This dramatic monologue is the follow-up to Darina Al Joundi’s The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing, which I wrote about earlier in the year. Once again, the translator is Helen Vassallo of the excellent Translating Women blog.
In Marseillaise My Way, Al Joundi’s protagonist Noun has left Beirut to make a new life for herself in France. As in the earlier play, a song runs through the piece, representing Noun’s situation. Before it was Nina Simone’s ‘Sinnerman’, which underlined Noun’s complex relationship with her father. Here it’s the Marseillaise, which Noun has to be able to sing as part of her French citizenship test.
Noun is uneasy about the words and often sings off-key. This represents a wider ambivalence that she feels towards France. She chose France because she thought it was the kind of secular country where she could have the freedoms she was denied in Lebanon. Yet she sees women and girls in France choosing to wear the veil and burka, and she can’t understand why. Experiences like this lead Noun to reflect on the Arab women who fought for freedom in the past.
The obstacles to Noun gaining citizenship keep piling up, as she has to navigate a maze of bureaucracy. But she remains determined to get there, to sing the Marseillaise her way. Her story is compelling.
In the countryside near London stirs Dead Papa Toothwort, a nature spirit who moves through the different layers of life in the village, and revels in the music of human voices. These curl and overlap strikingly on the page:
Lanny is a dreamy young boy from the village with a wild imagination. Many people can’t work him out, as we hear from his parents, a commuter and novelist who are recent arrivals from the city. We also hear from Pete, a local artist who spends time with Lanny, and seems more on his wavelength than most.
Papa Toothwort understands Lanny, though: he sees that here is someone with an affinity for nature – someone who would respect the deep tales of old, rather than treating them as tourist fodder. As the novel’s first part ends, Toothwort decides the time has come to reassert himself – and Lanny goes missing.
The second section is my favourite part of the book, as the prose turns into a collage of voices echoing Toothwort’s passages in the first part. Max Porter explores not just the relationship between his village community and the natural world, but also relations within the village – for example, the way suspicion soon falls (unwarranted) on Pete.
The theatrical third part turns to the question of what Lanny means to those closest to him – whether they’ll be honest about it or not. It’s the feelings in Lanny that remain strongest in my mind, the way emotions twist and unpeel as the novel goes on.
GauZ’ is a writer from Côte d’Ivoire who spent time working as a security guard in Paris. That’s what his first novel revolves around: ‘standing heavy’ is slang for ” all the various professions that require the employee to remain standing in order to earn a pittance.” The prologue describes how immigrant Black men tend to fall into security guarding: it doesn’t need much experience, employers aren’t too bothered about your official status, and it’s a way to avoid being unemployed or on zero-hours.
Three main chapters chronicle the changing experiences of three Ivoirian security guards. In the 1960s and 70s, Ferdinand is optimistic even as French immigration policy changes. He feels he has a good job, and contrasts himself with the students in his residence, who (it seems to him) argue a lot but never actually do much.
By the 1990s, Ossiri and Kassoum are security guards in a Paris that takes their work for granted. “Send money back to the old country,” says a billboard, symbolising how much of an industry has built up around immigration. Ferdinand himself is now part of that industry, running his own business subletting security jobs. But everything will change in the aftermath of 9/11, when even the most menial security work becomes seen as too important to be left to Black men.
In between the main chapters are collections of snippets which represent the observations and thoughts of a security guard. For example, closing time at a store:
At the door, there is always someone swearing on her mother’s life that she will only need two minutes. The security guard is eyed with contempt when he refuses to grant these two-minute stays of execution. It is difficult to accept being snubbed by those one never notices. Here, everything is on sale, even self-esteem.
There’s a dry wit throughout Standing Heavy, which is really well conveyed in Frank Wynne’s translation. But there’s also a poignant side to the novel. To me, the chapters of fragments suggest a certain openness to the work of security guarding, which is not there in the closing image we have of Kassoum at work. By then, there are openings for Black security guards again, but it’s a much more regimented atmosphere. Standing Heavy presents a panoramic view of its characters’ world – it says so much in a relatively small space.
This short Norwegian novel was a hit in my corner of the blogosphere when the English version was published by Archipelago in 2018. Then, a couple of years later, the And Other Stories edition was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. I’m pleased to have finally caught up with it.
