The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and his Mother)

Rabih Alameddine

The True, True Story of Raja the Gullible (and his mother) by Rabih Alameddine sweeps through sixty years of Lebanon’s history in the voice of sixty-three-year-old Raja, living in a Beirut apartment with his octogenarian mother, Zalfa. Raja is a popular and highly successful philosophy teacher, well loved by his students. He is also a homosexual, a fact well-known throughout his neighborhood and for which he was mercilessly teased as a young boy.

The novel opens in 2023 but then leaps back in time to the 1960s, leads up to and includes Raja’s experiences as a teenager during the 1975 Lebanese civil war, the banking crisis, the COVID pandemic, the 2021 devastating Beirut port explosion, Raja’s short trip to Virginia, and concludes by taking the reader full circle back to 2023. Alameddine skillfully weaves Lebanon’s turbulent history in the narrative, lending it an air of authenticity. But what makes this novel such an outrageously funny and delicious read is Raja’s engaging voice as he contends with his force-to-be-reckoned-with mother.

Raja is a book lover who enjoys solitude, routine, and quiet walks. All this comes to a screeching halt when his mother moves in with him. Rather than trying to accommodate to her son’s wishes, Zalfa imposes herself into every aspect of her son’s life. She coerces information out of him about his students, has an opinion on every subject, admonishes him, bullies him into submission, tramples on his self-proclaimed boundaries, and insists on and succeeds in getting her way in everything. Their relationship is adversarial. They constantly cuss at each other. Their dialogue is riddled with argumentative banter. But underneath their tempestuous exchanges is the fierce, unequivocal, and unconditional love they have for one another.

Much of the humor of the novel lies in Raja’s interaction with his mother. This humor is compounded when Zalfa befriends Madame Taweel; a wealthy, gangster-type woman who has made a fortune selling generators to Beirut’s beleaguered population. The two women form an inseparable bond. Madame Taweel frequently turns up at Raja’s apartment unannounced with her gun-toting body-guards. The indomitable female duo speak with one voice as they offer Raja unsolicited advice on how to run his life.

The novel unfolds in disparate threads which eventually coalesce into a coherent whole. The unifying thread is Raja’s distinct voice as he leaps in time while peppering his story-embedded-within-a-story narrative with direct addresses to the reader to assure us he is still in control of the disparate threads.

The novel is hilarious, tragic, poignant, moving, and always, always engaging. Ultimately, it is a wildly entertaining and powerful celebration of love in its many guises and manifestations.

A Far Country

Daniel Mason

A Far Country by Daniel Mason is a slow-moving novel in which Isabel, a young girl in a drought-ridden, remote village of an unnamed country, journeys to the city to find her missing brother, Isaias. The novel unfolds from Isabel’s perspective. Only fourteen years old, Isabel navigates the hazardous trip alone, arriving at her cousin’s home in the “settlements.” She is the care-giver of her cousin’s baby during the week while her cousin works as a maid. Eventually, Isabel finds work during the weekends as a flag waver. But all the while, she thinks of finding Isaias.

The novel’s strength lies in its descriptive details. Mason immerses the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of the drought-ridden village. He shows the desperation and hunger of the villagers who resort to eating earth to quell hunger. He depicts Isabel’s journey to the city in palpable detail. And from there he describes the sights, sounds, and smells of the settlement of New Eden, which is little more than a shanty town on the outskirts of the city. Here Isabel is exposed to exploitation, harassment, violent crime, and a different type of poverty.

Although Mason is successful in establishing atmosphere and recording details, the novel has a distinctly allegorical feel. There is an abstract quality to it which extends to the characters, none of whom emerge as fully realized or authentic. Isabel becomes a type, a sort of “everygirl.” She represents the poor, the disenfranchised, the rural populations who leave their villages and are forced to navigate unfamiliar territory in an urban environment that is at once frightening and alien. What potential conflicts or tensions she encounters fizzle out and disappear with no follow-up. She alternates between searching for Isaias or passively waiting for him to appear at the doorstep.

The slow narrative pace, the under developed characters, and the distancing effect of the style are a departure for Mason which makes this not as rewarding a read as his other novels.

The Bone People

Keri Hulme

The Bone People by Keri Hulme, winner of the 1986 Booker Prize, is situated in New Zealand and focuses on three individuals: Kerewin Holmes, a solitary artist who lives in an isolated tower; Simon, a young boy with a mysterious background who doesn’t speak, is prone to fits of violence, and has no sense of personal property; and Joe, Simon’s surrogate father who took Simon in when he washed up on the coast after a shipwreck.

When Simon breaks into Kerewin’s tower in the pouring rain, Kerewin takes him in until a family member picks him up. Through Simon, she meets Joe and the three become intertwined into a slapdash unit. Kerewin values her freedom and refuses Joe’s attempts to draw her into a romantic relationship. Their friendship becomes temporarily strained when Kerewin discovers that Joe’s fierce, protective love for Simon can translate into brutal violence towards the young child. When Joe’s beatings cause severe damage to Simon, social services step in and take the child away. Joe is temporarily incarcerated, and Kerewin destroys her tower and moves away. But the three are reunited at the end of the novel in Kerewin’s remodeled tower.

