In this unusual novel about an unusual and touching friendship, author Georgina Harding tells the story of life in a rural community in Romania beginning in the 1930s and extending through World War II and the Communist Occupation. As the novel opens, a sick and starving man has just arrived by train in Iasi, a place with which he is completely unfamiliar. He is looking for a woman, but he does not know where or how to find her. Eventually, he sees a nurse dressed in white walking past him and, thinking she is an angel, he follows her to a hospital, where he collapses. The man is Augustin, known as Tinu, and he is looking for Safta, a childhood friend whom he has not seen since they were separated by the war and Communist Occupation. Tinu is both deaf and mute, uninterested or unable to learn sign language. His only form of communication is through haunting drawings which he makes with soot and spit on found materials – paper, boxes, wrappings, pieces of cloth – and these drawings reflect an unusually selective view of the world. On my Favorites list for the year.
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Posted in 9-2012 Reviews, Belgium, Biography, Democratic Republic of Congo, England, Exploration, Historical, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Literary, Peru, Social and Political Issues on Aug 16th, 2012
Mario Vargas Llosa opens this fictionalized biography of Roger Casement as Casement awaits a decision on his application for clemency from a death sentence. As he reconstructs Casement’s life as a reformer and advocate for benighted native populations being exploited by various countries and corporations, he returns again and again to Casement throughout the novel as he rethinks every aspect of his life. Casement concludes, in most cases, that he acted honorably – or tried to. An advocate for indigenous populations exploited by governments and corporations, Casement has revealed the horrors of the Congo under the rule of Leopold II, and of Amazonia at the turn of the century, when a Peruvian entrepreneur controls vast quantities of land over which he has total control. His rubber company has many London investors. Ultimately, Casement believes that the Irish who are being ruled by the British have similar problems to indigenous populations, and he acts against the British and must face the consequences.
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In her debut novel, Out of It, British Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh creates a family from Gaza which reflects all the stresses, conflicts, and competing philosophies endemic to that world, a small strip of land along the Mediterranean coast in the westernmost corner of Israel, bordering Egypt. Creating a well-differentiated Gaza family which lives their lives and join friends in numerous activities, both political and otherwise, the reader learns about life in Gaza and the various factions complicating any unified action by any Palestinian “government.” By showing the action through members of a single family with differing points of view, the author makes many issues come alive in new ways and shows how they affect family dynamics. And though the issues and the different political factions attempting to deal with them are sometimes a bit muddled for those of us who are not already familiar with all the various groups in Gaza, her focus is clearly on those issues. We come to know the characters within the limits of their points of view, and they and their fates become part of the message rather than ends in themselves. The novel is enlightening and often entertaining, descriptive and often memorable, and exciting but often horrific, with few hints that any real solution is forthcoming.
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Focusing on the attitudes and beliefs of four time periods, author Andrei Makine analyzes what it means to be human; whether an individual is important in his own right or as part of a community; what makes life worth living; what obligations, if any, an individual has toward other individuals; and how and why individuals expresses themselves in art, literature, or music. Main character Shutov’s favorite authors, Chekhov and Tolstoy, whom he often quotes, are from the early twentieth century, yet they have helped provide Shutov with the values he retains even at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Georgy Lvovich, known as Volsky, a character with whom Shutov has a life-changing conversation in Parts III and IV has survived the Siege of Leningrad in the 1940s, then has had to deal with the aftermath of the war and the communist crackdowns and mass arrests in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties. Shutov himself grew up in the mid-‘fifties but knows little about a life like Volsky’s, having left for France in early 1980 and lived a fairly anonymous life. His affair with young Lea, followed by a visit to St. Petersburg to a former flame, show him how much times have changed, and Shutov has failed to adapt to the times, not even acknowledging that adaptation might have some value. The novel, powerfully and passionately drawn, presents well developed themes about life, death, individuality, and the arts, and their significant changes during a century of historical and philosophical upheaval. Romantic and often heartbreaking.
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Focusing on Ceausescu’s last hundred days as ruler of Romania, author Patrick McGuinness recreates all the forces leading to the overthrow of the government, telling his story through the eyes of an unnamed twenty-one-year-old speaker from the UK. The speaker had applied for a foreign posting upon the death of his father and was given a job teaching English in Bucharest, one for which he had neither applied nor appeared for an interview. In Bucharest his mentor, Leo O’Heix, shows him “the Paris of the East,” which now more clearly resembles “a deserted funfair.” Leo has adapted to Romanian life completely, ignoring most of the other Brits there and carving out his own identity – as the biggest black-marketeer in Bucharest. Gradually, Bucharest comes to life through the speaker’s eyes. The city is being bulldozed at a rapid rate, and the old architectural monuments and historical buildings are being replaced with cheap, modern buildings. Shop signs appear on new buildings but have no shop behind them, people are hungry, and even the headstones in the cemeteries have disappeared. The speaker finds himself growing up as he makes choices or has them made for him, and he discovers that no one is who s/he seems to be. Subtle, often humorous, and profoundly ironic, this is a unique approach to a study of a city in the midst of evolution and then revolution and its aftermath, and none of the characters here will remain unchanged.
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