SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

“We’re planning an event in the Athens Metro, it’s been too long since we had a good old-fashioned run-in with the police…Every now and then we smash a shop window or two…but we’re not nearly as active as we used to be…We don’t just wreak havoc indiscriminately, either.  And we’ve improved the fonts on our signs.  We’re revolutionaries with taste.”—Maria Papamavrou, at age thirty-five.

When my husband and I went to Greece in 1989 on a college-sponsored alumni trip with his favorite art history professor, the professor was very excited to be returning to Greece for the first time since 1967, when the Reign of the Colonels began.  Almost twenty years later, as we prepared to arrive, the military dictatorship had ended, and “democracy” had been restored. Times had improved, we thought – until we arrived at the airport in Athens, and found it ringed with tanks! Two recent parliamentary elections had produced no clear mandate for any dominant party, despite the deposing of the king, the election of Prime Minister Nicholas Papandreou, and the mandate for some form of democracy.  The police presence in 1989 in every major Athens square emphasized to all of us that the unrest and demonstrations were not over and that democracy in modern Greece was still very much a work in progress.  Many of the images I brought back with me – of the Plaka and Syntagma Square, of student demonstrators with their graffiti and placards, and even of the venerable Hotel Grande Bretagne overlooking all the frantic activity in Syntagma Square—came roaring back with this absorbing and fast-paced novel of modern Greece.

Author Amanda Michalopoulou develops her novel from the point of view of Maria Papamavrou, who is nine in the late 1970s, after the military dictatorship has ended; in her twenties in the 1990s, during a time of unrest; and in her mid-thirties in the early twenty-first century; the novel shifts back and forth among these three time periods.  When the novel first opens, Maria, now a thirty-five-year-old teacher in an elementary school, is confronting a rebellious little girl who has just moved to Athens from Paris. Reminded of her own difficult past, Maria then reminisces about her own life when she was a similar age to that of her new student.

The Agios Nikolaus, a Byzantine church built in the 11th century, was near Maria’s school. The girls in her class had their gym classes on the pavement in front of this church, “sit-ups on the sidewalk, between parked cars.”

An adventurous and independent nine-year-old in the late 1970s, Maria has arrived in Athens from Ikeja, Nigeria, where her father has been working.  She hates Athens, does not speak the language, though she is officially Greek, and she is the newest student in her school.  Her first days of school, filled with humorous detail, endear her to the reader immediately, as she gets into a fight with another student, deals with another who wants to know if a lion ate the missing part of her little finger, and does not understand the expression “fart on my balls.”  Her only “friend” is the unseen seventeen-year-old boy who uses her desk for night school and leaves her inappropriate messages.  The arrival of Anna Horn, another new student, is the highpoint of her life, however, and when the imperious Anna rudely corrects the teacher, announcing that “We’re not immigrants, we’re dissidents,” Maria feels as if she has found a best friend – until Anna declares that “there are no dissidents in Africa.  My mother says you’re racists who exploit black people.”  Despite this beginning, Anna and Maria become best friends for life – sort of.

Social unrest in Athens.

Historical events described within the natural context of Maria’s childhood in Athens become real here – celebrating with Anna the anniversary of the events at Athens Polytechnic, in which the military sent in tanks to kill student occupiers; the warning Anna gives Maria to take off her glasses when there might be “trouble” at a demonstration; the singing of a revolutionary song while older students throw stones near the American embassy; and the girls’ genuine belief that they are the “biggest revolutionaries in all of Athens.”  Together they negotiate their lives between Athens and, later, Paris during summer vacations. Still later, as adults, they remain linked not only by friendship but by their shared belief that they, like all the educated college students and young adults with whom they associate, have an obligation to live their philosophies and act, not just pontificate, about “government.”

“The Exarheia area in Athens is notorious. It is portrayed as a hotbed of anarchist radicalism, an area where the very fabric of society is threatened every minute of the day and an area that should be avoided at night.” Quotation from source listed in the photo credits below.

