ELEUTHEROPHOBIA

Review: The Flowers Of War

2012-02-13T10:43:00.003Z

This book was provided via Booktrust, whose translated fiction website is here.

Its big-screen adaptation starring Christian Bale might be one of the richest films in Chinese history but anyone expecting Geling Yan's The Flowers Of War (pub. Harvill Secker) to contain a healthy dose of Hollywood schmaltz should look away now.
Set at the start of the siege of Nanking in December 1937, 'The Flowers Of War' tells the story of a group of schoolgirls forced to take refuge in the attic of an American church while the advancing Japanese soldiers rape and massacre outside its walls.
The girls' safety is further compromised by the arrival of a band of gaudy prostitutes from a nearby brothel who are seeking shelter.

Long after the prostitutes had gone back to their lair and her classmates to their attic, Shujuan sat despondently in the kitchen. Her outburst had left her drained, but her head still whirled with the exquisitely wounding insults she could have heaped on the women. She hated herself for not having taken the chance. She could hear the women chatting and teasing each other in the cellar below. They were obviously used to indulging in provocative banter with their male clients; they simply carried on in the same vein when there were no men around.
As she sat there in the gloom, Shujuan listened to the continuous rattle of gunfire. The damned Japs had fought their way into Nanking, cutting her off from her grandparents, made her parents too afraid to come back to China, and let a bunch of whores invade Nanking's 'last island of green'. She was overwhelmed with anguish, and hatred for everything and everyone. She even began to hate herself, now it turned out she had the same body and organs as those women downstairs, and the same cramping pains expelling the same unclean blood from her body.

Fighting an increasingly forlorn battle to keep his church safe, and with the schoolgirls and prostitutes regarding each other with contempt, the ageing priest, Father Engelmann, is forced to confront issues of faith and prejudice.
If the central theme of the novel is that relationship between the sheltered schoolgirls and the colourful prostitutes, 'The Flowers Of War' is far removed from the Spielberg-esque cliché of wartime redemption.
Yan is unafraid to portray in graphic detail both the lewd, crude behaviour of the girls and the horrors perpetrated by the Japanese soldiers. Just 250 pages long,
'The Flowers Of War' is a masterpiece of focus and brevity: and certainly not one for the faint-hearted.

Review: Djibouti

2012-02-09T16:25:00.006Z

Elmore Leonard is eighty-six years old and pushing towards his half-century of novels, but there can be no denying the contemporary relevance of the man many call America's greatest living crime writer.
Topics don't come much more pertinent these days than Somali pirates, so on the face of it, a book by Leonard, styled on the dust jacket as 'Hollywood's favourite crime writer', ought to be a match made in heaven: a fast-paced, high-stakes, high seas thriller.
Sadly, apart from the occasional swag-bag of ransom loot, the only thing Leonard succeeds of hooking in the course of Djibouti (pub. Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is a knotted net of 'lawless Somali'-type cliches, choppy dialogue and an untidy, contrived plot: less Hollywood-on-the-high-seas, more bathtub buccaneering.
Calling it a disappointment is an understatement. The set-up is superb, which adds to the acute sense of a missed opportunity. Dara Barr is an Oscar-winning documentary maker seeking her next challenge after shooting successful films in Bosnia and post-Katrina New Orleans. She sets out for Djibouti with her friend and sometime assistant, the ageing, engaging Xavier, with the intention of hunting down the pirates who have eluded the might of the world's navies for the best part of a decade, and filming the true life tales behind their daring exploits.
And that's exactly what she does. Just like that. 'Dara, we got us a pirate', says Xavier on pretty much their first night out in Djibouti. Abruptly, we smash-cut to three weeks later, in the course of which Dara has sailed over to Eyl, the hub of piratical activity where the ransomed ships line the harbour, witnessed shootings, drownings and ransoms being dropped from helicopters, and befriended Idris, the pirate in question, who, when he is not hijacking oil tankers, squeals around town in a brand new Mercedes.
All very exciting - or it would have been, if we'd been privy to any of it. Leonard employs a self-defeating narrative structure in which the incidents are described retrospectively by Dara and Xavier as they review the video footage from their trips. Inevitably, this renders the dialogue terribly clunky. 'Watch - we cut to the Italian destroyer', says Dara at one point: how's that for telling-not-showing? This unnecessary conceit wrings all tension and suspense from the plot: we already know what happened, simply by virtue of them being there telling the tale.
If the plot is a little over-simplistic, it doesn't help that it's played out among a cast of ultra-macho, broadly unsympathetic characters, including a Texan billionaire and wannabe Hemingway who tacks up and down the Somali coast at will on his multi-million dollar yacht, with a model girlfriend who seems utterly impervious to the grave threat she faces, at one time seriously suggesting that they "go ashore and stretch our legs".
In Leonard's Somalia, the chances are they'd be just fine. By this point, Dara has (we learn later) pretty much made Eyl her second home, hauling Xavier along to visit Idris (who rivals Johnny Depp for nautical niceness) at his luxury pad - all with an ease which implies a paddle over the local pond to take tea with the neighbours.
By the time Dara and Xavier have dug deep enough, and embroiled themselves in a vague plot to hand over al-Qaeda terrorists to the US Embassy while a stolen tanker filled with lethal liquified gas lurks close by, you can almost hear the explosions of excitement in Hollywood. Sadly, you can't help hoping it's this whole sorry cast who are first to go up in smoke.
All of which is a shame, because it's a subject well worth exploring in fiction, and Lenoard does raise some thought-provoking issues early in the book, mostly about the moral right of Somalis to make a living from the vessels which traverse their waters and pollute what could have been an even more lucrative fishing industry. The seminal Somali pirate novel still waits to be written. Leonard fans will shunt up their bookshelves for his next novel, 'Raylan', which is set in Kentucky. They say Leonard's back to his best, now he's shed his sea legs.

Review: Told By Starlight in Chad

2012-02-07T22:40:00.007Z

First, a disclaimer of sorts. I've been fascinated by Chad since I can remember. I had a small globe I'd spin, reeling off the names of nations made familiar by news headlines or World Cup campaigns. Slap-bang in the centre of Africa, light green and strangely desolate-looking, Chad was neither of those. It was a mystery, and still is. I've hoovered up every bit of information I can lay my hands on since. I know, for instance, that the nearest Chadian Embassy to the UK is in Belgium, and that it's possible to fly to its capital, N'Djamena, with Air France via Paris. It's a journey I've vowed to make.
The Chad portrayed in Joseph Brahim Seid's Told By Starlight in Chad sounds eminently welcoming. This is not a Chad ravaged by war and famine, routinely listed as one of the world's poorest and most corrupt nations; the so-called 'Dead Heart of Africa'.
Seid's Chad is one of abundance: a 'vast paradise' of sand and gold where 'birds don all their colours and the air vibrates with their melodious song'. A land whose children love nothing better than sitting out under the stars to listen to the myths and legends of their elders.
This slim, seventy-page volume ostensibly consists of those campfire stories. They feature great warriors, impossibly beautiful daughters and great, mythical beasts. Most possess morals which have presumably sustained Chadian children through centuries.
Brahim Seid's intense love for his country shines through from the book's preface, which ends:

During all these seasons, the children of Chad are the happiest under the sun. When they are not working in the fields, they roam all over the bush picking wild fruit; armed with their assegais, they hunt guinea fowl, hare, porcupine and gazelle. One of their favourite pastimes, to this day, is to lie in wait for the teals and moorhens in pools strewn with water lilies. They are passionately fond of the large gatherings after nightfall, when the elders recount the most beautiful tales, which sometimes never end and must be resumed evening after evening under the light of the moon.

Brahim Seid was a well-known Chadian author and politician who died in 1980. This, his only book translated into English, was published in 2007 by Africa World Press, who have offices in Eritrea and New Jersey. Clearly, it occupies a unique position in the marketplace. But while its remit avoids contemporary issues, it shines a unique light on the history and traditions of a country whose people have been hewn together from the many tribes who passed through on trans-Saharan trade routes, leaving as their legacies a rich mix of cultures and religions which must co-exist to this day.
Seid's fourteen short stories are beautifully written and richly evocative (much credit must also go to Karen Haire Hoenig for the seamless translation and the desire to take on such an unusual project in the first place). Seid has done his homeland a valuable service in consigning them to paper, ensuring that they will be preserved for many more generations, whatever Chad's future may hold.

This book was reviewed as part of the Africa Reading Challenge hosted by Kinnareads.

Interview: Shehan Karunatilaka

2012-02-06T10:02:00.005Z

Shehan Karunatilaka's debut novel, Chinaman (pub. Jonathan Cape), is a riotous, drunken tale of an ailing sports writer's attempts to track down and uncover the legend of Pradeep Mathew, who may or may not be Sri Lankan cricket's greatest wasted talent. Last month, it scooped the £50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Here, the author talks about the issues his book seeks to address, and the not-so-covetous price of fame. You can read the review here.

How's life changed since you won the DSC Prize? Have you bought a speedboat, or anything like that?

Nope. Bought some books and some CDs (yes I’m one of the few who still buy music) and some strings for my bass. Now I’m back at my desk, with the curtains drawn, hammering away at the new book and sending out emails begging for freelance work. Unfortunately I live in Singapore, so 50k might last me a few weeks.

Did you meet Oprah? What would W.G. Karunasena have made of it all?

The gates of Jaipur’s Diggi Palace were locked when I came to see O. I managed to bribe my way inside and had to crouch in a thicket of bushes to peer at Her Oprah-ness. Didn’t get to meet her sadly.
WG wouldn’t have been impressed by Oprah or Rushdie. He would’ve taken the train to Calcutta to see Imran Khan. I was at the Kolkata Lit Fest at Imran’s session, which was just as surreal as Jaipur.

How did the book evolve: did you sit down first and foremost with the intention of writing a novel about cricket, or drinking, or Sri Lanka, or all three?

The novel was supposed to be about wasted talent and I was exploring the idea of a genius operating in anonymity in 80s Sri Lanka. When I realized that he had to be a cricketer and when I realized that the story had to be told by a drunk, the book truly came alive. So what started out as a light-hearted detective story about a drunk and a cricketer, ended up becoming this big(gish) statement about the Sri Lankan condition.

Is the character of Pradeep Mathew based at all on a real person, or real people: a particular lost talent, for example, or an ambidextrous kid you might have once spotted playing on a patch of waste ground?

There are a lot of threads to Pradeep’s character. Failed cricketers like Anura Ranasinghe and Richard 'Danny Germs' Austin. Fictional baseball anti-heroes like Roy Hobbs and Sid Finch. And yes I have played cricket with some strange talents on the streets of Colombo. But I think Pradeep’s main influence was a character called Colin McKenzie in Peter Jackson’s 1994 documentary 'Forgotten Silver'.

Your book has a big 'wayward genius' feel about it, from the narrator down. Is this a trait you are particularly attracted to? True greatness, you seem to be saying, whether in sport or literature or music or whatever, comes in glimpses.

I am attracted to one-hit wonders and talents that never quite made it. In my research, I came across an essay by Ed Smith in his excellent book, 'What Sport Means to Life' in which he discusses the myth of talent. The idea that performance at the highest level relies more on hours spent training than on natural ability. I do think it’s true that some of those blessed with gifts tend to take them for granted and work less harder than they should.

Cricket corruption is in the news more than ever. Is it still as big a problem in Sri Lanka as your book suggests, and is it in danger of threatening the nation's relationship with the sport?

I don’t know how much of a problem it is as all of this is cloak and dagger stuff that I’m not privy to. The stories in Chinaman are mostly made up, based on third-hand anecdotes. Though sadly, it appears that there may be more truth to them than I thought.
There are been plenty of rumours circulating, especially with ex-players making allegations, but as yet no concrete cases have come to light. Sri Lankan cricket is in the doldrums at the moment and last thing we need at this stage is a match-fixing scandal.

Clearly your novel addresses some important political and racial issues in Sri Lanka today. Are you optimistic about your country's future? And what has been the reaction to your book back home?

I am quietly optimistic about our future. For the first time we live in a war free Sri Lanka. There are no more excuses for us to not to become the great nation that our politicians talk about.
That said, the country isn’t without its problems. Old war wounds have yet to heal and there is much discussion online about war crimes, displaced civilians, the murder of journalists and widespread nepotism and corruption.
There’s a lot of work to be done and I think the next 10 years will be the most important in our history.
Reaction to the book has been very kind and overwhelmingly positive. No disgruntled cricketers or politicians declaring fatwas on me so far.

What's next, literary-speaking?

Have begun a new book, also set in Sri Lanka, but steering clear of old men, drunks and sport. Am still in the early stages so could take a couple of years. But am looking forward to moving back to Sri Lanka and getting stuck in.

Interview: Chris Womersley

2012-02-02T09:58:00.003Z

Chris Womersley's Bereft, a haunting post-First World War tale of a young soldier's return home to the Australian Outback to settle dark scores from his past, is out now (pub Quercus). My review is here, and you can read a sizeable excerpt in the Quercus flip-book here.

Why did you decide to set your story in the aftermath of the First World War; and were any of the characters hewn from real-life?

The decision to set 'Bereft' in the aftermath was more or less accidental. A historical novel was pretty much the last sort of book I ever imagined myself writing but around the time of its germination I became fascinated by millennium movements and fancied setting something in a period in which characters might imagine the end of the world was at hand. The year 1919, in the aftermath of war and the Spanish flu pandemic, seemed like such a time. It was only after I started writing 'Bereft' that I realized that the Walker family and their attempts to deal with the grief of losing their daughter/sister mirrored that of entire nations mourning their dead.
None of the characters were based on real people, although the knowledge that my grandfather George (who makes a fleeting appearance) fought in WWI and had been gassed in France was something of a spark for the book.

You don't spare the reader the horrors of the battlefield. How important was it to stay unflinchingly honest to the facts in that respect?

Initially I resisted the idea of writing anything in the way of a battle scene, but realized partway through writing the novel that such having a scene was inevitable. It was necessary to present something of the horror of battle without making it so explicit that it turned people away or, equally, was too timid. I guess the challenge for me was to try and present it in such a way that was new for readers, which prompted me to invent the image of the dead birds littering the ground in the aftermath of battle.

In your opinion, how well does Australia remember its War veterans, and do you feel the wider world sometimes forgets or relegates the role Australians played in the conflicts?

World War One occupies a curious place in the Australian imagination. Certain battles (Gallipoli, Flanders) are generally touted as being the crucible in which the Australian identity was forged, which is something I feel slightly queasy about. More than 60,000 Australian soldiers died during the war and Armistice Day and Anzac Day (the anniversary of the Gallipoli landing) are widely commemorated. Frankly, I am unsure how the wider world sees Australian participation. For Australia of the time, of course, it was always a geographically distant war, so it is weird how vivid in the imagination it remains.

How did the character of Sadie evolve through your drafting and editing process? Did you always intend for her to be so ambiguous?

I originally conceived of Sadie as a boy. It was only when I was flicking through an art magazine and saw a reproduction of a painting of a girl wearing a muslin dress lying down (Asleep? Dead?) facing away from the viewer that I realized, quite suddenly, that my little boy (who was, at that time, unnamed) was actually a girl. Once I had written her introductory chapter – where she meets Quinn for the first time – Sadie really came to life for me in quite a startling way. I always intended her character to be ethereal and ambiguous but her fondness for magical trinkets and so on developed in the process of writing, as the themes of the novel expanded and became more defined.

