Book Review: "1Q84" by Haruki Murakami

1Q84 (2011)
Haruki Murakami (1949)

Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel

932 pages

How strong are the ties that bind? Can a momentary encounter in childhood leave such a strong attraction between two people that many years later reality can literally be bent from its course in such a way as to bring them together? These are among the questions that Haruki Murakami raises in his novel 1Q84.

The story opens in the spring of 1984, as a young woman, Aomame, sits in the back of a taxi listening idly to the music from the radio as she heads into downtown Tokyo. When traffic jams up on an elevated section of an expressway, threatening to make her late for an important appointment, the driver surprises her with an unexpected option: climb down to the road below using an emergency ladder at a nearby turnout and continue on by subway. Once over her initial uncertainty Aomame abandons the cab and makes her way down the ladder to the street. Though she arrives on time to her appointment, over the subsequent days she begins to notice that the world has changed, in subtle but distinct ways, and that she has entered a new reality she eventually refers to as 1Q84.

Across town a young writer, Tengo, sits in a cafe talking with an editor-friend who tries to convince him to re-write a novel submitted to a writer’s contest by a teenage girl. Though they both find it a compelling story, they also agree that it suffers from the lack of writing experience of its young author. Though initially reluctant to take on the clearly unethical task of ghost re-writing the piece, Tengo is deeply drawn to the story the girl has told, and eventually agrees to work on it. When his completed revision not only wins the contest but is published and becomes an overnight success, Tengo too finds that the world has changed, in ways oddly related to and paralleling the story he has just re-written.

Though Aomame and Tengo experience this new world independently, each faces unexpected challenges from the slightly altered world which they have entered, each becoming enveloped in a deepening web of problems. Unable to understand what has occurred, and with no one to confide in --- for everyone else the world appears ‘normal’ --- they each struggle to fight back against the forces that have suddenly arisen against them.

Haruki Murakami has written other novels in which the main characters seem to inhabit a world ever so slightly outside the reality experienced by the balance of the people going on about their daily lives, such as in his earlier work After Dark. In 1Q84, however, he creates a world that clearly exists in the realm of science fiction, as the new reality includes the occasional appearance of beings less than a meter tall, and has two moons hovering in the sky. The science fiction aspects of the novel are central to the creation and existence of the altered reality, but at times they also feel like an awkward plot device that adds an unnecessary layer of complexity, distracting the reader more than enhancing the story.

At its heart though, this is a love story, revealing the connections between Aomame and Tengo, connections both physical and metaphysical, as the events that begin the process of re-uniting them straddle a nearly invisible line between apparent coincidence and fate.

The novel takes place over nine months, with chapters alternating between the points of view of Aomame and Tengo for the first two thirds of the book, until in the final section a new character enters the scene, one who unwitting acts as a kind of midwife for their relationship. Murakami develops the characters and their stories gently and unhurriedly; brief periods of drama alternate with longer sections of the characters reflecting on their lives as they struggle to make sense of the suddenly alternated reality. Through their reflections Murakami not only reveals how their childhoods led to the seemingly listless and generally disconnected lives they lead as the novel opens, but also the singular event that binds them together, if at first only imperceptibly. In a kind of variation on the idea of the one true love, Murakami seems to be telling us that such a connection can be so strong that it can bend reality to the purpose of allowing the bond to be completed.

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Other reviews / information:

The novel was originally published as three separate books.
The first and second books were translated by Jay Rubin.
The third book was translated by Philip Gabriel.

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Other of my book reviews: FICTION and NON-FICTION
 

Book Review: "San Camilo, 1936" by Camilo José Cela

San Camilo, 1936 (1969)
Camilo José Cela (1916-2002)

Translated from the Spanish by John. H. R. Polt 

302 pages

...seen from close up history confuses everyone, both actors and spectators, and is always very tiny and startling, and also very hard to interpret.

This line from Camilo José Cela’s novel San Camilo, 1936 lies at the heart of what Cela allows us to experience as readers: that historic events, as they occur, do not have the linear, almost inevitable feel that one is left with when reading about them in a history book years later. Even if we are aware of the broad direction of societal and political shifts that are occurring around us, the details generally remain a mystery, and we only reluctantly allow our daily habits and lives to be interrupted by the force of these outside events. The struggle for a novelist is how to make the history of a moment come alive to a reader as it was felt by everyday people experiencing it, to envelope the reader in the reality of those disrupted lives. It is not enough to simply tell us, we need instead to be actively overwhelmed by the moment, just as the characters are.

