The Book of Answers–C.Y. Gopinath

The day one receives a book which claims to have an answer to all the ills of this planet, should be a cause for celebration. Shouldn’t it?, and yet when Patros Patranobis is handed this package containing the book, he can’t get rid of it quick enough.

To be fair to Patros, he has spent all his adult life attempting to fly under the radar, to be an observer of his world, rather than some one who does. His way of dealing with problems is to push them to one side, so he sells the book to a dealer in 2nd hand smut mags and walks away, problem solved.  Several months later, the book surfaces as the font of all wisdom for a self styled guru & adviser to one of India's top politicians, Ishwar Prasad, who claiming divine inspiration, passes a whole range of laws with the sole purpose of strengthening his own position as top dog of Indian politics.

Patros is the only one who could upset this powerful individuals plans, who could reveal the lies being passed off as gospel, could reveal that this book has never been opened. In fact the key is missing and only he is capable of finding it’s location, but Patros wants nothing to do with it. This suits Ishwar Prasad & his cronies, for as long the book remains closed they can be inspired in any direction they like, as the author states “there is nothing more dangerous than a book no-one has read”.

Now, everything would be fine here, Patros would go on with his life, passively observing his country falling apart, Ishwar’s plans of dominance would go ahead undeterred. Except Patros has a conscience, in the shape of his common-law wife, the idealistic Rose Jangry and an old friend Arindam Roy, who will manipulate any situation for his own ends. Between them Patros, is cajoled, pushed  duped & generally conned into finding the key – all sorts of scrapes and adventures ensue as our “hero” stumbles around India and finally into direct conflict with Ishwar Prasad.

This book reminded partly of Monty python’s “The Life of Brian, not the subject matter, although religion is slightly poked at, but the humour. By using satire and general absurdity, the writer highlights endemic corruption whether of state, or on an individual level and how easy it is to fool a populace with slight promises and small tokens.

The Book of Answers was shortlisted for The Commonwealth Book Prize 2012, and according to Mark from Eleutherophia, who has read a fair amount of the list, it deserves it’s place. I’ve only read one other from this list and of the two this would be my preference, I thoroughly enjoyed following Patros as he stumbled from point to point, manipulated by all he comes into contact with, in the process becoming an inspiration and a very unwilling hero.

I would like to thank C.Y. Gopinath, for sending this book to me and to Mark for pointing me in this writers direction.

Japanese Literature Challenge 6

 

June the 1st is one of those days that are marked & highlighted with the largest  crayon from my colouring box. The reason for this degree of interest is that this is the opening date of what has, over the years, become one of my favourite challenges,by someone who is not only a favourite supporter of literature, but also a friend & constant source of inspiration. June the 1st is Japanese Challenge (#6) day, run by the wonderful Bellezza and in anticipation I’ve been stockpiling a few posts since the previous  one closed, here are the ones so far accumulated…

Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s - In Praise of Shadows (A Contemplation)

In Praise of Shadows is an essay on aesthetics by one of my favourite Japanese writers, it was originally published in 1933, with the English translation coming out in 1977. This is a tiny book of less than fifty pages, containing a foreword  and an afterword, making the essay itself only  forty-two pages long, which means it can be read in one sitting, although that would be defeating the point of it, this should be savoured, this book should be read and re-read, should be immersed in.

 

 

 

Black Rain–Masuji Ibuse

This book started as a serialization in the magazine Shincho (Shinchosha Publishing Co, Ltd) in January 1965. Masuji Ibuse used historical records and the diaries of survivors to reconstruct the experience of the devastation caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Early Sci-Fi, Nihon (にほん) Style .

In the introduction to this anthology John L. Apostolou, gives us a brief history of this genre in Japan, some of which I’ve used here. He the goes on to say that  apart from a few exceptions, before this book it was nigh on impossible to find Japanese Science Fiction, making this anthology most peoples first encounter with Japanese SF.

Also as part of this challenge, I intend to post on the history of post war Japanese poetry, also on Haiku (history & art of), plus a selection of writers that I’ve been compiling, hoarding & gathering in readiness.

Challenges Page.

Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma - Órfhlaith Foyle

 

I’ve been wanting to read this poetry collection for a while now. My interest was originally raised last year after reading her short story collection “Somewhere in Minnesota and Other Stories” . Whilst researching for the post I wrote on that book, I found out  she wrote poetry, this caused me to dig deeper and I found this anthology, but  like a lot of books it went on to my wishlist until finance or some other reason bumps it up & I purchase it. This was my reason….

