The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

I've had mixed experiences reading Tokarczuk's work in the past. I didn't get on with “Flights” but loved “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”. So I was curious to see what I'd make of “The Empusium”, especially just after reading “The Magic Mountain” as the bones of this story heavily inspired Tokarczuk's novel. This follows 24 year-old Mieczysław Wojnicz who is suffering from TB and another initially mysterious condition as he journeys to a “health resort” in the Silesian mountain range. There he encounters a number of highly opinionated men who take him on rambles through the countryside, drink a hallucinogenic alcohol named Schwärmerei and engage in conversations on a range of topics from politics to religion to the nature of reality, but most of these discussions devolve into horrifically misogynistic statements. The narrative follows Wojnicz's increasingly unsettling experiences as rumours of ritual killings in the forest and witches abound alongside persistent unsettling noises around the property. However, we also get frequent memories from Wojnicz's past as he lived under his imposing father (who is also a massive misogynist.) The story leads to a scene of intense crisis and an opportunity for new possibilities for Wojnicz.

The title of the book comes from Empusa or Empousa (who was a shape-shifting female from Greek mythology who seduced and fed on young men) but the name is combined with the word symposium. I enjoyed the chilling atmosphere of this novel where we're almost immediately presented with a body on a dining table! Threats abound from devils, the town's working class, women and even the landscape (according to his friend Thilo.) There's the question of who Wojnicz should really trust – the doctors, the gentlemen residents, terminally-ill Thilo with his cryptic warnings, the local women or the strange noises/voices that surround him. There's some gore especially surrounding food (there's a duck soup scene which is utterly stomach-churning) and the novel considers the cruelty towards/consumption of animals which is strongly reminiscent of Tokarczuk's “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”. One of the most unsettling images are some creepy dolls (tuntschi) which are made from natural material by locals and used for sex before being left in the forest. Though the novel is subtitled as a “horror story” it's not so much about nail-biting terror, but it's fairly effective at creating a persistent eerie sensation.

It gradually becomes clear that the true horror comes from prevailing attitudes and systems of thought concerning a hatred towards women. Not only that but Wojnicz is frequently under pressure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity. I grew up in rural Maine where I was forced to spend time amongst groups of men on camping and hunting trips. Though they weren't outwardly misogynistic there was pressure to fit into this high-testosterone atmosphere, rise to physical challenges and submit to men's need to be “right” in whatever argument they were making (whether I agreed with them or not.) So I definitely felt for the pressures Wojnicz experienced among such men.

Interestingly, the narrative switches between a past-tense 3rd person following Wojnicz and a collective first person account in the present from some undefined entities (labelled in the opening cast list of the novel as “Nameless inhabitants of the walls, floors and ceilings”.) I liked how this later narrative voice added to the creepiness of the story as it felt like I was travelling amongst ghosts, spirits, nature or some other unknown entity. It adds to the sense that although misogynistic men control the social order of this location there's a perspective outside of this judging, undermining and wryly commenting on the proceedings. But it was also such a curious way of shifting focus from the larger action to the micro: the chinks between the slate roof tiles, droplets of water, clumps of grass, etc. To me this felt very cinematic like in David Lynch's Blue Velvet where the view of a seemingly idyllic neighbourhood narrows down to creepy undergrowth.

The novel’s story has a superficial relationship to Thomas Mann's “The Magic Mountain” with its hero newly arrived at a sanatorium, plot structure centred around conversations between gentlemen and setting prior to WWI. Tokarczuk has commented that she rereads Mann's novel every few years so it's in some ways a homage and in some ways a corrective or, as she describes, a way of “sparring” with that classic. Having just read Mann's novel, I was immensely relieved that the diatribes from different gentlemen were greatly condensed since there were so many long essayistic chapters in “The Magic Mountain”. Nevertheless, there was a meandering sense which remained in Tokarczuk's story which meant the plot felt a little lethargic in places: another day, another stroll that descends into misogynistic nonsense. However, I enjoyed how Tokarczuk explored issues surrounding Polish nationality/independence and a new take on time/space by considering both a 2 and 4 dimensional reality. I also liked that Tokarczuk reproduced the odd homoerotic imagery of pencils being stroked in adolescence which was also in Mann's novel. There are several other parallels in imagery/ideas between the two books. I certainly don't feel it was necessary to have read “The Magic Mountain” as Tokarczuk's text doesn't play off from that original in the same way that the recent novel “James” worked in parallel to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, but I'm still glad I read Mann's book because it is its own strange beast.

There's a surprising twist in the story and the final sections of the novel are quite thrilling. These reinforce Tokarczuk's message that reality doesn't exist in simple absolutes but in different perceptions and in-between spaces. Overall I think this was a fascinating and through-provoking read. Though I definitely wouldn't want to harken back to this time of more rudimentary medicine/treatment I did like the idea of champagne being prescribed as a cure. There are certain odd images which will stick with me such as a toad sitting on a pile of potatoes. Though the finale is gripping I felt it played out a little too quickly with the narrative summing up afterwards for all the characters. In this case I kind of preferred how Mann concluded his novel in a way which was haunting and ominous regarding the advent of WWI. The really bracing thing to me was the author's afterward where she states how the misogynistic views expressed by her characters were paraphrased from texts by some of the foremost Western thinkers/writers from the past including Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Shakespeare, Yeats, etc. It shines a light on how the core of our culture is threaded through with misogynistic ideas and thus calls into question our very foundations.

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel (translated by Rosalind Harvey)

I enjoyed taking my time reading this thoughtful and emotional novel while on a long train journey through the Alps. Although “Still Born” primarily alternates between the stories of two women's lives as they grapple with the question of parenting, it gradually expands to become a nuanced exploration of mothering amongst a number of other characters as well. At the centre are Alina and Laura who are in their 30s. When Alina and her husband decide to do whatever it takes to have a child, her longtime friend Laura is initially confused because they'd previously resolved not to have children. So much so that Laura had herself sterilized. But when she hears her neighbour's troubled child Nico having severe outbursts through the walls of her apartment she becomes increasingly involved in his and his single mother's lives. Though it meditates a lot on parenting, the novel also dynamically addresses issues to do with female friendship, careers and relationships – as well as feminism, sexuality, economic disparity and political unrest.

