Many thanks to Tarek Shahin for granting an interview about his book RISE (reviewed below), a collection of satiric cartoons from the Daily News Egypt from April, 2008 – April 2010, in the lead-up to the Egyptian Revolution. I hope this interview will shed some light on what it is like to be a cartoonist during the tensions near the end of the Mubarak regime and how one finds humor in serious topics:
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In Tyrant Memory, Horacio Castellanos Moya’s second novel to be translated into English (and published by New Directions), the author once again speaks out courageously about repression, abuses of power, military dictatorship, and cold-blooded executions in Central America, this time setting his novel in El Salvador in 1944. General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, a fascist known here as The Warlock, had come to power in a coup led by the military in 1931, and was still holding the country in an iron grip in 1944. Believing that a communist conspiracy was underway in the capital of San Salvador, he used the power of his army to clamp down on individual freedoms and terrorize his citizens into submitting to his gross abuses of human rights. Dona Haydee Aragon, the middle-aged wife of Pericles Aragon, becomes the first person narrator of the events that eventually culminate in a general strike aimed at the general’s removal. At this point, the novel becomes a two-part dialogue, with Dona Haydee writing her casual and chatty diary about what is happening in her life in San Salvador, while two fugitives, her son and nephew, provide commentary on their own activities, often very funny, even farcical, as they try to avoid the military who have them on their death list. Part III takes place in 1973 and brings the fates of the various characters up to date.
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“Hilarious” is certainly not a word that immediately comes to mind when thinking of Icelandic writing. Arnaldur Indridasson, the most famous contemporary writer in Iceland, pens mysteries which are among the darkest, gloomiest, and most haunting ever written, the pinnacle of Nordic noir. Clearly, life in Iceland can be tough. So when I stumbled across The Pets, by Bragi Olafsson, in the “used” section of my favorite bookshop, I was amazed to see it described as “hilarious”—a book written by a young author who still lives in Iceland and who manages to find humor, even slapstick humor, in life in this cold, dark country. Main character Emil Halldorsson has been away in London, celebrating his million-kronur lottery win (about $8500) with a two-week vacation from the hardware store where he works. While he is gone, a man in an anorak and a plastic bag visits his house but does not leave a message. When Emil returns, he recognizes who it is, and when the man breaks in, Emil hides under the bed, at which point the man makes himself at home and invites all Emil’s friends to a party. Hilarious, indeed.
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Posted in 9a-2011 Reviews, England, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Psychological study, Social and Political Issues on Jun 11th, 2011
Described on Amazon and elsewhere as “the first credit crunch novel,” something that, frankly, would never have lured me into reading it, Get Me Out of Here is much more like an adult version of Patrick McCabe’s novel of psychological horror, The Butcher Boy, than it is a broad satire of the London business community at large. The book focuses almost exclusively on Matt Freeman, a thirty-three year-old Londoner who is trying to run his financial business, an overly-driven young urban professional, with all the stereotypical hang-ups about appearances, brand names, personal connections, and the toys of success. Matt, as narrator, conveys every thought that enters his mind, every twisted bit of false logic, every sensation, every hope for the future, and every self-deluded justification for the crimes he commits—and he commits a lot of them. We know his personal friends, all his lovers, and his neighborhood–he is individualized, not the generic stick figure we usually see in satires. The focus here is on the small, not the broad and universal–the life of one young man whose problems are so extreme that he cannot be considered “typical,” even among psychopaths. Full of wonderful, grim humor and irony.
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It is Christmas, and Nick Goodyew has not seen his father, Ken, in fifteen years, or Pearl, his mother, in twenty. His parents’ acrimonious life together, and their divorce, have come to typify the family’s way of dealing with issues—escape, a way of life for virtually all of them. His father, however, now believes he is going to die, and, despite the on-going rancor, typified by the Christmas phone call, he still wants to get the family together to make peace with the past. The ensuing novel is a witty and touching examination of all the members of the family as they finally examine their lives, their memories, and their relationships. Author Louise Dean, with her dark sense of humor and her breath-taking ability to suggest attitudes and psychological states through description, arouses sympathy for her characters as they search for ways to communicate and, perhaps in time, forgive each other for the past. On my list of Favorites for 2011.
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