The Modern Novel

Manuel Astur: San: el libro de los milagros (Of Saints and Miracles)

On 4 June 2022

In Neoruralism, Spain, The Modern Novel website

The latest addition to my website is Manuel Astur‘s San: el libro de los milagros (Of Saints and Miracles). Marcelino, a naive young man living in Asturias, a remote rural part of Spain, is cheated out of his farm by his conniving brother (who takes after their drunken, violent father). He kills his brother and flees to the hills. He manages – just – to keep one step ahead of the police but soon becomes not just a local folk hero – tourists come from miles around to try and get a glimpse of him -but is even declared a saint, with the eponymous miracles occurring. He is oblivious to it all, intent on merely surviving. Astur mixes in the story of Marcelino’s hard childhood, local myths and local anecdotes as well as a view of life in a remote part of the country.

Hiroko Oyamada: 工場 (The Factory)

By tmn

On 28 May 2022

In Japan, The Modern Novel website, Women

The latest addition to my website is Hiroko Oyamada‘s 工場 (The Factory)>. We follow the stories of three employees as they go to work at the Factory and are still there, in the same jobs, fifteen years later. Their jobs seem mundane – one shreds documents one proofreads and one is meant to be developing moss for green-roofing the factory. But why is a sophisticated factory using humans to shred? What is being proofread and for whom? And why has the moss man made no progress in fifteen years? What does the factory produce? We have no idea. Why does Goto seem to manage everything? And what are the strange animals seemingly only found on the Factory site? Oyamada tells a strange tale of a seemingly normal working environment which is perhaps not entirely normal.

Rachael McGill: Fair Trade Heroin

By tmn

On 27 May 2022

In Afghanistan, Scotland, The Modern Novel website, Women

The latest addition to my website is Rachael McGill‘s Fair Trade Heroin. Gwen is an aid worker in Afghanistan in the 1990s, just as the Taliban are taking over. While other aid agencies are moving out, Gwen wants to help the people of a village and, in particular, the women, by offering them alternative employment to the opium poppy trade. As the Taliban move in and she tries to set up a handicrafts school and then a way for them to sell their opium by cutting the middlemen, i.e. the drug warlords. Things do not go well when the Taliban march in and Gwen is dragged out of the country and to safety by Roshan, who works for her aid agency, but not before a quick fling with Syed, one of the drug dealers. Back in the UK, sixteen years later, Nadia, the result of her fling, is now fifteen and mother and daughter clash. When Gwen, working for a charity that helps immigrants, learns that Roshan is in the UK (illegally) and is involved in a drug deal gone wrong, inadvertently witnessed by Nadia, can she help?

László Krasznahorkai: Az ellenállás melankóliája (The Melancholy of Resistance)

By tmn

On 24 May 2022

In Hungary, The Modern Novel website

The latest addition to my website is László Krasznahorkai:‘s Az ellenállás melankóliája (The Melancholy of Resistance). It is primarily set in a small Hungarian town, clearly based on Gyula, Krasznahorkai’s home town. Lots of things seem to be going wrong: buildings and trees falling, rubbish everywhere, lots of feral cats, trains disappearing. The carnival, featuring the body of a giant whale comes to town and attracts numerous people. Who are they and where did they come from? We follow the stories of Valuska, the local postman, considered the village idiot but with more than meets the eye and his close friend Mr Eszter, former director of music at the school who suddenly quit and took to his bed. when all hell breaks loose – riots linked to the carnival, with Valuska inadvertently involved – the army is called in. Is it simply the riff-raff misbehaving or is it the devil’s work? The locals are not sure. In any case it is a superb book from Krasznahorkai.

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky: Клуб убийц букв (The Letter Killers Club)

By tmn

On 21 May 2022

In Literature, Russia, The Modern Novel website

The latest addition to my website is Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky‘s Клуб убийц букв (The Letter Killers Club). A successful author who has succeeded because he got rid of all his books and was influenced by only what he recalled or imagined the books said has now now formed a club with other authors where the written word is banned and they each tell stories subverting traditional genres, from a deconstruction of Hamlet with multiple Hamlets and Guildenstern split into two characters, to a parody of old German Baron Munchausen style tales. We have a story of three mouths and a character resurrecting a method according to which a text is found and fitted to a piece of music after it has been composed. The book was written in 1926 but Soviet censors refused to allow it to be published. Fortunately those of us who are not Social Realists can enjoy its wit and cleverness.