The narrative is complicated, confusing, and difficult to follow, at times. Hulme peppers her prose with a character’s stream of consciousness and interiority; unannounced jarring shifts in perspective; jagged, half-articulated thoughts; bouts of a drunken slurring of words; and leaps in time and location. Scattered throughout the complex, challenging language are references to Māori myths and legends. The tensions between the colonialists and the struggle of the indigenous people to retain their culture and language is sensitively handled. Characters frequently dot their language with Māori phrases and words. Fortunately, Hulme provides a translation of these in the back pages of the novel.

The novel’s conclusion is somewhat unsatisfactory. The ending reads like a hurried tying of loose ends. Joe experiences some sort of mystical epiphany; Kerewin recovers from a near death experience; and Simon is reunited with the two people he loves. The cause of Simon’s mysterious background and strange behaviors is alluded to but never adequately explained. The mystical elements are confusing and come across as a perfunctory deus ex machina inserted to bring the novel to closure.

The novel grapples with issues of cultural identity and erasure; with trauma and domestic violence; with isolation and abandonment; with the importance of familial bonds and community; and with the search for healing and forgiveness. Some of the thematic impact was diluted because of the nature of the narrative and complexity of its language.

A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth

Daniel Mason

A Registry of my Passage Upon the Earth by Daniel Mason is a collection of nine short stories in which Mason’s talent as a writer of immersive, descriptive prose is on full display. The stories transport the reader to different times and different locations.

The vividly drawn characters in each story are intensely driven. Some are based on historical figures, like Jacob Burke, the pugilist; Alfred Russel Wallace, who shared his theory of evolution with Charles Darwin; and an Egyptian Pharoah who tried to discover the origin of language by experimenting with children. Other characters are fictional—a hot air female balloonist; a mother desperate to relieve her son’s breathing problems in the polluted air of Victorian London; a man who prefers the solitary life in the jungles of Brazil; a doctor suffering from memory lapses at which time a better version of himself appears; and an immigrant who participates in Civil War re-enactments to cultivate a sense of belonging.

Mason injects science, technology, fantasy, and humor in this original and thought-provoking collection packaged in masterful writing. He demonstrates his consummate story-telling skills by immersing the reader in evocative prose and vivid characters. The stories are compelling. Each has a different flavor, but each delves deeply into a character’s interiority to depict the character’s state of mind when confronted with a challenge. And as he has amply demonstrated in this and in his novels, Daniel Mason has a vibrant imagination. His range is both wide and breath-taking.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Maggie O’Farrell

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell alternates location and time frame between colonial India where two sisters, Kitty and Esme, were born and spent their early childhood; 1930s Edinburgh where the sisters grew up under the care of their grandmother, Kitty; and Iris in present-day Edinburgh.

The novel opens with Iris receiving a phone call concerning her great aunt, Euphemia (Esme). It seems the mental institution where Esme has been incarcerated for the last 60 years is closing down. Iris is contacted because she is listed as the next of kin. She is convinced there is a mistake since she had never heard of a great aunt and her grandmother had never mentioned a sister. Nevertheless, Iris decides to visit Esme and ends up taking her home over a weekend until suitable housing can be found for her. Meanwhile, Kitty, Iris’ grandmother, suffers from Alzheimer and exhibits memory lapses. She babbles incoherently about Esme refusing to release a baby.

Intermittent flashbacks peppered with the characters’ interiority reveal Kitty and Esme’s back stories in India and Edinburgh. Kitty, seemingly docile and well-behaved, subscribes to the social and gendered roles assigned to her. She looks forward to finding a suitable mate. Esme, on the other hand, has little patience for social expectations. She likes to read, wants to pursue her education, is outspoken, flaunts conventions, and has no desire for marriage. Unfortunately, that makes her attractive to an unscrupulous young man who violates her. As a consequence, Esme is carted away to the mental institution where she is incarcerated for over 60 years, unvisited and forgotten.

Esme is erect, calm, lucid, and courteous when Iris meets her. She has her wits about her. She discloses snatches of her past to Iris who then pieces together the reason for Esme’s incarceration and why her existence had been kept a secret. When Esme asks to visit her sister, Iris agrees to take her. The final confrontation between the two sisters with its tragic consequences indicates Esme knew all along who had orchestrated her incarceration.

This very powerful novel unfolds slowly as it reveals snapshots of the past through leaps in time and through the characters’ interiority. Iris’ interiority reveals the challenges in her own life and the horror she feels when she learns of Esme’s fate. Kitty’s interiority reveals her to be cruel, vicious, riddled with guilt, consumed with jealousy toward Esme, haunted by her past actions, and harboring a terrible secret. And Esme’s interiority shows the terror of being unjustifiably incarcerated and forgotten for more than 60 years.

The novel addresses the themes of rape, madness, violence, physical and emotional abuse, childhood abuse, hypocrisy, torture, sibling rivalry, Victorian asylums, and patriarchal double standards. It highlights the tragic fate of young girls and women who did not fit neatly into the mold society had assigned for them.

This is not an easy read because of the nature of the topics it addresses. But in the more than capable hands of Maggie O’Farrell, it is well worth the effort and is highly recommended.

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years

Elizabeth Wayland Barber

First published in 1994, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber consists of ground breaking research that traces the role of women and their work with early textiles through 20,000 years of history.

Professor Barber’s painstaking research unearths the invaluable contribution of women’s labor in ancient cultures. Women worked primarily with food and clothing since their childbearing and child-rearing responsibilities required them to work close to home. Because food and clothing are perishable items which leave scant evidence of their existence, women’s work had been rendered virtually invisible.