You paint quite a damning picture of small-town Australia in that time -murderous, incestuous, drunk: and that's just the Sheriffs. Did the remoteness of these places really give the local authority figure carte blanche to behave in such way?

I think it’s important to note that Flint is a fictional place and I wasn’t seeking to provide any sort of social comment in the writing of 'Bereft'. Any resemblance to people living or dead etc etc, you know. Having said that, I suspect that isolation can provide people with a sense of being able to operate outside not only the law but outside conventional moral codes. But you’re right – small-town Australia doesn’t come off too well in the novel; I tend not to go there very frequently.

Your work has been compared with the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, Beckett and Cormac McCarthy among others. Which would you choose?

Hmm, I still have quite a fondness for Charles Dickens. He can be very sentimental and a tendency to waffle on a bit but, overall, his character are just so vivid and funny and memorable. Plus, his books still sell many years after his death and what author wouldn’t want that? Not that I plan on dying for a while…

Be they druggy doctors or sociopathic Sheriffs, you seem attracted to society's underbelly. Can we expect more of the same in your future work?

Ha! It’s true, I do love a nutcase – they are just so interesting and much more fun to work with than plain old healthy and happy folk. So, the answer is Yes, you can expect a few more of them to pop up in the future. I have recently started work on a new novel which, at this stage, features a couple of junkies involved in a global art forgery scam that, you never know, might just go horribly wrong…

Review: The Portable Son

2012-02-01T11:41:00.003Z

Barrett Hathcock's beautiful short story about teenage betrayal, 'High Cotton', first appeared on the consistently great 'Fried Chicken and Coffee' website two years ago. Read it here. The story tells of two boys who love to dive in cotton bins in Mississippi, and the challenge their friendship faces as the opposite sex begin to consume an increasing part of their lives.
'High Cotton' both begins and underpins Hathcock's debut short story collection, The Portable Son, which is published in the US by Aqueous Books, and is also available internationally in e-formats, including Kindle.
Its nine stories, of which the gleaming 'High Cotton' remains the standout, concern not so much growing up as the uneasy embrace of lower middle-age: a time when college friends and conquests are dispersed, parents are ailing, jobs are boring, and sex is less about thrill and more about need.
Peter, the collection's continuous character, intersperses awkward flashbacks with trying to get to grips with the monotony of everyday life. He is hanging on in law school while his friends are getting married and making babies. While he is not an especially easy character to like, it is all too easy to identify with his predicament. Hathcock has fashioned a sad reminder of what it's like to be left alone in the world, even when friends and family are close. It's also a delightful glimpse of a seldom-seen genteel side of the American south: a world away from dungareed rednecks, where hearts are broken gently, and only memories ache.

'The Portable Son' also happens to include, in 'Nightswimming', a truly devastating father-and-son birds-and-bees talk. Part of it's here, courtesy the publisher. The rest of it's even better, but you'll have to buy the book for that. Readers of a sensitive disposition, etc etc…

'Son, you should know that what you're about to enter is an exciting time. I don't have to tell you this. You're about to piss yourself as it is, I can tell. You're already excited about everything. And I want you to be. I don't want you to let what's going on between your Mom and me get in the way of your enjoying yourself for these next few years. We're all going to work it out and whatever happens, you know that I love you and that's what's important. I'll still be there for you. And I'm going to try not to be jealous or live through you in some way like some fathers do. But I have to admit that the next few years will probably be the best years of your life. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about. That's okay. Youth's wasted on the young, anyway. But I want you to remember, want you to remember what I'm about to say: What you're about to go through will never be repeated. Remember that. It's precious and brief and it only happens once.
'We'll get that new car pretty soon and you probably won't listen to a word I say afterwards. It's okay. It's to be expected. I don't know where you are, so to speak, but sooner or later, you'll only smell gasoline and pussy, and anything me or your mother says won't really compare to those two smells. And I'm not going to tell you to hold it in, son. Your Mom might, but I won't lie to you: some of the best pussy I ever got was when I was in high school, so I'm not about to pretend that you won't be involved. But I would tell you to take it slow. Slow Down. Don't be in such a rush to grow up. Get laid. Get a job. Whatever. But remember to be a kid for a while.'

Interview: Jamil Ahmad

2012-01-30T11:08:00.005Z

Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon (pub. Penguin) is an extraordinary collection of inter-linked stories which shines a light on the remote tribal regions bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. It has been deservedly shortlisted for this year's MAN Asian Literary Prize. Ahmad, now almost eighty, has come to literary fame late: his manuscript lay unpublished at his home for thirty years. You can read my full review here. Here, in a brief, exclusive interview, the author talks about the inspiration behind his book.

After taking so long to get published, are you surprised by the positive critical reception (and MAN Asian longlisting) for 'The Wandering Falcon'?

I was surprised, but then 'The Wandering Falcon' has offered me one pleasant surprise after another in the past year and a half.

Tor Baz is an unusual, elusive central character. Why did you decide to convey him in such a relatively unconventional way?

I have always believed that no person is a dominating character, 24 hours a day and seven days a week (other than comic book heroes). Life is by and large a feeble struggle with strong currents. This is the theme that Tor Baz represents.

In your previous work as as Commissioner and political officer in the tribal areas, how difficult was it to gain to trust and respect of these societies?

I never found it difficult to gain trust in any of the areas where I served. All one needed to show was that you protected their interests with as much vigor and commitment as you protected the interests of the state.

The tribal areas obviously come in for a bad press, especially in the West, dismissed as breeding grounds and hiding places for al-Qaeda. But one gets the impression that Western society could learn a lot from the way life is organised in these areas: their honour codes and morals?

I do believe so.

Al-Jazeera reported recently on the terrible mental strain placed on inhabitants of these areas by the constant threat of drone attacks. In what way has the latest Afghan war and specifically these missile attacks changed these communities, and their perception of the outside world?

I am not current with the situation but I do feel that in many parts of the tribal areas drone attacks are not resented to the degree they are portrayed in the print and electronic media. The most traumatic event for these societies and these areas was the Afghan war in the late seventies. Traditional power centres of these societies were bypassed when Mujahideen groups were created. This tragedy was further compounded by other policy decisions in the years that followed. The west and its surrogates sowed the wind in 1978 and are now reaping the whirlwind.

Something that shines through in your book is the glimpses of strong female characters in a world many are quick to judge as terribly repressive. How do you perceive the role of women in such societies today?

As I stated earlier, I am out of touch with the current situation. However, the status of women in areas such as the Mekran coast or among the nomad tribes may not have changed too much even with the passage of half a century.

Review: Drifting House

2012-01-27T08:57:00.004Z

On the face of it, South Korean fiction has the raw materials to make it big: partition, war, dictatorships and economic boom-and-bust, all played out against the backdrop of a deeply traditional, rigidly honour-bound society.
But while the likes of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto have succeeded in ushering modern Japanese writing into global favour, their South Korean equivalents have struggled to make such an impressive breakthrough beyond their homeland.
Until now: this has been a stellar season for South Korean fiction, starting with Kyung-sook Shin's Please Look After Mother, which as well as selling over one million copies at home, was released in 19 other countries, and is the first South Korean novel to be shortlisted for the prestigious MAN Asian Literary Prize.
Now comes Krys Lee's Drifting House (pub. Faber), a debut collection of nine tight short stories which jab at the heart of her modern nation's struggle to survive the myriad travails of its recent past.
Where Shin's work was predominantly concerned with exploring the rural, matriachal perspective of modern Korean life, Lee's book is very much urban and masculine: most central characters are husbands struggling to hold their families together under such an enormous, accepted weight of responsibility.
Lee's world is one that stretches far beyond the confines of her own nation's borders, to the countless Koreatowns dotting America's west coast, yet her message remains the same. Delicately, devastatingly, she strips away the veneer of post-Olympics, post-dictatorship economic respectability, bringing into focus the almost pathological obsession with work and education that came with it: an obsession ill-suited to such rigidly structured family models.
Lee's characters are people whose biggest fear, beyond family break-ups, beyond even death, is becoming a burden. They will gladly send spouses and siblings across the Pacific to escape it, consigning them all to a life of soullessness in the process, yet anything is better than the alternative.
The desperate period after the 1997 IMF crash which exploded the South Korean economic miracle is most starkly described in 'The Salaryman', in which an unexpected redundancy leads its comfortable, salaried central character into an alarmingly quick spiral of despair, culminating in his abandoning his wife and family and adopting a grotesque existence on the streets, simply unable to face the humiliation of going home no longer with a means to provide for them.

You, the docile fool, had believed that if you worked hard enough, you could protect those you loved.

While the first handful of stories in Lee's collection provide the layers of insight
required to begin to understand South Korea's unique society, the second half of the book is stronger. The stand-out, for sure, is the book's title story, a gut-wrenchingly memorable story of abandoned siblings seeking to escape the hell of Kim Jong-il's famine-ravaged north: a tale all too familiar to anyone who read the survivors' testimonies in Barbara Demick's seminal Nothing To Envy.

The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like ghosts. The government's face was everywhere: on the sides of a marooned cart, above the lintel of the gray post office, on placards throughout the surrounding mountains praising the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il.And in the grain sack strapped to the oldest brother Woncheol's back, their crippled sister, the weight of a few books.

'Drifting House' provides a superb, overdue insight in a fascinatingly complex culture which, in the context of global literary fiction, has been neglected for too long. Lee, whose forthcoming first novel has also been acquired by Faber, is talented enough to remain at the forefront of this shift-change. If 'Drifting House' is anything to go by, we have not heard the last of Krys Lee's South Korea; not by a long shot.

Review: Looking For Transwonderland

2012-01-24T13:51:00.005Z

Reading Noo Saro-Wiwa's account of her travels in Nigeria, Looking For Transwonderland (pub. Granta), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the current wave of Islamist terror gripping the country's north was inevitable, if not overdue.
That a hopelessly corrupt and wholly uncontrollable nation of upwards of one hundred and sixty million people, swinging from strict Sharia law in cities like Kano to evangelical christianity in Lagos, has survived so long as a single entity seems remarkable enough.
On visiting Kano, Saro-Wiwa writes:

Our sporadic flashes of violence don't reflect complete failure.. but instead the occasional spewings of an active volcano that Nigerian society has done remarkably well to contain.

Saro-Wiwa is in a better position than most to pass judgement on the state of Nigeria today. She is the daughter of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the author and environmental activist who was hanged by the military government of Sani Abacha in 1995 - to international fury - following his campaign against the oil industry.
In 'Lost In Transwonderland', Saro-Wiwa returns to the country of her birth for her first sustained visit since her father's death. Despite having just cause to rail against almost everything modern Nigeria appears to represent, not least the endemic corruption which has wriggled its way into every aspect of its society, she is by turns patriotic and proud, becoming frustrated when her accent or attire marks her out for preferential treatment as a foreigner.
Saro-Wiwa hurls herself back into her country's culture and lifestyle with an admirable lack of caution. She braves the madness of Lagos head-on by using the death-defying okadas, or motorcyle taxis. Later she heads, via the clinical official capital of Abuja, to the fascinating, simmering muslim north.
The nation's many paradoxes are plain to see, not least in a religious fervour which seems so cruelly at odds with the everyday predicament of those who seem keenest to preach it.

If there's a country more religious than Nigeria then I haven't been there. According to the Bible, God made the earth in six days and took a rest on the seventh. But by creating Nigerians, he ensured that that was the last day off he's enjoyed ever since. Twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week we call on his services, connecting with him, singing his praise, establishing dialogue with him (and extremely loud dialogue at that). In my time in Lagos I had heard hairdressers singing their hallelujahs at salons; evangelical radio stations resounding in internet cafes; bus passengers collectively breaking out into ovine choruses of 'Jeezos is my father… he never, never fail me.'

In the gleaming show-city of Abuja, Saro-Wiwa finally comes to despair of the corruption which leads to so little being done. Government contracts are dished out for the sake of back-handers rather than any sense of civic improvement. Seemingly little has changed since the days when her father's nemesis Abacha stashed six billion US dollars in overseas bank accounts: government limousines crash down pot-holed roads; sumptuous palaces are powered by noisy generators. Saro-Wiwa writes:

I couldn't understand why these kleptomaniacs preferred to be kings of a slum rather than live amongst equals in paradise.

Indeed, the assumption of corruption has become so ingrained that no-one is spared.
'Everyone is corrupt,' she is told by a local in Kano. 'Even that Ken Saro-Wiwa. I've heard he wasn't honest either.'
'Ken Saro-Wiwa was my father.'
Ravi's face fell. 'I'm sorry - '.

In Saro-Wiwa's vividly portrayed Nigeria, the hotel rooms seldom have running water, and the hazy TV sets flick out WWE wrestling in between powercuts. But perhaps nothing sums up its parlous state better than the eponymous Transwonderland, a half-abandoned theme park outside Abuja. There, a rusting rollercoaster lurches and creaks yet defies seemingly insurmountable odds to stay on track. Finally, it deposits its shaken traveller back where they started, having failed to get anywhere fast.
That said, by the end of her brave, tireless voyage, Saro-Wiwa's patriotism remains largely intact. She has painted a revealing portrait of a nation which, for all its faults, can point to its continued existence as perhaps its greatest success story. Never mind its squandered oil billions. It is the energy and evident lust for life of its inhabitants that it will need to harness in order to see off its latest threat, and secure its future.

This book has been reviewed as part of the Africa Reading Challenge. More details here.

Africa Reading Challenge

2012-01-23T20:47:00.003Z

Fellow book blogger Kinna Reads has devised the Africa Reading Challenge: a loose commitment to read, review and discuss at least five books from the continent over the course of this year. It's a worthy idea, and should help shine a light on the sheer scope of Africa's fact and fiction output. This blog will start in the next few days with a review of Noo Saro-Wiwa's Nigerian travelogue, 'Looking For Transwonderland'. Another certainty on the list is Ahmadou Kourouma's fictional, first-person account of a child soldier, 'Allah Is Not Obliged'. How to resist a book whose opening paragraph reads:

The full, final and complete title of my bullshit story is: Allah is not obliged to be fair about all the things he does here on earth. Okay. Right. I better start explaining some stuff.

Other candidates include the equally unforgiving 'African Psycho' by Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou, 'Anatomy of a Disappearance' by Libya's Hisham Matar, and - feeding this writer's entirely irrational obsession with the country in question -'Told By Starlight in Chad' by Joseph Brahim Seid. Any other suggestions will be warmly welcomed.

Review: Chinaman

2012-01-20T11:26:00.006Z

In my life I have seen beauty only twice. I'm not talking Tharuniya magazine front-cover beauty. I'm talking staggering beauty. Something so beautiful it can make you cry. Sixty-four years, two things of beauty. One I have failed to cherish, the other I might yet be able to.
Sheila at the Galle Face Hotel, 31st Nite Dinner Dance, 1963.
PS Mathew vs New Zealand, at Asgiriya, 1987.