 I Saw Beckett The Other Day


I saw Beckett the other day
in the doorway of that café
where you took his photograph.


You know the one
...when he looked up at the lens
and realised how he could
haunt us all.

'Hey Beckett,' I said
rejoicing in my discovery of him;
his hand on the door, his eyes
skimming over the interior image
of cigarette smoke and coffee.

I stood beside him. He rubbed his face so
he might recognise me. I smiled and
said even I didn't know what was
happening these days.
Even I could not stop the end.

He nodded, coughed and looked sly; his teeth were
yellow over the pink rim of his lips.
He mentioned the photograph. He said his face
had collected worms under the skin as if ready for
death and he smiled to show them dance
spasmatic with age-spots and veins.

Someone entered the café. Someone left.
Beckett touched the hair above my ear.
I stood on tip-toe so he could whisper down.

He said nothing. It was just a kiss
with the cold wind at our feet and the
smoke and egg friendly air
released in draughts between
the opening and closing of the café door;

which he stepped through to find his table
and entered some other world,
under greasy lights
coupled with table shine and coffee cups,
and thoughts of death, where she stood
groomed for an entrance, were held back by
the odd moments of life
that still strung the useful breaths
Beckett used to blow his coffee cool.

I love the conversational tone of this poem & those lines “You know the one...when he looked up at the lens and realised how he could haunt us all” ,it instantly calls to mind those iconic images of Samuel Beckett, staring off into some distant space, the look part defiant, part fearful, haunted or haunting I'm never quite sure, just that the eyes bore deep, deep into you.

Words said to a Poet just before her/his demise

Poetry is useless.
It only uses words and
they can be rubbed out.
Same way as we
rub you out.
Blank.
You're gone.
Just a vacancy,
not even a breathe left.
But
- if you insist
to exist – in books
well … then …
we can burn you up...
all over again.

Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma, starts with a short poem of the same name, whose opening lines “Should I kill the wolf – or invite him to tea”, reflect (I think) a question running through this collection, we have poems of love & life cheaply spent, of death & of passions strong, here bodies ache, hurt, not in theory, the torment is real, as are the questions left unanswered.

Órfhlaith Foyle was born in Africa (Nigeria) to Irish missionary parents, she has also lived in Kenya and Malawi, and later she lived in Australia, France and Russia, all of this is sustenance for the words, the tales that unfold through her poetry, migrant songs with all the darkness & light that make up human beings and their journeys through and in this life, because at the end of the day, that question running through this collection - is that of mankind's.


orfhlaithfoyle.blogspot.com
Orfhlaith Foyle
Red Riding Hoods Dilemma

Challenges Page.

Traveller of the Century - Andrés Neuman

“A- ARE YO_UU C_COLD? THE coachman shouted, his voice fragmented by the jolting of the coach. I-I’m f-fine, th-ank yo-uu, replied Hans, teeth chattering. The coach lamps flickered as the horses sped along the road. Mud flew up from the wheels. The axles twisted in every pothole, and seemed about to snap. Their cheeks puffing, the horses blew clouds from their nostrils. An opaque moon was rolling above the horizon.
For some time now Wandernburg had been visible in the distance, to the south. And yet, thought Hans, as often happens at the end of an exhausting day, the small city seemed to be moving in step with them,and getting no nearer.”

***************************************

Hans is an adventurer and translator of literature, never staying long in one place, he is on his way to Dessau, but tired he chooses to stop off for the night in the  mysterious city of Wandernburg, fully intent on leaving first thing the next day. Waking late the next morning, he steps out into a city full of the days hustle & bustle,  he decides to explore and wanders aimlessly around the city, occasionally loosing his bearings. The day passes without him realising it  & he misses his coach. Wandernberg  is a strange place with mysterious properties, although it is situated between Berlin & Dessau, it’s precise location is open to interpretation, as it has moved several times  & even the streets are constantly in a state of flux, appearing to have the ability to change not only their compass position, but also the location of the buildings within them. This all combines to ensnare Hans, who ends up staying a lot longer than he had intended.