Cela’s amazing novel accomplishes just that, thrusting us as readers into the middle of the chaos that accompanied the onset of the Spanish Civil War.

When parts of the Spanish army rose up against the government in July 1936, mobs of people in Madrid took to the streets demanding to be armed in order to help protect the Spanish government, an only recently formed Republic after a long history of monarchial rule. Those on the side of the government became known as Republicans (or Reds, depending on one’s point-of-view); along with the centrist socialist parties in power at the time, this included farther left Socialist groups, as well as syndicalist, anarchist and communist groups. Those who joined the uprising led by the army were known as Nationalists (or Rebels, again depending on one’s loyalties); along with the rebelling army units, it included monarchist, catholic and fascist groups. Madrid and just over half of the country was initially Republican controlled, while the rest fell under the control of the Nationalists. (A brief summary of the period can be found in my review of Hugh Thomas’ The Spanish Civil War.)

The situation was, of course, not nearly as clear as it might appear on a historian’s map of the division of the country between the two groups. The division of the country was not on relatively orderly north-south, or east-west lines, but rather very rough regions. On each side of the suddenly and rather unpredictably appearing areas of control, a majority may have supported the group in control of a particular region, but generally a significant minority remained who supported the other side, and were simply caught on the wrong side of the line.

In Madrid, the government armed its supporters, and with the support of loyal army units was able to put down the rebelling army groups in the city. However, as Cela writes “the people are asking for weapons, once they have them they will ask for targets,” and so the many monarchists, Catholics and fascists who remained in the city found their lives suddenly threatened. And then there were the truly silent masses of people who had little interest in the deadly political struggles going on around them, and simply wanted order restored so they could go back to their old lives. The city of just over a million people descended into an armed chaos of distrust, animosity and fear.

Cela makes this descent real for us as readers. An historian of the Spanish Civil War can described the events of the period, and the effects on the population, but even the best historical writing struggles to fully convey the emotional impact on the people affected. Historical fiction tells a story within the larger history of the civil war, but typically with a relatively small cast of characters, focusing the effects on these few people. Cela, in San Camilo, 1936, uses a technique that grabs us a readers by our shirt collars and pulls us down into the muddy water, leaving us to struggle along with his characters, fighting for breath.

Cela begins his story just a couple of days before the uprising, which began on 18th July, Saint Camillus’ Day, from which the novel is titled. The novel ends, 300 odd pages later just a day or two after the uprising has begun. The story is nominally centered around a young man of twenty, but has a large supporting cast of his family, friends, acquaintances, others he encounters by chance, and political and military figures of the period. The main character is studying at the university and being treated for tuberculosis, and is riven by self-doubt and uncertainty as the time comes to choose sides in the growing conflict.

The story does not, however, develop in the traditional sense. There is a more or less linear time line to the scenes, tracing the deterioration of the political and social situation in Madrid through the experiences of the characters, but there is not a plot as such. Or, better put, there are dozens of very small plot lines: Cela presents the many groups of characters going about their daily business, the often mundane events of their lives mixed with the occasional unexpected moments, and the disruption of these lives as the rebellion takes hold.

The power of the novel is in Cela’s method of presenting it. He divides the novel into three sections, covering the days just before the rebellion, the day it breaks out, and the days just after it starts. Over these three sections there are some ten chapters, but the chapter breaks are more a chance for the reader to catch a breath than actual plot divisions. Each chapter is single ‘paragraph’ of dozens of pages, and within each chapter-paragraph there is minimal punctuation beyond commas, question marks and the infrequent period. Sentences go on for pages at a time, any particular ‘sentence’ passing often, and generally without punctuation, from one set of characters in one part of the city to others elsewhere, and including descriptions of events and dialogue among characters with only a minimum of punctuation.

The feeling for the reader is one of being presented the story by a kind of angel, who can listen to people, read their minds and who comments on their thoughts and lives (reminiscent of Wim Wender’s angels in the movie The Wings of Desire). We tag along as this ‘angel’ moves quickly around the city settling for a few minutes in one place, with one set of characters, and then moving on to another part of the city and its characters. We watch as the events of the overarching plot of the descent into civil war enter into the consciousness and disrupt the lives of people going about their daily business, the hardworking and the shiftless, those struggling to survive and those who feel in control of their lives.
 