Sports writer W.G. Karunasena is drinking himself to death. The way he sees it, he has no choice. He needs the arack to sustain him through his final assignment: to resolve the mystery of Pradeep Mathew, the greatest bowler he has ever seen, and a man whose fleeting fame and subsequent deletion from cricket history begs unfathomable questions.
In Chinaman, Karunasena, fondly known as Wijie by his friends and neighbours, and the most unreliable of narrators, given he is blind drunk most of the time, scours the Sri Lankan cricket hinterland in his quest for answers.
He encounters bent officials, busty media executives, gangsters, paedophiles and midgets, all of whom seem to have their own vested interests in either hiding or entirely misrepresenting Mathew's story.
What Shehan Karunatilaka has fashioned is, like Mathew's legendary delivery itself, a great, double-bouncing googly of a debut novel. It is by turns inebriated, bewildering and uproarious; a unique and dischordant symphony of tall stories, Sri Lanka-style.
Karunatilaka has taken a brave step into that in-between world in which fiction and fictional characters are melded into an existing, factual framework. Most of the cricket matches are real, as are their protagonists, but the line is blurred to the extent that Mathew often interacts with them. The book's inherent unpredictability soon makes it impossible to separate fact from fiction, and this serves to perpetuate the Mathew myth: he may well be the greatest spin bowler the world has ever seen. Or he might just never have existed at all.
If it is first and foremost a novel about cricket, and a timely exploration of the roots of the match-fixing scandal which still grips the game, it is also so much more. As Karunasena opines early in the book:

If you've never seena cricket match; if you have and it has made you snore; if you can't understand why anyone would watch, let alone obsess over this dull game, then this is the book for you.

'Chinaman' presents a rare insight into a modern Sri Lanka still (then) in the grip of the Tamil Tiger insurgency. On an individual level, it describes the determination of an ailing, ageing sports writer to take his last chance to make a mark in both his professional and personal lives. Sports writing can be the most vicarious of professions, in which even its finest exponents are forced to measure their achievements not through their own pen, but the greatness of others. It is almost as if, by restoring the memory of Mathew, Karunasena believes he will go some way towards making up for his own missed opportunities.

It is unnerving to think that the dead walk among us and are invisible, particularly if you are a curvaceous young girl about to take a bath. But it is as likely an explanation as any, if you believe in a soul, which even godless W.G. Karunasena does. When we feel despair, it is a thousand-year-old spirit cursing in our ear; when we feel craving it is a drunk apparition coaxing our tongue.

'Chinaman' is an incredibly difficult book to describe in a way that does it full justice. The topics it raises go way beyond the boundary. It breaks just about every literary convention going: there are false starts, blind alleys and contradictions, and by the time you reach the reality-stretching coincidence which heralds this truly brilliant book's final pages, it will seem entirely fitting.
The richly deserved winner of this year's prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian literature, 'Chinaman' indicates that Karunatilaka's talent will sustain much longer than that of Mathew ever did, or might have done.

Chinaman is out now in hardback (pub. Jonathan Cape). It is released in paperback in April by Vintage.

The Mystery of Pobby and Dingan

2012-01-17T12:46:00.003Z

In 2001, Ben Rice's eighty-nine page novella, Pobby and Dingan, briefly lit up the literary world. Rice's deceptively simple story of a young girl in the Australian Outback who loses her imaginary friends drew rave reviews. Writing in the Guardian, Robert McCrum said: 'With Pobby and Dingan, Ben Rice makes a strong claim to be a leader of the new generation. This novel marks one of those debuts that may well turn out to have been of the greatest significance.'
Rice was included in Granta's list of the twenty best young British novelists. A film version of the story, 'Opal Dream', and co-written by Rice, was released to decent acclaim in 2006.
Pobby and Dingan is the tale of two siblings, Kellyanne and Ashmol Williamson. Kellyanne finds escape from the reality of everyday life in their rough, tough mining town by conjuring adventures with her two imaginary friends. So consumed is Kellyanne that her mother sets places for them at the table every mealtime. The novel begins:

Kellyanne opened the car door and crawled into my bedroom. Her face was puffy and pale and fuzzed-over. She just came in and said, 'Ashmol! Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead!' That's how she said it.
'Good,' I said. 'Perhaps you'll grow up now and stop being such a fruit-loop.'
Tears started sliding down her face. But I wasn't feeling any sympathy, and neither would you if you'd grown up with Pobby and Dingan.
'Pobby and Dingan aren't dead,' I said, hiding my anger in a swig from my can of Mello Yello. 'They never existed. Things that never existed can't be dead. Right?'

Kellyanne's world is shattered one day when Pobby and Dingan disappear, on the same day her father is accused of 'ratting' - one of the worst crimes an opal miner can commit - by his workmates. As Kellyanne takes to her bed, and her family is embroiled in increasing strife, it becomes clear that Ashmol's only hope of finding them is if he also starts to believe they are real.
It's a fantastic story about family and loyalty and the power of trust. But the 'significant debut' McCrum predicted has remained just that. Bibliographies suggest Rice wrote a second novel, 'Etiquette', in 2007, but there is no record of it. In 2010, he is credited with a video short, Bikes, by the Independent Movie Database. If Pobby and Dingan is to remain Rice's only foray into fiction writing, it will stand as a fine testament to his talent. But at the same time it would be a great pity.

Upcoming Reviews

2012-01-16T14:02:00.011Z

Review: Bereft

2012-01-13T09:36:00.007Z

There is a danger of doing Chris Womersley's post-First World War Australian Outback saga Bereft (pub. Quercus) a disservice by describing it as 'unputdownable'.
So-called 'unputdownable' books often turn out to be a sort of literary soufflé: scrumptious for the most part, but in the habit of leaving their readers feeling strangely unsated at the finish.
Unputdownability is generally the territory of common crime whodunnits or celebrity memoirs: in other words, it's a recommendation which guarantees accessibility and ready-made momentum - tune in and zone out, just so long as it lasts.
You could call 'Bereft' a crime drama, after a fashion, but it's definitely no whodunnit: you get a good inkling of the perpetrator fairly soon, and it's as good as confirmed before you hit half-way. Nor is it any form of literary comfort food. Womersley's book describes the horrors of the trenches, the lingering, debilitating hell of gas attacks, and what we would in modern parlance call post-traumatic stress disorder more viscerally than most.
But one thing Womersley's book does have is momentum, as it follows the returning soldier Quinn Walker's arrival from the War in 1919 to his home town of Flint, a sun-bleached scrub of a place ravaged not only by the loss of so many of its fighting men, but also in the grip of a deadly influenza epidemic.
For Quinn, it's the least of his worries. It's the first time he has set foot back in the place in ten years, since he was accused of an unspeakable crime against his sister. He knows the townsfolk will seek to hang him if they find him back. Hiding out in the woods above town, Quinn falls in with a runaway orphan, Sadie Fox, whose ghostly ways and impish companionship help bring his past to life, and make his options a little clearer in his gas-fogged head.
If Womersley is strong on evoking the barren, hopeless landscape of this part of New South Wales, he is even better at painting the bleak and incestuous lives of its inhabitants:

When it was dark, they ate cold beans and dry bread, and Sadie told Quinn of other things: Mrs Taylor, who wept every night over the deaths of her three sons in the war; the McClaren boy, who died from the plague and how a slug of blood leaked from his ear when they carried him from the house; how the Reverend's daughter Casey Smail got pregnant to a travelling salesman and they took her to the Chinaman to drink a potion that dissolved her baby; the Harman boy, who came back from the war possessed by the Devil; that his uncle Robert Dalton sometimes visited the widowed Mrs Higgins late at night. Who was dead, who married - the events that tangle and weave, over time, to make a town's history.

If Quinn's mind is not tortured enough by the memory of his sister, it is also subjected to violent, wartime flashbacks which tend to merge into a nightmarish soup with the travails of his present. It's a surprisingly Gothic novel, in which certain mysteries are never quite solved. The vagueness of a visit to a Paris séance weighs heavy throughout, as do the flitting appearances of Sadie, a character so otherworldly as to sometimes seem hardly really there at all.
In the wrong hands, the slight, otherworldly Sadie could have become a cumbersome cliché: a clumsy metaphor for loss and longing; an irritating diversion from the momentum of an urgent central plot of a man returning home in search of redemption.
In fact, as Womersley's superbly paced novel builds to its inevitable but never less than enthralling climax, it's the spectre of Sadie who will do her best to cajole you into putting your chores on hold and pulling 'Bereft' back off the bookshelf. Unputdownable? Almost. But much more steak dinner than soufflé.

MAN Asian Literary Prize: Shortlist Guide

2012-01-10T10:33:00.012Z

This year's MAN Asian Literary Prize shortlist, announced today, includes an unprecedented seven titles, split between Pakistan's pre-Taliban tribal lands, 19th century Canton, modern-day India and South Korea, rural China, swampy Guyana and misty, mysterious Japan.
Perhaps most notable for its omission is Haruki Marukami's super-hyped, yet critically divisive three-volume tome, '1Q84'. Personally, I'm disappointed Anuradha Roy's gleaming 'The Folded Earth' didn't make the cut, but you can't have everything. The winner will be announced on March 15. The choice of the Shadow Jury, of which I am a part, will be revealed prior to that. An index to all the Shadow Jury's longlist reviews can be found here. In the meantime, here's a cut-out-and-keep guide to the remaining contenders:

The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad (Hamish Hamilton)

Blurb: Set in the decades before the rise of the Taliban, Jamil Ahmad's stunning debut takes us to the essence of human life in the forbidden areas where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet... in 'The Wandering Falcon', this highly traditional, honour-bound culture is revealed from the inside for the first time (via Hamish Hamilton)

Excerpt: The drums started beating in a Bhittani village late one evening. Their booming notes could be heard throughout the night, rolling over the hills with intermittent periods of rest to enable the drum beaters to rebuild their rhythm and energy. As the sombre thudding beat of the drums permeated the airless mud houses and hill caves where the families of the tribe lived, the men shook themselves awake, grabbed their weapons and hurried out into the night towards the source of the sound.

Shadow Jury verdict: 'What Ahmad has crafted out of this land of endless dust-storms and unforgiving mountain ranges is a beautiful testament to the triumph of the human spirit' (Eleutherophobia); 'A brilliant book. Highly recommended' (ANZLitLovers).

Rebirth by Jahnavi Barua (Penguin India)

Blurb: Rebirth is the story of Kaberi, a young woman coming to grips with an uncertain marriage. It is also an intimate portrait of the passionate bond between a mother and her unborn child. Moving between Bangalore and Guwahati the novel weaves together Kaberi’s inner and outer worlds as she negotiates the treacherous waters of betrayal and loss — an unfaithful husband, a troubled relationship with her parents and the death of a childhood friend (via Penguin India)

Excerpt: You certainly took your time to show up. Year after year, we waited, your father and I, nerves jangling... I never gave up on you, I want you to know that. In the last year I sensed that your father had given up and I tried to tell him not to but he was already drifting away from me and nothing I said seemed to make a difference any more.

Shadow Jury verdict: 'Barua is strong on descriptive detail but less successful in developing plot interest' (Read, Ramble); 'This is a novel of self-rhetoric as Kaberi talks herself round to the fact that her husband isn't the dream man she had wanted' (Winstonsdad).

The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya (Macmillan/Picador)

Blurb: A twenty-six-year-old Indian journalist decides to give up his job and travel to a country where he can 'escape the deadness of his life'. So he arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerising beauty. From the beautiful, decaying wooden houses of Georgetown, through coastal sugarcane plantations, to the dark rainforest interior scavenged by diamond hunters, he is absorbed by the fantastic possibilies of this place where the descendants of the enslaved and the indentured have made a new world (via Picador).

Excerpt: On our fourth day a group of porknockers returned to the settlement. They were seven in all, rougher than rough, steppin like razor, they could chew bullets, kick down trees. They came with great big cheer and a supply of wild meat, eager to sport like sport going out of style.

Shadow Jury verdict: 'This is a remarkably clever book; I'm not surprised that it won the Hindu Literacy Prize' (ANZLitLovers); 'masterfully written... the book plays like a graceful, rhythmic song' (Read, Ramble).

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (Penguin India)

Blurb: In September 1838 the fortunes of all those aboard three ships in the Indian Ocean - the Ibis, the Anahira and the Redruth - are upended in tempestuous seas. On the grand scale of an historical epic, River of Smoke follows the motley collection of storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbours of China. All struggle to cope with their losses - and for some, unimaginable freedoms - in the alleys and crowded waterways of nineteenth-century Canton (via John Murray).

Excerpt: Like other boat children, Ah Fatt grew up with a bell attached to his ankle, so his family could always keep track of him; like them he had to sit in a barrel when the boat was moving; like them, he had a wooden board tied to his back, so that he would float if he fell in. But the other children lost their boards and bells when they were two or three - Ah Fatt's stayed on till long afterwards, making him a target of mockery.

Shadow Jury verdict: 'an epic, intense, richly rewarding novel, as elegaic as it is exhaustive' (Eleutherophobia); 'a sophisticated work of literature... a great story by a master story-teller' (ANZLitLovers).

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Blurb: Please Look After Mother is the story of So-nyo, a wife and mother, who has lived a life of sacrifice. A few years earlier she suffered a stroke, leaving her vulnerable and often confused. Now, travelling from the Korean countryside to Seoul and her grown-up children, So-nyo is separated from her husband when the doors close on a packed train. Compassionate, redemptive and beautifully written, Please Look after Mother will reconnect you to the story of your own family, and to the forgotten sacrifices that lie at its heart (via Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

Excerpt: It's been one week since mother went missing. The family is gathered at your eldest brother Hyong-chol's house, bouncing ideas off each other. You decide to make flyers and hand them out where Mother was last seen. The first thing to do, everyone agrees, is to draft a flyer. Of course, a flyer is an old-fashioned response to a crisis like this. But there are few things a missing person's family can do, and the missing person is none other than your mother.

Shadow Jury verdict: 'a deceptively simple novel... if all Korean literature is this good, be prepared to see a whole lot more of it' (A Novel Approach); 'a heart-warming story of family... I can see why a million Koreans bought it' (Winstonsdad).

Dream Of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (Corsair)

Blurb: Told through the eyes of Xiao Qiang, a young boy killed by his family's neighbours, this seminal novel tells the tragic and shocking story of the blood-contamination scandal in China's Henan province. With black humour and biting satire, Yan Lianke's novel is a powerful allegory of the moral vacuum at the heart of Communist China, tracing the relentless destruction of a community (via Corsair).

Excerpt: Turning the soil at the edge of his plot was back-breaking work that had to be done manually. Now that Li Sanren was selling blood two or three times a month, his face had turned sallow, as if his skin were coated with a thin layer of wax. When he'd been the mayor, he could swing a pickaxe as easily as if it were the handle of a hoe, but now it felt like trying to heft a boulder.

Shadow Jury verdict: 'Lianke's beautiful descriptions of such a beautiful and desolate landscape sustain the reader through this gut-wrenchingly sad tale' (Eleutherophobia); 'his ability to create true, human characters amongst all this is perhaps his greatest gift' (A Novel Approach).

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto (Melville House)

Blurb: [The Lake] tells the tale of a young woman who moves to Tokyo after the death of her mother, hoping to get over her grief and start a career as a graphic artist. She finds herself spending too much time staring out of her window, though... until she realizes she's gotten used to seeing a young man across the street staring out his window, too (via Melville House).

Excerpt: The lake had started looking blurry, and I realized a mist had gathered. All of a sudden, the world before me was shrouded in it. The lake, seen through the mist, was submerged in a pale, milky white, as if a gauzy curtain hung between it and me.

Shadow Jury verdict: 'it is about grief, trauma and recovery, overlaid with the struggle in Japanese society to not follow the norm blindly' (Whispering Gums); 'not a lot happens here. Yoshimoto is far more concerned with character study and development than any kind of plot machinations' (A Novel Approach).

