Otto Steiner, an Austrian whose diary from July, 1939, to August, 1940, forms the basis of this novel, is not worried here about any imminent danger because of his Jewish descent. Few people even know of his Jewish background because he has never practiced any religion, and he is not really concerned much with politics. He is a “pariah,” however,” because he is dying of tuberculosis and is confined to a sanatorium, not allowed to mix with the general population. As author Raphael Jerusalmy develops Steiner’s story, he incorporates many details of Steiner’s daily life in the sanatorium, along with the variety of people who live and work there, all drawn together because of a terrible illness and not for political or religious reasons. Jerusalmy uses Steiner’s personal isolation and his pre-occupation with his terminal illness to provide a new slant on events in Austria, 1939 – 1940. By limiting Steiner’s “world” to the sanatorium, his illness, and his dedication to music, the author avoids repeating details (and clichés) so common to “Holocaust novels.” When Steiner is visited by his friend Hans, who, like Steiner, is a writer about music and a critic, he learns that Hans has been preparing the program for the next Festspiele, set to occur in Salzburg in late July, 1940. The audience will be primarily Nazi officials and military. The entire music program, usually heavily Mozart (an Austrian), has been changed into a propaganda tool by the German occupiers, and he wants Steiner to help him by writing the program notes. Steiner is galvanized by this news and finally realizes that “Mozart must be saved.”
Read Full Post »
Though he has been celebrated by Roberto Bolano and many other Latin American authors, Guatemalan author Rodrigo Rey Rosa, has been a well-kept secret to most English-speaking readers. Of his almost two dozen works published to acclaim in Latin America, only four have been published in English, and three of those are translations into English by famed American expatriate author Paul Bowles, who was Rey Rosa’s literary mentor. Living in Morocco while he translated several of Paul Bowles’s novels into Spanish, Rey Rosa came to know the country well, finding life on the African shore of the Mediterranean markedly different from that of the European shore represented by France and Spain, both of which had claimed Morocco as a protectorate until after the mid-1950s. Rey Rosa reflects upon these changes as he presents three interrelated scenarios, in which three separate characters express their own points of view and live independent lives which sometimes overlap with other lives within the book. Rey Rosa composes these separate scenarios so carefully that each could stand alone as a short story or novella, and they are often so poetic and filled with lyrical details that critics have described them as “prose poems.” Elegantly written, The African Shore conveys much information about cultures, past and present, along with the people who straddle the worlds of Europe and Africa. The animism of the rural farmers, which infuses their lives with magical explanations; the Muslim culture, which provides comfort and identity to large numbers of people from all levels of society; and the criminality which seems to be filling a vacuum in the wake of the country’s independence from Spain and France, all play a role in the imagery and symbolism which connects the many facets of this marvelous work.
Read Full Post »
When the son of Paul Hackett, an American, hears that he is the heir and currrent Byzantine emperor in exile, he is stunned, unable to imagine how these circumstances have evolved. He has lived with his mother’s family in Turkey ever since his parents divorced when he was two, and he has shared the name of his Turkish grandfather, ever since. Telling his own story, the speaker is now a successful businessman in his early thirties. An economist schooled at Columbia in New York and at the London School of Economics, he loves research and writing, and he is intrigued by the prospect of investigating the baffling announcement that he is truly the latest emperor-in-exile. Long fascinated by the history of the Byzantine Empire, which lasted for over eleven hundred years before being finally defeated by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the speaker is anxious to investigate further. This unusual novel defies genre. The story as described above, resembles a fantasy, providing a framework for this novel, but it represents only a small part of the actual text. It is also a “quest story.” The speaker’s travels, typical of a quest, do not involve hardship, financial or otherwise, and this is not a travel narrative in which a main character faces dangerous obstacles as he travels to exotic places around the globe. Detailed information about the order of the emperors and how they ascended to their thrones, the people they killed (and often blinded), and how they themselves died sometimes make the novel sound like a complex history book, however. The term “Byzantine intrigue” takes on new meaning as the stories of the emperors unfold.
Read Full Post »
This third book of an unforgettable trilogy continues the story of Sir Edward Feathers, a “Raj-orphan” born in Malaya, unloved by his parents. Sent alone at age six to be schooled in England, he eventually began his adult career – and lived up to the adage, “Failed in London, Tried Hong Kong,” hence, his nickname, FILTH. In Hong Kong, he married Betty MacDonald, also a Raj orphan, and led an unexciting, though professionally distinguished, life as a judge representing the Crown and the Empire. The second novel, is Betty’s story, a story of her marriage to Filth, a man she respects but has never really loved, and the freedom she enjoys to pursue her own interests. Both novels are filled with hilarious moments, lively dialogue which clearly establishes the characters and their attitudes towards others, and memorable scenes in which they separately display their feelings about their lives in Hong Kong as representatives of the last days of the Empire. Last Friends, the third novel, is ostensibly the story of Sir Terence Veneering, a man of mysterious origins and the lifelong rival of Filth, rumored to have been Betty’s lover in Hong Kong. As the culmination of the trilogy, this novel reveals almost as much about Filth and Betty and their relationship with each other as it does about Veneering and their separate relationships with him. Gardam recreates a vibrant and rich background, filled with details presented through unique images and observations. Her control of her material and her insights into people and places infuse all of her novels, and with this trilogy, they hit their peak.
Read Full Post »
Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, England, Experimental, France, Germany, Historical, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, US Regional on Mar 3rd, 2013
This novel is definitely not science fiction. Instead it is a wide-ranging novel about just about anything that comes into the author’s head, told in glorious and inglorious imagery throughout. Though it is set almost entirely between 1931 and 1939 and does trace the idea of teleportation as a motif throughout the novel, it is really the story of Egon Loeser, a young set designer at the Allien Theatre in Berlin who is determined to do something spectacular with his life. A proponent of the New Expressionist theatre as a reaction to realism, Loeser is, quite frankly, the “loser” that his name suggests, almost totally lacking success in the area of paramount importance to him – sex. As the novel jumps wildly around in time and place, Loeser becomes involved in a series of crazy episodes as the action continues and continues, ricocheting around through time and space, incorporating vivid stories. Characters are killed and disemboweled, their hearts removed; and ghosts appear and reappear, with one character breeding ghosts for use in a machine which they will power. Virtually everyone gets blackmailed about an assortment of crimes, and one character stays busy selling the skeletons of Troodonians. This novel is unique, one requiring a good deal of patience, and even fortitude, at least for some of us who are significantly older than the twenty-seven-year-old author.
Read Full Post »