An example best demonstrates Cela’s technique. The following quote is taken out of the middle of a sentence that had started pages before, and would only end several pages later. To give some background, the rebellion is just opening, and General Miaja is in Madrid and has been appointed by the government as Minister of War, while General Mola is in Pamplona and joining the rebellion; in a Madrid apartment; Victoriano has awoken next to his wife in the middle of the night with stomach cramps; Don M&aacuteximo is visiting his favorite brothel…

…General Miaja makes two calls to General Mola they’ve made me Minister of War congratulations thank you are you planning to have me shot? that’s not why I’m calling you did you get the letter I wrote you? I haven’t had time to answer it yet but we can talk whenever you like the situation is confused but Mola’s words give no hint of anything the second conversation is clearer is it true that you have ordered the military commandant of Vitoria to proclaim the state of war? yes sir don’t you know that the authority to issue such an order rests with the commanding general of the sixth division? I am commanding the sixth division how’s that? what about Batet? I’ve relived him what? are you crazy? that’s outright rebellion yes sir I am in rebellion along with the division you could have told me that! I said as much when I asked you whether you were planning to have me shot well well you are responsible for your actions Victoriano has another attach of diarrhea this time he can’t make it to the bathroom and shits on the bed and along the hallway this is too much fine shape I’m in! don’t worry dear you’ll get over it tomorrow with a little rice and some quince jelly you think so? sure I do that’s the best way there’s no diarrhea it won’t cure go on change your pajama and I’ll get some clean sheets Don M&aacuteximo falls asleep in an armchair and Rafaela fans him with an ostrich-feather fan like the one use by Miss Dolly the dancer from Gibraltar the princess of the cabarets and queen of the charleston Angelines offers him a crème de menthe and Dulce offers him drags on a Cuban cigar that smells heavenly Victoriano like Rabelais has another attack of diarrhea …

It is no doubt a struggle to follow the circumstances and dialogue in that passage, especially as it is taken out of context from the middle of the novel, but it gives a sense of Cela’s approach. People going about their lives as events happen that they are unaware of and yet that will threaten their very existence.

Read the novel from the beginning however, and one gradually becomes accustomed to the tone and flow, and it becomes less difficult, if not necessarily ever easy, to distinguish the voices during the dialogue, and follow the jumps in location from one story line to the next. (The English translation by John H. R. Polt contains a glossary of characters and some expressions from the story to help us keep track.) At the same time, as you give yourself over to the story, and worry less about clarifying every uncertain detail about character and place, you find yourself immersed in the novel as in a canoe without a paddle on a fast moving river, pulled along inexorably; even the periods and chapter divisions don’t really offer relief from the relentlessness of the story, at best offering points where you feel you can set the book down for a moment and return later without completely losing the narrative. But be warned that setting the book down in mid-stream is difficult: even with the punctuation that does exist the novel feels like one, long 300 page sentence, and until you reach the end, it feels awkward to break the flow.

But I highly recommend taking courage in hand and enter into this deep dive snapshot into a moment in the life of a city on the brink of civil war.

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Other reviews / information:

Recently discovered negatives of photographs of the Spanish Civil War, taken by Robert Capa, Chim and Gerda Taro, are collected in The Mexican Suitcase.

Other books I have reviewed can be found at the links below, in the sections (non-fiction) Spain and Spanish History, and (fiction) Historical Fiction: Related to Spain.

Odd connection:
Cela writes:

 ...cities don't run away, they burn, they rot, they fall apart, but they don't run away, cities can't run away, if they could they would have done it long ago. 

and

...if cities could flee not one city would be left in the world, but cities cannot flee... 

Years ago I read a science fiction story, Cities in Flight, by James Blish, in which cities did just that, escaping a dieing plant by encapsulating themselves and flying off as giant individual space ships, leaving Earth behind to travel among the stars.

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Book Review: "Desert" by J.M.G. Le Clézio

Desert (1980)  

J.M.G. Le Clézio (1940)

354 pages

Nature can be astonishingly beautiful and devastatingly cruel, the difference often depending on the smallest change of circumstances. It can even be both at once: overwhelming one’s strength even as one is dazzled by its beauty. This is the view of nature experienced by the characters in J.M.G. Le Clézio’s haunting and lovely novel Desert; nature powerful and glorious, nature with the force of a separate character in the story.