Review: The Lake

2012-01-06T10:21:00.007Z

This is my ninth longlist review from this year's MAN Asian Literary Prize, and probably my last before next week's shortlist announcement. I'd be majorly surprised to see this make it. That said, Sue at Whispering Gums is much less cynical, while Matt and Lisa are also more willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Banana Yoshimoto is big in Japan. Her mostly modern fables of love and loss - of which The Lake (pub. Melville House) is her twelfth - have acquired a cult following, and sold upwards of six million copies.
Those familiar with Yoshimoto's previous work will presumably be unsurprised by her latest offering. 'The Lake' is a slim, fragile story revolving around the relationship between two young Japanese students, Chihiro and Nakajima.
Chihiro has recently lost her mother: the first line of the novel reads: 'The first time Nakajima stayed over, I dreamed of my dead mom.' Nakajima's affliction is more mysterious, and the novel is ostensibly concerned with Chihiro's attempts to figure him out.
Nakajima, an implausibly bright genetics student, has clearly been through something terrible in the past. In a vague attempt to exorcise those memories, Nakajima takes Chihiro to visit a couple of old friends who live in a run-down shack by a remote lake. Mino is buoyant and friendly; his sister Chii seems to be some sort of shaman, lulling semi-comatose and transmitting her accurate impressions of the future through the voice of Mino. So far, so mysterious. And wouldn't you just know it, a thick mist descends right on cue to enhance the sense of something otherwordly:

The lake had started looking blurry, and I realized a mist had gathered. All of a sudden, the world before me was shrouded in it. The lake, seen through the mist, was submerged in a pale, milky white, as if a gauzy curtain hung between it and me.

Obviously, abstractness and ambiguity are Yoshimoto's trademarks, and the story continues to unfurl in its relatively plot-less way. This is not necessarily a bad thing: on the contrary, one of the best books of 2011, Iosi Havilio's Open Door, remained unfathomable until the very end, and was all the better for it.
The major problem with 'The Lake' is that it positively drowns in introspection and self-doubt. Page after page after page, we find Chihiro seeking to identify her own shortfalls without ever having the will to confront them: frail and damaged as he clearly is, she seems to regard Nakajima as some kind of convenient emotional crux.
There is a narrative here, as fragile as Nakajima himself, and it could have been a compelling one. There's enough hints about Nakajima's history to make his eventual revelation not entirely surprising. It's by far the most riveting section of the book, exploring a very pertinent issue in Japanese society today, but it is shoe-horned in almost as an after-thought, like drinking a big cup of coffee-froth before finding the single gulp of espresso below.
When the truth is eventually exposed, what ought to be a mist-clearing moment for the reader is in fact diluted by the sheer relief that the story has finally actually got somewhere. And then, just like that, it is all over. Chihiro and Nakajima, we must presume, live awkwardly ever after.
Cynicism aside, Yoshimoto's book is not without its merits. There are questions for modern Japanese society here, mostly concerning its concept of freedom, from which Japanese youth - Yoshimoto's main, mass market - will glean much more.
Ultimately, though, 'The Lake' is more intriguing for what it says about its author than itself. I would certainly pick up her next book if I came across it, say, in an airport bookstore. Somehow that seems the best place for it: accessible, relatively engaging, and probably best read when you're floating high above the clouds.

DSC Prize 2012

2012-01-04T13:52:00.006Z

In a busy month for Asian literature, the shortlist announcement for this year's MAN Asian Literary Prize on January 10 is followed by the prize ceremony for the second annual DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, at the Jaipur Literary Festival on January 21.
The shortlist consists of the following six books (each of which is linked to a review or excerpt):

Bharathipura by U.R. Ananthamurthy (Oxford Univ. Press)

A Street in Srinagaar by Chandrakanta (Zubaan Books)

Monkey-man by Usha K.R. (Penguin India)

Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka (Random House India)

The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair (Fourth Estate)

The Story That Must Not Be Told by Kavery Nambisan (Viking)

The official press release is here. I haven't read any yet, and some are currently only available on the sub-continent, but that's kind of the point: last year's inaugural winner, Homeboy by H.M. Naqvi, was subsequently acquired and published in the UK and the US. The Prize blurb says the global acquisition of Homeboy realises 'one of the central visions of the prize, which is to propagate and present South Asian writing to a larger global audience'.
Hopefully, I'll review and interview the winner later this month.

Review: The Good Muslim

2012-01-03T17:00:00.008Z

My latest review from this year's MAN Asian Literary Prize longlist. It has also been reviewed by my fellow Shadow Prize judges Lisa, Matt and Fay. We are in broad agreement: it is a strong contender for the shortlist.

For her second novel, following 2007's Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner 'A Golden Age', Tahmima Anam tackles the not inconsiderable, and certainly timely, topics of revolution and fundamentalism in her native Bangladesh. As the Arab Spring turns cold in Egypt, The Good Muslim (pub. Canongate) begs the question of whether so-called liberation is ever entirely achieved by mass rallies in public squares or newsreel footage of toppling statues.
In Bangladesh, which achieved independence after a short war with Pakistan that ended in 1971, the first decade-and-a-bit as a sovereign state were anything but liberal. War wounds festered, and a series of assassinations and attempted coups seemed designed to shatter hopes of stability. It is best described by Anam:

Thirteen. Her broken wishbone of a country was thirteen years old. Didn't sound like very long, but in that time the nation had rolled and unrolled tanks from its streets. It had had leaders elected and ordained. It had murdered two presidents. In its infancy, it had started cannibalising itself, killing the tribals in the south, drowning villages for dams, razing the ancient trees of Modhupur Forest. A fast-acting country: quick to anger, quick to self-destruct.

Anam's narrative is split between the immediate aftermath of the war, and the mid-1980s, when religious radicalism is on the rise and the concept of liberation is beginning to mean very different things to different people.
Anam frames her story around a single family: primarily the headstrong Maya, returned from her war work as a nurse brimming with revolutionary principles, and harbouring disdain for those who pursue divisive agendas in the name of God; and Sohail, her beloved brother, whose harrowing wartime experiences have sent him down a fundamentalist path.
When Sohail effectively reinvents himself as a prophet, and sends his young son Zaid to a madrasa, Maya is determined to convince him to see the error of his ways by any means necessary, but the dark secrets she digs up threaten to destroy her dream of some kind of united future.
The narrow focus of Anam's novel is a clever one, turning the post-independence problems faced by nations both past and present into broadly personal ones, highlighting the raw emotions and paradoxes which prevail in every household; the difficulty of remaining true to one's principles when war wounds are yet to heal.
It does, however, come at a price: the reader is afforded only perfunctory glimpses of daily life in Bangladesh during this period of tumult. These precious glimpses of a nation striving for some kind of normality - moments when Maya and her ailing mother prepare to watch an episode of Dallas, or when they share chilli-hot phuchkas by the roadside while an anti-government demonstration is dispersed by tear-gas close by - are too few and far between.
At times, this lack of evocation can make Anam's writing seem strangely flat, and yet such drawbacks can be largely forgiven thanks to a blistering second half of the novel, in which Anam wrenches her characters towards a rousing, deeply emotional finale: Maya, in particular, evolves into a stunning paradox, her resistance to religion becoming more acute, yet still feeling its strange pull: wishing, in her darkest times, that she had "surrendered to its practicality".
'The Good Muslim' is a brave and important book, and if the pertinence of its message lingers longer than some of the characters themselves, then that is not necessarily a bad thing. Anam is clearly a writer for the future: someone with lots to say, and the ability, and time, to say it. That, too, ought to be something to celebrate.

Review: Please Look After Mother

2011-12-30T11:21:00.003Z

The shortlist for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize will be announced on January 10, and the reviews from the shadow jury are arriving thick and fast: for a complete list, click the icon on the right. None have polarised opinion as much as this one: Matt at A Novel Approach and Stu at Winstonsdad both liked it; Lisa at ANZLitLovers had issues with it. I'm with the former, but it's probably best to make your mind up yourself!

On the face of it, there is nothing out of the ordinary about Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After Mother. You might say, in fact, that it is a very ode to ordinariness. Slim in weight and scope, it mines a much-plundered theme of what happens to the relationships between an ageing matriarch and her gaggle of children once they have flown the nest.
But in Shin's capable hands - and they must be more than capable, given this book's extraordinary success in selling over one million copies in her homeland - this tale of South Korean domesticity becomes anything but ordinary. Delicate, touching and deeply insightful into her country's culture (superbly translated by Chi-Young Kim) she has crafted an exquisite novel from such an apparently scant resource.
'Please Look After Mother' centres on the aftermath of the disappearance of So-nyo, an ailing wife and mother, who is separated from her husband in a Seoul subway station during a rare visit to the capital from her home in the countryside. During their painful search, her children and husband recall moments in their lives in which they took their mother for granted, and as their chances of finding her dwindle, so their guilt grows.
The novel is split into four main parts: the respective points-of-view of the rebellious daughter, the pampered eldest son, the selfish, absent husband, and finally, of the mother herself. So far, so cliched, you might say. But told using such a simple formula, Shin's message digs home, perhaps because it might apply to us all: her mixture of first and second person narrative succeeds in pointing an accusatory finger far beyond the confines of the characters she has created.

Before you lost sight of your wife on the Seoul Station underground platform, she was merely your children's mother to you. She was like a steadfast tree, until you found yourself in a situation where you might not ever see her again - a tree that wouldn't go away unless it was chopped down or pulled out. After your children's mother went missing, you realised it was your wife who was missing. Your wife, who you'd forgotten about for fifty years, was present in your heart. Only after she disappeared did she come to you tangibly, as if you could reach out and touch her.

If this book has polarised opinions, it's not hard to see why. It's hardly ground-breaking, and it does lay on the guilt trip a bit thick. But I wonder if that is precisely what makes it so popular at home. I may be entirely wrong here, having next to no grasp of Korean history, but I sense Shin is aiming this book at the first generation of Koreans to benefit from their country's economic boom: seizing opportunities made possible by the sacrifices of their elders, the so-called 386 Generation, who hauled the nation out of its post-War poverty. The sad irony, of course, is that those who created the opportunities are now the ones left stranded by their children who have fled to the cities to take them. Pause for a moment, Shin seems to be saying: must we choose between these two conflicting worlds: one of disorientating, soulless streets and fractured relationships; the other of ruddy-cheeked families mashing mung bean porridge and sticking maple leaves on the doors to keep out winter draughts? Is there not a happy medium we have trampled somewhere along the way in the insatiable push for progress?
If South Koreans will take most from this book, that kind of soul-searching can certainly apply to us all. The concluding part, narrated by So-nyo herself, fumbles over a few false notes, but it doesn't diminish from the pertinence of her message. Maybe Shin's quaintly crafted story is not quite so ordinary after all.

Interview: Rahul Bhattacharya

2011-12-29T10:33:00.005Z

Rahul Bhattacharya's first novel, 'The Sly Company Of People Who Care', is a unique and vibrant picaresque of life in Guyana. It has been longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize. You can read my review here. Fay at Read, Ramble has also reviewed it here. Here is an exclusive Q&A with the author:

An obvious question to start with: to what degree is the main character autobiographical?

A little bit. It is a novel less about the narrator than about the people, relationships and the society he encounters. So the starting point for the narrator – a young man from India, seeking adventure – was me, but that starting point was also a point of departure.

What, in particular, first attracted you to Guyana as a source of fiction?

When I first visited Guyana, it seemed to me already somewhat fictional, this particular mix of Indians, Africans, Portuguese, Chinese and indigenous peoples on the forehead of lush, rain-drenched South America. Yet you couldn’t make up a place like that. The horrors of slavery, the deprivations of indenture, the idea of creating this imperial colonial factory, were too fantastical to be imagined. From this history sprung a society with a terribly attractive spirit of adventure and laughter, a creative and improvisational energy. It’s a naturally picaresque society. I felt I could most intimately capture it in fiction.

You describe a country in which two especially divergent and prominent cultures are constantly jostling for, and claiming, superiority. How do you see that relationship - and thus the nation itself - evolving in the future?

This has proved impossible even for long-standing Guyana commentators to predict! The Caribbean people on the one hand, to quote an academic, ‘in a racial sense . . . have in one way or another faced, and to some extent, resolved, many issues that still divide larger nations and torment mankind’. On the other hand it is a region sharply defined by race. Look at Guyana: you had a master race (the Europeans – by turns the Dutch, French, British), a colonized race (the indigenous tribes), an enslaved race (the Africans), and indentured races (the Indians, Chinese, Madeirans). It takes time and compromise from everyone to come to terms with a past like that. It’s a relatively recent past at that. The word you use in the question is culture rather than race, and the hope many Guyanese hold is that a common national culture will overwrite ethnic differences. Then again there is constant competition on what exactly this national culture must constitute.

Furthermore, you central character describes India as being "paralysed by hierarchy", and Guyana as promising a kind of Utopia in which caste becomes redundant: do you see any change within the caste system in India? Is it shackling its attempts to be taken seriously as an economic superpower?

The narrator, who has lived all his life in India, is drawn to the spirit of flexibility and transgression in Caribbean society; he is excited by it. One might argue that in Guyana race is caste by another name. About India, it is a country changing fast: this is a cliché because it is true. That doesn’t mean caste is irrelevant, and unfortunately it will never be. But it does mean that there is increasing fluidity in occupation and opportunity, and the rise of lower-caste political parties is a major story in contemporary India.

To what extent did you feel you had to strike a balance in your novel between staying true to the Guyanese patois - and, indeed, the Hindi movie references - and at the same time making your novel accessible to those unversed in those kinds of dialogues and references?

I wanted to write a book organic to the place. I would have felt unfulfilled otherwise. The Guyanese patois, Creolese as they call it, is such an addictive, visual, vivid language. I could not imagine setting a novel there and eliminating or diluting the language. For example, I grew up with the Standard English idiom, ‘To have one’s cake and eat it too’. (This would confuse me in school as I thought both verbs implied the same thing). Besides there was something slightly fusty about ‘having one’s cake’. Now the Guyanese idiom with the same meaning is, ‘He want to suck cane and blow whistle too.’ I feel that! I can see it and I can hear and I can feel it. Mind you, it also works because innuendo is the soul of Caribbean wit, and both the verbs above are perfect fits.

Much of your novel concerns what you might call the country's underbelly: what kind of reaction have you had from Guyanese people with regard to the way you have portrayed it?

It’s not so much the underbelly as those from the working-class, which is the majority of the country. They were the people I found myself most interested in, and their lives animated the life of the place I was exploring. I’ve come across the odd comment taking issue with this, but on the whole the reaction from Guyana has been extremely generous and touching. And a Guyanese pat on the back means more to me than praise from any other part of the world.

It's obviously sequel-able, but do you have any specific plans for the future with regard to fiction?

No sequel! But I have been chewing on a few things. I hope I’ll be able to sit down with these thoughts properly soon. It will be set in India, and it will be a novel.

Have you read any of the other Man Asian Literary Prize longlistees, or other recent world fiction of note?

I haven’t read any of the other longlisted books, no. I always have so much reading to catch up on that I’m always late in coming to books. The most recently published novel that I enjoyed was Damon Galgut’s In A Strange Room, which was tender, unusual, sad and beautiful.

Review: River Of Smoke

2011-12-27T17:04:00.008Z

Here's my latest review from the 2011 MAN Asian Prize longlist. Click the image on the right for an index to all reviews. I agree with much of what Lisa from ANZLitLovers said here. Lisa probably liked it a little more than me. I'd be surprised, however, if it's not a serious contender.