By shifting her focus, keeping an open mind, and using a different set of lenses to examine the existing evidence, Professor Barber garners a wealth of information about women’s work with textiles from scraps of ancient cloth that survived the centuries—remnants of cloth that had been cavalierly dismissed during early excavations. She combines this exploration with closely examining the surviving tools of spinning and weaving; combing through clues in mythology and literature; deconstructing etymologies; exploring ethnographic studies; delving into documented archaeological discoveries; and contextualizing the location of artefacts. In addition, her research incorporates a hands-on approach. She garners insights by drawing the details of clothing on statues and by painstakingly weaving patterns she had observed in Mycenean frescoes as well as in other ancient sites. She argues clothing served many functions, including as a visual means of communicating the marital status and fertility of women.

The scope and meticulous quality of the research is impressive. Professor Barber does not make unwarranted leaps in conclusion but methodically and systematically allows the evidence to speak for itself. She includes an extensive list of sources and an index.

This scholarly work is highly accessible, informative, and provides a fascinating glimpse into ancient cultures. Above all, it performs the important task of rendering visible women’s invaluable contribution to shaping the warp and weft of civilizations.

Malice

Keigo Higashino; trans. Alexander O. Smith and Elye Alexander

Malice by Keigo Higashino, translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith and Elye Alexander, is a murder mystery with a twist. The murderer reveals he committed the crime very early on in the novel. So rather than trying to figure out who did it, speculation revolves around the motive. This is not a “whodunit” but a “whydunit.”

The novel unfolds through the perspectives of Osamu Nonoguchi, the self-confessed murderer; and Detective Kaga, hot in pursuit of criminal and motive. The victim is Kunihiko Hidaka, a friend and former class-mate of Nonoguchi. Nonoguchi intentionally drops misleading, elaborate clues for the police that point to him as the murderer. His intention is to establish a false motive for committing the crime. He readily confesses to committing the murder when confronted and fuels Detective Kaga’s pursuit of the fabricated motive. But Kaga senses Nonoguchi’s elaborate scheme for supplying a motivation and investigates further. He questions Nonoguchi’s former middle school classmates and unravels the real motive for the crime. He confronts Nonoguchi who doesn’t deny it.

The novel touches on the themes of professional jealousy, malicious behavior, school bullying and its impact. But the characters are flat and uninteresting. And the real motive behind the crime when it is finally revealed is lackluster—more like a whimper than a bang.

The Magician's Wife

Brian Moore

The Magician’s Wife by Brian Moore, a historical novel set in 19th century France and Algeria, is inspired by the true story of the famous French magician and illusionist, Robert Houdin. It unfolds through the perspective of Emmeline Lambert, the wife of Henri Lambert, the character based on Robert Houdin.

Henri and Emmeline are invited to the rural estate of Emperor Napoleon III to solicit their help in advancing France’s interest in colonizing Algeria. Henri is commanded to perform magic tricks in front of the Arab rulers in Algeria to deceive them into believing his power of performing “miracles” comes from God and that God is on the side of the French. The goal is to subdue the Arabs into submission and to delay their inevitable resistance to French colonial rule until Napoleon has had time to amass his army to invade Algeria.

Unlike her husband, Emmeline approaches the whole enterprise with moral skepticism. Her doubts about the moral efficacy of their efforts only increase when she arrives in Algeria and witnesses the profound faith and humility of the indigenous population. Henri has no such qualms. Under the direction of Colonel Deniau, he performs his illusions and convinces his Arab audience he has been given special powers by God. Meanwhile, much to Emmeline’s dismay, the French ridicule the Arabs for their superstitions and gullibility. The French eagerly anticipate the arrival of their forces to colonize the country. Emmeline’s conscience prompts her to reveal the truth about her husband’s trickery to the potential Mahdi, a prominent Muslim cleric, in the hope of empowering him to expose the French plans for conquest.

Moore deftly mingles historical figures with fictitious ones. Emmeline is the focus of the story. She discloses the challenges in her marriage, her boredom with life in the French provinces, and her husband’s unremitting focus on his work. She is initially excited at being the object of Colonel Deniau’s obvious flirtation until she realizes that, like her husband, she is being manipulated. Her epiphany is gradual. She concludes Muslims are more pious than the conquering Christians whom, she claims, pay only lip service to their faith. She regrets the part she and her husband played in facilitating French colonialists’ aim to exploit Algeria’s resources and trade routes.

The settings are skillfully drawn. Through Emmeline’s eyes, we witness the pomposity and affectation of Napoleon’s rural estate. And through her eyes, we are immersed in the sights, sounds, smells, and texture of life in Algeria. The seeds of Emmeline’s anti-imperial sympathies are evident in France and come to fruition in Algeria. Moore’s portrayal of her is convincing. Moore also generates sympathy for her husband who believes in his assigned mission and shows courage by a willingness to risk his life for it.

The Book of Fire

Christy Lefteri

The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri is about a massive fire that burns thousands of acres of a forest and the surrounding homes in a village in rural Greece. The fire was started by a developer wanting to clear a portion of the forest for construction. Because of the drought brought on by climate change, the fire quickly burned out of control, killing some of the villagers and forcing the survivors to spend desperate hours in the ocean waiting for rescue.