I think it was partly an effect of lockdown and the timing of when my neighbours had two young children but that long period at home made me hyper aware of the struggle of parenting – just like Laura experiences. I've heard fights and long extended tantrums through the walls I share with my neighbours. Reading this novel I felt slightly guilty because I don't have Laura's altruistic impulse to help care for these children though the mother and child in this story are clearly in much more desperate need. There's the tricky thing of not respecting a neighbour's privacy and what's the line between showing concern and being an imposition. These dilemmas are definitely dealt with in Laura's story too. It's really meaningful how the novel approaches this issue and asks whose responsibility it is to take on parenting roles. Is it all down to the parents or extended family and friends or anyone who witnesses children in need of caring? What happens when the bond between parent and child is transferred to another party and powerful emotional connections are formed?

The story explores this through the involvement Laura takes in Nico's development, but also pigeons which nest on her balcony and a nanny who becomes instrumental in caring for a extremely ill infant. I found it really moving how the story gradually builds the meaning of what it is to be a parent and how this is more expansive and porous than our traditional ideas about this role. It also shows how parenting changes over a long period of time with the way Laura's relationship to her mother transforms. An adult child's relationship to their mother or father is very different from how it was when they were younger and it's touching how the story traces the way mother and daughter come to understand each other as fully rounded individuals – rather than only as parent and child.

Another thing I loved about this novel and it's almost eerie when this occurs, but Laura is reading a novel I just recently read and loved which is “Solenoid” by Romanian writer Mircea Cartarescu. I read this several weeks ago, partly because I figured it had a good chance of being listed for this year's International Booker Prize, but then I realised it wasn't actually eligible and I kept on reading its many hundreds of pages anyway because this novel is absolutely brilliant and fascinating and wild. However, what are the chances? Out of all the books that could be referenced in this novel it's one I also read recently and have been thinking a lot about. So whenever this happens in a book I'm reading it feels like a wonder synchronicity is happening or a dialogue between books in a way which makes reading feel like a larger conversation.

There is also Alina's side of the tale. When she finally does become pregnant there are severe complications. I don't want to give any spoilers if you've not yet read this book, but don't let the title of the novel make you think you know what's going to happen. It is heartrending following her and her husband's journey as they go through this process. And it contrasts in such an interesting way with Laura's experiences where the role of being a parent becomes something Alina desires so much while also not wanting it. This tension must be something all parents feel no matter the health and welfare of their child, but definitely if a child's development is impeded by such difficult restrictions. It's so so moving how her side of the story plays out. But it's also interesting because the author chose to narrate Alina's story in the third person but Laura's sections are all in the first person. I know some readers have expressed how this division didn't work so well for them. I did feel it was clunky at some points because the sections about Alina seem to be from Laura's perspective but then they go into such detail that even though these friends are very close it seemed like there are scenes and dialogue which Laura couldn't know. And this created an unnecessary level of confusion in the narrative. But I can see why Nettle chose to relate the story in this way and it creates another contrast between a deeply interior account and viewing the experiences of someone going through the challenging process of parenting from the outside.

Overall, I think “Still Born” is excellent. Though it raises a lot of meaningful and eternally pertinent questions it's also a gripping story. As it went on I became increasingly tense and I couldn't stop reading. It's the first book I've read by her but it's Nettel's fourth novel and I believe her previous books have been translated into English as well so I'm looking forward to exploring those. I can see why it's the most highly rated novel from the International Booker Prize longlist according to GoodReads as I discussed in a video I made recently comparing all the books' star ratings. It is also on the official International Booker shortlist. It'll be exciting to see if it wins, but regardless I'm so glad to have read this novel which is written in such an engaging style while dealing with parenting issues from a beautifully humane and new angle.

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier (translated by Daniel Levin Becker)

It's been a while since a novel has kept me up reading late into the night because I need to finish it and find out what happens. “The Birthday Party” could definitely be categorized as a thriller because its sense of danger and tension gradually escalates over the course of the book until it reaches a feverish pitch. However, it's structured in an interesting way with elaborate detail and intricate sentences which fully account for the multitude of thoughts, memories and impressions of I ts central characters. This creates a unique in-depth understanding of their points of view. The story is set in a hamlet in the French countryside where Patrice prepares for his wife Marion's 40th birthday party. Their daughter Ida draws pictures to give to her as a present and she's guided by their older neighbour Christine who is a slightly eccentric artist. Although this setting seems peaceful and idyllic ominous uncertainties linger especially as Christine receives anonymous threatening letters and the party which is about to kick off is crashed by sinister uninvited guests. What follows is a slow-building tale which teasingly reveals the motives and secrets of these characters. The tightly wound plot cautiously unravels until the truth is laid mercilessly bare.

This is a novel which requires some patience at first because its pace initially appears so languid. But it becomes increasingly compelling as all the elements which consume the moment to moment lives of these characters reveal how people are overwhelmingly preoccupied by thoughts of the past and projections of the future. At least, this is the case until something disrupts the self-designated line on which they walk through the world. Then they become firmly rooted in the present. The author describes this in the novel as “the surprise giving way to a mute shock so strong that all reality finally dissolves into a sensation of brutal hyperrealism”. Through the domestic drama and tense stand off in this story Mauvignier poignantly shows the perilous uncertainties of life. These persist no matter how firmly people believe in the narratives they write for themselves and it reveals the intense clash which occurs when these narratives are disrupted. The precariousness of self invention is reflected in Christine's method of painting: “you can layer over your life to call it into being, superimpose coats of realities, different lives so that at last only one is visible, nourished by the previous ones and surpassing all of them”. The conflict which occurs between these characters reveals how their sense of being is violently torn apart when it infringes upon the liberty of others. In particular, it exposes how a certain type of hyper-masculine sensibility is remorseless in its determination to dominate and control.

It's clever how the author builds a sense of mystery surrounding his characters and their motives. Many times when I began to feel weary of the convoluted tangle of this situation, I'd be drawn back in wondering what's really going on here and what's going to happen next. Mauvignier certainly keeps the reader guessing and I can see how some might feel information is being artificially withheld for the sake of suspense. But I think as well as building a sense of tension the author is reflecting the reality of daily existence and our relationship with time. In fact, life begins to feel like its composed of blocks of time which are moveable pieces. The present is often overlaid by a future which might never materialize and frequently it doesn't as events mean the characters' plans must be rewritten. The novel is paced to reflect this where experiences move quite slowly until lots of surprising things suddenly happen all at once. At one point Mauvignier adopts a cinematic language to describe how: “Now what happens goes very quickly, and it's as though only a very long slow-motion shot can make it visible.” Action sequences are notoriously difficult to present in novels but I think this story masterfully conveys events which occur quickly. Rather than trying to imitate the visual impact of film, Mauvignier shows in his text how cinema reflects the heart-stopping moment when something calamitous occurs in an instant. It takes a certain style of presentation to show how this decisive moment will change things forever.