Love was originally published back in 1997, and it’s very much a story of times when people didn’t tend to have communication on tap in their pockets. We meet single mother Vibeke and her son Jon, whose ninth birthday is tomorrow. Both are preoccupied with their own thoughts.
The structure of Love is striking: within each chapter, the perspective shifts between Vibeke and Jon, but without scene breaks, so their stories merge into and out of each other. This reflects how they live alongside each other: together but separate. It feels as though, even if they were in the same place, they would still be apart.
For their own reasons, both characters go out. Jon assumes Vibeke must be buying ingredients for for a birthday cake, but she has a work colleague on her mind. Over the course of the evening, mother and son move in similar spaces, even encounter the same characters sometimes – but they remain apart. Love – the idea or absence of it – haunts proceedings.
Ørstavik will often arrange scenes so that Jon and Vibeke are in the same type of environment – different houses or different cars. When these merge together, it flips the sense of the book around: now, even though mother and son are separated physically, they may be closer together in other ways. This plays out with painful clarity at the end, a poignant final chapter to a compelling novel.
I’m so glad that Tomb of Sand has won the 2022 International Booker Prize. First and foremost, it’s an excellent book, a joy to read.
The International Booker has built up a track record of shining a light on fiction from less commonly translated languages. I hope this win helps bring literature from Indian languages to a wider audience (and that it helps encourage more publishers…).
What I like most of all is that Tomb of Sand got to this position because of people’s passion for it. There is no compromise in the writing, translation, publishing, or indeed the prizegiving. Congratulations to author Geetanjali Shree, translator Daisy Rockwell and publisher Tilted Axis Press for their win, and thanks to everyone at the Booker for a great result!
Today’s the day: the end of this year’s International Booker cycle, when we find out the official winner this evening. Before then, it’s time for the shadow panel to announce our winner. We chose our own shadow shortlist, and have voted amongst ourselves, awarding the books 10, 7, 5, 3, 2 or 1 points. In the end, there was only one point between the winner and runner-up.
It is my pleasure to announce that this year’s shadow winner, with a grand total of 60 points, is…
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur (Honford Star)
Cursed Bunny was my favourite book on the longlist, a story collection that will stay with me for a long time.
We also want to give an honourable mention to our second place book: Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, tr. Daisy Rockwell (Tilted Axis Press). I didn’t get to review the book (maybe later), but it was actually my second choice from the longlist, a sprawling tapestry of linguistic exuberance.
Thanks to my fellow shadow panellists Tony, Stu, Meredith, Frances, Vivek, Oisin, Paul and Areeb – excellent companions for this journey, as always.
I wanted to read Russell Hoban: the question was, where to start? Hoban’s website has a handy page of suggested introductions, and I just went for the book billed as “the most accessible” – 1975’s Turtle Diary.
Two characters take turns to narrate: bookseller William and children’s writer Neaera. Both are middle-aged, living in London, lonely. They don’t know each other, but there’s one thing that unites them: a concern for the sea turtles at London Zoo. Held captive, these creatures are unable to follow their natural instinct to navigate to the sea. William observes: “Their eyes said nothing, the thousands of miles of ocean that couldn’t be said.”
Neaera and William have a dream to take some turtles from the Zoo, travel to the coast and set them free. What’s striking to me is that, when the pair first come across each other and recognise their shared preoccupation, they are reluctant to join forces. I kept imagining another version of Turtle Diary, a more straightforward tale of ’empowerment’ in which the protagonists get together readily, pursue their goal single-mindedly, and find their lives changed permanently for the better.
That version of Turtle Diary wouldn’t be as good as Hoban’s.
Don’t get me wrong: the turtles matter to William and Neaera, the pair go through with a plan, and there are consequences. But the protagonists’ concern for the turtles comes from a deeply personal place: it’s standing in for a more fundamental absence. As Neaera puts it: “The mystery of the turtles and their secret navigation is a magical reality, juice of life in a world gone dry.” This is not necessarily an experience that the characters would want to share with someone else – and setting the turtles free won’t necessarily open up the rest of life.
I appreciate the knottiness and ambivalence of Turtle Diary: there is hope, but it’s not automatic. Hoban’s writing sparkles… I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like this novel before, and I can’t ask a book for much more than that.
I don’t read an awful lot of non-fiction, but I was particularly intrigued by the premise of this book… Homelands (published by Canongate) is journalist Chitra Ramaswamy’s account of her friendship with Henry Wuga, a Holocaust survivor. It’s part biography and part memoir, as Ramaswamy finds echoes and points of connection between her life and Henry’s.