The fire and its aftermath is described through the lens of Irini, a music teacher who lives in the village with her husband, Tasso; and their daughter, Chara. The story unfolds in intertwining threads consisting of the day of the fire; Irini’s written account of the disaster in her journal; and her desperate attempts to help her husband and daughter heal from their physical burns and from the psychological trauma they all experienced. To add to her anxiety, Irini encounters the developer responsible for setting her world ablaze. She finds him in the burned-out forest, barely conscious and with a rope around his neck either because of a botched attempt at suicide or due to foul play. Holding him responsible for all her losses, Irini abandons him only to return later to find he has died. Questions linger about his death, which is later deemed a suicide.

Threaded throughout are Irini’s flashbacks of her childhood in London with her parents, her meeting with Tasso and his parents, her marriage and relocation to Greece, and her idyllic life with Tasso and Chara before the fire. Irini includes loving recollections of her father-in-law who doesn’t survive the fire. He had warned that climate change and the ensuing drought would accelerate the speed and scope of forest fires. But his warnings went unheeded. As she desperately tries to hold her traumatized family together, Irini battles feelings of guilt, sadness, and concern over her family.

The novel’s strength lies in the immersive description of the fast-moving fire and the devastation it caused. The novel’s weakness lies in flat characters; stiff dialogue; long, drawn out passages; excessive repetition; and chunks of expository writing that dulled the narrative. At times it seemed as if the novel didn’t move forward but was stuck in a never-ending, repetitive loop.

Lefteri’s attempt to highlight the impact of climate change on the environment and on people’s lives and livelihood is to be commended. Unfortunately, the execution of this important theme is not entirely successful.

The Leopard

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; trans. Archibald Colquhoun

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, translated from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun, is an Italian classic. Set against the backdrop of the unification of Italy, the novel charts the passing of the era when Italy was separate states. Lampedusa embodies the turmoil during the transitional period in his central character, Don Fabrizio Corbera, a Sicilian aristocrat and fictional prince of Salina.

As a member of the old ruling class, Fabrizio adopts a pragmatic attitude towards the inevitable changes that will come with the unification of Italy and the establishment of democracy. But his observations are tinged with melancholy at the death of an era. He is conscious of the fact he is the last member of his family who knows its rich history. He is saddened by the knowledge that with his death, the memories of his ancestors, their traditions, their grandeur, and all they achieved and represented will die with him.

Lampedusa immerses the reader in late 19th century Sicily with its palatial homes and grand balls. In Fabrizio he has created a character who is charming, cultured, intelligent, sensitive, and astute. He looks askance at the changes and the emerging class that will govern the country. Saddened by the changes he perceives but recognizing their inevitability, he encourages his nephew to marry into the bourgeois class even though he is contemptuous of its acquisitive temperament and absence of culture and good taste.

This is a haunting story of loss and the demise of a former way of life, one with biographical elements since this same loss was probably experienced by the author himself. The diction is immersive, rich with detail, and compelling. Fabrizio garners sympathy for his unsettling situation. His interiority reflects his dilemma of being caught at a time of flux between the death of the old and the birth of the new. The past, with its rich traditions and culture, is all he has ever known. And now, he has to step aside to make way for the inexorable forces of change.

Lampedusa’s writing, much like his central character, is elegant, tinged with melancholy, poignant, and compelling. It is heartbreaking to know that Lampedusa was unable to get this major literary accomplishment published during his lifetime, denying him the literary accolades he so well deserved. Fortunately, the novel survived him and was published posthumously.

This elegant, moving novel of a bygone era yields an impact that lingers long after the final page has been read.

Hotel Du Lac

Anita Brookner

Winner of the 1984 Man Booker Prize, Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner is a quiet, meditative, and exquisite novel that packs a powerful punch. It tells the story of Edith Hope, a writer of romance novels. Although only in her thirties, Edith dresses like an older woman with her cardigans and carefully pinned-up hair. She has been told she looks like Virginia Woolf, and she acts the part. She is philosophical, introspective, and observant.

The novel opens with Edith unceremoniously shipped off to a Swiss hotel by her outraged friends. She has been instructed to have a good think about the consequences of her actions. Exactly what Edith has done to deserve this exile is not revealed until later in the novel. She finds herself thrust in a traditional Swiss hotel at the tail end of the tourist season. Initially, she mopes around, struggles to find the words to her next novel, but is positively effusive when writing letters to a mystery man named David—letters which, she later reveals, she never sends.

Through her flashbacks and revelations, we learn David is Edith’s married lover. Quiet, unassuming, mild-mannered Edith has conducted her clandestine affair with such discretion that not even her friends know about the relationship. She recalls how she had waited for David’s phone calls and visits; how she cooked for him, catered to his needs, and watched longingly from the window as he waltzed back to his wife and children. She reveals exactly what she did that caused her to be packed off to Switzerland with marching orders to sort herself out. It seems Edith’s great crime was her refusal to acquiesce to societal expectations by marrying a respectable man who would doubtless be a dull but good provider.

Back at Hotel du Lac, Edith familiarizes herself with the routines of the hotel and with its residents who provide a much-needed distraction. She is befriended by Mrs. Pusey, an over-bearing, self-centered, and affluent elderly woman traveling with her devoted daughter. Other residents include a lithe, elegant young woman with her dog; and Mr. Neville, a meticulously-dressed gentleman in his mid-fifties who proposes a marriage of convenience to Edith with his terms and conditions clearly stipulated.