Later, through other shifts in time, Maria describes her life at thirty-five, relating how she met Kayo, the man she lived with when, together, in Geneva in the 1990s, they “overturned the Central Bank Director’s Mercedes and spent two days in jail for it.”  Leaving Geneva, they then embarked on other revolutionary activities – shaking the hands of Zapatistas and celebrating the landless people of Bangladesh, before continuing to Nigeria “to shout slogans against the oil companies.” Throughout all this activity, Maria tries to develop her artistic talent, about which Anna has always been jealous.  Wildly volatile, even when they were children, their relationship becomes far more complex as they get older.  Anna eventually marries and has a child but continues to exhibit her “imperious” attitudes and, more especially, the jealousy which she originally exhibited toward Maria.  Though both continue to be interested in “revolutionary” causes, their relationship and common bonds begin to fray as their roles change. Revolutionary activities when these now adult women are in their thirties eventually bring the novel to its climax.

The Acropolis station on the Athens Metro. These statues are copies of the Parthenon Marbles. The originals are still in London.

The lively, conversational point of view, often filled with slang; the casual humor; the girls’ often intense resentments; and many revealing scenes which allow the reader to make his/her own judgments about the increasingly complex characters, enhance the novel and bring its historical time periods to life for an English-speaking audience.  Translator Karen Emmerich, who worked directly with the author, is so sensitive to nuances here that there is no feeling that this novel is translated.  The reader feels no separation between the author and the translator, as if one person wrote the novel and then translated it into English, with the language and its sentiments perfectly attuned to the action, and the style to the message and themes. The action never flags, and though it takes place in several countries during different time periods, the point of view and the details about the student protests in which the characters involve themselves strike such universal chords that they will feel familiar to most American readers – and certainly to all who are over forty.  A rousing coming-of-age novel, Why I Killed My Best Friend explores the never-ending search for values within everyday life while also celebrating the importance of living one’s beliefs.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.shjcw.gov.cn/

The Agios Nikolaos on the Plaka is from http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr

The photo of social unrest in Athens may be found on http://www.theguardian.com/

Exharheia Square, famed for its graffiti and its demonstrations, is also described on this site as a place to avoid at night.  http://a-place-called-space.blogspot.com

The Acropolis Metro station features the great sculptures from the Parthenon Marbles.  These are, of course, copies.  The originals are still in London. http://www.organicallycooked.com

ARC: Open Letter Books

Note: This novel was WINNER of the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, WINNER of the New South Wales Premier’s Award for New Writing, and  WINNER of the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist Award.

“The Governor is payin’ us to instill a lesson in the obtuse skulls of these dark skins.  But I tell you this right now. It may be the blacks what do the instilling.  It may be them affixing our bodies to the trees as you would the common criminal of old.  I will offer no indemnity against that outcome.”  John Batman, to his roving party, 1829.

From September, 1829, until early 1831, the British government overseeing the rule of Tasmania as part of its Australian colony, engaged in establishing the shameful “Black Line,” part of its Black War to remove all blacks in Tasmania.  Numerous clans of aborigines, who farmed and hunted on “their” Tasmanian lands at will for countless generations learned to hate the whites who appropriated their lands at will, destroyed their farms and habitat, and killed them and their families to take over their traditional lands. Rohan Wilson, a Tasmanian himself, tells the brutal story of the Black Line in the northeast part of Tasmania, in which a white farmer, John Batman, and Manalargena, an aborigine leader, among others, engage in mighty, genocidal battle sanctioned by Colonial Governor George Arthur representing the British crown.  As Wilson presents the bloody story of this period, he is sensitive to the historical record, telling of events as they happened, while also paying attention to the incalculable effects of this war on the aborigine people, either through warfare or through the transporting of the few survivors of this war to mainland Australia.  His main characters are real and are presented realistically, not as stereotypes of good and evil as they struggle to survive.

The “roving party” which farmer John Batman leads in 1829 consists of Batman and eight others who illustrate the island’s cultural mix: Black Bill, a young aborigine who has worked for Batman for years, has a pregnant wife and lives in a “humpy” in the outskirts of Batman’s farm.  His familiarity with white life make him suspect as far as the local blacks are concerned.  William Gould, Batman’s manservant, and two other blacks, Crook and Pigeon, members of the Dhuareg clan, are from Parramatta, an area near Sydney.  They have traveled to Tasmania to work for Batman in exchange for their emancipation papers.  The four remaining members of the roving party are prisoners transported to Tasmania for crimes in England.  Uneducated and unskilled, these men will be pardoned by the governor if they perform well in the war against the blacks.  James Clarke, known as “Horsehead,” serves as a foil to the young Thomas Tooey, a naïve youth still in his teens, sent to Tasmania seemingly by accident.  Jimmy Gumm and Howard Baxter, also prisoners, fill out the roving party.  The prisoners do not trust the blacks, the blacks and Batman do not trust the prisoners, no one has enough food, and none of the prisoners have warm clothing – or any shoes! – for this war in the mountainous northeast region of Ben Lomond during winter.

