Good reads

[bruce]

Yes, 1st time of reading. Many years ago I read Death in the Afternoon and Green Fields of Africa and was appalled by the almost pornographic imagery that Hemingway attached to the savage butchery of the bull-fight and his hunting exploits. When, as I do, I delved deeper into the character of the author to try and fathom where their work sprang from, I found him to be a loathsome caricature of faded machismo, or a fat, hairy cunt if we're to be more literary. I then read For Whom The Bell Tolls and was so frustrated by the pretentiousness of it that then, and on the few occasions since when I have attempted to read it, I managed to get no further than half way.

I like The Old Man and the Sea; still fecking loathe Hemingway.

I'm with you on this Sarge. The film is good too.

[rowan]

It’s been nearly twenty-five years since South Africa held its first democratic elections, which saw the previously outlawed African National Congress (ANC) forming a government and its leader Nelson Mandela becoming South Africa’s first black head of state after his decades of incarceration as a political prisoner. It was a powerful moment for a country that had struggled for generations under an intense racial segregation – segregation that had risen to an institutional level and affected all facets of South African life during the period of apartheid from 1948 to 1991.

Apartheid was essentially a brutal system of racial oppression, one that allowed a minority of white South Africans to maintain their control over the levers of government and a position of power. While figures like Nelson Mandela counseled reconciliation and healing in post-apartheid South Africa, the pervasive violence, the struggle to overthrow apartheid, and the deep economic and societal divides that so long defined the nation left deep scars. While South Africa may be one of Africa’s most developed economies, and in broadest strokes one of its most prosperous nations, it remains a country haunted by a decades-long struggle for equality. As is generally the case, these themes permeated the literary movements of South Africa. Unfortunately, these issues are now often intertwined with issues plaguing South Africa in the post-Apartheid era – identity, the AIDS epidemic, and continuing poverty.

The books below, many by South African authors, will hopefully shed light on the complex history of South Africa, its seismic struggles for equality, and the ways that the specter of apartheid continues to loom over the country and its people.

http://www.signature-reads.com/2017/07/ ... th-africa/

[rowan]

It’s been nearly twenty-five years since South Africa held its first democratic elections, which saw the previously outlawed African National Congress (ANC) forming a government and its leader Nelson Mandela becoming South Africa’s first black head of state after his decades of incarceration as a political prisoner. It was a powerful moment for a country that had struggled for generations under an intense racial segregation – segregation that had risen to an institutional level and affected all facets of South African life during the period of apartheid from 1948 to 1991.

Apartheid was essentially a brutal system of racial oppression, one that allowed a minority of white South Africans to maintain their control over the levers of government and a position of power. While figures like Nelson Mandela counseled reconciliation and healing in post-apartheid South Africa, the pervasive violence, the struggle to overthrow apartheid, and the deep economic and societal divides that so long defined the nation left deep scars. While South Africa may be one of Africa’s most developed economies, and in broadest strokes one of its most prosperous nations, it remains a country haunted by a decades-long struggle for equality. As is generally the case, these themes permeated the literary movements of South Africa. Unfortunately, these issues are now often intertwined with issues plaguing South Africa in the post-Apartheid era – identity, the AIDS epidemic, and continuing poverty.

The books below, many by South African authors, will hopefully shed light on the complex history of South Africa, its seismic struggles for equality, and the ways that the specter of apartheid continues to loom over the country and its people.

http://www.signature-reads.com/2017/07/ ... th-africa/

Coetzee & Paton would be the pick of those. Just glad they didn't include anything by Wilbur Smith

[rowan]

James A Michener's 'Covenant' was a good read too, given a more detailed account of South African history.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Was it as good as Sean Courtney shagging little Boer girls?

[rowan]

A tad more realistic than the glorified Tarzan tales of Wilbur Smith - who was born in what is today Zamibia, btw, and named the Sean Courtney character after his grandfather, who had commanded a maxim machine gun during the Zulu Wars.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

who was born in what is today Zamibia

Is that half way between Zambia and Namibia?

[rowan]

who was born in what is today Zamibia

Is that half way between Zambia and Namibia?

The former, though it was Northern Rhodesia in those days. I seem to recall Smith's portrayal of C J Rhodes as both a paedophile and a tyrant, though perhaps not quite such a genocidal maniac as we now know him to have been.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Mikhail Bulgakov's The Heart of a Dog. This is a savage parable of The Russian Revolution, written in 1925 and not surprisingly landing Bulgakov on the NKVD's naughty list. Worth a read if you've a couple of hours to kill.

[rowan]

Mikhail Bulgakov's The Heart of a Dog. This is a cracking parable of The Russian Revolution, written in 1925 and finally landing Bulgakov on the NKVD's naughty list. Worth a read if you've a couple of hours to kill.

The Master & Margarita was a pretty awful novel, IMHO. What did you think?

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Haven't read it, but as Bulgakov died leaving it largely unfinished, I don't suppose he can take all the blame for however it turned out.

[rowan]

Haven't read it, but as Bulgakov died leaving it largely unfinished, I don't suppose he can take all the blame for however it turned out.