This novel could be read simply for its suspense though I can understand why some readers' patience is tested. However, I think its overriding message makes more of an impact than any generic potboiler and this is because of the distinctive style Mauvignier uses to relate this story. It's like Virginia Woolf meets Patricia Highsmith. Though the setting is provincial and it presents only a tiny community it speaks to some of the current concerns of the wider world. It reveals the dangers of group mentalities and an incel-type misogynistic frame of mind. Also, about halfway through the book I felt completely hooked and knew I had to finish it even if it meant I would lose some sleep.

Paradais by Fernanda Melchor (translated by Sophie Hughes)

The luxury housing complex at the centre of this novel is called Paradise, but groundskeeper Polo has trouble pronouncing this English word so his employer orders him to say it phonetically as “Paradais”. Polo is trapped in this dead end job where he's ordered to perform menial tasks for rich people. He's paid little and what money he does make goes directly to his overbearing mother who makes him sleep on a palate on the floor. Polo's cousin lives with them and she may be pregnant with his baby. Outside of work he spends time getting drunk with one of the older boys who lives in the complex named Franco, but Polo refers to him disparagingly as “fatboy”. He's disgusted by Franco but the boy steals quality alcohol or small sums of money for Polo to buy them booze. The sour dynamic of this friendship of convenience is so vividly conveyed as the boys waste their time together and hatch an evil plan. Franco has failed socially and academically so will probably be sent to a military school. He becomes obsessed with his masturbatory fantasies about his female neighbour who is a mother. So they decide to break into the neighbour's home so Franco can force her to have sex with him and they can rob the property. These are young men who feel they have nothing to lose which makes them incredibly dangerous.

As with Melchor's novel “Hurricane Season” there is a hypnotic intensity to her prose which spills out in an almost stream of consciousness style. We're bombarded by Polo's sensory experience of the world and his emotional interpretation of it. All the while we deeply feel his growing resentment for the callous wealthy residents of this complex and anger about his limited options in life. This takes the form of long blocks of text and extended sentences. It's a narrative structure which is entirely suited to conveying Polo's point of view and made me feel trapped in it just as he feels ensnared by his circumstances. In this way it feels somewhat similar to Damon Galgut's technique in “The Promise” because while being locked into the perspective of this character the reader is also implicated in his misogyny, bitterness and fury. While this can't exactly be called a pleasant experience it is so effective in conveying his worldview, his warped reasoning and his motivations. It made me feel empathy for him as he essentially doesn't seem like a bad person. He's just overwhelmingly frustrated by his economic and social position in life. He's also been raised to embody a pernicious form of masculinity. At the same time, I'm repulsed by his attitude and decisions. It's an effective way of completely drawing me into this menacing character's life.

I also don't entirely trust Polo's perspective as he frequently refers to most of the women around him as horny sluts so I question whether his interpretation of events and people are entirely accurate. Polo can clearly see that Franco's neighbour would never be sexually interested in Franco, but Franco is convinced that she really does want him. Similarly, Polo is certain his cousin is constantly flirting with him and tricking him into having sex with her so I'm cautious about accepting whether this is actually the case. It brings an interesting level of ambivalence to this narrative which is saturated with a misogynistic attitude. Interestingly, there is also an intimidating female figure in the story whose power resides in her absence. This is a notorious long-dead tyrannical Countess rumoured to haunt her dilapidated mansion which Polo must fearfully pass by on his way to the luxury housing complex. Just as in “Hurricane Season” the only way women can escape this masculine-driven community is to become a menacing almost mythological figure. I appreciated how Melchor incorporates the imagined spectre of the Countess' presence into the narrative as a counterpoint to these hyper-masculine points of view.

For such a short novel, “Paradais” makes a big impact and leaves a lasting impression.

Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti (translated by Elizabeth Harris)

Claudia, the narrator of “Strangers I Know”, begins her story by describing her unusual situation as the daughter of deaf parents who've never taught her sign language. They can speak to each other because her parents read lips, but they still establish a very unique form of communication as Claudia invents imperfect hand gestures to convey what she wants to say. Her parents aren't necessarily trustworthy as they tell her contradictory stories about how they met. Nor can she rely upon them for stable parenting because of their erratic behaviour and tendency to leave: “I missed my mother when she disappeared, but she was a nebula and my father, the blackest of galaxies that neutralized any theoretical physics: my brother was the first matter I could gather around.” Claudia's sense of national identity is also divided as she grows up amongst relatives in both America and Italy. From this perspective we see how Claudia has a special relationship to history, truth, language and the ways in which experience is codified. This curious novel is part coming of age tale and part essay collection as we see her life and ideas filtered through her unique position. 

In a way I wish the novel had continued in a similar vein to the first half of the book which is primarily concerned with describing the narrator's parents and extended family both in New York City and a small village in Southern Italy. The details and description of their habits are intriguing and playful, but a fully rounded understanding of their lives gets lost as the narrator goes on to analyse their circumstances and conveys her theories about various subjects. Though the book progresses largely in chronological order it becomes increasingly fragmented with ideas trailing off into metaphors and logic that trips over the narrator's limited knowledge. While a lot of fiction is “autobiographically inspired” there seems little point to the confusing blur here between narrator as author and Claudia as a character. The structure of the book seems to reflect the narrator's assertion that “The story of a family is more like a map than a novel, and an autobiography is the summation of all the geologic ages you've passed through.” However, this way of presenting Claudia's experiences left me with a very patchy understanding of her life as a whole and interesting concepts get quickly dropped before they can be fully explored.

Certain impressions from this book have stuck with me such as the way Claudia develops a love of reading when she moves to Italy and also begins to lie about how much she's read. It's compelling how she expresses the disconnect she feels between her sense of place and the actual experience of living there. There are also several emotionally charged descriptions which are memorable including her sense of alienation from the other children at her school: “I was still an island at my desk in the middle of the room, with stagnant water all around.” But these aspects of the book don't add up to a very satisfying picture of her life because so many details are used as reference points to larger ideas the narrator expounds upon rather than telling a more complete story. Later scenes in the book such as time living in London, a conflict with her first employer and a friend who suffers from drug addiction pass too fleetingly and allude to situations more complex than the author allows space for. While I admire fiction that resists sticking to the conventions of genre, I feel like the structure Durastanti has created for this book mostly amounts to a series of interesting suggestions rather than forming a fully realised and completely satisfying picture. 

Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux (translated by Tanya Leslie)

Every year there is excited debate about what author will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and this year one of the top contenders that readers were speculating about was Annie Ernaux. Since I had a fairly free morning and while I was waiting for the prize announcement to be made, I thought I'd get to reading the most recent book to be translated by this author whose work I fell in love with starting with “The Years”. It's very short – just under 50 pages! And it centres around the subject of a married man that the author/narrator had an affair with for a couple of years. It's an all-consuming passion which takes over her life for this period of time. Her focus is not on the details or moral drama of the affair, but the impact passion has upon an individual: “I do not wish to explain my passion – that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify – but simply to describe it.” In doing so, she illuminates how we can become completely entangled in heated passion in a way that defies all logic and reason. Ernaux uses her characteristically rigorous sense of self enquiry to raise larger questions about the nature of desire, imagination, time and memory. 

One of the most fascinating aspects of Ernaux's writing is the openness of her narrative to take shape in the way which will best convey the meaning and heart of her subject matter. She describes how: “I felt I was living out my passion in the manner of a novel, but now I am not sure in which style I am writing about it, whether in the style of a testimony, or possibly even the sort of confidence that can be found in women's magazines, maybe a manifesto or a statement, or perhaps a critical commentary.” This book defies genre or any conventional form. Yet, its construction feels perfectly suited to what she wants to say and there's a masterful precision to her ideas. If most writers were to do this and discuss the book's construction so openly within the text it would feel intrusively self conscious, but with Ernaux it feels like a sincere and conscientious way to explore the subject matter. The book even moves from the past to the present tense because she realises that she's gradually being released from the grip that passion has on her which traps her in memories of her lover. At the beginning she's outside of the flow of everyday life, but by the end she's rejoined the stream of time and can reside again in the present.

It's curious how feverish passion causes us to idealize the lover. In the midst of this the lover can feel like the greatest person in the world, but afterwards we can see all too clearly that individual's flaws. Ernaux is careful not to reveal many details about the lover in order to respect his privacy and because his identity really isn't the subject of this book. We do know that he comes from a country outside France and that he doesn't even speak French that well. The fact that the narrator can't communicate that clearly with him almost seems to add to the way he's fashioned into an ideal and how nothing about their relationship is clear except the sexual desire between them: “I would only ever be certain of one thing: his desire or lack of desire. The only undeniable truth could be glimpsed by looking at his penis.” However, rather than recounting the details of their encounters, Ernaux focuses instead on the excruciating interim periods between their meetings and the force with which this passion controls her life.

This is most certainly not a saccharine or nostalgic account of a love affair. Ernaux describes passion as a destructive force which leads to pernicious thoughts and grievous actions. Not only does the passion annihilate any other pleasure she has in her life, but she longs for self destruction to reclaim that sense of closeness: “One night the thought of getting myself screened for AIDS occurred to me: 'At least he would have left me that.'” Equally disturbing is her compulsion to go “to the place where I had a clandestine abortion twenty years ago... As if hoping that this past trauma would cancel my present grief.” It was quite a shock to suddenly be taken back to the incident and physical location described in Ernaux's book “Happening”. Yet, it doesn't feel like Ernaux is justifying or judging the simultaneously exhilarating and poisonous effect that passion has upon a person's life. Rather, this text functions as a kind of testament which can be a touchstone for others who have felt such passion. The fact that Ernaux ultimately judges this passion to be “meaningless” adds to the persistent mystery of why it is a force that so feverishly grips our lives.

When I finished reading this book I went online to see that Ernaux has not won the Nobel Prize this year (the award went to the great Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah), but I hope one day she'll receive this honour.

In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova (translated by Sasha Dugdale)

At some point in life we all wonder about our family history. Who were these ancestors whose coupling through succeeding generations has unwittingly resulted in us? What do any surviving photographs, stories and momentos say about them and can we ever obtain a meaningful understanding of these lives from the past? Maria Stepanova has been trying to construct an account of her family history for a long time and become its narrator like a documentary filmmaker: “I would become a stranger, a teller of tales, a selector and a sifter, the one who decides what part of the huge volume of the unsaid must fit in the spotlight's circle, and what part will remain outside it in the darkness.” When her Aunt Galya dies she sifts through the belongings Galya left and discovers that “The meek contents of her apartment, feeling themselves to be redundant, immediately began to lose their human qualities and, in doing so, ceased to remember or to mean anything.” 

Thus, Stepanova presents us with memories, anecdotes, letters, diary entries and other documents alongside her journeys to significant locations from her ancestors' lives to form a loose picture of their past. In doing so we gain access to not only her personal family history, but Russian Jewish life over the course of the 20th century. There are innumerable accounts of this period of European history, but Stepanova brings a new perspective of rigorous enquiry into how we memorialise people from the past and how their narrative has been self-consciously shaped. More than this, Stepanova rigorously questions how we interact with fragments from the past and what memory means: “This book about my family is not about my family at all, but something quite different: the way memory works, and what memory wants from me.” The result is an utterly enthralling rumination on this subject which sheds light on what the past really means to us and the responsibility tied to the act of remembering.

Some books take me longer to read than others and this was one I really needed to be patient with – not only because it's 500 pages long but because the text contains such a density of ideas I often stopped to copy passages out, look up references or documents such as the short film 'Diversions' by Helga Landauer and ruminate upon the many dilemmas the author presents. She gives so much to consider when contemplating the meaning of memory and includes numerous scholarly, literary and artistic references through which to probe how we relate to the past. At some times it does feels too cluttered and that it could have been usefully cut down to streamline the points she's making. Of course, part of the point is: how do you begin to form a story about the past with the enormous amount of material which survives, especially when so many of these things don't really mean anything anymore? She elegantly summarises how “Pointless knowledge expands at an unstoppable rate: not like a building, which grows with the slow addition of floors, more like that terrifying wartime spring thaw when the bodies were slowly exposed by the melting snow.” But it feels like there's a lot to wade through before getting to Part 3 which beautifully summarizes her own unique mission to memorialise the story of her family. Though she concedes at the beginning of the book “I need to make it very clear at this point that our family was quite ordinary” I grew to feel real affection for them through some of the fragments Stepanova includes and her own reflections on deceased family members. There is so much which remains unknowable about these array of individuals including her young male relative who died in combat as part of the “ill-fated Sinyavinsky Operation” of 1942 or a female ancestor who studied to be a doctor in Paris. However, it's not answers about their lives but the abiding mystery which is what's important.