Edith’s state of mind improves as she begins to appreciate the rhythms of the hotel and its staff. She develops a realistic assessment of the residents, recognizing the vacuous life-style of the Mrs. Puseys of this world. She rejects Neville’s marriage proposal, unwilling to participate in the pretext of a respectable marriage to a seemingly loyal and devoted husband. She accepts that a solitary life, even that of a lonely, mild-mannered English spinster like herself, is not the tragedy her friends make it out to be.

This is a character-driven novel in which little happens. What holds the reader’s attention is the elegant quality of the writing. The rhythm of hotel’s daily routine is captured in precise detail. And through carefully-chosen particulars of clothing, mannerisms, and speech, the characters emerge as well-rounded and realistic. Edith is portrayed as sensitive, intelligent, and introspective. Beneath her quiet, unassuming exterior lies a dogged determination to live life on her own terms.

Oh, William!

Elizabeth Strout

Oh, William! by Elizabeth Strout is a character-driven novel unfolding in the first-person voice of Lucy Barton, a successful novelist in her early sixties. Lucy is still grieving over the recent death of her second husband. She maintains a wonderful relationship with her two married daughters and enjoys a great friendship and connection with her first husband, William.

When William’s third wife leaves him, he turns to Lucy to help him navigate the separation. Through an ancestry research service, he learns he has a half-sister who was abandoned by his mother when she ran away to marry the man who was to become William’s father. He decides to visit Maine where his half-sister lives to see what he can discover about her and about his mother’s background. Lucy agrees to accompany him.

Strout’s characters are vibrant and skillfully drawn in telling details. The true strength of the novel, however, lies in the narrative voice. Lucy’s perspective and interiority is realistically rendered. It reads like an intimate conversation with a close friend. Her voice is plain and sincere; her tone, conversational. She hesitates, repeats herself, flounders to find the right words, and peppers her speech with colloquialisms. She includes anecdotes of her childhood and marriage. She rambles. She announces she doesn’t want to talk about a subject but then talks about it. She drops words like “I guess” or “I suppose” to reflect the tentative nature of her thoughts. She reveals details about her painful childhood, her marriage to William, his infidelities, her decision to leave, and her marriage to her second husband. She shares her insecurities and fears. She explores her childhood trauma and the impact it has had on her past and present adult relationships. She is endearing, compassionate, generous, and with an authentic interiority.  Strout peppers Lucy’s forthright diction with a highly effective use of the word “Oh!” This simple exclamation packs a wealth of meaning depending on the context. It resonates on many levels. At different times, Lucy uses it to reflect frustration, appreciation, gratitude, sympathy, tenderness, and love.

Lucy’s relationship with William is another delightful piece in the novel. Their relationship is built on years of knowing one another’s strengths, weaknesses, and foibles. Their conversational banter and bickering is authentic and believable; their support for one another, genuine. Lucy’s feelings toward William fluctuate. At times, her interiority reflects anger at William’s emotional absence and past indiscretions during their marriage; at others, she experiences overwhelming compassion and tenderness towards him.

The novel explores a variety of topics including the fabric of relationships; why some work and others don’t; the long-term impact of childhood trauma; how trauma can propel the choices we make; and the tricks memory can play on us. This compelling, skillfully executed novel, with an endearing character at its center, invites us to immerse ourselves in her candid and sensitive reflections.

The Orchards of Basra

Mansoura Ez-Eldin; trans. Paul G. Starkey

The Orchards of Basra by Mansoura Ez-Eldin, translated from the Arabic by Paul G. Starkey, was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2021. The narrative shifts between modern Egypt and ancient Iraq and uses multiple narrators.

The novel is in six sections. It opens with Hisham Khattab, an antique bookseller in Cairo. He is enamored of ancient manuscripts, collecting them and selling them for a living. He has a passion for Arabic poetry, theology, and philosophy, and thrives on the words of Islamic scholars some of whom lived over 1,000 years ago. He becomes an assistant to an ex-sheikh who has been demonized by the mainstream religious establishment for espousing Marxism. Hisham has a series of dream visions involving jasmine flowers. These dream visions convince him he lived a former life in 8th century Basra, Iraq, as a man named Yazid Ibn Abihi.

The second section takes us back to fragments in the life of Yazid Ibn Abihi, a basket and mat weaver. He, too, dreams of jasmine flowers and relies on Malik ibn ‘Udday, the copyist, to interpret his dreams. This section includes the various sheikhs Yazid follows and their debates on theological matters. The third section focuses on Layla, Hisham’s mother. Section four introduces us to “Bella” who has a relationship with Hisham. Section five takes us back to Basra and Malik ibn ‘Udday’s affair with Mujiba, Yazid Ibn Abihi’s wife. And with section six, we are back in Cairo with Hisham.

The construction is complicated and can get very confusing. Chapters within each section shift between characters, times, and locations. Threaded throughout the sections are episodes of violence that continue to haunt the perpetrators in the different time frames. Actual historical figures mingle with fictional characters. Hisham’s and Yazid’s lives are so tightly woven together, they become almost inseparable. At times, Hisham is convinced he is strolling along the roads of 8th century Iraq. Such shifts can be jarring for the reader.

Through Hisham/Yazid, Ez-Eldin explores themes and debates in Islamic philosophy, with a special focus on the Mu’tazila school of thought. For those not versed in Islamic debates of over 1,000 years ago, she includes a list at the end of the novel of the historical figures and a brief summary of their positions. This is somewhat helpful but the name-dropping of various religious scholars, their exchanges and theological debates, is bewildering to someone without a rudimentary knowledge of the issues. They bog down the narrative.