In a literary world whose bestseller lists are clogged up with chick-lit and the memoirs of C-list celebs, it may seem churlish to make the chief criticism of Amitav Ghosh's 519-page River Of Smoke that of over-ambition.
Ghosh's novel - the second in a trilogy that began with the Booker-shortlisted 'Sea Of Poppies' in 2008 - is an epic by any standards: extraordinarily researched; superb in its evocation of a distant time and place.
But in the context of the literary firmament in which the critical reaction to 'Sea Of Poppies' has placed him, you can't help feeling that Ghosh's account of events leading up to the first Opium War in China in 1840 might have benefited from a more brutal edit.
'River Of Smoke' is set predominantly in the Chinese port of Canton, upon which ragged cast of characters eventually converge as a consequence of a terrible storm which unshackles prisoners and swamps precious cargo-holds of the so-called 'black dirt' - the opium that British traders have been harvesting on the sub-continent and smuggling into China over generations (generally with the tacit approval of the Chinese authorities).
As the drug takes root in Chinese society, however, a crackdown looms, threatening the livelihoods of the merchants who have grown grotesquely rich on its profits, and who see no reason why China's reinforcement of opium's illegality ought to be allowed to restrict their lucrative trade.
At the centre of the story is Bahram, a Parsi trader from Bombay, who seeks to land the enormous haul that will finally earn him the respect of his rich wife's family, and enable him to finally buy their export business outright.
Bahram is a wonderful creation: a deeply-flawed character; an opium trader with 'a large and generous heart'; a man at once covetous of and repulsed by the Club run by the gluttinous British brigade, who seek his membership in order to suit their own ends: an undercurrent of racism is implied throughout.
Bahram's poor background lends a delicious subtlety to what is otherwise an insight into early colonialism at its worst. One British merchant, entreatied to withhold his cargo for the good of the Chinese people, retorts:

..it is not my hand that passes sentence upon those who choose the indulgence of opium. It is the work of another, invisible omnipotent: it is the hand of freedom, of the market, of the spirit of liberty itself, which is none other than the breath of God.

It itself, Ghosh's chronicle of the rising tensions between the Chinese authorities and the British merchants, which would end in war, the Treaty of Nanking and, ultimately, the secession of Hong Kong to British rule, is a shocking, riveting and brilliant piece of work, told in a dazzling array of colloquial tongues and imbued with no little amount of irony in respect of the economic emergence of China and India today.
Had he restricted himself to that central theme, Ghosh would have had an instant classic on his hands. Where he falls a little short, however, is in the sheer scope of his novel. His cast of characters is extraordinary, yet so many are transients, each of their back-stories carefully laid bare before they disappear back into Canton's crowded alleys. It is simply impossible to remember them all, drawn as they are into Bahram's ever more tangled web by coincidences that seem a little far-fetched - a chance meeting, for example, in the Wordy Market, a bustling place of which the narrator asks: 'where else could a man go, clothed in nothing but a loincloth, and walk away in a whalebone corset and silk slippers?'
The momentum of the central story is also slowed by a secondary plot which concerns another storm survivor, Paulette, who is rescued from a run-down garden by an esteemed English botanist, and charged with discovering the elusive and possibly mythical golden camellia: a flower, it is said, with more financial potential than the tea plant.
Barred from docking in Canton as a foreign woman, Paulette sets an artist friend, Robin Chinnery, the task of discovering the plant: his travails are recorded in a series of letters which pock-mark the second part of the novel. Despite the engaging conceit, however, it is here the plot peters out: Chinnery's letters recreate a rich Cantonese street life, but otherwise serve little purpose. Paulette is rendered pretty much an after-thought, and the eventual merging of the two strands is somewhat tenuous.
If all this seems rather negative, it isn't especially intended to be. Have no doubt: River Of Smoke is an epic, intense, richly rewarding novel, as elegaic as it is exhaustive. It is by any standards an excellent book. The abiding frustration here is that it might have been a great one.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T11:12:00.002Z

Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this blog. Here's Mark Twain's opinion of Santa Claus, from A Tramp Abroad:

In the course of the morning we passed the spot where Pontius Pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake. The legend goes that after the Crucifixion his conscience troubled him, and he fled from Jerusalem and wandered about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of the mind. Eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights of Mount Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and crags for years; but rest and peace were still denied him, so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself.
Presently we passed a place where a man of better odor was born. This was the children's friend, Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas. There are some unaccountable reputations in the world. This saint's is an instance. He has ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children, yet it appears he was not much of a friend to his own. He had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them, and sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as possible, and became a hermit in order that he might reflect upon pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other noises from the nursery, doubtless.
Judging by Pilate and St. Nicholas, there exists no rule for the construction of hermits; they seem made out of all kinds of material. But Pilate attended to the matter of expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas St. Nicholas will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys, Christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindless on other people's children, to make up for deserting his own. His bones are kept in a church in a village (Sachsein) which we visited, and are naturally held in great reverence. His portrait is common in the farmhouses of the region, but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness. During his hermit life, according to legend, he partook of the bread and wine of the communion once a month, but all the rest of the month he fasted.

Skeletonette

2011-12-21T09:16:00.003Z

A short Christmas-ish story:

Stacey watched the Winter Olympics with a stack of paprika Pringles and her bare legs ski-poled out across the couch.
Pearl and Jim walked in. Pearl said, 'hell, it's beautiful.'
Stacey said, 'uh-huh.' She glued her eyes on the screen. Mountains sparkled under snow like celebration cake icing.
Pearl said, ‘Linus Thirlby’s gonna take it down Black Run. You coming?’
Stacey shook her head, reached for another Pringle, glued harder on the screen.
Jim said, ‘last time, he almost drowned.’
Stacey sparked up and motioned her boots.
'Well, why didn't you say?'

Pearl and Jim held hands in front. Their steam-breath mingled. Stacey crunched behind. When they reached the ravine they saw a bunch of stick-boys high on top. Black Run cut down the edge, helter-skeltered through the trees. If you made it that far, it flung you down an almost vertical drop, ramped up over the frozen lake to the island. Any lack of speed and you gambled on the thickness of the ice. Two Christmas Days ago it swallowed Ian Thackeray whole. Since then only Linus Thirlby had had the balls or the non-brains to try it. He must have reckoned it was worth the risk for the hot girls he got coming to watch.
They climbed next to it. The spring that dribbled down the track had froze it rock-solid. It was smoothed to a chute. It banked on the corners, plunged down an incline with no get-out clause. Jim gazed out at the white-over lake.
Jim said, ‘look - the ice is cracking.’
Stacey flicked a smile.
‘We can but dream.’
Stacey and Linus had a thing going in fourth year. He pursued her for months. He sent cards and flowers. He was Stacey’s first time. He was careful and kind, said he loved her. Next day, the whole school knew about the ten pound bet Linus had had with his bunch of friends. Stacey spent half her day in a toilet cubicle. Pearl coaxed her out, told her to bide her time to get him back.

They puffed to the top. Their lungs burned. Linus Thirlby beamed up from his sled, a soldered-off square of car bonnet. He said, ‘well, look who isn’t.’ His friends pulled smirks. The young girls fought to swoon over him. Jim said, ‘the ice is cracking.’ Linus Thorsby pulled a face, put on his best girly voice: ‘what’ll we do, the ice is cracking!’
He swung his attention to Stacey. He said, ‘didn’t think we’d see you up here. What’s the chances, huh?’
Terry Jenkins: 'I'd lay you ten to one.'
The boys cracked up, high-fived.
Pearl said, ‘come on, let’s get out of here.’ Stacey stood her ground.
‘I’ll clear that lake farther than you.’
The boys silenced.
'You serious?'
'You bet.'
Linus said, ‘ladies first.’ Stacey lay face-down on the sled. She felt its cold bite through her jacket. Linus said, ‘shit, face first?’
Pearl said, ‘Jesus, Stacey.’ Then she said, 'this ain't the Olympics.'
Stacey stared down at the lake-crack. She thought of Ian Thackeray, the way his mother flung herself at the coffin, pawed the lid. She remembered Linus Thirlby’s smug grin at school, those hours in the cubicle. The secret only she and her now-dead mother shared about that day. She said, ‘push.’ She felt a boot on her arse cheek. She thought she heard Linus Thirlby shout, ‘stay low at the last!’ She saw the ice rush up to meet her. She reckoned she'd bided her time long enough.

Stuff flung through Stacey’s head. Some good, some not. Like her whole life spooling out before her eyes. Stay low at the last. Her first kiss – Bobby Lee, through a mouth of parma violets. Linus’s warm breath: ‘Me and you, Stacey - we're gonna be great.’ Stay low at the last. Her mum’s face, spilled with horror: ‘we’ll fix it, Stacey, I tell you we will.’ The leering boys. The ache in her guts. Her mum’s last days: ‘I'm proud of you, Stacey, whatever.’ The trees whipped past. The chute banked and flipped. She blinked up, eyed the lake-crack, yearned for the oblivion beneath. Stay low at the last. She banked high, caught a tree-root overhang, shot down the near-vertical, spun like a flung-free Waltzer ride, ice and sky and lake all-a-whirl, then hit the ramp side on and jerked back up, felt the slo-mo sensation of flying, of things dropping away. She clamped her eyes and stretched and flew some more, so the leering boys were back to stick-men pointing up at her comet-ing through the sky; saw her mother waiting on the island smiling her on: ‘I knew you'd make it.’ Till she sailed down, soft-snugged in pillow-white snow, felt the comfort she craved.

Review: The Devil's Disciple

2011-12-20T11:12:00.005Z

This book was provided courtesy Booktrust. The translated fiction section of their website, which will shortly include a more concise version of this review, is here.

Lumping Shiro Hamao's sashimi-sized slivers of short stories in The Devil's Disciple down as detective fiction would be a little like calling Mark Twain a travel writer, or Charles Dickens that bloke who penned miserable Christmas stuff: in other words, it would do scant justice to a writer who wrote the stories that make up this intriguing, translated volume in 1929, six years before his tragically early death at the age of forty.
Originally published in the Japanese magazine Shinseinen, these appear to stand as the only work of Hamao - among his sixteen novellas and three full-length novels - to be put into English. For this, the translator J. Keith Vincent and the publisher, Hesperus Press, deserve much credit.
Hamao's work does indeed revolve around crime and justice, or rather injustice: there are also prominent sexual and misogynistic elements which brilliantly lay bare the decadent, honour-bound Japanese high society of which he was a part: a world in which marriage, publicly at least, was sacrosanct, and reputation was everything, even in death.
Hamao was born into one of the most rich and powerful families in Japan. He trained in law but to his family's horror, relinquished his job as a public prosecutor to write books. 'The Devil's Disciple' and 'Did He Kill Them?' were the first stories he saw published.
In the title story, Shimaura Eizo languishes in jail charged with the murder of a young woman. The narrative takes the form of a letter from Eizo to the prosecutor of the case, who happens to be Eizo's former lover, and whom he blames for his predicament.
The narrator's unreliability lends a fascinating extra dimension to the story, as the reader is forced to address the issue of what, if anything, this inherently dislikeable man is guilty of.
Guilt, and the way in which the justice system dictates it, is broached more directly in 'Did He Kill Them?' in which Hamao's narrator assumes the role of an ailing barrister, regaling a group of detective novelists with the story of how an apparently water-tight, death penalty-punishable crime of passion turned out to be anything but.
Hamao makes some observations about the uneasy relationship between the courts, the media and the public in establishing guilty which, more than seventy years after his death, and in light of the tabloid media scrutiny currently obsessing the UK, seem remarkably prescient:

the minute they catch a likely suspect the newspapers waste no time in making out that he's the real culprit and their readers have the bad habit of believing them. If he turns out to be innocent, people are just as quick to attack the police and kick up a ruckus about trampling on people's human rights or torture or what have you

The only disappointment about this bite-sized collection is that it is over so quickly, and that, for the time being at least, there appears little or no other English language examples of his work. The guarantee is that while you will devour these stories in a couple of gulps, their mysteries will linger much longer.

MAN Asian Literary Prize 2011

2011-12-19T15:25:00.023Z

I'm delighted and honoured to have been asked by Lisa Hill at ANZLitLovers to join the Shadow MAN Asian Literary Prize jury for 2011. Between us, we will review all the books on the longlist, ahead of the official shortlist announcement on January 10. The winner from that shortlist will be announced on March 15. There have been some great books -and great reviews - so far. Using the icon on the right, check back to this page for continually updated links to our reviews below. Alongside Lisa, my fellow judges are: Matt at A Novel Approach; Fay at Read, Ramble; Stu at Winstonsdad; and Sue at Whispering Gums.

Reviews:

The Wandering Falcon by Eleutherophobia
The Wandering Falcon by Winstonsdad
The Wandering Falcon by ANZLitLovers
The Wandering Falcon by Whispering Gums

The Colonel by Eleutherophobia
The Colonel by ANZLitLovers
The Colonel by Read, Ramble

Dream Of Ding Village by Eleutherophobia
Dream of Ding Village by A Novel Approach
Dream Of Ding Village by Read, Ramble
Dream Of Ding Village by ANZLitLovers

The Sly Company Of People Who Care by Eleutherophobia
The Sly Company Of People Who Care by Read, Ramble
The Sky Company Of People Who Care by AnzLitLovers

The Valley Of Masks by Read, Ramble
The Valley Of Masks by ANZLitLovers
The Valley Of Masks by A Novel Approach

The Folded Earth by Eleutherophobia
The Folded Earth by A Novel Approach
The Folded Earth by Whispering Gums
The Folded Earth by Read, Ramble

1Q84 by A Novel Approach
1Q84 by ANZLitLovers

The Good Muslim by Eleutherophobia
The Good Muslim by ANZLitLovers
The Good Muslim by A Novel Approach
The Good Muslim by Read, Ramble

The Lake by Eleutherophobia
The Lake by Whispering Gums
The Lake by A Novel Approach
The Lake by ANZLitLovers

Please Look After Mother by Eleutherophobia
Please Look After Mother by A Novel Approach
Please Look After Mother by AnzLitLovers
Please Look After Mother by Winstonsdad
Please Look After Mother by Whispering Gums

Rebirth by Read, Ramble
Rebirth by Winstonsdad

River Of Smoke by Eleutherophobia
River Of Smoke by ANZLitLovers

Sweet Tooth: The Ballad of Kola Kubes

2011-12-19T09:29:00.002Z

This is a short synopsis and sample from my would-be novel, which is seeking representation. Please contact me at mark at this website for more details.

Synopsis

‘Sweet Tooth: The Ballad of Kola Kubes’ is the story of a girl named Trisha Carless and her extraordinary rise from a down-and-out start in life to become Kola Kubes: the most notorious porn star on the planet.
Narrated in unflinchingly blunt fashion by her older half-brother Bobby, Trisha’s journey leads from the local woods, where the legend goes she sold her virginity for a bag of boiled sweets, to Las Vegas and the pinnacle of the adult movie world.
Trisha’s crash back to earth is every bit as dramatic, and as she turns back home for help she finds her ultimate fate bound by those who refuse to forgive her past.
Stretching the stereotype of the local girl made good to its most extreme, ‘Sweet Tooth’ seeks to challenge deep-seated prejudices in our celebrity-obsessed age.

Prologue

Hi, my name's Kola Kubes, and I love screwing!