This book does something truly revolutionary. Rather than present dry historical documents which we inflict our imaginations upon to imbue them with meaning, Stepanova demands we grant a dignified independence to people who can no longer speak for themselves and not shape them into a desired narrative. At first this message felt too unsentimental and accusatory to me, but as I continued reading I came to more dynamically understand the moral implications of fixing people from the past within a certain story. How much of our family histories is true and how much embroidered with fiction? And how do we deal with the feeling that to recite the facts is dull but to fabricate is to deviate from history? It's given me such a new perspective on memory and family history which will continue to impact how I think about the past. At times, Stepanova risks sounding curmudgeonly in her point of view when she forcefully dismisses the prevalence of selfies or damns pornography as the lowliest form of documentation. I'd certainly not make a case for the lasting importance of either of these things, but she doesn't fully consider their broader meaning. While I didn't always agree with a number of the author's points, I've learned so much from this book and it's expanded my perspective on the enormous subject of memory. It's also encouraged me to take a more active engagement in my own family history and speak with my parents about where we come from.

The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer

Confessional narratives such as tell-all magazine articles and dramatic reveals on talk shows frequently dominate the media. I could easily imagine the narrator of Katharina Volckmer's debut novel “The Appointment” inhabiting a similar scandal-hungry space as by the second page she admits she's sexually drawn to Hitler and muses “don't you think that there is something kinky about genocide?” But this book isn't simply trying to be sensational, exploitative or shocking. This is an unfiltered monologue from the perspective of a young woman who is a German expat grappling with unsavoury compulsions that consume her. She discusses her tumultuous relationship with a married man and how she lost her job after threatening a coworker. Over the course of the book she speaks to a mysterious individual named Dr Seligman who she's arranged to meet in a London examination room because she believes “the only true comfort we can find in life is to be free from our own lies.” The true nature of their appointment remains elusive, but over the course of their session she reveals her innermost desires and thoughts. In doing so we come to understand her ambiguous feelings about her family and relationships as well as her own national and gender identity. Through her unsparing honesty we're given a fresh perspective about the many instabilities at the centre of being. 

There are some books I'd enthusiastically recommend to absolutely everyone and there are others which I'd only recommend to a select few friends. Because of the explicit and prolonged meditative nature of her monologue, this novel would fall into the later category. But it's one I savoured mulling over as its narrator presents such a challenging point of view with many pithy comments and insights. It made me think more deeply about how the country and family I was born into have impacted how I perceive myself and the way I conduct myself. She also gives such an interesting perspective about desire and relationships – how our intense connection to others becomes its own distinct narrative because “Love, like blood, needs to be a story we can tell.” It reminded me somewhat of the equally short novel “The Collection” in the way it boldly discusses erotic desire in a meaningful way. Volckmer is so insightful about how a prolonged disconnection from others can inhibit our abilities to actually express what we really want: “I think that's what loneliness does to people, Dr Seligman; they forget how to articulate their desires.”

I also really appreciated how meaningfully this story looks at the development of gender identity. The narrator humorously describes how as an adolescent she believed she could simply go into a shop to purchase a penis. It's a similar sentiment to what Hilary Mantel described in the first section of her memoir “Giving Up the Ghost” where as a young girl she assumed that she'd eventually wake up one morning as a boy. There's a sense in our early years that these aspects of our identity aren't necessarily fixed so the way adults relate to us as if being a girl or boy is integral to who we are shapes so much about our attitudes towards gender. Given what a politically-contentious subject gender identity is in the UK at the moment, I think it's especially useful to read a narrative that so openly discusses these experiences. 

This novel also has an uneasy suspense to it given that the narrator is speaking continuously to the silent Dr Seligman. Of course, I initially assumed he was some kind of psychotherapist. But we're given small unsettling clues that this isn't all that's happening since she's positioned in an odd way while talking to him and at one point she notes how he's taking pictures of her. The mystery of what's going on adds a sense of drama because she's being so vulnerable, but there's nothing weak-willed about her because she actively speculates about Dr Seligman's identity and desires as well. It creates a curious atmosphere and sense of tension which engaged me beyond the overriding cerebral nature of this book. “The Appointment” certainly presents a forceful and welcome new voice in fiction. 

Happening by Annie Ernaux (translated by Tanya Leslie)

I've been wanting to explore more of Ernaux's writing since reading her extraordinary book “The Years” last year which so creatively blended autobiographical narrative with social commentary. Her slender book “Happening” is in a similar vein but about a specific period of her history. In 1963 Ernaux was twenty three years old, single and pregnant. She desperately wanted to terminate the pregnancy because of the social shame it'd bring to her family and the limitations it'd impose on her early life. Since abortion was illegal at that time she had to resort to other means. She describes the mindset of the time: “As was often the case, you couldn't tell whether abortion was banned because it was wrong or wrong because it was banned. People judged according to the law, they didn't judge the law.” For many years she didn't discuss this period from her past, but in this book she describes her extremely difficult experiences while also meditating on the process of grappling with her memories. In this she makes a short, impactful statement about changing times and the challenges young women face in particular.

It's one thing to read about a period of history in a specific location where abortion was illegal but it's quite different to read about an individual's own experiences. Part of the reason it took her so long to write about this was that it was a subject not often discussed in society, but Ernaux maintains her conviction that “any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a lesser truth.” Something which makes Ernaux's story so impactful are her feelings of ambiguity about her experiences – not that she didn't make the right choice but that she's still feeling through what this incident meant in her life and she's still trying to unravel why the process of getting an abortion was so difficult. For instance, she was treated very brusquely in the hospital and she eventually understands that this is because they believed she was working class rather than a university student. As with many social taboos, the process of overcoming obstacles and avoiding the attendant feelings of shame are made more difficult for poorer and more marginalized members of society.

She marks her experiences as a definitive point of transition in her life and what I found most moving were the melancholy images which have been pressed into her memories. The daily sense of fear and gloom she felt at the time resurfaces so sharply when recalling a small exchange or a physical object from the past. She describes how “Above all I wish to capture the impression of a steady flow of unhappiness, conveyed by a pharmacist's inquisitive attitude or the sight of a hairbrush by a steaming basin of water.” This narrative seems to be a way of disentangling the continuing effects of trauma. There's a straightforward honesty to Ernaux's writing I find so refreshing because she so openly discusses her process of composing her history and subject matter while she writes it. With some other writers this might seem too self-conscious but with Ernaux it takes on a meaningful clarity. She states how “Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.” As with any great writer, she manages to do just this turning the extremely personal into something which has universal meaning.