The labyrinthine structure serves as a platform for Ez-Eldin to explore questions raised by Muslim scholars for over 1,000 years. The major debate seems to be about whether a Muslim who has committed a sin can still be considered a Muslim. Questions emerge about guilt, sin, morality, predestination, free will, reason, the impact of one’s choices, and justice. The probable intent of this complex novel is to invite the reader to reflect on these thorny issues. Success in accomplishing this goal depends on some prior knowledge of the debate and its major players.

The Winter Soldier

Daniel Mason

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason opens in 1914 when twenty-two-year-old medical student Lucius Krzlewski reports for duty as a doctor at an improvised field hospital in Lemnowice in the Carpathian Mountains in Eastern Europe. His thoughts of a grandiose medical facility shatter when he arrives at this destination. The make-shift hospital is in a converted church; the conditions are appalling; medical equipment is in short supply; and medical staff is reduced to a single nurse, Sister Margarete from the Sisters of St. Catherine. With minimal clinical practice, Lucius is thrust into operating on men with broken limbs, performing amputations, removing shrapnel, healing wounds, and administering medications. Fortunately, Sister Margarete, who has no formal medical training, tutors him. Without being officious or patronizing, she guides him through each procedure until he gains confidence and is able to conduct difficult operations unassisted. Their bond eventually leads to a clandestine love affair.

Lucius and the staff fall into routine periods of lull interrupted by new arrivals of wounded or dying soldiers. Jozsef Horvath, oHHHhhhhhha traumatized patient with no physical injuries, presents a unique challenge since he won’t speak, won’t move, and won’t eat. Lucius administers medication and watches as Horvath begins to make a slow recovery. To Horvath’s detriment, Lucius refuses to release him to a different facility, a decision that proves to have devastating consequences and which continues to haunt Lucius for many years.

As the battle front inches its way toward the field hospital, Lucius and Margarete are separated. He is reassigned to different hospitals but never stops searching for Margarete. He eventually moves back to Vienna, and after a brief, unsatisfactory marriage, renews his search for Margarete. He eventually finds her but under entirely unexpected circumstances.

The novel focuses on the effects of war, not on its battles and skirmishes. Its unwavering lens is on the casualties of war and on the medical staff who are tasked with healing them. Mason immerses the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of the field hospital. He describes broken limbs, amputations, head injuries, lice infestations, typhus, and various other afflictions in gruesome, graphic detail.

The characters are well-drawn and believable. Margarete remains a fascinating enigma. Lucius is shy, self-effacing, prone to self-doubts, and with an authentic interiority. He struggles with the aftermath of war, with his guilt for the damage caused to Horvath, with his meandering search for Margarete, and with questions concerning her true identity.

The novel concludes on a hopeful note. Although her background remains a mystery, Margarete plays a pivotal role in Lucius’ healing. Just as she taught him to perform amputations and heal wounded limbs, she offers him a path to relinquish his feelings of guilt and to redeem himself from the horrors of war.

A skillfully executed intense, compelling narrative.

Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei

Eliot Weinberger

Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger is a delightful little book critiquing translations of a Chinese poem written over 1200 years ago by the Tang Dynasty poet, Wang Wei. One would assume such an exploration would be dry, but it is anything but dry in the capable hands of Eliot Weinberger.

The poem under consideration is only four lines long. Weinberger deconstructs nineteen different translations, including one by Octavio Paz. He comments on each, highlighting strengths and weaknesses. An Afterward by Octavio Paz articulates his methodology for translating the poem. Weinberger follows this with several additional translations and a Postscript.

Weinberger does not shy away from lambasting the translations if he thinks they are injecting the translator’s biases, deviating from the original, being illogical in use of imagery, imposing an unwarranted cultural lens, or attempting to “improve” the poem. His critiques can be quite scathing but also very funny. For example, he says of one translation, “To me this sounds like Gerard Manley Hopkins on LSD.”

What Weinberger achieves—and achieves so well in such a short book—is to elucidate the challenges of translation. He argues multiple factors must be taken into consideration when translating, and the right words must be chosen if the aim is to adhere faithfully to the original work. Often a single word or a shift in perspective can transform the theme and tone of the poem.

Weinberger’s commentary is insightful. He comes across as a bit of a curmudgeon but one with a great sense of humor. Even if one knows nothing about Chinese poetry, this little book is an absolute gem for articulating the challenges of translating a poem.

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry

Fredrik Backman

My Grandmother Asked me to Tell you She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman, translated by Henning Koch, is the story of a precocious seven-year-old Elsa and her delightful relationship with her best friend—her cantankerous, incorrigible seventy-year-old grandmother. The roles are reversed in the relationship with Elsa talking and behaving well above her age while her grandmother flaunts social conventions and is prone to playing childish pranks.

The two communicate in a secret language and share a love for the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the kingdom of Miamas, an elaborately constructed fairy tale land peopled with magical creatures and heroes and monsters. The grandmother shares this fantasy land with Elsa to teach her the skills she needs to cope with her parents’ divorce, her mother’s remarriage and pregnancy, and the bullies who torment her in school. They journey together to this land of make-believe every night with her grandmother adding layers and detail to the story with each telling.