The novel has two parallel story lines. One takes place in the Western Sahara desert in the early years of the 20th century, and is based on historical events of the time. The other is set in modern times, starting out near a city where the sands of the Sahara end in dunes along the Atlantic coast, before moving to the French port city of Marseille, on the Mediterranean. The two stories are interlaced in the telling, and are loosely but clearly connected to one another, the consequences of the actions of one era playing out seemingly inevitably in the next.

The novel opens in 1909, as nomadic tribes of the western Sahara are gathering together and streaming north through the desert, ahead of the advancing “Christian” armies of the European colonial powers. This part of the story is told from the point of view of Nour, a teenage boy whose family is part of the exodus. Nour watches the tribes come together around a holy man and follow him northward on a deadly search for a new home; caught between the unyielding desert sands and mountains, and the relentless armies of the Christians, Nour and his people struggle onward with little more than hope and prayer to sustain themselves. Challenged by the harsh desert and witnessing both the stalwart resolve of this fellow travelers and the dead who eventually begin to line the sides of the path north, Nour grows into a man over the months of the trip, discovering the power of faith in the face of continual loss.

The parallel, modern-day story follows another young teenager, a girl named Lalla Hawa. Lalla lives in a kind of shanty town outside a port city on the Atlantic coast of the Sahara desert. She rises above the poverty of her surroundings, seemingly fascinated by all aspects of the natural world, whether the desert landscape, the sand dunes along the coast, or the wasps hovering over the cooking food. But most especially she is enthralled with light, the light reflected off the sand, the rocks and the water. In one of the many, many beautifully written descriptions of the desert landscape in the novel, Le Clézio describes how a shepherd friend of Lalla’s leads her into

a chasm that opens at the bottom of a rocky ravine … [and] along the narrow tunnel that descends into the earth…. All of a sudden, they stop: the long tunnel is bathed in light because it opens right out into the sky… the sky right there in front of her, immense and weightless. She stands motionless, breathless, wide-eyed.

As the story develops, Lalla seems to be absorbing the light, to be illuminated by it. She moves through life with an awareness of the world that most everyone around her remains blind to. She knows, for example, that she lives in a very poor family and that there is wealth in the world --- wealth in fact just across the river in the neighboring city; she is not naïve to these facts, but this reality does not affect her appreciation of the beauty in the world around her. When a situation does finally develop that threatens to tie her down and limit her ability to follow her own will, she escapes, running away crossing the Mediterranean and ending up in Marseille. Even there, though poor, struggling to survive and missing her desert home, she nevertheless manages to find moments of inspiration even in the otherwise grimy, run-down poverty of the underside of life in the French city.

With Lalla ending up in France to try and make a life for herself the novel comes full circle in a way. The French and their fellow Europeans drove Nour and his people from their homelands and their nomadic, pastoral lifestyle. Many who survived settled in shanty towns outside of larger African cities, where they were often unable to find work on which to survive and so failed to be integrated into the local populations. In a desperate bid to make a life for themselves, some move on, across the sea, to the promised wealth of the cities of Europe, only to find the promised land a mirage, as they struggle unwanted in these new lands. Thus, Europeans reap what they have sown in colonizing Africa.

But this novel also has a powerful message of hope and inspiration. It shows the ability of people to persevere and rise above a difficult reality, making new lives for themselves that can be worth living. And too, it is a wonderful homage to the beauty of the natural world, a beauty that can be found all around us, if we only open ourselves to appreciating it. In his descriptions of nature Le Clézio’s writing verges on poetry at times, particularly when he describes Lalla’s perceptions of her desert home. When she finds herself in the middle of the desert at night, with her shepherd friend, Lalla lies on the hard ground, and though tired, sore and hungry, looks up to see

… the extremely soft light coming from the cluster of stars … [that felt] so very close, she could easily reach out her hand and take a handful of the beautiful light.

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Other reviews / information:

J.M.G. Le Clézio was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Review by Elizabeth Hawes in the New York Times Book Review that gives a little of Le Clézio’s history.

Review on the site Three Percent by Timothy Nassau.

Review on the blog  Mookse and Gripes.

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Book Review: "1492" by Felipe Fernández-Armesto

1492: The Year the World Began (2009)  

Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1950)

346 pages

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Children learn this rhyme in school to help remember the year of the voyage that changed the course of history. In his book 1492, however, historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto argues that Columbus’s discovery of the New World was only one of a number of significant events that occurred world-wide in (and around) 1492, and that together have had a lasting impact on the path of world history through to our present day; as his subtitle states, 1492 was “The Year the World Began.”