Yes, they are the words that opened ‘Sweet Tooth' - and set me on the way to becoming just about the most famous adult movie star who ever lived - but they still hold true, now more than ever. Sometimes it shocks folks to hear me say it that way, but it's the truth, take it or leave it. It's been that way for as long as I remember. I know what you're thinking - I must have had some kind of bad experience as a child, some excuse for making me say it that way. Well, no. I've nothing but loved sex from the day I started and the only one taking any kind of advantage ever since that first time has been me. The way I see it, loving sex is no different to loving football or fast cars, or eating in fancy restaurants. Whatever tickles your fancy. Well, sex tickles mine, and I've never been ashamed to admit it. I would spend my whole life having sex if I could. Sex is who I am. I eat and breathe and sleep it. It is sex that made me the global icon I am today. This is going to sound kind of selfish, but if I was told tomorrow there was a chance of world peace if I stopped having sex, well, I'd just slip into a flak jacket, and keep on coming!

Head up to Fryup today and there's hardly a sign of Kola Kubes ever having been there. It's a tossed handful of houses hunkered down on high moors like it's hiding out from something. There's no welcome sign, no Home of the Famous… They did try a sign once, screwed in wood at village limits. No-one knew who put it there, but its straight-line letters and general smartness spoke of someone who must have gave a shit. It said, Birthplace of Kola Kubes. It got daubed on first, thick black varnish paint that blocked out its letters, then it got hauled down and chucked in the beck. It was cleaned up and put back and the same thing happened. No-one gave enough of a shit to replace it second time round. It stayed in the beck, got lapped over till the letters faded out.
In the chip shop where she used to work, they kept an old fraying photo beneath the price board. The famous one, the one she gave the fryer named Charlie the first time she headed back to the place. She had puff-out blonde hair and a brand new pair of 36DDs. They strained out of a snow-white wedding dress with a fringe like frosted icing. The photo stayed up years, all yellowed up and pocked with chip oil. I guess they figured it was good for business. For a short time Charlie re-named the place Kola's. He had it sign-wrote up in bright red, said he'd switch it to neon just as soon as he'd sold enough fish suppers. He stuck up more shots of her, introduced specials. You could get a Kola Krunch for fifty pence. It was a bag of chips with triple scraps, her favourite. You could get a Double D for the same price, two chip cones taped together then filled with chips and a nipple blob of Ketchup on each. He even tried deep-fried kola kubes. They glooped together and spoiled the fat. When Charlie started having a whole load of fun with his jumbo sausage, the locals let him know he wouldn't be getting his neon sign any time soon. The name and the shots and the menu were the first things to go when Charlie was forced to sell up to new folk from down in town.
Most of the long-stay statics we grew up in are gone. With them went the little museum our so-called step-dad set up with its home-pirated videos and ripped-out glamour shots, Kola's early A-cup bras slung dangly from the curtain rail. There's a couple of statics still perched there, insides gutted and roofs peeled back like sardine can lids. The rest is weedy concrete squares and breezeblocks. The reception hut and the flat above are boarded up, the kiddie pool drained and smashed with glass. The tourists have long gone, headed over to Sun World, newer and nearer town.
Scratch hard enough, you might still find her. Last I heard, the stock room at the back of the news shop was still piled high with iron-on Sweet Tooth tee-shirts. They won't put them on display, but they'll flog them off at a fiver a time to the trickle of folks who still come along asking. There's a couple of trees carved with her name on in the car park woods. Out at the truck stop, a bunch of truckers built a sort-of shrine. There's a small wood cross with a nailed-on hardcore nude shot fading out through a sandwich bag. Marker-penned over the middle is Kola: Truck On. They leave single fags and Pernod minis. Some like to reckon she brings protection. Saint Kola, that's a good one. Round the back of the café above the bins it's scrawled KOLA 74-08 RIP. It's kind of touching. Kola would have liked it that way. Say what you like about what those truckers wanted and generally got from her, but they treated her just about better than anyone else in her mad short life.
As far as Fryup goes, that's about it, save the gloom of guilt I reckon still hugs the place over how it treated her. There aren't too many folk left there from those times, but you can tell those that are by the way they dig their eyes in the ground when I come on by. I'm not saying my sister was any kind of angel. But the fact is while most kids her age slumped out of school straight down the village green steps and more or less set themselves for life the moment they clicked up their first can of Super Strength, my sister got off her arse and went and did what she did, and to my mind the so-called God-fearing folk of Fryup ought to be rightly proud of that.
I started this book soon after we tossed her ashes. It's my way of trying to set things straight. You could hack down half of Fryup forest with all the shit that spouted up in her life and especially after her death. Folk would say one thing then sell different stories for cash. The new-built porches and fancy cars round the place paint up those who didn't manage to keep their gobs shut. Kola always said she fancied on penning her story but it was only after she died I found a sheaf-load of start-up notes in her suitcase. I reckon she'd have been proud to see them wrote up this way, specially as it's likely the closest to the truth you're ever likely to get. It might not come over as any kind of classic, but for sure it's none of that ghost-wrote bullshit they spew out on the shelves these days, stuff that sugar-coats folk thick enough it could smear up a murderer to make out he'd done no wrong. Well, Kola - Trisha - she did plenty wrong and it's took less than four or five short pages to make that clear. With that in mind, this book might not be best for those sensitive disposition-type folk who find themselves getting easily worked up over things. There sure as hell won't be a book-signing session in the Fryup village hall any time soon. But it is what it is. Like my sister would have said, it's pretty much the truth, and we don't give too much of a shit if you take it or leave it.

Chapter 1

Kola Kubes - sister, stripper, porn star, most-wanted fugitive, all that shit - slid out on a caravan floor on October 29, 1974 as plain old Trisha Carless, in a place you'd never know of if it hadn't been for her. She was grown by a mother too ginned up to hardly notice, and any one of a bunch of possible dads none of who gave two shits right up to the day the cash started rolling in. The day she was born, the sky blacked over and the rain wouldn't let up for two whole weeks. The beck spewed its banks and flushed the guts out of the shut-up gift shops. It cut the electrics and closed the church through three whole Sundays. Sometimes it seemed like God held a beef ever since. There were plenty of folk squinted down in that old pram of hers and reckoned the face blazing up was going to be nothing but trouble.
I was barely two years old, and had just spent my birthday propped on the couch in front of the fuzzy old portable. There's a picture of me plastered up in peanut butter, looking deep at my mum's fat baby belly like I'm not sure I want whatever's inside to pop out. Mum's got a gin bottle laid over, and glazed-up eyes. They say soon after, I watched on helpless while mum slid slow down on the lino and frowned at the blood pooling up between her legs. When they banged down that door on account of my roaring, mum was damn near close to strangling the poor thing that had fished out of her inners, and might have done had the gin not drowned her strength so much. So I guess it's thanks to the gin that the world got to know of Kola Kubes and all the crap that came with her. Without her, it's a fair bet me and mum would still be shacked up that old static of ours, none the wiser. Mum would maybe have a new man and I'd be down on the village green steps with the rest of them, supping up my days on the Super Strength. Maybe some other kid would have taken Trisha's place selling herself off for cash, though for lesser acclaim.
They were in the hospital a good few weeks and for a time it was touch and go, what with Trisha coming out flimsy as an ear of barley and dumping straight on the mucky lino like that. There were lots of folk whispering it was unlikely mum would ever get to see the kid again, or me also come to that, once the social got wind of the birthing situation. Mum shrugged off her soreness and stomped straight out of the place the day they unhooked Trisha from the machines. She headed straight out in the downpour and stuck her thumb out on the Fryup road. First round the bend was old Blunt Marley's slaughter van. I reckon there's enough folk plenty cleverer than me could fashion some joke about Kola Kubes starting out life snugged deep in the stench of pig shit.
The way Blunt Marley used to tell it, he took one look at our mum and the yowling bairn she had shoved half up her drenched out nightie and took to thinking it was no time for small talk. He steered his van through the downpour and set about fashioning another roll-up as he did so in order to distract him from asking questions. When he reached the top of high street he pulled up and gruffed at mum: 'it's flooded out.' Mum flashed him a look that left Blunt Marley figuring it was his own fault the Lord had chose to open the heavens, and slammed the van door so hard the old bones in the back almost shook back to living.
What with mum shouldering off into the wet like that, Blunt Marley must have come to reckoning there was slim or no chance of seeing the bairn alive again, let alone peering down from billboards or spouting out profanities on daytime TV. Matter of fact Blunt Marley would go on to live to a ripe old age, and though his cataracted eyes were by then well past being for seeing it, it was Kola who crashed in with his hundredth birthday cake and his telegram from the Queen, gobbing off to the TV crew that followed her about the whole heap of thanks she owed Blunt for showing up and saving her life the way he did. She planted a smacker on old Blunt's shrunken forehead and likely lingered just long enough to catch a bedpan whiff.
Mum ignored the muck-water lapping up at her swollen inners and waded the rest of the way back to the statics. Since a couple of years back, when they'd hung a condemned sign over our grandpa's tumbledown old pile while his body was just about still warm, mum had been took pity on by the folk named the Bullocks who owned the site. There were plenty willing to make the Bullocks out as good people, specially those who saw them down in the Kwik Save car park most Sabbath mornings, where Artie Bullock would rock back and forth on his heels like a flyweight boxer, punching out fire and brimstone stories of imminent doom. It didn't stop talk of Artie Bullock's true intentions when he let mum have the leaky-roof van at the back in exchange for the cleaning, and rumours had it of a whole lot more. The Bullocks had moved to Fryup after a Christmas night farm blaze that accounted for their couple of kiddies and a so-called home help. There were some said they had it coming, stacking up all them gas bottles for the end of the world. The Bullocks had built up the vans and started reeling in the holiday folk just as soon as the harvests started failing. It didn't take old Artie Bullock long to start striding round with a look that said the Lord was on his side, and he'd given him the gold round his wrists to prove it. The old boys bent up on their sticks and shook their heads at how Artie's gift of the gab had hooked their broke-up old fields for damn near petty cash, and gone and planted big profit straight back in them. There was talk Artie Bullock had a woman in town with curves smooth as a sports car bonnet. What is sure enough is that his pinched-up missus Eleanor wasn't enough to stop him dealing out his divine interventions to others when he got the half-chance. Mum was a bit of a looker in those days before the gin took hold, so it was hardly surprising she landed that van and her cleaning job just as soon as she did.
Mum was the first long-stay tenant on site. Part of the deal was she stayed out late as she could, left the field over to the none-the-wiser holiday folk. She soon came to not caring whose bed she ended up in each night, just so long as she was warm and there was some kind of hot breakfast waiting on the other side of it. I was farmed out round various folk while mum was in the hospital having Trisha, and none could fathom what was the bigger miracle, the pair of them making it through those flood waters alive, or the authorities allowing mum was still in a fit enough state to bring up the both of us. Maybe it was no coincidence Artie Bullock had most of those authority folk wrapped round his fat little finger, just so long as he could come to mum as much as he liked for his payments in kind. I've never been one for all that omen bullshit, but I can't helping wondering if the start she had in life gave Trisha some of her strength for what she'd do to follow. Whatever, mum plucked me back off which ever folk were unfortunate enough to have a hold of me on the night she brought Trisha back from the hospital, and told them she'd do just fine in that leaky back van of hers. I guess with Artie Bullock and the gin bottle giving her all the insulation she needed, she had good reason for reckoning she was right.

Trisha started teething that very first week. It gushed her cheeks dynamite-red and sent out screams like fire splinters. Mum clamped Trisha on her tit to shut her up, and even the gin couldn't stop her wincing at just how much she came to get gnawed at. It was no surprise mum had picked up some sort of affliction from wading through all that flood muck, and she started swinging from fever to freezes faster than a fairground dipper. She'd spew grease-sick on the lino and leave it to fester till next morning and sometimes longer. She'd lie on the couch half out of it with the gin and the pain, while me and Trisha got shacked up in our shared bedroom, bawling our eyes dry.
For a fair time it was pretty much just the three of us in that static of ours, though as soon as mum's inners got healed the blokes would start tramping round again, regular as feeding time. Sometimes mum would hand me a bottle and a few bags of foam gum sweets and when Trisha started roaring out next to me I'd monkey-feed her through her cot bars. Other times I'd stuff my fingers in my ears to block out the wall thuds. The thuds would work the plaster free and it would puff down over Trisha's cot. One time mum came round still halfway out of her head and the bloke long gone, and mistook the plaster puffs in Trisha's hair for fairy dust. She reeled up her jeans and went right out in just a saggy old bra top telling all who'd listen she'd given birth to the chosen one. What with the church still closed up due to flooding, and the rumoured father's predilection for Kwik Save car parks over pulpits, mum didn't have to shout too loud to find omen-folk willing to give her theory the time of day.
By this time my own old man had long gone and I wouldn't know him to this day if he stepped back in town and announcd himself and such. I don't reckon mum even knows his identity either, and given that makes a pair of us who don't give two shits, the chances of ever being faced with the truth are just about slim and none. When she was pregnant with me, rumours went round I'd probably pop out looking like that pervy old codhead off the fish fingers packets. It was folks' way of taunting her for getting knocked up when the fleet was in. They said when mum was down the harbour the fisherlads could be sure to catch more crabs than they ever did at sea. Another was mum had enough sea-salt squirted up her inners the bairn was pretty much bound to be inoculated from rickets for life. Mum didn't give a shit about her reputation, which was just as well. By the time I'd popped out my dad had long gone back on the high seas. I don't care either way but I reckon he's likely dead now, otherwise he'd have been sniffing round like the rest of them when there was a chance of some of that excess cash.

Those who still say Kola Kubes heaped nothing but shame on Fryup obviously aren't ones for looking up the local history books. Fact is, soon as my sister started taking her clothes off for cash she was following in a fine local tradition. Much as the prim-and-propers might not like being reminded of it, there was a time not so long back the place was proud of courting girls like her. It pulled them up out of town faster than the fleet hooked in haddocks. When mine and Trisha's grandpa was still alive, Fryup was raking it in and there weren't enough folk round to share it. They had to bus boys up through summer to help with the harvest.
There were three pubs strung out along high street and in each the bar was three-deep with square-chest farm boys and the girls who'd been easily convinced to chase up after them. The more who heard the stories of get-rich-quick places on the high moors, the more headed up out of town to discover it for themselves. Grandpa called them the Gold Rush days and the girls got shiny names to match - Big Cynthia, Betty The Legs, No-Slo Mo. The boys slept sardined in barns and stayed happy just so long as they had a different girl to squeeze in next to them each night, and there were still good enough fortunes to be made from the fields. Soon, they'd stuck up their own animal feeds mill so they could sift off the profits there and then instead of sending the raw crop away. They had a whole fleet of wagons chugging the lanes, hauling the Fryup harvest to all parts of the country. Sundays, they shrugged on their best and packed the pews in the All Saints church to give thanks for their riches. They'd screw their eyes tight closed and make vows of clean living they'd likely break even before they got back to their barns. They bawled out songs of sweat and toil and everlasting love.
Course, the place soon spilled over with greedy folk taking too much advantage of the good times. They ploughed and scattered and pushed out more crops but never reckoned on the rich moor soil being spread so thin. Soon the ground sighed its last and plucked itself clean of profit. By the time grandpa had snared one of those good-time girls into squeezing him out a daughter, the place was about busted. The feeds mill was shut down and already rusting up. The workers and whores trickled back down to town, figured the sea was a better bet. There were just the locals left and the place went into a mighty slump till the Bullocks rolled up spouting salvation. The old farm boys like grandpa who were just about bankrupt were quick to turn over their stubbled-up land in exchange for a pile of quick cash. The Bullocks had the brains to use the rise in seaside holidays to get the place back on its feet. They swept out the old barns and lured in families with tinted-up brochure shots of blue seas and purple moors. While the Bullocks grew richer the old boys took to spending their precious pennies in the Sailors, the only one of the three pubs that was still pulling pints, too stuck-up stubborn to admit they'd backed the wrong business.

