeong-Kwan it was his debut novel when it came out in 2004 he has since written several books and also a few screenplays and has directed a film from his own writing. This book had been translated a few years ago as part of the DalkeyArchive Korean lit series, but we on the shadow jury were discussing if it did come out. There is a cover for it, but some have the same number in the series, and it is a different book and a new translation.

Every time the old crone’s eyes met her daughter’s, she was reminded of the halfwit, which tormented her. So she hit her. Not a day went by without a bruise forming on the little girl’s stick-thin body. Every time she was beaten, the girl would crouch in the corner, crying, and look up at her mother. Her wretched gaze reminded the old crone even more of the halfwit; it was as if she could hear his voice, his frightened look, and outstretched hands as he sank into the dark water.

I don’t want to take a bath.

The other main character is the old crone maybe harking back to the sotorytelling and surreal side of his book.

The whale is set ion a remote village and takes place over several years as the village, and the country itself see excellent changes. We are let into this village through a surreal collection of strange characters.the two main characters are a mother and daughter Geumbok, the mother wanders with a fishmonger in the aftermath of the Korean war. What we see is her journey to success from a moment glimpsing a whale’s tail which; later plays a part when she opens a whale shape cinema. As her life grows from those early days and her inventive ideas with the fishmonger, then moves on with the money she uses to build a life and see her empire grow. She has a way with men and manages to escape her violent father and eventually build a brickyard. This is where her mute daughter  Chunhui works her story forms another strand of this complex novel as does an old witch like a woman that has involvement with the family add some twins the ability to talk to elephants, and you have a unique book that mixes storytelling and surrealism.

By the time the fishmonger reached Geumbok’s village, the salted fish had long been spoiled and the musty smell made people pinch their noses, and the rancid flesh had become mush and disintegrated into fish sauce that flowed under the wooden chests. Not many whole fish were left, with many heads gone missing. Geumbok’s village was so small and so deep in the mountains that the fishmonger often turned back to the coast before he even got there, so the old folks–who craved anything fishy and smacked their lips when someone roasted a piece of mackerel that was so preserved as to be indistinguishable from a block of salt, even as they attempted to behave with dignity by saying “That stinks” or “That tastes like it’s turned”

-waited eagerly for the fishmonger despite his unimpressive wares.

She uses the fishmonger to futher her life

I am pleased I ask for this as I am maybe one of those readers that hasn’t 100% connected with Korean lit, and this isn’t [perfect, but it is known in Korea for being the bookshelf of one of the members of the group BTS (I’ve not listened to them but know they are huge in Korea and around the world. So this book is considered a cornerstone in the modern Korean canon. For me it has part of please look after mother, part Royanderson surrealism that grim odd world he conjures up, part Dickensian tale of a character’s world to goodness and part cinema Paradiso. Dickens as it is a story of someone escaping the worst and building a life ala Dickens, then it has a chunk of surrealism that is odd but believable. Then like PLease look after mother, another book that captures those whirlwind years in Korea that saw Korea shoot forward as a country. Have you read this how did you find it ? Have you a favourite book that uses Surrealism and Magic realism which this book does both?

Winstons score- A – the solid first book of this year’s Booker shadow Jury reading and the sixth book from the list I will have read and reviewed.

Touring The Land of the Dead by Maki Kashimada

Touring the land of the dead by Maki Kashimada

Japanese Novellas

Original title –Meido meguri (冥土めぐり)

Translator – Haydn Trowell

Source – Library book

This book has two novellas in it I am only talking about the first novella as the second novella is connected to Junchiro The Makioka sisters a book I have yet to read so I will borrow this again at some point when I have read that book and review the second novella 99 kisses. And this is the first book I have read by Maki Kshimada she has won a number of big prizes in Japan Initially she was into Russian literature and then went on to study French literature and she also became an orthodox Christian priest as well. She is married to a feel priest.

Before finding her current position at the children’s center, Natsuko had been working part-time at the ward office. The job involved hardly anything more than stapling together the bulletin for a group that the office ran for local children who weren’t attending school. She wasn’t an airline stewardess, but she was doing the kind of manual work that as a child she had always wanted, so she couldn’t say that her wish hadn’t come true. Once the bulletin was ready, she would be handed a bundle of papers to staple together.And the person that made that bulletin was Tachi

Natsuko has partime mindless work as she tries to get by

The story is about a couple that is down on their luck in life. Natsuko is living a hard life. In the past when her family had wealth. But that was a couple of generations ago. but the money disappeared when she was a kid and her life became hard she has her mother talking about the past and other family members leaning on her.  then add to that she has a husband who because he has a degenerative disease had to stop working a number of years ago making their life even harder. so when she sees an ad for a spa weekend at a hotel that Her grandfather had visited with her mother she decides it is time she and her husband need time and maybe going there will kick memories of her family’s better times. So Natsuko and her husband Tachi yes he is struggling with illness but as they leave their life , I did wonder at this stage if the book could have taken a darker turn and maybe she had an idea of ending her life and her husband’s.  Whilst she stay in the Hotel Natsuko looks at her world and her life and sees thing differently and her husband’s courage and positive nature rubs off on her. This is a story of a couple reconnecting the world outside who had driven a wedge but when they step back the world changes.