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)

Sometimes when I'm reading about a period of history a detail will jump out at me concerning an individual or incident which inexplicably resonates with me. It might be something small which there isn't much more information about so I can only imagine the circumstances surrounding it, but it has a way of bringing the past alive and offers an insight beyond the broader historical picture. That's what happens to the narrator in the second half of “Minor Detail” by Adania Shibli. Amidst her working day she comes across an article which describes how a young Palestinian woman was captured by Israeli soldiers in the Negev desert during the War of 1948. The woman was repeatedly raped before being killed and buried in the sand. It's only one incident in a war which led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 Palestinians. Though it only gets a brief mention in this larger article she considers how “There may in fact be nothing more important than this little detail, if one wants to arrive at the complete truth, which, by leaving out the girl's story, the article does not reveal.” The narrator was also born exactly twenty-five years after this murdered woman's death and this makes her feel an affinity towards her. She embarks on a perilous journey across hostile territory to discover more about this obscure victim. In 112 pages of spare, piercing prose Shibli evokes great emotion. She exposes the tragedy of individuals who were not only victims of war but whose loss has been trivialized or forgotten when their personal stories are buried in a larger view of history. 

It's clever and moving how Shibli chose to structure this novel. The first half of the book recounts the circumstances surrounding this 1948 incident from the point of view of an Israeli commander. His days are related in short declarative sentenced stripped of embellishment or emotion which mirrors the regimental tasks that he and his soldiers carry out patrolling the desert. Therefore the way the captured woman is handled and treated is all the more heart-wrenching because it's described as if it were any other procedure like a daily bath or cleaning a gun. The narrative leaves out any graphic information of the woman's suffering which amplifies the brutality of what's happening between the lines. Instead, evocative details like a continuously barking dog or the smell of petrol create a sensory awareness and made me feel chillingly present in the scene. These descriptions take on even more resonance in the second half of the book when the narrator comes across the same sounds and smells. This forms a poignant bond between the two women and blurs different times into one. There's also a poetic beauty to the way the environment is described or the movement of light throughout the day. So even though the writing in this novel is very straightforward it's so effective in conveying the power of its subject matter.

This is such an artfully written and poignant novel which gives a very different perspective on a region and complicated conflict than what's portrayed in the news.

The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse (translated by Damion Searls)

A clichéd complaint about modern art is that it’s something a child could do – as if little or no thought has gone into the process behind it. In a way, “The Other Name” might serve as an extended riposte to this dismissive attitude as it details in 351 densely-packed pages an artist agonizing over two intersecting lines he’s painted on a canvass. Of course, it’s about much more than that but this is the primary dilemma at the centre of this deeply introspective novel. Asle is an artist living a sparse monastic existence in a small Norwegian village and his only real social contact is with a neighbour that clears the snow from his driveway. But he also occasionally encounters a doppelganger, an alcoholic artist also named Asle who lives some distance away and who he finds near death passed out in a snow drift. As Asle travels to assist his precarious double he moves in and out of memories and fantasies in a way which fascinatingly traverses the usual boundaries of time and space. The result is a moving and complex meditation on the meaning of art, faith and relationships.

It’s interesting how Asle’s thoughts frequently twist around themselves, repeat or meander in a way which can feel initially frustrating, but all of a sudden they take on a meaning which is profound and revelatory. For instance, a long strange scene where Asle observes two young people frolicking outside results in the statement “We’re making each other like children again” and helped me consider how deep intimacy between adults can inspire a kind of reversion to infancy in our behaviour and manner. It’s a poignant insight into the vulnerability and innocence adults still carry inside them and which is little shown in ordinary life but might be revealed to a significant other. However, the act of watching this couple also takes on strange and sinister undertones as it becomes an act of voyeurism whereby the pair alternately become Asle and his deceased wife or Asle with Asle himself. It’s as if he frequently wanders into shifting new landscapes which blend intense memory with fantasy.

It’s not only Asle who exists in a strange sort of duality, but a woman he meets and who takes charge of his double’s dog also takes on multiple identities. Her name might be Guro or Silje or Silja, but no matter how many times she introduces herself or refers to their previous intimacy Asle is consistency mystified by her. This might be another form of casual misogyny which is also made in that earlier scene when the pair he observes engage in hurried intercourse: “she liked it, even when she was saying she didn’t like it she was actually liking it, she says and he says yes well that’s how it often is”. This attitude is alarming but I’m guessing Asle’s obliviousness to the thoughts and feelings of women is part of his macho disregard for the reality of women and preferred reverence for the idea of them (as in the form of his late wife.)

The doppelganger acts as a distressed acquaintance who Asle strives to save, but he’s also a way of enacting an intense conversation with oneself. In some ways the narrator is an idealized self: faithful, sober, intensely dedicated to his art and lives a simple thrifty lifestyle. Yet he’s also emotionally repressed and actively blocks any thought or mention of his deceased wife. Whereas his double is reckless, unproductive and wants nothing more than to drink. Thus he represents an entirely different way of dealing with insurmountable emotion. While it appears nothing much occurs over the course of the novel Asle gradually works backward to a stage where these dualities can achieve some form of cohesion. There’s an extended sequence where he imaginatively journeys with his sister into places their mother forbid and the novel ends with a shocking and significantly traumatic memory. I’m still really uncertain how I feel about the final few pages. I can’t decide if it’s a crass way of explaining Asle’s psychological complexity or if it adds an interesting way of viewing everything that proceeded it.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the thoughtful space this story patiently opens up over the course of the novel. It’s a book that you definitely need to be in the mood for, but I found it very relaxing to read and I especially appreciate the way it considers the creative process. Asle occasionally refers to a hidden light that can be seen in successful artwork and to realize this vision in a painting “it’s not the painter who sees, it’s something else seeing through the painter, and it’s like this something is trapped in the picture and speaks silently from it, and it might be one single brushstroke that makes the picture able to speak like that, and it’s impossible to understand”. Fosse’s reverence for the deep engagement and compelling mystery of art whether it’s in paintings or literature is poignantly portrayed in this soulful and searching story.

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (translated by Sophie Hughes)

At the centre of “Hurricane Season” is a mysterious murder in a small Mexican village. The locals only referred to this notorious individual who is found floating dead in a body of water as “The Witch”. There are tales that she hoarded vast quantities of rare coins and valuable jewels in her home, that she had mystical powers to cast spells and that she regularly hosted depraved orgies. This makes her a figure of high intrigue as well as a target for violence. The novel gives a series of accounts from several individuals who were acquainted with the Witch and gradually explains the dramatic events and circumstances which lead to her death. Many of these characters are mere adolescents or teenagers engaged in very adult situations. In reading the dizzying fervour of their stories we get a wider view of this deeply troubled community and receive the author’s stealthy commentary upon it. It’s utterly hypnotic, gripping and filled with dexterous storytelling.

