In the second novel of the Copenhagen Quartet to be published in the US, American expatriate Thomas E. Kennedy shows his immense versatility, writing a totally different kind of novel from In The Company of Angels (2010), the first novel of the quartet. In this new novel, Kennedy provides a vision of a different side of Copenhagen in a different style of writing, broadening his overall themes and his depiction of this city. Though no less serious in terms of its themes, Falling Sideways focuses on the business world of one company, a world writ small, instead of the world in its grandest terms, thematically. Though it is sometimes termed a satire, this novel is less a satire than it is a dark commentary on the shallow and self-absorbed lives of the employees of “the Tank” as they navigate the shoals of big business during difficult economic times. Here Kennedy uses the business framework to establish a set of characters whose business lives become part and parcel of their personal lives, with the two different aspects of their lives so intertwined that the characters fail to grow or even recognize who they really are.
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Extremely emotional and powerfully moving, the novel begins as the story of a seventy-year-old man who has returned to Mauritius with his son, specifically to visit the grave of his best friend, David Stein, who, we learn in the first ten pages, died in 1945 at the age of ten. The speaker, Raj, of Indian descent, has never been able to come to terms with the circumstances of David’s death, and has blamed himself for many years for his own part in possibly hastening David’s end. As a child, Raj was shy and lonely, especially after losing both of his brothers in a flash flood, and though he has always been close to his mother, he fears his brutal father, who beats him and his mother. When fate steps in and makes it possible for Raj to come to know a young Jewish orphan, who is interned in the camp where Raj’s father is a warden, he protects this secret relationship, willing to risk all for David, who has become his “last brother.” Author Nathacha Appanah tells the story in poetic language of great natural beauty and imagery, and her musical cadences give the novel a flow much like that of an opera.
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Written in 1933, and newly translated into English, Kornel Esti is Dezso Kosztolanyi’s last book, a unique combination of wild romp, thoughtful contemplation of life’s mysteries, and dark commentary on life’s ironic twists. Dezso Kosztolanyi (1885 – 1936), a Hungarian poet, fiction writer, and journalist, creates a narrator who is also a writer, telling us from the outset that the narrator, now forty, had not seen his oldest friend Kornel Esti, also a writer, for ten years. Now, however, the narrator has decided to contact him. Born on March 29, 1885, the same day and time as both the narrator and author, Kornel Esti also looks just like the narrator and is clearly his alterego, now down on his luck. What follows is a series of eighteen episodes, which may or may not be metafictional, ranging from Kornel Esti’s first day of school, in 1891, through a symbolic tram ride at the end of the novel, a brief chapter in which the author’s entire philosophy is summed up through Esti’s late-in-life experiences on an overcrowded tram. In between are moments of high comedy, poignant drama, and shocking cruelty, all reflecting aspects of Esti’s life, either real or imagined, and all contributing to the broad panorama of human existence.
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When Sarah Moss, a physician in Madison, Wisconsin, falls in love with a fellow student, Ibrahim Suleiman of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, she is unable to persuade him to stay in the US. Instead, he persuades her to go to Saudi Arabia, where she obtains a job at the Suleiman Hospital in Khobar to see if she can adjust to Saudi life. What follows is a comprehensive exploration of Saudi families and Saudi society, especially the society of women and their roles in the larger Saudi world, and as Sarah learns more about the world of Saudi women, she must decide whether she can live among them forever as Ib’s wife. As the culture is explored, the reader can truly imagine what it would be like to be a woman living in this family. The way that women achieve levels of freedom on their own, despite the restrictions; their urge for independence but their flexibility within their culture; traditional bridal customs and marriage preparations; and the special society that women share with each other without the presence of men are both fascinating and well integrated into the story of Sarah’s life in Saudi Arabia.
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Eva Gabrielsson, the common-law wife of Swedish author Stieg Larsson, has finally published her own book about Larsson, his books, their thirty-two years of living together, and his legacy, which she believes has been sullied by his father and brother who have claimed the multimillion dollar estate and all rights to his work. According to Slate.com, Gabrielsson’s book, which is apparently her revenge against the commercialization of his legacy, also discusses the fourth book in the Millenium series, which is on a laptop in her posssession. The English translation of this book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
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