“No,” Natsuko replied sharply. “Not at all. My family is a bit weird. So it’s okay if you don’t want to marry me.”

“Huh?” The pork cutlet that Taichi had been holding in his chopsticks fell to the floor with a silent thud. “But you’re the one I’d be marrying, Nathan. What a strange thing to say! You were so nervous yesterday. You must be exhausted. Let’s put it behind us. Just try to imagine the wedding. You’ll be so beautiful!”

Her family has a number of characters that drag her down and lean on her she is a women drained by life.

Natsuko is at the end when she decides to head to the hotel and you think the book could go another way I was thinking is this a Japanese take on the French Novella beside the sea that saw a mother head to a hotel at a seaside then do something but no this is a bleak tale that then starts to show how the power of being a couple can change things around her husband a burden but a man that has a huge depths he is one of those people that has a condition but then it seemed to unlock a positive attitude so when they get away from the family that with her drunk brother and awful mother in a place that her family had been happy it seems the past and her present as they grow back together over the spa visit. This is an emotional book about how ugly families can be inside but she captures the despair we can feel when the world around you seems like a wall holding us in with no door to get out of the spa is a tunnel memory of a door a different place, but also like a door suddenly is seen and grows over the time there  Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – B – a story that looks to head one way and the it turns.

The Lying LIfe of Adults by Elena Ferrante

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Italian Fiction

Original tilte – La vita bugiarda degli adulti

Translator – Ann Goldstein

Source – copy for blog tour

 

I don’t often sign up for a blog tour but when approached to do one for the Cheltenham Literary festival it was always going to be a yes as the theme is reading the world which is something I always do here. But then I had no idea what the book was till it arrived at the house. So when the latest book by Elena Ferrante dropped on the doorstep of Wintonsdad towers.  I was in two minds as I hadn’t been bowled over by her. As in the past, I had read the first and last book in the Neapolitan series. I was also one to avoid hype and the time the first book came out My Brillant friend was everywhere in the blogosphere so I left reviewing it. There is still the question of who Ferrant is I love that even after all this success she or he or they has stayed hidden from the limelight in a way it has attracted me more to them as a writer as it shows they are in it for the writing. And  I am always willing to try again with a writer I hadn’t got on with a second chance and this time it was the right choice it is a standalone novel set in the Naples of the 90s and follows three teen years of Giovanna’s life. A coming-of-age novel.

Two years before leaving home my father sid to my morther that I was ver ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents new,y married, had brought at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri, in Rione Alto. Eveything – the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a frigid February, those words – remained fixed. But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing,nothing of my own, nothing that has really begn or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knotm and nobody, not even the one who at the moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption

The opening lines told in retrospective by Giovanna years after the event.

The book starts with the 13-year-old Giovanna hearing at the crack of a door her father says she was Ugly and becoming more like his sister Vittoria. This is the first thing she has heard of a family. Her parent’s successful couple life up the hill in Naples in a middle-class area. She loves and has her father as her idol so when she hears this it sets her on a path to first find out why her father compared her to the auntie she knew nothing about and after much persuasion, she is allowed to meet her aunt and this leads to the discovery of her parent’s origins a working-class neighborhood and a family of aunts and uncles that she never knew existed and the Aunt at once enthralled and vibrant draws the young girl in and shows her the working class place her family was from. But then she sees her in the way her father does over time. Add to this her parents start to unravel over this time and drift apart. Giovanna also blossoms over this time and discovers boys. Add to that the truth behind a family Heirloom this is a glimpse into three years that will change her life forever.

I learned to lie to my parents more and more. At first I didn’t tell real lies, but since I wasn’t strong enough to oppose their always well-ordered world, I pretended to accept it while at the same time I cut out for myself a narrow path that I could abandon in a hurry if they merely darkened. I behaved like that especilly with my father, even though his every word had in my eyes a dazzling authority, and it was exhausting and painful to try ti deceive him.

fter she meets Vittoria she has to start telling lies to her parents as she is drawn into a new world.