Manalargena, aborigine leader, 1829.

The novel opens with a dramatic scene in which Manalargena, a black clan leader, confronts Black Bill outside the “humpy” Bill shares with his pregnant wife.  Manalargena’s men, painted for war, are armed with the spears and waddies they use for hunting, and their wild hunting dogs are ferocious. Manalargena and his men want Black Bill to join his fellow blacks in the war against the well-armed white farmers.  From the outset, however, the reader understands that these issues are not simple.  Bill, acculturated from his years working for Batman, cannot make that promise, telling Manalargena that he is obliged to Batman.  As a parting shot, however, Manalargena tells Bill ominously that his unborn child is “a boy.  Strong boy…My demon tell me.”

Handmade waddies, traditional aborigine war weapons.

From this point on, the drama parallels the historical record of the real battles in Ben Lomond and south. Author Wilson is at his best as the party moves through various geographic areas, describing in vibrant, intensely visual prose what they are all seeing as they go.  As they first leave Batman’s holdings, he notes that “It was a stretch of forest entirely hostile to folk of any nation, native or not.  That beggardly clutch hung in rags and animal pelts and toting rusted firearms walked that ground as if pilgrims guided by the word of a demented god.”  Stories are revealed as they walk, many of them grisly, but at the same time, the author also gives us passages celebrating the great natural beauty of the land and the natural kindness of some characters toward the people they meet.  Young Thomas, the youngest prisoner, instinctively responds to the plight of a young woman taken prisoner by the roving party, bringing her tea, and entertaining her toddler.

“Through the Mist,” a pastel of the Ben Lomond area, by Clifford How

The complex relationships and unstated loyalties within the roving party become clearer as the action evolves.  On one occasion, when Batman kills a black, young Thomas asks Black Bill if they are “runnin’ afoul of the law…Batman up and shot that black bugger.”  In an astonishing commentary on the issues and culture of the times, Black Bill answers, “You can’t murder a black…any more than you can murder a cat.” On a later occasion, however, Black Bill unconsciously shows his own confusion about his identity when they are confronted by an enormous snake, which Batman is about to kill:  “We don’t kill them,” he says as Batman is about to destroy it.  To which Batman responds, “Well, I most certainly do, my dusky friend.”  Some time later, after Bill catches the snake and throws it harmlessly away, Batman confronts him asking, pointedly, “Who’s we?”

Tasmanian tiger, Tasmanian wolf, or thylacine, now extinct.  At one point on their trek, the roving party is threatened by a “Tasmanian wolf.”

Though the characters do not always come fully alive, and the fast action sometimes feels artificially “historical,” rather than a direct result of specific actions by the characters, the novel is an important addition to the story of Tasmania and its history.  The wonderfully vivid descriptions of the natural world, which make the unique setting come alive in this era in which one is especially conscious of environmental impacts, are stunning.  The disappearance of all but a handful of Tasmanian aborigines, the killing of every known Tasmanian wolf (Tasmanian Tiger/Thylacine), and the near disappearance of all the Tasmanian devils over the last two hundred years, as a result of human behavior, are, however, obvious reasons for alarm.  With global warming now threatening the polar icecap (and Tasmania the closest land area to Antarctica), this island will also be a “canary in the mine” regarding warming effects on land areas outside of the Antarctic and Arctic.  Author Rohan Wilson, writing ostensibly about the Black Line in 1830, has also touched on environmental “lines” two hundred years later.

ALSO by Rohan Wilson:  TO NAME THOSE LOST

The statue of John Batman, founder of Melbourne and participant in Tasmania’s Black Line, was commissioned by the Melbourne City Council, unveiled in 1979.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on https://medium.com/ Though it is not credited there, it is very similar to a photo by  James Croucher and may be his work.