There’s a mesmerizing propulsive intensity to this novel which comes from a narrative of long unbroken sentences as well as from the raging force of its central characters. I found it hard to put down despite the horrors it describes. Not only is there physical and sexual violence, but the sensibilities of its characters are imbued with an odious array of prejudices including misogyny, racism and homophobia. There are also unsettling descriptions of female adolescent sexuality with a troubling look at the question of consent and abuse. I feel like if this novel were written by a man these aspects would come under a lot more criticism. Not that a woman can’t write misogynistic novels, but it’d be much easier for readers to confuse the intent of the narrative. However, I felt that the novel was slyly critiquing all these troubling views by embodying them so fully and presenting the full force of such unwieldy complex social power structures. By following the minutiae of these characters’ logic through the momentum of their voices, we see the complexity and contradictions of people who appear simply villainous on the surface. This creates a powerful depiction of a community of drug dealers, thieves, rapists and murderers who would otherwise be dismissed.

It’s unsurprising that in the acknowledgements at the end of the novel the author refers to reading “The Autumn of the Patriarch”. Melchor’s book has a very similar feel to a lot of Gabriel García Márquez’s writing with its documentary style of reportage and the way it circles around the same events many times from a variety of perspectives until the meaning of truth seems to be utterly obliviated. It’s also a way of depicting a certain prominent character through a series of points of view which leaves the reader still wondering about the real identity of that individual. The Witch is alternately described as a criminal, a sex maniac, a secret man, a drug fiend and a benevolent carer who helps local women get rid of unwanted pregnancies. I was left with a feeling of longing to really know the Witch’s background. But I think the novel was showing that there are people who can never be known, especially if they are the subject of lurid gossip and endless speculation. This is the real tragedy which Melchor depicts with such brilliant power.

The Years by Annie Ernaux (translated by Alison L Strayer)

When this year’s Man Booker International Prize longlist was announced it included French book “The Years” by Annie Ernaux. Some people scratched their heads at its inclusion – not because of its perceived quality – but because the English version was published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo with their recognizable plain white covers and blue lettering. This signifies it’s a book of essays or nonfiction (as opposed to their plain blue covers with white lettering which signifies it’s a work of fiction.) But the Man Booker International Prize is only open to fiction. What gives? Well, when “The Years” first appeared in its native French language it was classified as a novel. So apparently Fitzcarraldo asked the Booker if “The Years” could be submitted as a novel even though they originally classified it as nonfiction. The Booker accepted.

This titbit of gossip doesn’t matter, but it shows how the form of “The Years” doesn’t follow any neat classification. It’s part fiction, part essay, part autobiography. Personally, I don’t care how books are categorized or which shelf they sit on in a bookstore. What is important is how this revolutionary book conveys a sense of history, consciousness and national identity like no other book I’ve read before. Narrated in a unique collective “we” voice it follows a woman and those around her from post-WWII through to the current Information Age. In doing so it provides such a unique shifting sense of time as it speaks from the perspective of people in an era of rapid change. Also it regularly focuses on jarringly precise details that come close to poetry. Somehow it achieves the startling feat of being both intimately personal while also speaking as the collective voice of a generation. It’s extraordinary, beautiful and warrants prizes no matter what label it’s published under.

One of the absolutely fascinating things “The Years” does is openly discuss its protagonist’s desire to write a book and the struggle to find the right form for doing so. Normally such self-consciousness can be distracting, but in this book it’s very poignant how it captures our desire to catalogue our experiences and lives in a way which will both memorialise them and articulate their true meaning. In fact, in the later part of the book she explicitly states the mission of why she’s written the book in this way: “By retrieving the memory of collective memory in an individual memory, she will capture the lived dimension of History.” She does this by referencing a number of photographs taken throughout the protagonist’s life and it’s through the lens of these different stages of an individual life that she touches upon the sensibility of a generation. For instance, with a picture of the adolescent girl she devises “that writing is able to retrieve here something slipping through the 1950s, to capture the reflection that collective history projects upon the screen of individual memory.”

I also felt I could strongly relate to how she discusses the process of maturity. As we age our perception of time and our own personalities change as well. As a precocious teenager she feels: “She has gone over to the other side but she cannot say to what. The life behind her is made up of disjointed images. She feels she is nowhere, 'inside' nothing except knowledge and literature.” This beautifully captures a sense of moving from childhood to a different form of engagement with society where we become preoccupied with intellectual questions rather than just looking at the world with wonder. Later there’s an especially poignant moment where she feels her life is passing her by: “She feels as if a book is writing itself just behind her; all she has to do is live. But there is nothing.” This so elegantly and tragically describes a heightened sense of self-consciousness where we see our lives like a movie or the story of a novel. And we feel that it’s being captured in some essential way, but in reality our experiences only exist on the periphery of other people’s and aren’t memorialized except in fleeting memories or photographs.

It’s so interesting how personal details are often only referred to in asides. We’re fleetingly aware the protagonist gets married, works, has children and gets divorced but these aren’t the central tenants of the plot. What this book is more concerned with is capturing the mood in stages of time and how this individual’s personality is informed by and reflects the changing society. The sense of a collective voice powerfully shows the social change and predominant ideology of a certain section of French society at different times. As she moves through the decades of the 60s and 70s there’s a growing sense of feminism and social progress. Later on there’s a critique of capitalism and material obsession in the 80s and a sense of how our relationship to world events changes with the advent of the Information Age. But there is also an expression of regressive values and xenophobia which periodically emerge in views about immigrants and Arabs. In response to acts of terrorism there are some jarring statements where its expressed “That people could murder each other over religion was beyond our comprehension. It seemed to prove that these populations had remained at an earlier stage of evolution.” Ernaux describes how these pervasive feelings of prejudice spread throughout cultures at certain times, the way in which sections of society can form elitist views and subject different cultures to a form of “otherness” which divides people in the country.

I admire how daring the author was in self-consciously plotting out the book’s structure while also creating such an enjoyable and moving reading experience. I felt I could connect with the story so powerfully though it’s so wrapped up in a time, place and people very different from my own. The novel is beautifully framed at the beginning and end with certain images which seem plucked at random but have taken on such importance for the protagonist. There are several points in the book when she recalls the memory of a woman pissing out in the open and though it was just a fleeting observation it stays with her so vividly. I love how this reflects the way we can become obsessed with certain experiences or memories which linger in our minds – not because they have any great significance but they have been defined by our point of view. They are “the images of a moment bathed in a light that is theirs alone.” This shows how it’s not the fact of events in history which resound in the collective memory but our unique perceptions of them. This is one of the many brilliant ways this novel expresses so much about personality, time and the state of being.