 When her grandmother dies, Elsa feels angry, abandoned, and betrayed. But she is soon taken up with a treasure hunt left for her by her grandmother. She is tasked with locating and delivering her grandmother’s letters of apology to the group of misfits who live in their apartment building. Elsa learns the backstory of the individual with each letter she delivers. And she soon realizes that her grandmother’s Land-of-Almost-Awake is based on the characters and backstories of the apartment dwellers and that each connects to her grandmother in some way.

The third person narrative voice is entertaining when presenting Elsa’s perspective and comments. But the exposition of the interlocking mythologies of the Land-of-Almost-Awake with its several kingdoms and complex rules is unnecessarily elaborate and confusing. It detracts from the narrative. And the correspondences between the events and characters in the Land-of-Almost-Awake with the group of misfits doesn’t always work. The fantasy tales take on a life of their own and do not fit into the narrative organically. The effect is of a strained connection. With the exception of Elsa and her grandmother, character development is weak, with some of the portrayals bordering on caricatures.

Certain aspects of the novel are entertaining, but, on the whole, this is the not up to the quality of Backman’s other novels.

Brotherless Night

V. V. Ganeshananthan

Winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan is historical fiction set against the background of the Tamil’s fight for autonomy during the 1980s Sri Lanka civil war. The novel is in five parts, beginning in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in 1981, and concluding in New York in 2009. Although the novel is fictional, it builds on actual events that transpired during the civil war.

The narrator is Sashi, a young Tamil girl with aspirations of becoming a doctor. She lives in Jaffna with her parents and four brothers. As the conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated state and the Tamil separatist groups heats up, Sashi’s eldest brother is killed in anti-Tamil riots. Two of her remaining brothers join the militant Tamil Tigers, leaving Sashi and her youngest brother alone with their parents. The war becomes increasingly violent with both sides perpetrating atrocities and with civilians caught in the crossfire. It isn’t long before the Tamil Tigers kill members of other rebel groups to eliminate all potential opposition to their dominance. Civilians are accosted from all sides. They live in fear of the Sri Lankan army, the Tamil Tigers, and, later, the Indian Peace Keeping force which has ostensibly entered the fray to maintain peace between the two sides but which ends up terrorizing the population by committing rape and murder at will.

Sashi’s determination to pursue her medical education is unwavering. She navigates a path in her war-torn community. She juggles her studies with volunteering at a medical facility that treats civilians and rebels. She teams with a medical professor and her husband to document human rights violations perpetrated by the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan army, and the Indian peacekeepers. After her professor is murdered, Sashi escapes to England and then to New York where she continues to advocate for justice for the civilian population.

The novel is well-researched, drawing heavily from actual events and representing a powerful illustration of man’s inhumanity to man. The brutality and violence perpetrated by all sides is graphic and described with unflinching honesty. All too often, a group formed to advocate justice for its ethnic population turns against that very population by intimidating and terrorizing it into submission. In such situations, as Sashi demonstrates, the space for movement and for freedom of thought and action shrinks immeasurably. Moral certainties are questioned; moral ambiguities proliferate; conflicting impulses abound. One does the best that one can under the circumstances by handling daily struggles one step at a time.

Sashi’s voice is deliberative. At times, her interiority can be long-winded, repetitious, and somewhat self-indulgent. She frequently pauses from the narrative to address the reader directly to invite empathy and consideration. The prose is unadorned and somewhat labored. In spite of these shortcomings, the novel powerfully evokes the deleterious impact of civil war on all concerned, particularly civilians. It explores how and why individuals are sucked into a conflict. And it does so with simultaneous outrage, empathy, and compassion.

Lampedusa

Steven Price

Lampedusa by Steven Price is a fictionalized biography of Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, a Sicilian aristocrat, the last in his family line, and the author of The Leopard, a novel published posthumously and one which became a classic in Italy. Tomasi died from complications of emphysema and lung cancer at the age of 60.

Price conducted extensive research on Tomasi’s life and on the last few years before his death. He portrays him as endearing, cultured, sensitive, and intelligent. Tomasi is a man plagued with anxiety because he is the last in a line of noble aristocrats. Childless, he frets he has no legacy to leave behind, and that with his death, the family line will end. The novel opens with him learning he has emphysema and may not have long to live. He decides to write a novel based on the life of his great-grandfather in the hope of recording the past for posterity. The novel is rejected by publishers during his life time, so Tomasi never witnesses its success.

Price peppers his novel with Tomasi’s memories of his lonely childhood, the solace he finds in books, his military service in World War I, his time in a prisoner of war camp, his meeting and later marriage with the love of his life. Threaded throughout are snapshots of Tomasi’s mother who cast a powerful presence during his childhood and continues to do so even ten years after her death. As Tomasi writes his novel, he makes continuous excursions down memory lane. He visits the once magnificent but now crumbling palazzo where he spent his childhood. And he visits several locations that were a big part of his formative years.

Tomasi’s interiority is deeply moving. He is sensitive, cultured, intelligent, introspective, and deeply emotional. His observations on Italy as it transitions from post war to new beginnings are astute and tinged with melancholy. He grapples with existential questions of the meaning of life and the legacy one leaves behind if there is no one to carry on the family name. He grieves knowing that when he is dead and buried, the past will be buried with him. And he contemplates the connections between his life and his art, on how much of his life is projected on to his novel, and whether his novel constitutes a significant legacy.