The picture of Manalargena may be found on http://ourtasmania.webs.com

The waddy, a traditional aborigine weapon, is shown on http://en.wikipedia.org/

“Through the Mists,” a pastel of the Ben Lomond area of northeast Tasmania, is by Clifford How. http://www.tasmanianart.com.au/

The Tasmanian Tiger, or Tasmanian Wolf, or Thylacine, is shown here.  The roving party was threatened by one of these creatures on their trek:  http://www.talismancoins.com/

The statue of John Batman appears on this site: http://monumentaustralia.org.au

“[Throughout the castle], music was coming from the rediffusion boxes …music for strings, and then suddenly one of the players, with great urgency, would play a solo, the theme…yes!  It was “Harlequin’s Millions,” those same millions that accompanied silent movies in the old days….[now filling and infusing] the hall and the corridor and the footpaths along the castle walls with the cotton candy of violins.”

The castle in this novel, once the home of Count Spork, just outside “the little town where time stood still,” is now a retirement home, residence of elderly pensioners given much freedom to lead comfortable lives, along with a number of old pensioners who need kindly delivered terminal care.  “Rediffusion boxes” playing “Harlequin’s Millions” are on the walls everywhere, both inside and outside the castle, and everyone who hears this tune is “entranced” by its “melancholy memory of old times.”   The unnamed speaker, the wife of the former owner of a brewery, her husband Francin, and his older brother “Uncle Pepin,” have come to the castle as residents late in life, after losing their brewery when the communists took over in the aftermath of World War II. The speaker, for thirty years an independent and beautiful local actress, has felt at home among the wealthiest residents of their community, and though she is now elderly, toothless, and poor, her changed condition barely fazes her.  Still independent in spirit, she embraces her new surroundings, explores them with enthusiasm, and enjoys hearing the stories of other residents at the castle and the history of their much earlier predecessors from as long ago as the seventeenth century.

Author Bohumil Hrabal, a captivating story-teller whom many consider the Czech Republic’s best novelist, brings to life the real town in which he lived for many years.  Nymburk, in Central Bohemia, has featured in many of his novels, and the real castle of Count Spork exists just a few miles from its center.  A lifelong resident of the Czech Republic, Hrabal does not dwell on the horrors of war and its aftermath, on sudden changes of fortune, on evil plots, or, in the case of this novel, on the misery of old age and the approach of death, preferring instead to see the world with a more optimistic attitude, and with a sense of humor even in the midst of sadness.  The result is a novel of great universality and wit, told with a confidence that comes from total familiarity with his setting and subject matter and with a brio that engages the reader from the opening page.  Hrabal is an honest writer describing real life, a writer without pretensions whose primary interest is in engaging the reader in a “discussion” about his characters and their lives.  It is through this “discussion” that the reader, seemingly by accident, comes to understand Hrabal’s much larger ideas and themes about the continuity of life.

Count Spork's Castle, Lysa nad Labem, just outside Nymburk

Outwardly plotless, the novel begins when the speaker first arrives at the castle.  When she goes exploring, she discovers that behind a wire fence, which she ignores, is the statue of a naked young woman glorifying the month of May, one of twelve such statues representing the seasons and months of the year.  Eventually, she discovers that “what connected these statues had some deeper meaning, that in fact…all  these statues represented the entire human race, in all its phases, and together they formed what we call nature: spring, summer, fall, winter…I was standing there in front of the statue of May when suddenly I knew that I had needed to arrive at this point, just as I am…I could see that the sandstone statues formed a kind of novel, the tale of someone who had been waiting here for me…”  Hrabal’s novel is the revelation of her discovery.

The Month of May, a key image in this novel, stands in the grounds of Spork Castle

Among the first people the speaker meets upon her arrival at the retirement home are three men from the “town where time stood still.”  These fellow residents tell her stories about the past, and her interest (and the reader’s) in their stories keeps the “action” going.  Filled with vivid imagery, the speaker’s comments on her life strike the reader with their honesty:  “I wished [my friends] could stay here forever, or at least for as long as I did, so they could keep telling me stories about things that had happened long ago, which excited me more than the old Czech legends.”  While the reader shares the speaker’s memories with her, the author weaves his spell.  Some of her elderly fellow-residents continue to knit or crochet baby items because they cannot give up this habit.  “There was no handiwork exhibition, nor was it an answer to the question of how our ladies passed the time, here on these tables lay the things the old women couldn’t give up…the constant and everlasting necessities no woman could live without, not even a pensioner in Count Spock’s castle…”

Statues representing the twelve months and the seasons are displayed in the garden of Spork Castle.