Now that “The Years” has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (and even though I still have three other books to read on the list) I hope Annie Ernaux wins.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

I tried reading Olga Tokarczuk Booker International Prize winning novel “Flights” last year. I really tried. But, although I could appreciate what an engaged and intelligent writer Olga Tokarczuk is, I just wasn’t enjoying the book's fragmented nature. So after 60 pages I regretfully shelved it to try again another day. Therefore, I was so delighted when I immediately connected much more easily with the story and protagonist of her most recent translated novel “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”. Here a teacher/caretaker/translator named Mrs Duszejko dwells in a remote Polish village during the dead of winter when most of the community’s inhabitants have left for the season. One snowy day she and her neighbor (who she calls Oddball) discover their only other immediate neighbor (who she calls Big Foot) dead in his home. She soon believes this is part of unusual murder plot orchestrated by the animals of the woods who are motivated by revenge. Mrs Duszejko is wonderfully eccentric. She rigorously consults astrological charts, dresses up as a wolf for the mushroom pickers’ ball and sometimes encounters the ghosts of her mother & grandmother. She surmises that “the best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.”

Unsurprisingly, the surrounding villagers and police force (who she frequently writes to with her ardent conspiracy-theories) don’t take her very seriously and consider her a kook. She’s very aware of this, but is steadfast in her opinions even though she seems to have manic-depressive tendencies. As the title of the novel would suggest, she’s prone to a lot of bleak self-reflection. At one moment she might reflect “one day we shall all be nothing more than corpses” and the next “How great and full of life the world is.” She feels somewhat like a deliciously bleak Jean Rhys character - but less drunk and unconcerned with romance. Mrs Duszejko even goes so far as to postulate “that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.” Through the lens of this idiosyncratic woman’s sensibility, we’re introduced to a way of viewing the natural world, society and human relationships from a refreshing new perspective. 

That’s not to say I agree with most of Mrs Duszejko’s cockeyed theories or philosophies and I don’t think we’re meant to buy into her ideas. For instance, she has an odd reverence for angry impulses believing that “Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.” This goes against the common adage that anger can make us blind to the truth. At another point when thinking about her neighbor who is a writer (who she calls the Grey Lady) she suggests: “people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous... such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality - its inexpressibility.” It’s enjoyable how Tokarczuksimultaneously pokes fun at the endeavour of writing and a particularly dour perspective on the literary impulse. 

Mrs Duszejko herself is often consumed with literature as she helps her sensitive younger friend (who she calls Dizzy) to translate the letters of William Blake. Each chapter is headed by a quote from a Blake poem and it's interesting how these ideas meld with Mrs Duszejko's thoughts. She seems intent on creating theories through which this community that's dominated by patriarchal rule can exist more harmoniously with nature: “People have a duty towards Animals to lead them - in successive lives - to Liberation. We’re all traveling in the same direction, from dependence to freedom, from ritual to free choice.” Certain words are capitalized in her sentences highlighting when she's defining these terms for her philosophical systems of thought. In this way, she strives towards elaborate theories which no one takes seriously and this prompts her to take alternative action.

I really enjoyed this intriguing story and portrait of an idiosyncratic personality. There’s a dry sense of humour at the heart of it which I really appreciate. It's prompted me to want to go back and try reading “Flights” again because Tokarczuk has such a unique point of view.

Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants by Mathias Enard (translated by Charlotte Mandell)

If I hadn’t read some articles in the past (such as ‘Bridging the gap: the east-west divide in art’), I’d have entirely believed the central story of Mathias Enard’s new novel. It’s true that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were invited by Turkish rulers in Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn, but neither ever journeyed to this Eastern superpower. However, “Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants” imagines Michelangelo travelling to work for the sultan in the summer of 1506. He’s embittered by Pope Julius II failing to deliver timely payments for commissions and enlivened by the thought of surpassing the talent of his rival Leonardo da Vinci whose design was rejected. During this stolen season, Michelangelo comes into contact with Muslim culture and people outside of his staunch Christian beliefs. An encounter with a mesmerising androgynous dancer also prompts him to adopt a more fluid attitude towards sexuality and gender. It’s a brilliantly told fantastical tale that plays on ideas concerning history and the power of story-telling.

Enard does a lot to support the seeming validity of his novel including letters, lists of ship cargo and sketches of Michelangelo’s proposed bridge. Like Damien Hirst’s famous ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’ exhibit/documentary which assemble rare art objects he claims to have retrieved from the bottom of the ocean, Enard’s novel is an elaborate joke and entirely serious in its quest to reconstruct an imagined period of Michelangelo’s life. Art and literature not only reflect the culture they emerge from but fashion versions of how that civilization wants to be remembered. We can also retrospectively read into these artefacts myths around their creation and how we’re positioned within their lineage. So part of why Enard’s novel feels so believable is because we want to believe in this great exchange between the Renaissance and the Orient (or the European fantasy of the East.) However, it never really happened and the fact of Enard’s construct says as much as the content of his intricate fable. With this novel he forms a radical confrontation with lost corners of history and the marginalized invisible people whose stories aren’t often reflected in art.

Interspersed with descriptions of Michelangelo’s time working for The Grand Vizier are accounts by the nameless androgynous dancer that mesmerised him. This performer speaks to the artist while he sleeps in an ingenious kind of counter-narrative to “One Thousand and One Nights”. Instead of trying to lull him to sleep the dancer urgently wants to open Michelangelo’s eyes to the people he doesn’t see, what is left out of his art and the consequences of the legacy he leaves. The dancer is a slave stolen from another place entirely as are several people the artist encounters in Constantinople. Most of their stories have vanished from history just as they have lost their countries of origin. I kept thinking back to the recent novel “The Sealwoman’s Gift” which describes a mass kidnapping and enslavement of Icelandic people by Barbary pirates.

The dancer is aware how being slighted in story-telling amounts to an erasure of being. Imperialism functions through myth-making as much as it does through brute force. The dancer observes how “You conquer people by telling them of battles, kings and elephants and marvellous beings… But you will know, since you are here pressed against me, you ill-smelling Frank whom chance has brought to my hands, you will know that all this is nothing but a perfumed veil hiding the eternal suffering of night.” Through constructing Michelangelo’s imagined journey, Enard enables this voice from the past to cut through time with the power of a knife.