Note: The Spanish edition of this novel was WINNER of La Otra Orilla Prize when it was published in 2009. Europa Editions has just released it in English.
“These fateful years that it has befallen us to live through would be more suitable for seclusion and solitude, [but] the intellect must continue its work in the midst of the most horrifying circumstances, it’s always been that way, and today more than ever, when the present is growing ever angrier as if to punish us, it is worthwhile looking at the past, turning to memory…because in memory lies the origin of ourselves and of reality” –President, International Conference on Biography and Memory (ICBM)
While the head of the ICBM is addressing participants at a literary conference in the King David Hotel, Jerusalem is being shaken by bombs. When the lights go out, the conference simply continues by candlelight. Attending this conference is the novel’s unnamed speaker, “E.H,” now living in Rome in the aftermath of a two-year convalescence from a serious illness. He has written nothing at all during that time, and he has no idea why he has been invited. The list of other participants offers him no clues: one man is an expert in Jewish religious texts and is a passionate lover of chess; another, from Colombia, collects stamps and has written a grammar book; a third, a Miami-based, former evangelical pastor, ex-con, and drug addict has written only religious texts; and the lone woman, a porn actress and the founder of the highly successful Eve Studios, has been the star and producer of Screw Me, Screw Me, I Don’t Want this to End. Each of these participants will tell a novella-length story during this conference on biography and memory, and as their stories unwind, the reader begins to see that just as Jerusalem is a kind of necropolis, a memorial to mankind’s complex past, so, too, is the conference itself, with its emphasis on each character’s inner “necropolis” as s/he revisits the sometimes horrific past.
As the speaker sets out for Jerusalem, he carries with him a first draft of his lecture, Words Written in the Cave of Silence, “in which I tried to explain that the literary concept of words is that of an underground stream that runs very deep, dictated by the distant, obscure howling of creation.” Picked up by limo at the airport in Tel Aviv, he notices the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of Sorrows at Latrun and passes long military convoys along the road. Jerusalem is smoking upon his arrival.
What follows is a novel packed full of non-stop action even as it considers some of life’s biggest subjects: life and death, God (“the Big Enchilada”) and Satan, love and sex, truth and lies, poverty and wealth, memory and reality, language and the past, and assorted related subjects such as the need for solitude and for hope, the irresistible urge for revenge, and the inescapable violence which is responsible for the declining civility of modern life. Despite the extraor
dinary number of these “heavy” metaphysical themes and the sometimes allegorical connotations, however, Colombian author Santiago Gamboa, creates a can’t-put-it-downer of a novel, filled with excitement and unusual characters leading unusual lives.
The first and longest story is told by Jose Maturana, a former bank robber and drug addict, whose violence has landed him in Moundsville Prison in West Virginia. After being beaten up so badly by visiting evangelical preacher Walter de la Salle that he needs to recuperate for three weeks in the prison infirmary, Jose becomes a convert. Walter, a body builder covered with tattoos, eventually helps Jose get out of prison and gives him a job with the ministry. With the aid of Miss Jessica, who “fell out of the sky,” Walter and Jose expand the ministry, visiting prisons and nursing homes. Eventually, the ministry becomes huge – and extremely wealthy – and Jose begins to suspect financial misdealings. Now, twelve years later, Jose brings the conference up to date on his story. Hours later, he is found dead in a blood-drenched bathroom, declared a suicide.
The second story is the tale of two chess champions from Poland and Sweden, their marriages and later widower-hood, and their long friendship. Chess provides them with the continuity of life which they seek, and their friendship becomes a strong theme that contrasts with the “friendship” between Jose and Walter. The third story tells of hardworking Colombian Ramon Mela Garcia, a shop owner who is unwilling to pay extortion to paramilitaries, who then accuse him of collusion with FARC in drug-running. Eventually betrayed, he plans a terrible revenge. The last story, Sabina Vedovelli’s, is as pornographic as her film career, with no holding back here in the graphic descriptions of what she does to please her partners and her film fans. Her film company, she says, tries to convey stories that are “the last bastion of a truth that’s on the verge of disappearing from the world forever, and not because of a war…[but because of] infinite human stupidity…it’s in the body that it must be won,” an unusual view of society which provides an ironic approach to fixing today’s problems.
Literary ironies and humor also play a part in the novel. Salvadoran author Horacio Castellanos Moya (one of my personal favorites), along with Stefan Zweig, Bruno Schulz, Bohumil Hrabal, and Philip K. Dick have all written books the author wants to take to the conference, along with Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness, and Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth. A lawyer in the chess story is named “Uriah Heep,” a character from David Copperfield, and the whole story about the revenge-seeking auto repair shop owner is reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Reading this book is a total experience, and I find myself still thinking back to it over and over again, trying to connect all the stories and themes into a coherent whole – I’m still working on that. The novel’s conclusion raises even more questions about the dark direction in which the author sees civilization moving. Often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, especially in the choice of his themes, Gamboa does not veer into Marquez’s magic realism, making a few reference
s to things like the “glowing eyes,” of an evil character, but containing them within the context of a particular character’s story and not using them for the arc of the plot. Challenging, thoughtful, and often fun, this is the most ambitious new novel I’ve read in a very long time.