The reader’s emotional response to the main character interweaves with factual information, making the novel both a joy to read and a poignant commentary on the passage of time.  The speaker’s story of her failed attempt to open a perfume shop explains the vicarious joy of some of her fellow retirees at her failure, but it also illustrates the commitment of her husband Francin. As the reader comes to share the speaker’s life, s/he also understands that “the [pensioners] have no place to go, many of them will simply stand around looking at the open gate, they could go anywhere they wanted,” but fail to do so.

The plague column in Nymburk, 1715, is also an image in this novel

The ceiling paintings at the castle in each of the rooms are used to provide comparisons and contrasts to the lives of the characters as they unfold, just as the repeating symbolism of the tune of “Harlequin’s Millions” provides musical commentary on the state of the speaker’s mind.  Ultimately, the characters are asking not “What is death?” but “What is life?”  Some of their answers lie in the differences between what the characters see happening outside the castle and what is happening inside. The dramatic, moving, and ironic conclusion, in which the reader and the speaker come to new realizations, cements the author’s themes and leaves the reader with new understanding, and even hope, as the days wind down. Superb!  (This book is #1 on my list of Favorites for the year so far.)

NOTE: Translator Stacey Knecht’s sensitive translation, with its conversational tone, its often sly humor, and its wonderfully realized (and quirky) characterizations, enables this novel to sparkle in unexpected ways, despite the author’s own visually daunting style.  Knecht is so attuned to nuances here that it sometimes feels as if she has “channeled” the author, so successfully does she capture the changing moods and tone of this novel. This translation should certainly be a candidate for “Best Translated Novel of the Year.”

ALSO by Bohumil Hrabal:  I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND

The romantic Serenade from Riccardo Drigo’s Harlequin’s Millions, arranged by Leopold Auer, which echoes throughout the novel, is seen here:

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on  http://www.lucerna.cz/

The Castle of Count Spork in Lysa nad Labem, a few miles from Nymburk, the town where Hrabal grew up, may be found on  http://en.wikipedia.org

The Month of May, a statue in the gardens of Count Spork’s Castle, is seen on  http://scottishlit.com

The statues of the months and seasons, in the castle garden, are from  http://gardenpanorama.cz/

ARC: Archipelago

Note: Jo Nesbo has been nominated for many prizes for his work, and has been WINNER of the Riverton Prize of 1997, the Glass Key Award for 2008, the Norwegian Booksellers Best Novel of the Year Awards for 2000 and 2007,  the Norwegian Book Club Prizes for Best Novel of the Year in 2007 and 2008, the Edgar Award in 2010, and Norway’s Peer Gynt Prize of 2013.

“The age of mercy is over, and…the day of judgment has arrived. But as the Messiah is running late, we have to do his job for him….Justice. The kind of justice which is above the law.” –Simon Kefas

Norwegian author Jo Nesbo never writes the same book twice, even within his best-selling series of ten Harry Hole thrillers. From The Redbreast, an historical novel which examines Norway’s Nazi era past and its neo-Nazi present, to The Snowman, a horror novel which out-horrors Stephen King, and The Leopard, with action which moves from Norway to Hong Kong and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nesbo always keeps the narrative moving at a ferocious pace, and the excitement at fever pitch. Though the reader does come to know Harry Hole and those who share his life to some extent during these ten novels, the emphasis has always been on action and thrills, rather than character. Harry, an alcoholic loner at heart, has never been complex. Nesbo’s focus changes with The Son, a standalone novel. Though the plot here is every bit as fast-paced as those of Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels, the scope is smaller and more intimate, and for the first time, Nesbo seems to be allowing the reader inside his characters, making the characters and themes more complex and fully-developed. The novel is tightly organized and totally controlled, and I suspect that it will be HUGE – the biggest-selling book Nesbo has ever had.