I wasn't aware of that. A little like the Mystery of Edwin Drood then - which was to remain a mystery... M & M was mostly theological discussion alternating between 20th century Moscow and the Biblical Israel, with one character representing the devil personified, and a giant black cat appearing on the scene at intervals. Overly complicated and a little pointless, and I don't think I finished it anyway.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Robert Seethaler, A Whole Life. It is a good year when I come across a book that is so profoundly good that I would give it a 5-star rating. It is a pretty fecking brilliant year when I come across two. Earlier this year I recommended Andreï Makine's A Life's Music, which I gave the very highest rating and I can only do the same now with Seethaler's A Whole Life. The story of a simple man, carving out a life in the mountains of Austria, this is one of the most beautifully constructed novels I have ever read - and the translation is beautifully crafted, too. It has been described as a Tyrolean Stoner; it is so much more.

[rowan]

Robert Seethaler, A Whole Life. It is a good year when I come across a book that is so profoundly good that I would give it a 5-star rating. It is a pretty fecking brilliant year when I come across two. Earlier this year I recommended Andreï Makine's A Life's Music, which I gave the very highest rating and I can only do the same now with Seethaler's A Whole Life. The story of a simple man, carving out a life in the mountains of Austria, this is one of the most beautifully constructed novels I have ever read - and the translation is beautifully crafted, too. It has been described as a Tyrolean Stoner; it is so much more.

What's the storyline, in a nutshell - if that's possible?

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Orphan goers to live with uncle in the mountains of Austria in around 1910. Ends up leaving a solitary life into his 70s, though there are brief moments of partnership and a brutal war-time interlude. It is just a gentle and, for the times, unremarkable life but it is wonderful.

Short-listed for last year's Booker International.

[rowan]

Orphan goers to live with uncle in the mountains of Austria in around 1910. Ends up leaving a solitary life into his 70s, though there are brief moments of partnership and a brutal war-time interlude. It is just a gentle and, for the times, unremarkable life but it is wonderful.

Short-listed for last year's Booker International.

Sounds autobiographical, or semi-

What does Tyrolean Stoner mean, btw? I must be a little out of the loop on literature-related terms...

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Judging by the photo of the author on the back sleeve and the brief notes, it is not remotely auto-biographical.

A Tyrolean Stoner would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel) set in the Tyrol.

[rowan]

Cheers. I'll have to use a proxy, as Wiki is still banned here Well, I'm battling (yet again) through the final pages of the General in his Labrynth. This, as the title might suggest, has nothing to do directly with Bolivar's military triumphs and other achievements, but is more a portrayal of his musings, observations and emotions during the final years of his life. Vague and complex, it requires patience to follow, and certainly won't rank as the most enjoyable GGM book I've read. But at least I'll get through it.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Try this. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/ ... ian-barnes

The book has been warmly praised by most of us who post on this thread.

[rowan]

Judging by the photo of the author on the back sleeve and the brief notes, it is not remotely auto-biographical.

A Tyrolean Stoner would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel) set in the Tyrol.

Thanks. Strange I've never heard of that. I studied literature in the American Midwest.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Julian Barnes writing in the Guardian piece suggests that when it was first published in the 60s, Stoner made barely a ripple and went out of print in the early 70s. It was only in 2011 when a French translation was published that it began to be noticed and even then only in Europe (And Israel for some reason?). I'm not sure even yet, whether interest in the US has matched that of Europe, but it was voted the book of the year in the UK in 2013. It is wonderful.

[rowan]

Yes, just been reading that. Though the comments I encountered at the bottom weren't very flattering. I only read several of them.

Anyway, next up for me it's non-fiction: Neanderthals Rediscovered. A lot of new evidence has been coming to light about the inter-breeding that went on among our primal ancestors, how we emerged as a species and removed our rivals, and even offering some clues as to how the four major ethnic groups diverged. This will be the second book I've read on the topic in the past year or so

[SerjeantWildgoose]

I'd say that if you lose the comments that make the same tired old joke about thinking it was going to be about drugs and the cynics who clearly hadn't read it but felt that Barnes was on an earner you will find that most of those who actually did read it found it to be as good as its belated hype - I certainly did.

Whoever it was who compared Stoner to Confederacy of Dunces is a moron. The only similarity between the books is that they achieved due recognition only after the deaths of their authors. I liked CoD; I loved Stoner.

I am going to make a rash prediction here and suggest that you will have waded through 2 more books on Neanderthals by the end of the year, than I will ever read.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Andreï Makine Le Testament Français. Having been blown away by Makine's A Life's Music, the next trip to Foyles on Charing Cross Road provided the chance to pick up everything else of his I could find. The hardest decision was which book to read next (And, as with Steinbeck to try to ration myself so that I can keep something to look forward to). Le Testament Français was originally published in 1995 in France, and then in English under the title Dreams of my Russian Summers but this, the 2007 edition, retains the French title and I find that this adds value to what follows in the pages.