Fernández-Armesto opens with a chapter in which he describes European understanding of world geography in the 1400’s, and how a growing group of geographer with an interest in exploration were, in part out of self-interest, beginning to argue that the world was actually much smaller than Eratosthenes of Alexandria had (correctly) calculate around 200 B.C. He also explains his choice of 1492, clarifying that though the events he describes in the subsequent chapters have a tie-in to 1492, they were not necessarily each reaching a turning point precisely in that year. 1492 is a marker for Western societies --- a famous way-point in our understanding of our history --- but Fernández-Armesto wants us to understand that the path of development of the world’s societies over the last 500 years can be traced to events in the late 1400’s.

In the remaining chapters we are taken on a truly Grand Tour of the 15th century world. Fernández-Armesto describes events in Spain, where the final victory of the Catholic Reconquest over the Moors occurred in 1492; this was followed a few years later by the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews, and he recalls their varying degrees of success in settling around the Mediterranean. He reviews the histories of the competing kingdoms of western Africa in the 14th and 15th centuries, where Islam was spreading into pagan lands, and from there the struggles in Catholic Italy as the beginnings of Protestantism were stirring. To the east, we learn about the growth of the small principality of Muscovy into what would become Russian, as the centuries old Mongol domination in the area disintegrated, and farther east yet how the Chinese were turning inward and largely abandoning maritime exploration as the Confucians tightened their grip on power. The thriving markets among the states around the rim of the Indian Ocean are described (highlighting at the same time the relative backwardness of Europe): Fernández-Armesto argues that the success of these markets left little motivation for these states to explore westward beyond Africa or eastward into the Pacific, and as a consequence their leadership would begin to wane after 1492 as Europe gained momentum through the exploitation of the New World. Finally, of course, Fernández-Armesto describes the voyages and discoveries of Columbus, his motivations and experiences, and the Indian societies that lay just beyond his view, on the continents of the New World.

The effect of reading each chapter is one of spinning the globe, having it stop at a particular point, and then zooming in to a region and getting a glimpse of its history. Fernández-Armesto descriptions lie more to the narrative or anecdotal side than a straight, dry telling of history. This makes the book a fascinating survey of the history of parts of the world I would venture to say few readers will have learned much about in the normal progression of history classes in school. And, as Fernández-Armesto makes clear, these are not just ancient histories with no bearing on our present; the histories of these areas have led to the wealth distribution and conflict points of our modern day world. Just as one example, the current front-page stories covering the conflicts and violence in and around Mali make the history in 1492 come to life in the descriptions of the warring empires in that same area in the 1400’s, as societies sided with the Islamists or the pagans, and the Tuareg people of the desert north struggled against the prosperous peoples of the Niger river valley.

Fernández-Armesto’s approach lends a wonderful story-like feel to the histories he tells. At the same time, it can be a bit frustrating if one tries to follow the details more closely. In each chapter, it is as though he began with an idea that he wanted to expand on, and then followed a bit of a stream of conscious path from that beginning, proceeding with a description of one sequence of events or of one person’s life, and then, when it encountered a point of contact with another interesting history, switching to follow that path or person. Thus it can be a bit difficult at times to step back from the interesting stories and try and piece together the bits into a coherent understanding of the period being discussed.

The stream of conscience feel of the book comes out in another way: I found odd occurrences of repetition at several places in the book --- a phrase would be used and then repeated a few lines later. (As I did not mark those when I encountered them, and I am having trouble looking back and finding an example, I must leave this ‘accusation’ undefended, but it was something that struck me at several points in the book.)

Also a bit disconcerting for me were instances where Fernández-Armesto makes unequivocal statements about what he considers false understandings of some aspect of the history he is covering. One example from among several in the book:

The conventional explanations [for the success of Spanish conquests in the New World] --- that the Spaniards were inherently superior, that they were mistaken for gods and preceded by omens, that their technology was decisive, that disease undermined defense, and that their enemies were subverted by corroded morale – are all false. But a glance at the Aztec and Inca realms in about 1492 helps explain how so dramatic a debacle was possible.