The novel’s opening is packed full of information which sets the scene and introduces characters in Oslo’s maximum security prison. Sonny Lofthus, a thirty-year-old man, has been jailed for the past twelve years after admitting to killing two people, a false confession which he gave willingly at age eighteen in a deal with officials which has guaranteed him a never-ending supply of drugs while in prison. He is always so “mellow,” in fact, that his fellow-inmates regard him as a kind of Buddha figure, one who says little, goes into trances, and provides absolution to criminals who seek it. Part of Sonny’s original problem was connected to the fact that his father, Ab Lofthus, whom he idolized, committed suicide after confessing in writing that he had been a crooked cop, a mole within the department. Sonny, who was a teenager at the time, got hooked on drugs, and went downhill from there. Convicted soon after his father’s death of two murders which he did not commit, he served twelve years of his sentence before being allowed out on day release. Unfortunately, the wife of a well-known financier was discovered murdered while he was out, and Sonny found himself at the center of the investigation. When Sonny then learns from a prison old-timer that he knows the name of the powerful, big-time criminal who actually killed his father, Sonny is stunned, and so determined to avenge his father’s phony suicide that he goes through drug withdrawal on his own in an effort to get clean – and then get even.

The Oslo Prison. A new-state-of-the-art prison, more similar to the one described in the novel, has been built in Halden, about 75 miles from Oslo.

All this – and much more – happens in just the first fifty pages of the novel, as Nesbo introduces a dozen or more characters, and provides the motivation and methods by which Sonny will escape on his mission for justice, not just for his father but for himself and all those others that he knows have been wronged. The reader, too, learns just how clever and how protected the criminal underworld has been, how they have insinuated themselves into all levels of police investigations, how they have blackmailed law enforcement officials, and how they have threatened innocent families to make it all work. The victims are depicted with depth and understanding here, and the reader quickly discovers that the absolutes which most of us take for granted in our own lives do not apply here. We may think of justice as an absolute term, and good and evil as polar opposites, but the “evil” characters as they develop here often become sympathetic, despite their criminal behavior, while some of those “good people,” like the chaplain who advises Sonny to confess to the new killing he did not commit, are among the most venal.

Simon Kefas takes his wife Else, suffering from failing eyesight, to a Chagall exhibit, which he believes she might enjoy for the colors.

Simon Kefas, the inspector who investigates the new murder, soon discovers that Sonny originally denied all knowledge of the new murder, and he begins to wonder about other aspects of Sonny’s “confession” as it pertains to higher management of the police and prison system. Simon, like Sonny, has problems, namely a gambling addiction which he fights every day, and he refuses to become involved in the internecine rivalries which might lead him to make money “off the books,” money he desperately needs for crucial surgery for his wife. The common threads between Sonny and Simon make both of them more human, and actually similar, despite the fact that they are technically on opposite sides of the law.

An Argentine Mastiff (dogo), a dog banned in Norway, plays a role in one dramatic scene in this novel.

The novel continues to broaden its scope after Sonny’s escape (which is announced in the first sentence of the book jacket), and there are many scenes which long-time Nesbo readers will find surprising. A humorous scene in which Sonny learns to drive, and scenes illustrating his genuine innocence regarding technology, his first kiss, and his developing love story all make him a “real” person. A young boy, Markus, who lives in the house beside the house where Sonny grew up, likes and wants to help Sonny, adding depth to what we already know about Sonny through the contrast in their lives. The violence for which Nesbo’s novels are noted continues here, but in a more personal setting than what long-time readers are accustomed to, as Simon and his partner, Kari, continue to investigate murders, drugs, and corruption at the highest levels. Scenes involving The Twin, the kingpin of crime, are as horrifying as one would expect them to be, a murder involving an Argentine mastiff (dogo) is grotesque, and some of the murders committed as “justice” by Sonny (and Simon, for that matter) are as visually disturbing as those committed by the “criminals.” The ironies and twists at the end of the novel are unforgettable, though many readers will probably figure out one key part of the conclusion ahead of time.

Simon sometimes enjoys stopping in at a small church, which resembles this one, when he needs private time to think.