Since she got rich and famous, there were more folk came forward claiming to be Trisha's old man than she had silicone inches.
There was a fisherlad called Cammy who sent in offers of paternity tests till the day she died. He went to the papers spouting bullshit about not wanting a thing of what Trisha had to offer, just the chance to hear her call him dad. Like me, Trisha always used to figure on her real dad being six-foot under somewhere, and if he wasn't she'd sure as hell help get him there for leaving mum in the lurch like that.
Dates don't mean shit when you're bedding as many blokes as mum was at the time, but to me the most likely bets were a pair who never reckoned on it. Artie Bullock was guilty of a whole load of dark dealings in the name of improving his cash flow, but hooking himself to Trisha's home-made fortune was never one of them. The way things turned out you'd get odds-on it was Artie, but the other likely father was a lad named Snake. He worked porting the catch off the boats, lugging the ice crates into market. No-one knew him by any other name. Some folk said he was named for the pair of freak fangs he had on him, which I guess could have accounted for Trisha's skew-iff mouth in the early days. There were always others who smirked out other explanations. They recalled how Snake hung around just enough enough see mum's belly go big, then he upped and left for good. No-one ever heard from Snake again though there's a fair few since who've claimed to be him. After Trisha got famous some paper bought up mum for a magazine piece and she claimed it was the Snake guy. They dolled her up as best they could and filled her mouth with fancy words. She said,

Trisha's father was a guy named Snake. I never got his real name. He was a looker and he knew it. He was tall and slim with jet-black hair. I won't lie - he had a certain prowess in the trouser department. He wore a cowboy hat her never took off, not even when we made love. It was the best sex I ever had. He was a one-night stand, give or take. He disappeared long before Trisha was born. I would have liked for Trisha to have grown up knowing her father, but it wasn't to be. She's got his eyes. I don't know where he is now. I suspect he might be dead.

Snake was hunted down and each time Trisha got in the news for something knew, it was a sure bet one of the tabloids would carry some exclusive claiming to have found him. They'd blur up shots of an old guy working the docks or tending allotments. They'd run their mouths off just as soon as they smelled the money, pluck stories clean from the air. Course, there was any number of blokes who could reel off facts about the insides of our caravan, but as proof of plugging mum with what turned out to be Trisha, none of their words ever counted for shit. Mum always said there was only one sure-fire way of figuring if they were telling the truth, and if she took a look at what every so-called Snake had to offer, she'd be back to her bad old ways sooner than she knew it.

This isn't meant as no kind of sob story, but there's no doubting Trisha didn't have a whole lot going for her in the early days. Chances were she'd end up at best like most of those lasses of Fryup whose folks hadn't had the time or inclination to fill their heads with fancy plots for getting out of the place. The furthest most ever got was the hitch into town on weekend nights in the hope of catching a fleet boy's eye. Those fleet boys might have stunk up the bed sheets if they ever got that far, but their days hauling haddocks gave them heaps of ready cash, and muscles to match. Trouble was they held their time on dry land fairly precious, and the furthest things generally got by way of romance was a quick sprawl on the lobster pots under the pier. Even those who made it that far ran the risk of facing up to the townie girls who didn't take too kind to the bunch of inbred farm sluts heading down off the moors and hooking up their boys. Many a Fryup girl would end the night limping the five miles home with a black eye a broken heel, let alone the lobster pot stains the locals called crab scabs on account of their needing a whole box of Daz Automatic to shift. Even so, by the time Trisha was born, there were enough prize catches that Fryup could call on a whole crew of mini-sailors, and by the looks of some of the bellies on show it wouldn't take long before there was another good ship-full ready for harbouring.
What part Trisha's start in life had in turning into who she was is up to one of those mind-doctors to figure out, and there's a whole load who've tried. The way I recall it, we'd live on hardly much more than those foam sweets for a while, then other times mum would come in flush with enough bags of groceries to last us a couple of weeks. Each time she'd hug us up close and reckon things were going to turn out a whole lot different, starting now. Maybe she'd met a new bloke or got sober long enough to stock up on food. Mum was always giving up the booze for good and getting her life back in order, though the give-ups barely lasted longer than the time it took to head down the Kwik-Save and stock back up on Super Strength. One time mum worked herself sober enough to head to church two Sundays in a row, though a rumour went round she'd got herself so skint she was only after a gob-full of communion wine and a fist of coppers off the collection plate. Times like that, we'd slouch on the couch with the foam sweets. It was the closest we ever got to playing happy families.

I had learned to look after myself even before I could walk. I knew how to dress myself and how to haul myself up on the kitchen top and scout the empty cupboards for scras of food. The folk in the van one down from us had a dog called Toby. He was one of those big shaggy things that came up above my waist. Each feeding time, they would pile a tin-full of minced meat in a bowl for him, and a stack of savoury biscuits. To a hungry thing like me it looked like silver service, and luckily Toby was only too happy to share! I have always had that effect on animals. I often think if I had not become the word's most famous adult movie star I would have been a vet, or a worker in an animal rescue centre. There are times even now when I am still tempted to do just that. They say a dog is man's best friend and Toby was the first real friend I had. He was also the only one who never betrayed me. Our dinner-sharing stopped when Toby's owners caught us sharing out of his bowl. The looks on their faces! They were typical of folk back then who would look down on us on account of our clothing or the way we talked. Still, I suppose I've got a lot to thank them for. Without Toby, I don't know if I'd be where I am today.

Review: An Open Secret

2011-12-13T10:01:00.005Z

Human Rights groups estimate that somewhere in the region of 30,000 people were 'disappeared' during the reign of Argentina's military junta between 1976 and 1983. Carlos Gamerro's An Open Secret (pub. Pushkin Press) focuses on one of those - Dario Ezcurra, an activist and playboy from the small Pampas town of Malihuel.
Gamerro's narrator is a young man who returns to Malihuel some twenty years later, with the pretense of writing a fictional account of a small-town murder: Ezcurra's, it seems, as he begins to at first reminisce with a circle of old friends, may fit the bill.
Word soon spreads about the intentions of the would-be novelist, and as more locals are cajoled into sharing their memories of the circumstances of Ezcurra's demise, a numbing truth begins to emerge: that they are all, to some extent, complicit.
'An Open Secret' is as far from a classic whodunnit as a murder story is ever likely to get. Gamerro's colloquial, sparsely punctuated prose does a fine job of conveying the confusions and contradictions of those involved in recounting their tales (translated, it must be said, painstakingly well by Ian Barnett). Gamerro's vast cast of characters, sometimes referred to by different names, is often bewildering and requires frequent flick-backs, yet this narrative tumult - different voices clamouring over each other to be heard - is clearly entirely intentional, and the book's major strength.
Gamerro does an excellent job of conveying the chronic paranoia of the times; a sense which still lingers, more than a quarter of a century after the junta were finally overthrown. It pitted neighbour against neighbour and, by imposing its will so publicly, rather than surreptitiously, say, in the dead of night, it made everyone accessories: as his old school teacher opines to the narrator late in the book, 'silence can be spread by word of mouth'.
If its experimental narrative conceit makes 'An Open Secret' a challenging read, then it is all the better for it. There is enough momentum, in extracting truths from lies and then, in a stunning denouement, unearthing the narrator's true intentions, to sustain Gamerro's story to its end, putting it right up there with the best of the exciting new wave of Argentinian fiction.

(It is worth noting that another Gamerro novel, 'The Islands', will be published in translation by And Other Stories in May next year)

Book Of The Year 2011: The Wandering Falcon

2011-12-09T10:44:00.004Z

Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon (pub. Hamish Hamilton) follows the meanderings of a boy named Tor Baz - the Black Falcon - through a pre-Taliban, tribal landscape where the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran meet. Ahmad's spare, precise prose gives life to a region known now as a place of terrorist hideouts and unmanned drones. As an insight into the region's complex cultures and honour-bound societies, it is second to none. In its wider remit as an exploration of the indefatigability of the human spirit, it is just extraordinary. Read the full review here.

A thin trickle of water flowing down the Shaktu river demarcates the boundary between the Wazirs and the Mahsuds - the two predatory tribes of Waziristan. On either side of the river are narrow vertiginal banks where Wazir and Mahsud women look after ragged patches of corn. The river provides only a brief interruption. Where the fields end, the convolutions and whorls of bare, cruel rock once again resume their march across the land - occasionally throwing up spires and lances of granite into the sky.

Books Of The Year #2: The Devil All The Time

2011-12-08T12:42:00.004Z

In Donald Ray Pollock's pitch dark debut novel, The Devil All The Time (pub. Harvill Secker), Arvin Eugene Russell trawls home through the Appalachian badlands on a thankless mission to make sense of the world he's been raised in: a world of serial killers, fire-and-brimstone preachers and human sacrifices. It's not for the faint-hearted, but Pollock is a master at making his crazy cast of characters tick. Read the full review here.

Then Roy hopped back up to the altar, reached under Brother Theodore's wheelchair, and brought out a gallon jar. Everyone leaned forward a bit on the benches. A dark mass seemed to be boiling inside it. Someone called out, "Praise God," and Brother Roy said, "That's right, my friends, that's right."He held up the jar and gave it a violent shake. "People, let me tell you something," he went on. "Before I found the Holy Ghost, I was scared plumb to death of spiders."

Books Of The Year #3: Down The Rabbit Hole

2011-12-07T11:50:00.003Z

Juan Pablo Villalobos' Down The Rabbit Hole (pub. And Other Stories) caused quite a stir in 2011, and rightly so. Tochtli is the seven-year-old son of a Mexican drugs kingpin. He lives in a heavily guarded compound with prostitutes and corrupt politicians for company. He loves samurai, hats and dictionaries, and dreams of owning a rare Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. What Tochtli wants, he generally gets, but at what price? Villalobos has crafted a touching, shocking, unforgettable first novel. Read the full review here.

One of the things I've learned from Yolcaut is that sometimes people don't turn into corpses with just one bullet. Sometimes they need three or even fourteen bullets. It all depends where you aim them. If you put two bullets in their brain they'll die for sure. But you can put up to 1,000 bullets in their hair and nothing will happen, although it must be fun to watch.

Books Of The Year #4: The Folded Earth

2011-12-06T10:44:00.003Z

Anuradha Roy's The Folded Earth (pub. MacLehose Press) is a book to clutch to your heart through the cold winter. It's a rich and evocative story of rural India's struggle to shake off the remnants of the Raj and embrace a new political and religious future. Maya, a young schoolteacher, escapes to a Himalayan mountain village in search of solitude. But she finds that even in this remote Utopia, the pace of change is flowing too fast for some. Read the full review here.

Sanki Puran had no recollection of his cow having aimed a kick at the Brigadier, but Mr Chauhari's neck throbbed with stress each time he allowed his thoughts to return to that party. He had tended, since that day, to encounter Puran at every turn: smelly, slovenly, a disgrace. What was more, he grazed his animals on precisely those slopes where Mr Chauhan had planted signs both in Hindi and English announcing fines for illegal grazing.

Books Of The Year #5: Snowdrops

2011-12-05T09:48:00.002Z

On a much-maligned Booker Prize shortlist, AD Miller's Snowdrops (pub. Atlantic) was perhaps the most unfairly judged of all: critics scoffed at how Miller's macho tale of modern Moscow could be rated so highly. In fact, few have written so richly of the city's dark underbelly, nor the soulless existence of an ex-pat abroad. Dark, sexy and mysterious, Miller's novel builds momentum as his narrator allows himself to become embroiled ever deeper in shady schemes. A guilty pleasure? Perhaps. But a great one, at that. Read the full review here.

Inside there was a dance floor with three podium dancers - two energetic and topless black girls, and in between them a male dwarf wearing a tiger stripe thong. Katya pointed up to the ceiling. Two naked girls, sprayed with gold to look like cherubs and with wings attached, were flapping above our heads. We headed for the bar. It had a glass floor, and underneath it there was an aquarium filled with sturgeon and a few forlorn sharks. There were a lot of priceless women and dangerous men.

The Dukes Of Fryup IX

2011-12-04T20:10:00.004Z

The latest excerpt from my novel, The Dukes of Fryup:

The Burgesses live in the posh house. They are the richest people in our entire village. They own all the ice cream shops, all the bread shops, and the butcher's shop. They bought the mill so they could sell it to someone else to turn into houses.
None of our mums ever went round to the Burgesses' for cups of tea or chats. Mrs Burgess wasn't really Mrs Burgess because she wasn't married. She was the third Mrs Burgess even we could remember. She was miles younger than Mr Burgess and always wore really short skirts. All the older lot fancied her. Keith Ingleton said she was definitely up for it. Fat Gavin's mum got closest to getting in the Burgesses' house. She went round delivering coffee morning leaflets. She could have delivered one through the letterbox but she rang the bell instead just so she could get a look past when someone answered.
Fat Gavin's mum had to ring the bell three times before anyone came. It's such a big house it even has a swiming pool. Mrs Burgess came to the door in her dressing room with her hair wrapped in a towel, even though it was the middle of the day. She looked at Fat Gavin's mum and said, 'not today thank you,' and slammed the door.
Fat Gavin's mum: I had a good mind to ring that bell again and give that woman a piece of my mind.
Fat Gavin's mum: you don't go and tog yourself up in a dressing gown at that time of day unless you're living the life of Riley.
Dazzler's mum: you don't get that rich by being honest.
Dazzler's mum always said that about the Burgesses: you don't get that rich being honest. She said it was their fault poor Mrs Gulliver had gone doolally. Doolally wasn't in the dictionary, but it meant going a bit mental. (Other examples of going a bit mental are eating mud, or running down the street with your pants on your head).
Mrs Gulliver was an old fogey who used to own a proper ice cream shop down near the thatched cottage. Mrs Gulliver's ice cream shop was the only one Mr Burgess didn't own, but it was the best one by miles. It was proper ice cream and you could get loads of different flavours, even flavours you've never heard of before, like New York Buttered Almond, which sounds manky but was really nice. Plus you could get hundreds and thousands and monkey's blood. Mr Burgess's ice creams were just Mister Softee. Mr Burgess had been trying for ages to buy the shop off Mrs Gulliver. He kept trying to give her more and more money but she didn’t want it.
Mrs Gulliver: I wouldn't sell up for all the tea in China.
Then one night Mrs Gulliver's shop caught fire. We got woken up by the fire engines and went out into the street in our pyjamas to watch. I had Denver Broncos American Football pyjamas. I was glad I didn't have teddy bear or Batman ones. Holly and Chantal were out in their nighties and dressing gowns. The fire was puffing out of all the windows.
The next day the shop was all black. It stank of burned metal and you could see the sky through the roof. Some cars outside were covered in soot. The firemen came back to make it safe, which meant knocking down another bit of it. It stayed that way for ages. Mrs Gulliver said she didn't have the first idea about how to get it straight. People kept writing letters to the Gazette saying she should do something about it because it was a right eyesore and a blight on the tourist trade. Our mums said they were made-up letters sent by Mr Burgess to try to get Mrs Gulliver to sell it. They didn't look like made-up letters, because they didn't have made-up names. Examples of made-up names are Mr T Bag, Mr C Side and Mr P Niss.
In the end, Mrs Gulliver just died.
Dazzler's mum: there's no question, that poor old woman died of a broken heart.
After Mrs Gulliver died Mr Burgess bought the shop and put the roof back on it and opened another ice cream shop. It was called Gulliver's Olde Worlde Ices.
Dazzler's mum: the nerve of that man, it makes you sick.
Dazzler's mum got everyone to boycott the shop. The boycott lasted a bit but then we found out it was the only place that still did loads of different flavours and hundreds and thousands and monkey's blood. A few months later, Dazzler's mum caught us coming out of the shop with massive ice creams. We thought she would go doolally, but didn't.
Dazzler's mum: blooming heck, those look good.
Dazzler's mum gave us a quid and asked us to go in and get one for her, because she wouldn't go in herself.