I am not a historian, having simply a layman’s interest in the subject, but from other books I have read the precise explanation for the success of the Spanish conquest is a matter of on-going debate among historians, and not a settled point that allows the string of explanations that are listed above to be bluntly labeled as “false”.  This dismissal of the complexity of the history on this particular topic, and similar condemnations on other topics in the book, can seem to undermine the general authority of the histories presented.

These observations aside, however, 1492 is an engaging and informative survey of a point in history in which, as Fernández-Armesto states, “a new world, the world we are in, began to take shape.”

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Book Review: "Poems of Arab Andalusia" by Cola Franzen

Poems of Arab Andalusia (1989)
selected and translated by Cola Franzen (1923-)
from the Spanish collection Poemas Arábigoandaluces (1971) by Emilio García Gómez

92 pages

”In the year 711 a Berber army under Arab leadership crossed the straits of Gibraltar from Morocco in continuation of a series of raids which had been going on for some time. … Within a few years the entire [Iberian] peninsula lay at their feet.” Thus began (as quoted from the opening paragraph of Richard Fletcher’s Moorish Spain) almost 800 years of Islamic rule on the peninsula, until the Spanish Reconquest pushed the Moors from their final foothold, the Kingdom of Granada in the southern region known today as Andalusia.

During those centuries the Arabs established kingdoms in al-Andalus, as they referred to the peninsula, in which Christians and Jews could for the most part live in peace, if not necessarily complete equality, with their Islamic rulers. Though debate continues between historians who feel that this period of multiculturalism has been idealized and those who see it as a potential blueprint for our future, it is clear that a cultural exchange flourished that was to have long-term benefits for Western Europe. Through the connections that developed between members of the different religions at the time, Western Europe was introduced to the scientific advancements of Arabic scholars and re-introduced to works of ancient Greek writers and philosophers that had been lost for centuries. (I have included references to two histories of this period at the end of this review.)

The Arab kingdoms did not, however, simply pass along the cultural advances of their brothers in North Africa and the Middle East; they developed a rich and impressive cultural tradition of their own. Most famous are the architectural wonders of these kingdoms, the cathedrals, palaces and gardens, such as the Alhambra in Granada, the great mosque in Córdoba and the Giralda in Seville. Less well-known is the tremendous importance of poetry in the cultural life of the kingdoms of al-Andalus, particularly in the early centuries of Arab rule. Walking through the palace of Alhambra, one is surrounded by poetry, carved into walls at every turn; the walls are only silently beautiful though for anyone without knowledge of Arabic --- the beauty of the words, lost.

Poems of Arab Andalusia, goes some way to rectify this great loss, however, by collecting some six dozen or so poems from the Arabs of al-Andalus. The works, many only a few stanza long, have been translated by Cola Franzen from the Spanish, and, as Franzen states in the introduction, are selected from a larger collection translated from Arabic into Spanish by the Emilio García Gómez, and published in the book Poemas Arábigoandaluces; García Gómez had found the poems in Cairo in 1928, in an unpublished anthology created by Ibn Sa’id.

Franzen describes the poetry in this collection as having been written by “rulers of all sorts … and others simply known as poets.” The themes may be commonplace --- love found, love lost and inspiring beauty; in the delicate but powerful words of these poets, however, images are crafted that shimmer with life.

The Arabs who came to Andalusia found a lush, green land of high mountains and long river valleys; in these opening stanzas from his poem The Valley of Almería, Ibn Safr al-Marīnī (11th century) wonders at the beauty of his native land in the south-eastern part of Andalusia:

Valley of Almería!
God grant that I never see
myself deprived of you!
When I look on you I tremble
as an Indian sword trembles
at the moment of tempering.

And you, friend, here beside me,
enjoy this time, for there are delights
in this paradise not to be found
in the eternal one.

See how excited the river is?
Listen to its murmured applause
sounding beneath the dancing trees
that arch over it
wearing garlands of blossoms.

The branches sweep their sleeves
over the silvered surface of the river
then lift them up
scattering pearls.

Ṣafwān ibn Idrīs (of Murcia in the late 12th century) fairly burns the page with desire in his poem My Beautiful One, which concludes:

Once I went out with her when the
shelter of night and her cape
let me mingle the fire of my breath
with the fire of her flaming cheeks.

I clasped her as a miser clasps
his treasure, and bound her tightly
with the cords of my arms
lest she escape like a gazelle.

But my chastity did not permit me
to kiss her mouth
and my heart remained huddled
over its embers.