Nesbo often uses religious imagery here, from the title of the book to its opening quotation: “And he will come again to judge the living and the dead,” along with the quotation at the beginning of this review (from late in the novel). The concepts of guilt and atonement as motivations for avoiding evil pervade the novel, as characters often behave as they do to atone for past “sins,” rather than because of their inherent sense of what is good and right. The novel sometimes veers into the sentimental, romantic, and coincidental (a new and unique criticism of Nesbo), but many readers may find this a welcome change from the horrors which have characterized so many Nesbo novels in the past.

ALSO by Nesbo:  THE BAT (1997),    COCKROACHES (1998),       THE REDBREAST (2000),      NEMESIS (2002),     THE DEVIL’S STAR (2003),     THE REDEEMER (2005),      THE SNOWMAN (2007),     HEADHUNTERS (2008),     THE LEOPARD (2009),     PHANTOM (2011), POLICE (2013)     BLOOD ON SNOW (2015),      MIDNIGHT SUN (2016)

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears in Version:1.0 http://www.bostonglobe.com

The Oslo Prison, still being used, is shown here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/ A new state-of-the-art prison, similar to the one described in this novel was built in Halden, about 75 miles from Oslo, in 2010.

Marc Chagall’s “I and the Village,” from 1911 is depicted here:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Chagall Simon Kefas takes his wife to a Chagall exhibit because he thinks she might be able to enjoy the colors of the paintings, despite her failing eyesight.

According to the author, the Argentine Mastiff (or dogo) is a prohibited dog in Norway, though one such dog is involved in a bloody episode in this novel.  This photo and descriptions of the dog, depicted in the article playing with children, are here:   http://mantronix.hubpages.com

Simon sometimes enjoys visiting St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Oslo. It is described as having a very small tower, three steps at the entrance, and situated in a neighborhood with apartment buildings surrounding it.  The church pictured here, the Frogner Church, fits the description, though it is a Church of Norway church. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/ The photo was posted on this site by Joamax.

Note: Mario Vargas Llosa was WINNER of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010.

“People are really scared, have you noticed?  At the cantina, on the job, all the work crews.  Even the Indians who haven’t left the community yet.  There’s tension in the atmosphere, like something is about to happen.  Maybe it’s the rumor that they’re stopping work on the highway, that they’ll all lose their jobs. And all the killing everywhere.  Nobody’s nerves can take it…Don’t you feel it?”—Tomasito, adjutant in the Gardia, to his boss, Cpl. Lituma.

Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa continues to speak out politically in yet another realistic and uncompromising novel set in his home country of Peru.   In this novel, he brings the reader face to face with the horrors of the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), a Maoist terror group operating in the mountains of Peru from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, with seemingly few direct challenges from the government.  The novel’s sense of immediacy, enhanced by vivid descriptions of real events affecting real people, provides a close-up look at the tactics, including massacres, used by the Shining Path in the central and southern mountains of Peru, where they attacked indigenous Indian peasants, all foreigners, all educated Peruvians working to improve the lives of the peasants by providing better services, and anyone representing the government or police.

The novel opens with an old woman, who speaks only Quechua, telling Tomas (Tomasito) Carreno, the assistant of Corporal Lituma at their small Gardia station in Naccos, that her husband has disappeared.  What is worse:  she had expected something to happen to him.  Her husband, a foreman on a road-building crew, is the third person from their small mountain village to have disappeared in the past three weeks, the other disappearances also remaining a mystery.  Local peasants, farmers, laborers, and Indians have provided no information to Tomas or Lituma, and both men worry that they are surrounded by the terrorists they are there to monitor.  The local people have learned from past experience that government forces are not always to be trusted, so Tomas and Lituma are virtually alone at this station.  Lituma is a man from the coast, and he has little understanding of the local mountain culture, never sure if he is being teased at the cantina when villagers talk about lightning as the “lizard of the sky,” about earthquakes as the work of the devil, about pishtacos – man-monsters who kill men and suck out their body fat for cannibalistic purposes.  The locals often leave plates of food for serpents at the mouths to caves.

Photo of the  small Andean village of Qero, by Oscar Samwel.