ALSO by Santiago Gamboa: NIGHT PRAYERS
Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on https://www.las2orillas.co/
The King David Hotel in Jerusalem is seen here: http://www.islamic-architecture.info
Moundsville Penitentiary, in West Virginia, where Jose spent time, is now a tourist attraction. http://www.thehiat.org/2010/11/moundsville-west-virginia-penitentiary.html
The photo of paramilitaries in Colombia is from http://mauro-santayana-english.blogspot.com
The island of Tristan da Cunha, mentioned in the novel, is the most remote island on earth, located 1750 miles from the nearest land (South Africa) and 2088 miles from South America. It has a population of 275 people. The adjacent islands are wildlife reserves. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1372203.stm
ARC: Europa Editions
Though the characters of these three mesmerizing novellas are all looking for “bridges,” they face personal voids instead, gaps between their perceptions of past and the present, and dislocations in time and place. All are hoping to make true connections which will allow them to resolve the conflicting aspects of their inner lives. Each of the characters has traveled to a new place from the “homeland” where she or he was born, and each now lives in a new culture into which she or he does not quite fit.
ells of Kazuko Minamiyama, a Japanese living in Berlin who has been invited to Vietnam by an acquaintance. Because her friend has seen someone in Vietnam who looks just like Kazuko, she travels there on vacation a few years after the “Vietnam” (or “American”) War. Kazuko regards being a tourist as a job, and she is careful to behave exactly as tourists behave, a quiet satire which is well integrated with author Tawada’s themes of miscommunication and alienation. Like Amo and Tamao, Kazuko has sexual relationships which remain unresolved, even as she travels with a blonde young man who identifies himself as “Japanese.” Throughout the trip, Kazuko discovers women who look exactly like her, with more and more of them appearing the longer she stays in Vietnam.
mon Brenner to be available in the U.S. Over two million copies of that series have been sold in Germany alone, with additional hundreds of thousands sold in the rest of Europe, Korea, and China. Though Haas’s novels have been described elsewhere as belonging to the noir mystery genre associated with the previously named, more famous authors, this novel is actually quite different from those. Here the novel’s smart-alecky and in-your-face first person narrator, with his appreciation of irony and his uniquely hilarious observations, keeps the reader smiling even as horrific murders are taking place. The narrator himself does not appear to take the characters in his story seriously, and the novel’s resulting style is closer to that of an “entertainment” or farce, in which the narrator becomes the main character directing the show, than it is to the dark and often cynical mysteries clearly identifiable as “noir.”
On one occasion, however, Brenner fails to fuel the limo ahead of time. When he stops for gasoline, he goes inside the station to buy Helena a candy bar and gets sidetracked. By the time he returns to the car, Helena is gone. There is no dearth of suspects in the kidnapping since both parents have serious enemies. Kressdorf, the father, is working on a huge development project, MegaLand, which many citizens oppose but which certain well-paid government officials support. In Vienna, a group of militant pro-lifers led by a man named Knoll have been trying to oust Kressdorf’s wife and her clinic from their medical office, buying up all the surrounding office space and installing surveillance cameras as intimidation. After Brenner is fired from his job, he ignores orders from the police, some of whom he knows, and decides to track down the kidnapper himself. Uncovering secrets surrounding both of the parents and the people who work for them, Brenner trails suspects, breaks into buildings, and searches for a reason to explain why there has been no ransom. As he investigates, he becomes involved in a number of gory deaths.
, the less arrogant one’s the physician.” When he surveys the abortion clinic, he notes that “there was never a riotous crowd in front…but somehow the silent threat from the church-types was even more menacing, because there’s nothing worse than a sighing aggressor. A well-known fact: behind every mass murderer there’s a mass sigher.” The author pays lip service to major themes as Brenner, throughout the novel, half-heartedly tries to consider big issues, such as when life begins, whether there is a God, and how much He may control what happens in life, but most readers will be repulsed by the conditions under which Brenner believes he finally sees God and the inescapable conclusion.
n only a couple of murders have taken place, the narrator self-consciously reminds himself that “If he’d just [paid attention] the entire solution probably would have presented itself, and [X number of] people wouldn’t have had to die.” Suspense about the number of future murders is sacrificed here to the narrator’s second-guessing about his own actions, suggesting that the author is having more fun with his narrator than with the story itself.