You may well marvel at one
who feels his entrails on fire
yet complains of thirst
while holding the quenching water
in his throat. 

And the torment of parting is laid bare in Leavetaking, by Ibn Jākh (of Badajoz in the 11th century), which closes with the lines:

Beneath the veils
tears crept like scorpions
over the fragrant roses
of their cheeks.

These scorpions do not harm
the cheek they mark.
They save their sting
for the heart of the sorrowful lover. 

The amazing poems of this collection are much like beautiful paintings: they can be enjoyed over an over again, each reading revealing new depths of meaning and emotion.

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Other reviews / information: Although I have not reviewed these books for this blog, I found them to provide fascinating histories of the period of the Moors in Spain.
Moorish Spain by Richard Fletcher
Ornament of the World by María Rosa Menocal

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Book Review: "The Angel Esmeralda" by Don DeLillo

The Angel Esmeralda (2011)  

Don DeLillo (1936-)

211 pages

[Standing on the highway overpass] I watched and listened, unaware of passing time, thinking of the order and discipline of the traffic, taken for granted, drivers maintaining a distance, fallible men and women, cars ahead, behind, to the sides, night driving, thoughts drifting. Why weren’t there accidents every few seconds on this one stretch of highway, even before morning rush? This is what I thought from my position on the bridge, the surging noise and sheer speed, the proximity of vehicles, the fundamental differences among drivers, sex, age, language, temperament, personal history … it seemed a wonder to me that they moved safely toward the mystery of their destinations.

from the story Hammer and Sickle

“[It] seemed a wonder to me that they moved safely toward the mystery of their destinations.” This idea lies at the heart of each of the nine short stories of this collection by Don DeLillo. Characters look out in wonder at the people around them --- both friends and strangers --- never quite able to come to an understanding of the lives they see, though feeling at times a deep connection lying just beyond comprehension. These same characters gaze also inward, at their own behaviors and attitudes, and find themselves driven by impulses whose origins they can only dimly fathom.

But the stories are not simple meditations on existence. DeLillo places each of his characters into a charged situation that challenges the order of the lives they have created for themselves, and then allows us to watch as they struggle to make sense of it. In the title story a nun in New York City who helps the poor finds herself joining them in contemplating the significance of a vision on a street corner that appears in the wake of a tragedy. In another story two friends walk the streets of their small university town inventing stories about the people they see, until one day they find themselves drawn deeply to an old man they repeatedly encounter and they begin to question the goal of their game. In a third a woman meets a stranger at an art exhibit and through an apathetic indifference allows him to drift into her life, until suddenly she finds things have gone farther than she had realized. In each of these stories the slow paced action on the surface contrasts with the increasing tumult and uncertainty of the characters thoughts as DeLillo forces them out of their routine, mindless existence and onto unexpected paths.

The stories are best read slowly, savoring DeLillo’s deliberate construction and wonderful phrasing. I found the staccato rhythms of his character’s thoughts and the questions that suddenly bubble up into their consciousness about their lives to be authentic representations of the way we pass through our world.

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Read quotes from this book

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Other of my book reviews: FICTION and NON-FICTION

Book Review: "Berlin Noir" by Philip Kerr

Berlin Noir (1993)
Philip Kerr (1956- )

836 pages

Is there a more fertile ground for a mystery writer than central Europe in the mid-20th century? The environment of secrecy and violence that existed in Germany in the 1930’s as the Nazi’s gained control of the government and then consolidated their power; the chaos of World War II as fighting raged on multiple fronts across the continent; and the cold war spy games that flourished as the wartime alliances broke down.

At the center of this “huge cauldron in which all historical eras [were] boiling and mingling” (to borrow from Octavio Paz) lay, both literally and figuratively, Berlin. The seat of Nazi power up to and through World War II, it also became a focal point for the machinations of the former allies as they suddenly turned into adversaries fighting to control the future of Europe.

A variety of writers have set their novels in this “cauldron,” and among them is Philip Kerr. In the novel March Violets, Kerr introduced his fictional detective Bernhard (Bernie) Gunther, and Gunther has returned in several subsequent novels by Kerr, the first three of which (in addition to March Violets, these include The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem) have since been collected into a single title, Berlin Noir.