Without transition, the narrative suddenly shifts to a pair of young, naïve French tourists who have chosen to go through the Andes by local bus to their next destination, instead of by plane.  “Michele” is uncertain, but she goes along with “Albert,” a teacher, who is interested in native music, and who believes, even after masked men stop the bus, that this will be an experience which they will love sharing with their buddies back home in France – when it is all over.  They believe that nothing can happen to them because “We are French tourists, senor.”  Other story lines also evolve and broaden the scope. Twenty-three-year-old Tomasito, the adjutant to Lituma, is in the mountains to escape death at the hands of a mob leader in Tingo Maria for whom he had been a bodyguard – until he fell in love with his boss’s girlfriend.  Many people now want him dead.  The man who runs the cantina and his wife, thought to be a witch, play all sides of all issues in an effort to make money, and cannot be trusted, though they hear everything that is going on.

Potato farmers in the village of Qero, shown in previous photo

Of the three missing men, one case makes Lituma feel particularly guilty, the disappearance of a “little mute,” whom Lituma has brought with him from the coast.  The mute, Pedro Tinoco, has run away from the military which conscripted him against his will, and Lituma brought him to the mountains to help him escape.  The story of the mute, who finds a “home” living with vicunas, and the story of the albino, the second man to disappear, add color and more cultural detail to the story, while the love story of Tomas for Mercedes, which sometimes seems interminable,  adds contrast to the horrors of the Shining Path.  The attack on a town named Andromarca (similar to the attack of the real community of Lucanamarca in 1983, which was the single largest massacre by Shining Path) shows exactly how the Shining Path operates, with all local leaders captured, many killed, young children sent off to join the Shining Path militia, public executions, stonings, and the attempt to establish a support base there from which they will spread their “proletarian revolution” in other directions.

Sixty-two of the three hundred villagers of Lucanamarca were massacred by the Shining Path in 1983.

The arrival of the National Guard at Andamarca does not bring relief, in this case.  The Gardia loot the homes of the remaining citizens, then vanish with their possessions.  The treatment accorded to intellectuals and educated volunteers who work with indigenous people in the mountains becomes yet another subplot involving the Shining Path, while in still another, involving ancient cultural practices, the belief in human sacrifice to assuage the spirits becomes real.  As the residents of Naccos begin to leave the village for other, safer places, Lituma and Tomasito, too, begin to prepare for other places, their fates, full of irony. described in the Epilogue.

Burial at Lucanamarca cemetery, 1983

Vargas Llosa, through his many subplots, shifting time frames, and different points of view vividly presents many aspects of life – and especially death – in the Andes in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Shining Path, operating in both Peru and Bolivia was so intent upon a proletarian revolution.  The author’s insights and ability to depict people from all walks of life as they try to deal with the hit-and-run tactics of this terror group bring this period alive again, even after almost twenty years.  The “pastiche approach” to this subject, which Vargas Llosa uses to great effect, allows him to create  a broad panorama of life in the Andes during this fraught period, but this approach lacks the strong characterizations which most other novels use to create empathy with the main characters.  We know very little about Lituma,  and what we know about Tomasito is limited to his never-ending love story.  In its focus on the Shining Path, however, this novel provides a rare view of a terror group and its political goals and tactics, offering an important reminder of the need for vigilance.

Note: It was not until 1992 that Abimael Guzman, the former philosophy professor who led the Shining Path, was captured by Peruvian police and sentenced to life imprisonment. Though his capture led to a decline in the number of Shining Path attacks, especially large-scale attacks, it did not end the movement, which, though weakened, has continued terrorist attacks at least through 2013, according to Wikipedia.

ALSO by Mario Vargas Llosa:  THE BAD GIRL, THE DREAM OF THE CELT,    THE FEAST OF THE GOAT, THE DISCREET HERO

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://construirigualdad.blogspot.com/

The small village of Qero appears on http://upload.wikimedia.org Photo by Oscar Samwel.

Villagers from Qero harvest their potato crop.  http://standingonsacredground.org/

The photo of the funeral procession after Lucanamarca Massacre of 1983, upon which the massacre of Andamarca may have been based,  may be found here:  http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/

Lucanamarca mourners gather at the cemetery to bury their dead: http://www.codehica.org.pe/

Vicunas live on grassland in the Andes during the day, when it is hot, then go up the mountain slopes at night when it is cold.  They are protected animals and are the national animal of Peru.  Their skins and wool were originally used only by Incan royalty.   http://trabajodeingleszoo.blogspot.com/