Very little happens in the novel. It is quiet; the pace, slow; the diction, lyrical; the tone, nostalgic. Price captures the heart and soul of an aging, gentle man trying to come to terms with his impending death and with the decline of a way of life he once knew. The novel’s strength lies in Price’s poetic language and his ability to capture Tomasi’s interiority with sensitivity and compassion to reflect his feelings of loss of family, class, and culture.

The novel is a moving retrospective of a life, a powerful meditation on aging, a reflection on one’s past failures and successes, a consideration of how one wants to be remembered, and an assessment of what one leaves behind. It is a powerful portrayal of a complex, sensitive man with a mournful and beautiful spirit.

The Piano Tuner

Daniel Mason

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason blends historical fact with fiction while carrying distinct echoes of the Lotus-Eaters’ passage in Homer’s Odyssey and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as backdrops. The novel opens in 1886 when Edgar Drake, a quiet, modest piano tuner is summoned by the War Office with a strange request. Would he be willing to comply with the request of an eccentric English surgeon-major called Dr. Anthony Carroll?

Edgar Drake is baffled by the request. He listens as the colonel explains how Carroll’s unorthodox methods to build alliances through music have met with success, making him indispensable to the British colonization of Burma. Accordingly, the government is compelled to honor his requests no matter how bizarre. His initial request for an Erard piano was granted. But now it seems as if the piano is in need of the services of an experienced piano tuner. The question before Edgar Drake is this: “Are you willing to make the journey to a remote outpost in Burma to tune an Erard piano?” This quiet, unassuming piano tuner who knows virtually nothing about Burma, or its current political turmoil, or the imperial powers fighting for control of it, nods his head in agreement. And so the adventure begins.

Drake’s lengthy journey to Mae Lwin, the remote outpost in Burma, is described in an explosion of sensory detail and vivid imagery. Along the way, he acquaints himself with the complexities of Burma’s history and current political climate by reading War Office documents. This gives Daniel Mason, who spent a year studying malaria along the Thai-Burmese border, the opportunity to provide a detailed history of the region and the Shan insurgency opposing British rule.

Drake eventually arrives in Mae Lwin and meets the infamous Dr. Anthony Carroll who impresses him with his knowledge of indigenous customs and traditions, respect for the indigenous population, and extensive knowledge of the local flora and fauna. Drake tunes the Erard piano but is in no hurry to return home. He becomes increasingly embroiled in Carroll’s political machinations, eventually departing from Mae Lwin with the piano when the village is under threat of an imminent attack. The novel concludes with an ambiguous ending which calls into suspicion Carroll’s activities and Drake’s unwitting and tragic involvement.

The novel’s strength lies in its detailed, sensuous description and vivid imagery of the landscape and culture. The colors, sights, sounds, and smells are immersive. The villagers’ daily activities and the children’s games and laughter are captured in vibrant detail. The technical details of piano tuning are impressive. Edgar Drake emerges as a well-rounded character, simultaneously baffled, enchanted, and seduced by the environment and by his attraction to the beautiful, Khin Myo, Carroll’s mistress. Khin Myo and Anthony Carroll are not as well developed. She is exoticized. He remains elusive; his activities, a mystery. Perhaps this was intentional on Mason’s part. However, coupled with the ambiguity of the ending, the novel falls short of delivering a sense of closure, which may not appeal to some readers.

After You'd Gone

Maggie O’Farrell

Although After You’d Gone is Maggie O’Farrell’s first novel, she already shows promise of her wide-ranging talents as a writer. The novel’s ambitious structure consists of multiple timeframes, multiple threads, and the perspectives of three generations of women: Alice, her mother, and her grandmother. The main thread is about Alice.

The novel opens with Alice impulsively deciding to visit her family in Scotland. She is obviously in a great deal of emotional and psychological pain although we are not told the cause. Her two sisters meet her at the Edinburgh train station. Alice barely has time to greet her sisters when she sees something shocking. She immediately decides to catch the train back to her home in London, without explaining why to her sisters. That night, suffering from depression and intense grief, she intentionally steps off the sidewalk and is hit by a car. She ends up in a coma in hospital where she remains for most of the novel.

The novel then flashes back to Alice as a child and her fraught relationship with her mother; her university days; her employment in London at a national arts organization; her marriage to the love of her life; and her intense grief following her husband’s untimely death. Interspersed throughout Alice’s thread is the backstory of Elspeth, Alice’s grandmother; and Ann, her mother.

The novel’s shifts in perspective and spontaneous leaps in time which mingle the past with the present can be a confusing at the outset until one gets into the rhythm of the novel. The flashbacks are presented as interlocking vignettes, shedding light on the three generations of women and their back stories. The main thread is on Alice’s fraught childhood, her tense relationship with her mother, and her relationships with men. Unlike her Scottish grandmother who is methodical and calm; and unlike her English mother who is cold and dogmatic; Alice is emotional, moody, unconventional, and impetuous.

All the characters, including the minor ones, are authentically drawn. O’Farrell is an astute observer of minute details. She frequently juxtaposes a minor detail with a character’s climactic moment. She captures her character’s interiority, mannerisms, and the incidentals that distract attention, all of which contribute to a realistic portrayal. Her depiction of Alice’s despair and grief after the death of her husband is heart-wrenching.

The complex, interlocking structure gradually uncovers the lives of the three women, revealing secrets and illicit love affairs. But the beating heart of the novel lies with Alice, her boundless capacity for love, and her equally boundless capacity for experiencing grief at its loss.

Another great Maggie O’Farrell novel.