******************************************

He ends up staying the next night & the next, unable to pursue his intended journey, without real intent he ends up prolonging his stay in this city. This leads to  him encountering & befriending some of the local residents that cross his path, decreasing his motivation to leave. Through one of his new friends, he meets the the beautiful Sophie Gottlieb, an intelligent, well read, poetry loving, independent young woman, whom Hans falls deeply in love with, a perfect match one would think,  except,  there is a fly in the ointment, Sophie is betrothed to another.
Although at the heart of this book is this love affair, it is merely the core around which everything revolves, much of this book takes place in Sophie’s Literary salon & through this medium we hear discussions covering everything from individual freedom to national sovereignty, they debate philosophy, music, they talk about books & censorship, argue about women’s rights & the working class. We follow this relationship as they use language to probe & decipher each other, they meet in his inn room under the cover of translating poetry.


In my interview with Andrés Neuman, he said about this book, “the novel tells a love story between two translators, Sophie and Hans, who can’t stop translating everything: words, gestures, intentions, silences. In the beginning, they don’t know that the other is a translator too, but they connect through their obsessively translating approach to reality. They start to get more intimate, until they settle the routine of locking themselves in a bedroom in order to translate poems and fuck, fuck and translate poems (not a bad plan I think!). And they start to realize how similar can love and translation be. Loving someone implies putting the other person’s words into ours; struggling to completely understand them and (unavoidably) misunderstanding them; founding a common, fragile language. Whereas translating a text implies a deep desire towards it; a need of possessing it and cohabiting with it; and both (translator and translated one) end transformed.”, making this book an exploration of the idea of  “Love as a metaphor of translation, translation as a metaphor of love”

***********************************

“During the four hours they spent alone three times a week, Hans and Sophie alternated between books and bed, bed and books, exploring one another in words and reading one another’s bodies. Thus, inadvertently, they developed a shared language, rewriting what they read, translating one another mutually. The more they worked together, the more similarities they discovered between love and translation, understanding a person and translating a text, retelling a poem in a different language and putting into words what the other was feeling. Both exercises were as happy as they were incomplete – doubts always remained, words that needed changing, missed nuances. They were both aware of the impossibility of achieving transparency as lovers and as translators. Cultural, political, biographical and sexual differences acted as a filter. The more they tried to counter them, the greater the dangers, obstacles, misunderstandings. And yet at the same time the bridges between the languages, between them, became broader and broader.”

What is amazing about this book is that this is just one aspect, I could mention the organ grinder, Han’s first friend & yet regarded by most as an old beggar. Through him Hans learns of the natural world via the discussions held in the cave the man lives in, and in one of those lump in the throat moments  we follow the organ grinder as he fades away & dies despite, Hans doing everything he can to save him, or that there is a sub plot about a sexual predator furtively prowling the streets of Wandernburg, whilst being pursued by a father & son cop team, allowing for some great comic dialogue between the two as they detect & finally catch the culprit.

Attempting to pin down & define all that goes on in this book isn’t easy, as I said in my interview it seems to encompass everything – Do you like Philosophy✓, History✓, Politics✓, Romance✓, Translation✓, Poetry✓, and yet this isn't some dry intellectual exercise, it seethes with passion whether this is the love affair of the  two main protagonists, or the ideas pouring off the pages. In fact it would be harder to find a reader that would not find this a wonderful, fantastic and a totally absorbing read.

Andrés Neuman has written four novels, four short-story collections and several collections of poetry, all published since 1998. Born in Buenos Aires in 1977, his family later emigrated to Granada, where he still lives. this his fourth novel, El viajero del siglo (Traveller of the Century) won Spain's two most prestigious literary awards, the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize.

Andrés Neuman (Official)
Andrés Neuman(Wiki)
Words Without Borders (A.N)

Granta Audio: Andrés Neuman

Pushkin Press
@Pushkin Press
Andrés Neuman at The Parrish Lantern

Challenges Page

The Official Winner of the IFFP

The results for the official Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is in, so a hearty congratulations to Blooms of Darkness, written by Aharon Appelfeld & translated by Jeffrey M. Green. The judges said of this book  “Jeffrey M Green's incantatory translation from the Hebrew does ample justice to a novel that meditates on the imagination, memory and language itself”.