From the explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, to the killings of prisoners by the Cubans and Spanish in the aftermath of the Protocol of Peace on August 12, 1898, American news correspondent Sam Carleton records his day-by-day actions during the Spanish-American War. America’s interests in acquiring Spanish territories, combined with the rebel Cuban movement to overthrow their Spanish rulers, has led to groups of Cubans fighting the Spanish while the Americans are also conducting operations. Black soldiers from units in the United States, perhaps identifying with the Cubans’ desire for freedom, have been anxious to help in this war, and a number of all-black regiments are also involved in the fight.
s making courageous decisions and willingly sacrificing their lives for a cause. Instead, he focuses on the specific – the small, personal aspects of daily life among ordinary Union soldiers – describing how the soldiers feel, what they are thinking, and even, in some cases, their palpable fear. In The Red Badge of Courage, the book by Carleton/Crane, eighteen-year-old Henry Fleming quickly gives up his romantic vision of war when he sees it in all its stark, gory realism – full of the color of blood, the agony of the dying, the putrid smells of death, the ear-splitting screams, the thunder of weapons, and the seeming senselessness of it all. Henry runs away, his shame dominating the rest of this impressionistic novel as he tries to atone for his personal failure and for his betrayal of his duty.
As Douglas Savage’s novel begins, Sam Carleton, in Havana in December, 1898, is getting ready to return home to the United States. The war has been over since August, but Carleton has remained in Havana to finish recording what he has seen. He suffers terribly from the effects of both malaria and yellow fever, along with the yet-undiagnosed tuberculosis which will kill him a year later. His mind wanders, and he sometimes becomes confused. Rosa Montoya, who has been at his side for the past year, accompanies him as he walks along the Havana waterfront, paying homage to the lives lost in the explosion of the USS Maine in January, 1898, its wreckage still visible. When Rosa shakes him from his stupor, “He [is] grateful that she [has] grabbed him before he drained out of sight into the pores of the street.” Back at his boarding house, Carleton relives his experiences during the Battle for San Juan Hill. His writing is vivid, as is his depiction of Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who grins after killing a Spanish regular: “Got this one myself…Popped him with this pistol my brother-in-law – damned navy man – salvaged from Maine, God bless her.”
Another story evolves in parallel with the story of Sam Carleton. Appearing and reappearing without warning throughout this novel, George Fleming, son of Henry Fleming from The Red Badge of Courage, accompanied by Esther Slone, travels to a collapsed mine in western Pennsylvania to help rescue sixty trapped miners. Episodes in this trip constantly intrude into Carleton’s story in Cuba, showing similar themes and characters, as author Douglas Savage illustrates the mortality of Carleton’s illness, his unresolved issues regarding courage and its importance, and the power of imagination.
Cayetano Brule, an unemployed Cuban who is living in Valparaiso with his well-connected Chilean wife, escapes the tedium of a cocktail party one evening by disappearing into the library of the estate where the party is being held. Appropriating a wing chair, he begins to muse, perhaps even doze, until he hears footsteps behind him. Hoping to avoid chatting with someone, he remains silent until the intruder begins to comment on the indignities of old age – in such vivid terms that Cayetano wonders if the man might be a writer. The old man confirms this, commenting on Cayetano’s own “detective skills” and introducing himself as “Ricardo Reyes.” When Cayetano turns around, he finds himself staring at Pablo Neruda, real name Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, just two years before. “He had never been alone with a Nobel laureate before. Emotion suddenly shook his body, and blood rushed to his head.” And when the poet then invites him to come to his home, La Sebastiana, to see some post cards of Havana, Cayetano is so shaken that he waits until Neruda contacts him again before accepting. On his visit to Neruda, he learns that Neruda has a mission for him, his first job as a private detective – to find a man Neruda has not had contact with for over thirty years using skills he must learn through reading Simenon’s Maigret novels and through on-the-job training.
Author Roberto Ampuero incorporates within the story of Cayetano’s mission for Neruda both the historical and contemporary history of Valparaiso and the political turmoil that roiled the country from the 1970s – 1990s. A ferocious earthquake in 1906 killed three thousand people and devastated the city, and many more people left the city permanently to avoid the aftershocks. An even greater shock to the city’s economy occurred in 1914, however, when the Panama Canal opened and permanently ended Valparaiso’s prosperity as a resupply stop for trips around Cape Horn. By 1971, when Cayetano himself first arrived in Valparaiso, President Salvador Allende was in the second year of his term as the first Marxist ever to be elected president in open elections. Now, in 1973, both Cayetano and his wife are ardent supporters of the president, as is Neruda, their politics representing an unusual point of view for most western readers. Throughout 1971 – 1973, the time frame of the novel, the government is trying to solve economic issues peacefully, while the army is becoming impatient at the slow pace and what they regard as serious threats to national security. Communist guerrillas further confuse the political situation, as does the United States, which fears a takeover of all of Latin America if the socialists and communists become stronger in Chile. They secretly fund those leaders whose activities seem to be in the best interests of the United States.