Not content to simply play off the obvious advantages of a mid-20th century, central European setting for his detective novels, Kerr actively and plausibly engages Gunther with several high ranking Nazi political and security officials. Some will be familiar to readers with even a passing knowledge of the history of those times (such as Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler), while others are less well-known (Reinhard Heydrich, Arthur Nebe and the leader of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller). By involving Gunther directly with the events and personalities of the day, Kerr gives the novels several layers of meaning for readers. On one level the stories stand alone as action-packed thrillers that are difficult to put down. But for readers who are interested in the historical background, the novels also provide a fascinating window into the world of that period through the eyes of Gunther as he navigates daily life in 1930’s and 1940’s Berlin and deals with some of the architects and effects of Nazi policy.

Kerr introduces Gunther as having become a private detective after serving for years as a policeman in Berlin. By the beginning of the first novel he has already left the police force, frustrated by the way many of his colleagues had lost their jobs or otherwise been sidelined by the new regime, and angered also by the brutal practices that the Nazi’s propagated through the security services. In these stories Gunther is a man disenfranchised by the events in his city and country, and someone whose unwillingness to hide his opinions often leads him into trouble with dangerous people both inside and outside the government; he knows how to play the game and get along, but struggles to bring himself to do it.

March Violets takes place against the backdrop of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. An industry tycoon’s daughter and son-in-law have been killed, and he hires Gunther to investigate the deaths. Gunther’s work on the case leads him into a crossfire of conflicting interests among high-level Nazi officials. As Gunther roams Berlin in search of answers to his questions in the case, Kerr highlights the political rivalries within the regime, the criminal behavior linked to government supported labor and cultural groups and the growing struggles of the Jewish population: historical fiction at its best, in the form of a crime drama.

The second novel of the collection, The Pale Criminal, is set in 1938, in the months leading up to Kristallnacht, the night during with a pogrom was carried out against Jews throughout Germany. A series of brutal rapes and ritual murders of fifteen to sixteen year old girls is occurring in Berlin, and Gunther is forced by a high-ranking Nazi official to rejoin the police force and from there lead the investigation into the murders. He soon finds himself on a trail that implicates powerful members of the Nazi regime itself in the crimes. As in the best crime dramas, not everything is as it seems, and even supporters cannot always be trusted to be revealing the whole truth.

The last of the three novels in the book, A German Requiem, takes place in 1947, as post-war relations between the Americans and the Soviets are deteriorating almost daily. The story opens in Berlin, with Gunther being hired by a former police colleague who is in jail in Vienna, accused of killing an American officer. Gunther follows the trail of clues to Vienna, where the balance of the story takes place. Reflecting the reality of the period, Gunter finds himself a pawn in a complexly layered and deadly serious struggle for control being played out by the American and Soviet occupation forces.

Kerr writes the stories very much in the traditional manner of crime and mystery novels. There is an extensive slang for the inhabitants of Gunther’s world --- police officers, petty criminals and gangsters --- which takes some getting used to: lighters are guns, for example, and spanners or chocoladies are prostitutes. Similes also fly fast and free throughout the novel --- one of my favorites: “Pipe-smokers are the grandmasters of fiddling and fidgeting, and as great a blight on our world as a missionary landing on Tahiti with a box full of brassieres.”

And the main character, Bernie Gunther, is a classically styled private eye in these novels, in line with other such literary detectives --- hard-boiled but with a soft-spot for a woman in trouble, self-deprecating but with a biting wit, smart and perceptive but not omniscient. Significantly however, Gunther also represents a foil to the Nazis around him and those who support the Nazis through their silence. He makes his dislike of the regime and its policies clear at every opportunity, even when talking to Nazi officials who must often remind him that despite their need for his services, their tolerance for his opinions has limits. Thus Gunther allows Kerr to, in the context of a detective novel, describe and comment on the tragedy of Nazi Germany.

In these novels are straight-forward detective stories for the reader who loves “noir,” but also a fascinating window into Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and central Europe in the early cold war years.

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Other reviews / information:
Before being brought together into the collection titled Berlin Noir, the three novels were published individually as:

• March Violets (1989)
• The Pale Criminal (1990)
• A German Requiem (1991)

There have been several additional novels in the series, including The One from the Other, A Quiet Flame, If the Dead Rise Not and Field Gray.


Rumors about Berlin Noir being turned into an HBO mini-series.

A review of another Philip Kerr novel appeared earlier in this blog: A Philosophical Investigation.

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Other of my book reviews: FICTION and NON-FICTION