I’ve reviewedHomelands for Shiny New Books. It felt a bit strange at times to be passing comment on a living person’s account of their recent life, but hopefully I achieved a good balance in the review. Anyway, Homelands is an absorbing book, and if you like the sound of it I suggest you give it a try.
This year is the 20th anniversary of the publisher Melville House. They publish an eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction, including an extensive classics range, and I’ve always found their books intriguing. I was invited to review one of their titles for this blog tour, so I thought I’d revisit one of my favourite Melville House books: The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz (translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette). Abdel Aziz is an Egyptian writer, artist and psychiatrist; The Queue is a sharp tale of authoritarianism.
Following an uprising, a mysterious structure, the Main Gate of the Northern Building – or just ‘the Gate’ – appears in a Middle Eastern city. Large and windowless, it dominates the surrounding physical space; but that’s nothing compared to the effect it soon has on people’s lives. The Gate begins to issue all manner of decrees: ‘before long, it controlled absolutely everything, and made all procedures, paperwork, authorizations, and permits – even those for eating and drinking – subject to its control.’
Then there’s a revolt against the Gate; but this one fails, and the Gate closes its doors. People are forced to queue – for hours, days, longer. Life as it was grinds to a halt:
No one knew when rush hour was anymore; there were no set working hours, no schedules or routines. Students left school at all sorts of times, daily rumors determined when employees headed home, and many people had chosen to abandon their work completely and camp out at the Gate, hoping they might be able to take care of their paperwork that had been delayed there. The new decrees and regulations spared no one.
Society reorients itself around the queue, to the point that little side businesses spring up providing refreshments, telephone calls, or other services to queuers. The novel’s deadpan tone serves to highlight the fundamental absurdity of this situation, as in (for example) a scene where people at different points of the queue start to argue over its length; and it takes a surveyor calculating the actual distance to stop the groups coming to blows over what might seem such a trivial thing. But this is a measure of how much the queue has distorted life, that it becomes so central to individuals’ preoccupations. There are also those with ulterior motives, waiting to take advantage of the queuers’ predicament: a company named Violet Telecom offers free handsets and calls to people in the queue, but it becomes apparent that their calls are being recorded and transmitted elsewhere.
Alongside the broader story of the queue, Abdel Aziz focuses in on a number of individual characters. Perhaps the central of these is Yehya, who was wounded in the ‘Disgraceful Events’ (as that uprising against the Gate became known) and still has a bullet lodged inside him. He’d like to have it removed, but that requires a permit (bullets being official property, you understand). But the authorities would rather that Yehya’s injury never happened; so his X-ray goes missing, his medical records are censored… and the people around him will find out what happens to those who try to interfere. The Queue is a novel that chills by appearing quiet and abstract, but underneath is an urgent precision.
This post is adapted from my original review of The Queue on Shiny New Books.
Sara Baume’s third novel begins with a disconcerting description of a mountain in south-west Ireland. First, Baume emphasises that this apparently passive landscape is full of the eyes of animals:
And each eye was focused solely on its surrounding patch of ground or gorse or rock or air. Each perceived the pattern, shade and proportion of its patch differently. Each shifted and assimilated at the pace of one patch at a time.
Then, the mountain itself becomes an eye:
It’s kept watch on the sky, sea and land, and every ornament and obstruction – the moon and clouds; the trawlers, yachts and gannetries; the rooftops, roads and chimney pots; the turbines, telegraph poles and steeples.
The image of an eye recurs throughout Seven Steeples, along with the sense of the landscape as an antagonistic (or at least indifferent) presence.
Into this landscape come Bell and Sigh, a couple who believe that “the only appropriate trajectory for a life was to leave as little trace as possible and incrementally disappear.” They have moved here determined to cut all ties with their old lives (for reasons which are at most only hinted at). They resolve to climb that mountain, but for the seven years of this book, it remains unclimbed.
Seven Steeples is one of those novels that takes you into the minds of its protagonists through the way it’s written. This is not a novel concerned with ‘what happens’ so much as with the ebb and flow of the life Bell and Sigh want to lead. The rhythms of Baume’s prose reflect that the couple want to live as part of the landscape, and it’s absorbing to read.
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