Le Testament is the story of a Grandmother and her life in Russia from the turn of the 20th Century, however it is an unashamed autobiographical journey that covers the hardships of life in a distant and isolated village in the Stalinist Soviet Union and a destitute life as a struggling author in Paris. Large parts of this beautiful novel are up there with the very best I've read, but I can't go lashing out 5 stars to everything; let's call it four and a half (Three quarters, maybe).

Makine is up there with the very best. If you haven't read him, get started.

[rowan]

I've just started Neanderthals Rediscovered and have already discovered something interesting: Ancient hominids (not Neanderthals) reached South East Asia almost a million years before the first hominids (also before Neanderthals) settled in Europe, about half a million years ago. Obviously that has a lot to do with climate, not just because of cold temperatures, but also due to the flora and fauna, which would have remained familiar along the tropical belt - unlike Europe's.

Meanwhile, this looks interesting:

This astounding debut novel, by British-Egyptian film-maker Omar Robert Hamilton, opens after the seeming triumph of the 2011 Egyptian revolution’s early stage has passed, though it is remembered, cinematically, as “an explosion of light, sound and epic consequence with no room for ego or doubt”.

Now the revolutionaries are flailing in various tides of counter-revolution. The new Muslim Brotherhood government forces through a constitution that ignores key revolutionary demands. Brotherhood “security” and a revived police force torture and murder at will. The army kills too, and prepares to seize control. To emphasise these reversals, though the story moves forward chronologically, parts one, two and three of the novel are titled Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday.


Sign up for the Bookmarks email
Read more
Crowds are evoked through disputatious voices. A large and striking cast of characters struggle in night-time streets, choke in traffic or on tear gas, argue in bars and wait in hospitals and morgues. They are brought together through the figure of Khalil. Palestinian-Egyptian, and American born, Khalil’s nationality, and people’s responses to it, is one way in which the novel questions the nature of community. (The author is the son of Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif and British poet the late Ian Hamilton.) Khalil’s partner Mariam is a medical worker seeking a life worthy enough to “conquer death with memory”, and a feminist, although she never mentions the word.

Khalil co-founds Chaos, a magazine, website and podcast (in the real world, Hamilton co-founded a media collective called Mosireen to comment on the revolution). Their office “becomes a cerebral cortex at the centre of the information war”. Significantly, the novel begins with the massacre of (mainly Christian) protesters outside Maspero, the state media HQ. Later, Khalil will have reason to repeat: “I wish we had taken Maspero.”

The revolutionaries set up illegal radio transmitters, write manifestos, crowd-source, make public art. Increasingly they also tend the wounded, comfort the bereaved, and find lawyers for the detained. Some of the people here are real, such as the imprisoned activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Hamilton’s cousin, to whom he dedicates the book.

Cairo, hyper-real but never overstated, is as large a presence as the title suggests: “A city of thousands of years past piled high upon each moment of the living present”, where “alleyways become complicit in your roguishness”. Cairo is also compared to jazz, “contrapuntal influences jostling for attention, occasionally brilliant solos standing high above the steady rhythm of the street”. That last metaphor could describe the novel itself.

An anti-government protester in Cairo.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
An anti-government protester in Cairo. Photograph: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
Obstacles soon multiply, and swell beyond the narrowly political. Women are subjected to military “virginity tests”, and raped in Tahrir Square, dominated now by “men who infect the air with testosterone and territory”. In this mood, Cairo is “a city of women and another of men stalking in dark parallel”, and not only the nebulous regime but patriarchy – society itself – becomes the opponent.

“Something new is coming that we can’t see yet,” Mariam says. The most persistent arrival is death, and an accompanying “unbearable grace”. The novel pays reverent and repeated attention to the impact on the parents and friends of the dead, and asks what the dead are owed. The emotional, even spiritual shock of political deaths – their noisy horror and silent awe – has rarely been so well expressed.

When the army under General Sisi makes its move, more than 900 Muslim Brotherhood supporters are massacred. The unliberated radio justifies the slaughter by whipping up panic concerning infiltrators and Palestinian spies, while declaring that the army has developed a cure for Aids. (This claim was actually made.)

One of the Chaos crew shares the pro-Sisi hysteria. Another is killed. Unity splinters, energy dissipates, the protests shrink. “A million becomes a thousand becomes a hundred becomes one ... This is the long end of the extraordinary.” Cairo takes shape finally as “this sulfuric city of our dead, our metrocropolis [sic] of failure”, and Khalil asks in bitter retrospect if the revolutionary victory was confined to “two hours between the police retreating and the army deploying”.

The City Always Wins is a tale of defeat and dashed dreams and of hope’s persistence told in a poetic prose. The style is at once pared down and highly expressive. The tension between exuberance and restraint fits the subject matter and defines Hamilton’s method. He splits scenes to great effect, interspersing text messages, tweets and real headlines, raising the pitch until the final stretch of Khalil’s stream-of-consciousness. This private, continuous flow of thought at the end of the novel is an apt reflection of the retreat from collective, social energy to the individual and interior realm.

The relentless acceleration of pace mimics the confusion of the events, the sense of the people – who once seemed to hold the reins – losing control. Here is the novel form proving itself again, revealing far more than journalism can.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... are_btn_tw