Najwa Barakat: مستر نون (Mister N)

By tmn

On 19 May 2022

In Civil War, Lebanon, Mental health, The Modern Novel website, Women

The latest addition to my website is Najwa Barakat‘s مستر نون (Mister N). Mister N is a failed Lebanese writer who currently lives in a hotel, rarely leaving it. We gradually learn his story – horrors of the Lebanese Civil War, a mother he hated as she much preferred his older brother, Sa’id, now a successful businessman and a father who was a doctor, helping the poor and whom Mr N saw die. He has had two long-term relationships – the first dumped him and the second was with a Nepali prostitute whose pimp did not take kindly to him. One day he does leave the hotel (looking for a spare part for his toilet) and comes across Luhman. Luhman was a Civil War thug and murderer who died. More importantly, he was fictitious , a character in one of Mr. N’s books. Luhman keeps reappearing, his neighbours have serious mental health issues and he himself is increasingly unable to cope with life, language and people. Gradually we learn of his past and how he ended up in this hotel and who he and Luhman might really be. It is a splendid, complicated, colourful book.

Montserrat Roig: Ramona, adéu! (Goodbye, Ramona)

By tmn

On 16 May 2022

In Catalonia, The Modern Novel website, Women

The latest addition to my website is Montserrat Roig‘s Ramona, adéu! (Goodbye, Ramona). The novel tells the story of three women, all called Ramona, from three successive generations. Ramona 1 lives in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and feels her life as a wife and mother is boring. She almost has an affair to liven things up. Ramona 2 had an affair before marriage but it did not work out and now she is married to Francisco. She is very concerned when she thinks he might have been killed in a terrorist attack in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War but, later, she is not happy in her marriage. Ramona 3, living in the 60s, is more liberated but she has man trouble with her boyfriend Jordi and, like her forebears, feels patronised and unhappy with her family, with Barcelona and with her life. Roig makes her point clearly, that women in Catalonia (and obviously elsewhere) were expected to follow the marriage-motherhood path and do little else, even though they would have liked to have a more fulfilling life.

Zou Jingzhi: 九栋 (Ninth Building)

By tmn

On 14 May 2022

In China, Communism, The Modern Novel website

The latest addition to my website is Zou Jingzhi‘s 九栋 (Ninth Building). This is an account by Zou Jingzhi of his life in China during the Cultural Revolution. We first meet him as a boy in 1966 when he and his friends form a Red Guard unit. In some respects they behave (and misbehave) like normal boys but, at the same time, they are rooting out class enemies, including their parents when appropriate, and regularly see older people physically abused and also see several dead bodies. As an educated person – his father is already imprisoned in a cowshed – Zou is sent to the Great Northern Waste where, for eight years, he has to carry out arduous agricultural work. Getting transferred, illness or injury (real or fake) and death are the three ways out. Zou survives and returns to Beijng to make a career as a writer. Though there are other works set in the Cultural Revolution, this one focusses on the life of an ordinary person and how he survives.

Georgi Gospodinov: Времеубежище (Time Shelter)

By tmn

On 11 May 2022

In 1960s, Bulgaria, Old age, The Modern Novel website, Time

The latest addition to my website is Georgi Gospodinov‘s Времеубежище (Time Shelter). Gaustine, who may or may not exist but whom we have met before in Физика на тъгата (The Physics of Sorrow), is a geriatric psychiatrist. Assisted by the narrator who calls himself Ishmael but may well be the author, he sets up a series of homes for the Alzheimer’s/dementia patients which are seemingly set in various decades in the past, with all the relevant trappings, thus making these patients feel more at home as they regress to the past. However, eventually, the EU decides to do the same for countries as a whole, with the favourite decade decided by popular vote. Some of the book is clearly Gospodinov ruminating on memory, the past, the future, death, forgetting and remembering, with a host of fascinating ideas about how we are regressing to the past while struggling with the future. As always with Gospodinov, a thoroughly original book.

Eugene Vodolazkin: Брисбен (Brisbane)

By tmn

On 6 May 2022

In Music, Russia, The Modern Novel website, Ukraine

The latest addition to my website is Eugene Vodolazkin‘s Брисбен (Brisbane). The story is told in alternating chapters, the first telling of the early life of our hero Gleb Yanovsky, till he becomes famous as a musician, and the second from, 2012 when three key events change his life. He is born and bred in Kyiv (like Vodolazkin) where, under the influence of his father, he takes up music. He eventually studies guitar but his dream is to go to Leningrad, where he studies language rather than music. He meets and marries Katya, a German woman, and they both become teachers. He is attracted by a generous offer to play music, so they go to Berlin, where the offer does not work out. However, he gets his chance and we gradually see his career take off. However,in the later story, we learn early on that he has Parkinson’s disease and the second half is, in part, how he copes with that, as well as political events. Vodolazkin is clearly concerned with the issue of how Gleb’s music and his life are interconnected and, to a lesser degree, his language(s) as he speaks Russian as a child to most people but but his father speaks Ukrainian. This is another complex and fine book from Vodolazkin.