It is fair to say this impressed me more than the other two books by Ferrante I have read. I have always been a fan of Bildungsroman works those important teen years are the years that we become the adults we can be and here we have so many threads it makes the story more than that. First is why did her father call her Ugly like Vittoria and was that the right term to use. Why did the parents hide this other family this is all about Class and how they tried to escape their past and class moving to San Giacomo when they married a middle-class place far removed from the home. Add to this a girl discovering herself as all this goes on it and also falling in love for the first time as her family falls apart. Then there is the other character to this book the city Naples as in her other books this is a story of a city of class and the city about how people move on. A story that isn’t just a Naples story but it is told so well by Ferrante her love for her home city of Naples that always leaps of the page. Has it converted me to Ferrante well I will try some of her other stand-alone works? What are your thoughts about Ferrante?  Do you read the world?

Winstons score –  A – a brilliant coming-of-age novel with family secrets at its heart!

 

The Enlightenment of the Greengage tree by Shokoofeh Azar

The enlightenment of the Greengage Tree  by Shokoofeh Azar

Iranian fiction(Australia)

Original title –  اشراق درخت گوجه سبز

Translator – was named in the Orignal Australian copy but has since been removed from the UK and US editions for their safety

Source – Review copy

Shokoofeh Azar left Iran as a Refugee in 2011 and settled in Australia. She had written many articles and children’s books and was the first Iranian female to walk the SIlk road (I hope we read a description of this journey at some point). This is her first novel since arriving in Australia it was on the shortlist for the Australian version of the old Orange prize the Stella prize and was her first work to be translated to English. This is the latest on the Booker longlist this year.

Around five O’clock the next morning , dad, Beeta and I woke up n the thick morning fog to see the last foxes returning to their dens after hunting Razan’s  chickens and roosters and to feel the wings of the hoopoe just inches away. Mom had once again returned to the highest bough from her peregination among the planets and cities villages, islands, and tribes in time to hear ghd song of thousands and thousands of sparrows, and to see a hedgehog curl up and roll down the forest slope because dad had moved.

The magic realim in this one pasaage grabbed me early on

Shokoofeh was born the same year as I was and the narrator of her book is a few years younger than we are as she is thirteen and narrating the book and the events in the book after she has died Bahar tells the story of her family and the events that followed the Iranian revolution the violence and fervent religious zealots that run the country and the knock-on effect on one family. The family is an academic famil there is much talk early on of the books she loved to read from her father’s precious library. He had already been expelled for the university early on for his socialist views. They lead Tehran thinking that this will save them from the madness of the capital but as they settle in the village of Razan the revolutionary guards reach even reaches there as the country turns mad as this place that was until recently so remote it was years behind the rest of the country also adds a sense of Persian storytelling to the story. as the lines between the real the living and the dead blur, there is a dash of magic realism at play but there is a sense of a young girl using those great stories as a way of avoiding the worst of the violence. the mother disappears, then her brother dies. As the books they loved are burnt music is banned as the regime cracks down this is the portrait of one family’s implosion during the Revolution.

We counldn’t bear the wailing of Shakespeare and Rumi, Hafez and Confucius, Zoroaster, Budha and Khayyam any longer, so we set off towards the house. En route from the village square, towards te alley and up the slope to our grove. I sa with my own eyes how clumps of dad’s hair had turned grey. For seven days after that, no one in the house said a word. Standing in the porch as the fire and smoke from the books filled the valle, and the breeze spread far and wide the burnt smell of the feather by Matheson, even Mom cried meanwhile, Sohrab was keeping watch from atop a distant tree. The house had abruptly become devoid of cheer. It became silent, Empty. Hollow

The shock of losing there books as they are burnt.

I admit this had passed me by before the longlist although my fellow Blogger Lisa at Anzlitlover was a huge fan of the book when it came out. It came out a few years earlier via the greatly named WIld dingo press I even missed her enthusiasm which I should have noted she is someone whose opinion I value. Anyway, this is one of my favorites from the longlist so far it mixes a bit of Salman Rushdie, a dash of Marquez  and maybe a dash of Mo Yan and moves it too Iranian. A brave book that could only be written from the distance of Australia now more than forty years after the regime still isn’t willing to have a novel written that questions what happen to people those educated ok Western but still through there love of books very much in touch with there Persian world. This is what I love about the booker it always brings a couple of books that Had passed me by completely.

Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli

 

 

Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli

Italian crime fiction

Original title – Carta bianca

Translator – Michael Reynolds

Source – personal copy

I’m on too the second book for Italian Lit month and a crime novel. Italy has produced some great crime fiction over the years. A number of these have been brought to us in English by Europa Editions the English arm of an Italian publisher. Carlo Lucarelli studied History and Literature at university in doing research for his thesis he came across stories and events that he put into this and the follow-up novel of the De Luca series. He also with Marcello Fois and Loriano Macchavelli the Gruppo 13 group of writers.I have featured Marcello Fois twice on the blog.