Although it didn’t feature in the shadow jury’s short list, Mark from Eleutherophobia, said that the Writer “has crafted a nice, and somehow soul-enriching novel.” and our chairman, Stu from Winstonsdad said that “Aharon has shown why he considered one of the foremost Hebrew writers”.  So although this wasn’t my personal favourite, or the choice of the shadow jury(Rob,  Mark, Lisa,Tony,  Stu, Simon and myself)), Congratulations to Aharon Appelfeld & Jeffrey M. Green from all the members of the shadow jury & hope you enjoy yourself at the official celebrations this evening.


Here are the shadow jury posts on this the official IFFP 2012 winner.
Mark,  Simon,  Stu, Tony

And here a link to all our posts on the 2012 IFFP .

Thanks to all from Booktrust  and The British Arts Council , for their support and thanks also to Nikesh Shukla for aiding us in this process.




Also once again I want to thank all my fellow Judges for making this such a successful first year for the Shadow IFFP & an additional thanks to Stu for the original invite & if he does it again - I'm in :-)

A Righteous Decision (The IFFP Shadow Winner)

Earlier in the year I was asked by Stu (Winstonsdad), to join him & some likeminded fellow bloggers to form a shadow jury, working alongside the official Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, between us  (Rob,  Mark, Lisa, Tony,  Stu, Simon and myself) we read them all, then racked our brains & each others, debated & argued, slowly deliberating over our selections, before choosing our winner. So our Winner is……………… but first a quick word from our chairman & champion of translated literature in all its guises, Mr Stuart Allen….

***************************

“I want to thank all my fellow Judges for making this such a successful first year for the Shadow IFFP.

We all undertook the journey of judging the 2012 Shadow IFFP eight weeks ago. This journey first took us to Asia - 1980’s Tokyo (or is it?), a mother's disappearance in Seoul, and a chilling look at the AIDS crisis in rural China. Then we read two Hebrew novels: the first set in the present, introducing us to an old man and a village; the other in World War Two, showing us a young Jewish man on the run, hiding in a most unexpected place.

Next, it was off to Germany, and two books dealing with death. In the first, a husband is shocked at discovering his wife’s view of him after her death; in the other a women called Alice has friends and lovers alike die around her. At this point, we relaxed for a while in Hungary, soaking in a little of the country's rich history - and its hidden sexual underground - until deciding to head north to make the acquaintance of an eccentric Icelandic autodidact with an interest in sea creatures and the occult.

We then journeyed further into Scandinavia, meeting a professor stuck in a mid-life crisis, who is witness to a murder, and a roguish leader of a Jewish community in a Second-World-War ghetto, before two Italian novels introduced us to a villain of the top order in 19th-century Europe, and a shipwrecked man with a forgotten heritage. Skipping forward to 1980s Paris, we learned about a group of friends facing the AIDS crisis head on, while a trip back in time courtesy of a Basque writer took us to Colonial Africa and a man heading into an army camp gone rogue.

This journey hasn’t been the easiest for us as judges, as most of the books dealt with death and the darker side of human life. However, they show the wealth of literary talent around the world and the wonderful work modern translators carry out. We as judges have discovered a lot about each other, digesting and discussing the books and slowly trimming our list down to our winner”

Thanks Stu. Well that just leaves me to tell you our choice for the IFFP Shadow Jury Winner. This is a book I described as “a strange and wonderful book & that  it was also harsh, weird, comic and magical” & that I thought the translator “also deserves high praise for her translation from  Icelandic, with  her use of words like “Helpmeet” & “Braggart” making  the book appear grounded in an older form of English, allowing me to get a taste of the period”

Our 2012 Winner is From the Mouth of the Whale, by Sjón & translated  by Victoria Cribb, whose ear for the poetic & yet appropriate word choice made this book a delight. I’ll leave the last word to our  esteemed chairman…

“We all liked - and some of us loved - this book; nobody really had a bad word to say about it. All of us felt entranced by the writing and by Sjón's voice. Through Jonas' eyes, the writer captured 17th-century Iceland so well, and this was helped by Victoria Cribb's translation which, through its usage of archaic vocabulary and grammatical forms, gave it the feel of a book that had just been unearthed, not written. From the Mouth of the Whale is a worthy first winner of the Shadow Independent Foreign Fiction Prize."

For a complete list of Shadow jury Reviews visit Lisa's blog Here  Thanks Lisa.


Also my Hearty Thanks goes to Stu, for the original invite.