The bomb exploded suddenly, with a ferocious blast, right as the funeral procession was crossing the street. De luca threw himself to the ground, instinctively, and covered his head with his hands as a section of wall collapsed onto the sidewalk, showering him dust. Everybody started shouting. A sergeant from the Republican National guard stretched a machine gun out over De Luca’s body and fired an endless burst that deafened him and brought a deluge of broken pantiles down onto the street.

The opening and De Luca is caught in a blast.

This is the first of a trio of novels Carlo wrote about Detective De Luca. This is set as the world war is drawing to a sticky end and Italy is in tatters. When a bomb is set off in Milan as most of the Italian fascists are travelling or in the city trying to escape from the American and allied forces as they move north in Italy. Someone is killed Vittori is a lady man and has a number of lady friend that is connected to figures high up in the fascist regime. The case is handed to De Luca a good guy in a world full of bad people a good old fashion cop. He has just arrived from being involved in the political police and has a first case that involves dark secrets sex and drugs all this as the country is falling apart and he is trying to find the killer. As others want him to finish the case as quick as possible.

He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and turned a page over. ” Rehinard Vittorio,” he read. “Born in Trento, on November 22 1920.Member of the Fascist Republican party since July 15, 1944. Membership passed thanks to the open sponsorship of Count Alberto Maria Tedesco. He had an assignment, was  secretary of the office responsible for the party’s relationships with the Holy see and in particular the diocese, but nobody in there if at party headquarters ever saw him. He sure like the ladies or rather the ladies liked him; they’d run fter him, and according to that officer.Rehinard was a kept man

The victim has a number of lad friends and is a ladies man .

I read almost blue from his other series of novels a number of years ago just before I started this blog. I liked the style of his writing then it has a dash of Hammett and hard-boiled crime fiction of America writers of the time the novel is set. De Luca has that feel of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders trying to be the stand-up man in the big world. He has seen the world he knows falling apart Lucarelli captures in the world around De Luca the madness of Italy in 1945 the figures trying to leave the country. Lucarelli had researched the time for his thesis and I’m sure a lot of what he wrote is comparable with actual events, Policing during the fall of a regime is always hard and a lot of events like those in the book happened at the time.

The Principle by Jerome ferrari

The Principle by Jerome Ferrari

French fiction

Original title – Le Principe

Translator – Howard Curtis

Source – review copy

Well from a new French writer to me yesterday with Pierre Senges to an old favourite of this blog Jerome Ferrari has had his two earlier books translated into English The sermon on the fall of Rome and Where I left my soul.  He won the Prix Goncourt with his last novel and lived in Abu Dhabi where he teaches Philosophy. but now lives in Casablanca , like his other novels I have read this is a look back at recent history this time he has looked back at those fever years of the war when scientists where trying to build the Bomb.

You were twenty-three years old , and it was there, on that desolate island where no flowers grow, that you were first granted the opportunity to look over god’s shoulder,There was no miracle, of course, or eve to be honest , anything resembling God;s shoulder, but to give an account of what happened that night, our only choice, as you know better than anyone, is between metaphor and silence . For you , there was first silence, then the blinding light of an exhilaration more precious than happiness

This the time he made his famous uncertain principle

we are drawn into the world of Germany in the  early 1930’s  and onwards when the country falls under a dark shadow of the Nazis,  we follow the life of Werner Heisenberg , a man best known know for his uncertain principle .We glimpse into his world one of knowledge , but he was best known for something he worked out many years earlier his principle . we see his life unfold drawn into the Nazis world of the hunt for the Bomb as he was the one that made classic science become the atomic age of science he is at the forefront. What we see is how a man of science and his own principles has to walk a tight line of the age he is trying but not trying if you know what I mean ! Faced with a world he didn’t expect to be in from those early days  of discovery .

They’re all bored to death

Something in them becomes gradually worn pout over the  endless weeks

Professor Heisenberg plays Mozart sonatas, by heart on the piano. Nobody listens to him anymore. Every day, Professor Hahn walks for hours in the garden, never tiring .He calculates the distance he’s covered. If he’d walked straight ahead , he would have crossed the sea. By know he would have been ages in Germany

They struggle to get the Bomb made .

This was a clever novel that is a good autobiography in a novel form of a figure , that was at the heart of the burning atomic age a man who provide the turning point in the way people thought of Physics. Like his earlier books lament and sorrow under lie the main character in a way also like his earlier books he deals with how people deal with those situation where we have no chance to turn and the world seems in utter chaos. In Where I left my soul it was the Algerian war and the sermon which was an angrier look back at his childhood homeland  as ever using his poetic writing style to look at one person struggle in this world . Here it is the madness of the Nazis and Hitler wanting the Bomb before the allies. There is similarities in style too In search of Klingsor by Jorge Volpi which was also a look at the same group of people in this novel from a different angle where they try to find the top man in the programme. An interesting look at the times .