Books Of The Year #6: The Old Man And His Sons

2011-12-03T21:26:00.004Z

First published in Faroese in 1940, and republished by translation experts Telegram this year, Heoin Bru's The Old Man And His Sons is a story of the daily struggle for survival on the Faroe Islands. It tells of inter-generational conflicts, Faroese-style: Ketil's sons no longer wish to endure the slog of hunting for seabirds nor line the rooms of their homes with turf. His daughters-in-law 'have been to Torshavn, and picked up daft notions'. It's a beautiful, captivating chronicle of the savage glory of a simple life, long gone. Read the full review here.

The people on the shore had now fallen silent, for though they rejoiced in the hunt, they were a little abashed at the slaughter, sobered to see the whales so mutilated and dying - those same whales that a little before had been swimming briskly and beautifully, with all the gleam and pride of the mighty ocean upon them.

Books Of The Year #7: Villain

2011-12-03T09:28:00.003Z

The spare, stripped-back prose of Shuichi Yoshida's Villain (pub. Harvill Secker) perfectly mirrors the soulless, desolate landscape in which he has set his latest, super-modern Japanese thriller. In a Japan of love motels and lighthouses, a young student is murdered and the man who might be her killer is on the run. Lent zest by flashbacks and constantly changing narrative perspectives, Villain - longlisted for the 2011 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize - is a riveting read.

Mitsuse Pass has always had ghostly, otherworldly stories connected to it. In the beginning of the Edo period it was rumoured to be a hideout for robbers. In the mid-1920s rumour had it that someone murdered seven women in Kitagata township in Saga Prefecture and escaped to the pass. More recently the pass had become infamous as the place where, so the story goes, someone staying at a nearby inn went crazy and killed another guest.

Books Of The Year #8: The Sisters Brothers

2011-12-02T11:04:00.001Z

Patrick DeWitt's debut novel, The Sisters Brothers (pub. Granta) is both an ode to, and a subversion of, the classic Western, conjuring two cold blooded killers-with-a-conscience who traverse the badlands of Gold Rush America seeking to complete the latest bloodthirsty mission handed down to them by their mysterious boss. Along their way they counter all kinds of down-and-outs and dead-men-walking. DeWitt's work stays true to the climate of its times, and yet remains undeniably unique.

Short, late-winter days, and we stopped in a dried ravine to make up camp for the night. You will often see this scenario in serialized adventure novels: Two grisly riders before the fire telling their bawdy stories and singing harrowing songs of death and lace. But I can tell you that after a full day of riding I want nothing more than to lie down and sleep, which is just what I did, without even eating a proper meal.

Books Of The Year #9: Open Door

2011-12-01T09:24:00.003Z

Iosi Havilio's Open Door (pub. And Other Stories) is a bewildering, riveting, sexy book, which follows one young woman's search for solitude deep in the Argentinian Pampas. The unnamed narrator pitches up in a small town overshadowed by its sprawling psychiatric hospital, where she meets a man who shares a name with his horse, and develops an obsession with a local girl. Havilio's jagged, disconnected prose forces us to address the very notions of freedom and sanity. Read the full review here.

I'm walking with my head down, in search of new pine cones to kick, when I hear a timid hello close by. It's Eloisa, the girl from the shop. Hi, I say, and her eyes dart all over the place. Under her arm, she's carrying a rolled-up burlap bag. She's wearing a buttoned blouse patterned with tiny bunches of flowers, yellow, red and white, rococo style, and a black bra, which is very see-through, making her diminutive tits more pronounced.

Books Of The Year #10: Palo Alto

2011-11-30T09:15:00.006Z

It's too easy to be contemptuous of James Franco's Palo Alto (pub. Faber). Here's a multi-tasking Hollywood superstar penning paens of teenage ultra-angst. In fact, this collection is as shocking and true a portrayal of adolescence as you'll read in a long time. Franco's characters are never more than vaguely outlined, which adds to the over-arching nihilism of their lives, and hints that these tortured souls could be, and have been, all of us too. All told, it's much more disturbing than going to the cinema and watching a guy have to saw his own arm off.

In fourth grade Sasha Alexander was the biggest dork I could ever think of. Buckteeth and short red hair and glasses. She said she could play basketball better than me. I laughed. We played at lunch and I won. She didn't admit that I won. Back in class I told her she was a dork and a poor loser, and she stabbed me in the arm with a pencil. The hole was gray from the graphite.
Mr DeFelice didn't do anything about it.

Eleutherophobia Books Of The Year 2011

2011-11-29T09:36:00.005Z

Over the next ten days this site will run down Eleutherophobia's Top Ten Books Of The Year - in reverse order, of course. But first, in an especially strong year for world fiction, it's worth highlighting a number of notable others that narrowly failed to make the cut. The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize threw up an excellent longlist, and ultimately a very worthy winner in Santiago Roncagliolo's dark and mysterious tale of a Peru struggling to shake off the Shining Path, Red April (Atlantic).
Also from the list, Marcelo Figuera's delicate, elegaic Kamchatka (Atlantic) - about a family living in fear of authoritarian rule in seventies Argentina, and Michal Witkowski's garish Lovetown (Portobello), a chronicle of sleazy queens in post-Communist Poland, were most worthy of note.
From the much-maligned MAN Booker shortlist came Patrick McGuinness's gripping account of the crumbling of the Ceausescu regime in Romania, The Last Hundred Days (Seren), Carol Birch's rollicking Victorian high seas adventure, Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate), and an unarguable winner in Julian Barnes' precise and profound muse on memory, The Sense Of An Ending (Jonathan Cape).
Possibly the strongest longlist this year was provided by the the MAN Asian Prize, including Rahul Bhattachariya's richly chaotic tale of a year in Guyana, The Sly Company Of People Who Care (Picador), as well as a devastatingly sad insight into the AIDS tragedy facing rural China in Yan Lianke's Dream Of Ding Village (Corsair).
From the sub-continent came Mirza Waheed's gripping first novel The Collaborator (Viking), which shed overdue light on the Kashmiri conflict, and which was deservedly shortlisted for the Guardian First Novel Award. Meanwhile former Booker winner Aravind Adiga followed up 'White Tiger' with his study of the residents of a Mumbai housing complex, Last Man In Tower (pub. Atlantic). It is testament to the strength of this year's prize lists that Adiga's accomplished follow-up barely merited a mention among them.
Finally, a word for Tommy Zurhellen's Nazareth, North Dakota (Atticus), a tumultuous re-telling of the New Testament, re-imagined in a Badlands landscape of dingy bars and love motels. Zurhellen's follow-up is due in 2012. Watch this space.

Review: The Colonel

2011-11-28T10:31:00.006Z

Iran's parliament spent part of this week chanting 'Death To Britain' as part of its seemingly never-ending nuclear row with the West. In his latest novel, The Colonel (pub. Haus Publishing), Mahmoud Dowlatabadi implies that rather more introspection is required to find the root cause of his nation's continued tumult.
Dowlatabadi's Iran is devoid of almost all hope: crushed by the oppression and paranoia of successive regimes, and, like the ageing narrator who spends the first part of the novel seeking to bury his murderered fourteen-year-old daughter before sunrise, lurching ever deeper into blackness.
It is small wonder that 'The Colonel' is banned in Iran. Translated tirelessly from Persian by Tom Patterdale, it is an exhaustive and gruelling piece of work, undoubtedly most valuable to those who are denied it. The rest of us can only admire Dowlatabadi's epic from afar.
The Colonel of the title has lost four of his five children to execution or frontline action. Burying his daughter and preparing for his middle son's funeral in the weeks which mark the beginning of the Islamic revolution, he can do little but ruminate on the mistakes made by his country's successive rulers, his pessimism manifested in endless rain and darkness.
Thrusting between past and present, employing a mixture of narrative techniques and rich in references - both direct and oblique - to heroes of Iranian history (invaluably covered in the book's sizeable glossary), Dowlatabadi has not made it easy for those with only a tenuous grasp of his subject.
But then, he has little or no reason to. This is plainly, first and foremost, a despairing and as yet unheard plea to the Iranian people. In a world where a man's torturer can then seek - and be granted - sanctuary in his victim's house when the plates of power shift unfavourably, Dowlatabadi lays bare his nation's hypocrisy and misplaced morality.

"Father, the tragedy is this! They say that the servants whom the Almighty loves, he kills. And I see that our country kills those who love it the most. Is this country committing suicide? They get under your skin, they use you to speak for them, and, in your name, they then kill you. Crying 'salvation and welfare', they drive you to destruction. Your servants - people like you were once - are destroying you."

'The Colonel' could by no means be described as an enjoyable book. Clearly, it is intended to be digested first and foremost by those who are directly affected by their nation's politics. For them, the importance of this book must not be under-stated, thus we should celebrate its inclusion on this year's longlist for the MAN Asian Literary Prize. For others, it provides a valuable insight into a nation with whom the war of words is unlikely ever to be won.

'The Colonel' has also been reviewed by my fellow Shadow MAL Prize jury member, Lisa at ANZLitLovers. Read her review here.

Review: The Sly Company Of People Who Care

2011-11-24T11:03:00.009Z

Rahul Bhattachariya's sprawling, ambitious debut novel The Sly Company Of People Who Care (pub. Picador) charts the adventures of a 26-year-old Indian cricket journalist who, smitten with the country during a previous Caribbean tour, quits his job to return for a year to Guyana in search of aimless adventure.
Bhattachariya's (presumably) partly autobiographical character - his previous book about a cricket tour, 'Pundits From Pakistan', was rated the sport's fourth best ever by 'Wisden' - delves deep into this sparsely chartered, thickly jungled society, retracing the steps of the so-called coolies who set out in their boatloads from Calcutta and Madras in the mid-19th century, lured by tall tales of a land of gold.
The descendents of the coolies and the emancipated slaves who were brought there before them have evolved an extraordinary Guyanese culture, and Bhattachariya, through a narrative hotch-potched with Rasta patois and Hindi movie excerpts, does a fine job of bringing that colourful, cross-continental maelstrom to life.
His unnamed character travels in search of a kind of unclear fulfilment which he discovers, even in a land where 'days pass slow and voluptuous' and rivers 'drift by your feet like molasses', remains tantalisingly out of reach.

'One escapes one's life, for however long, seeking adventure - I think of the Hindi word 'dheel'. This is what kite-flyers in Bombay shouted when they wanted the spooler to let loose the thread. I could not fly a kite, as unnavigable to me as chopsticks, but I liked giving dheel, and I liked very much the thought of dheel. So one escapes one's life seeking adventure, and with enough dheel and some luck, that happens. But the thread is anchored. You can only go so far. The impulse must change. Instead of adventure one seeks understanding. It comes with a heaviness. The only way to be exempt is to resolutely not ponder, but I was given to pondering.'

Bhatticharya's admirable desire to remain true to this country's easy, abstract rhythms makes his book an occasionally impenetrable and often disorientating read; what passes for its plot is hinged around two central, unconnected adventures: first, hunting diamonds in the country's thick, dark interior; second a tumultuous, impromptu trip to Venezuela with the captivating Jan, whose face is 'cut like a rough heart.'
At a time when US colleges spew out earnest MFA students by the bucket-load, this fresh, loose approach to novel-writing is to be celebrated. It brings to mind the raw, disjointed 'Dirty Havana' of Pedro Juan Gutierrez: each providing its own unique picaresque of a vibrant culture's ignored underbelly.
'The Sly Company Of People Who Care' - longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize - is part history lesson, part travelogue and part love letter. More than that, it is a bewitching meditation on youthful restlessness and our never-ending search for self.

You can read further reviews by my fellow MAL Prize jury member Fay at Read, Ramble here.

Interview: Anuradha Roy

2011-11-22T16:31:00.004Z

Anuradha Roy's The Folded Earth (pub. Quercus/MacLehose) has been longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize. Following is an exclusive Q&A with the author. Scroll down or click here for the review, and here for an excerpt.

To what extent, if any, is Maya, the novel's central character, autobiographical, and are the other significant characters drawn from real-life?

Maya and I share nothing other than a fondness for long walks and the place we live. Those who know the kind of anarchic, individualistic, amateur scholar not uncommon in the hills here till a generation ago will glimpse him in Diwan Sahib, especially as Corbett’s biographer did live in Ranikhet and was somewhat similar to Diwan Sahib temperamentally.
Some of my characters come out of nowhere; for a few I use real people as line drawings from which to begin, but they tend to move further and further away from the real with their every new line in the fictional world.

There is an inherent fragility about the Ranikhet of your novel; the sense that political or religious forces could irrevocably alter its landscape at any time: does this threat still exist in real-life Ranikhet today?

Ranikhet has been protected so far by its relative remoteness. But this makes it even more vulnerable to the rampaging greed for more land, more power, more everything today.

That fragility is also reflected in its nature, which is a big part of your book: in particular the images of leopards slinking the undergrowth. To what extent is your Ranikhet at risk from environmental change?

Compared to other hill towns, parts of Ranikhet are still densely wooded, but human need is constantly gnawing at it. But I’ve been reading Sebald’s Rings of Satan and one cataclysmic storm he describes towards the end of the book in which whole forests in England are flattened like cornfields makes me wonder if there’s much point losing sleep over any of this.

India's crumbling Raj era is obviously still extremely popular among prospective tourists and, by extension, readers, seeking out the so-called 'real India'. One of the successes of your novel seems to be how, rather than striving to avoid the cliches associated with that era, you actively embrace them: the pickle factory, the ageing aristocrat, etc. Was this a conscious decision?

I don’t know that too much in the way I write is made up of conscious decisions. I’m trying to create a coherent fictional world, and what goes into it, not too consciously, is a mix of what I see around me and what I want to add to that. In my first book, a town I made up had a ruined fort with a banyan tree, and a knot in its trunk appeared to suggest the face of the Buddha – I’ve no idea why I felt the town had to have that ruin and that tree, but that was how the town came to me.
A few months after the book comes out I have to try being analytical about it — and I could say that I put in the Nehru-Edwina/ aristocrat tropes alongside leopards and deers to show how all of this is irrelevant to the new, present-day India — to describe change etc – but that wasn’t how it happened during the writing process.

As editor at a publishing house - and also a MAN Asian Prize longlistee! - you are in a unique position to assess the state of Indian literature today. How is it, and which authors from the sub-continent have particularly inspired you?

South Asian history and social sciences are packed with sophisticated, internationally renowned scholars and writers; the regional languages have great writers who are now becoming accessible across India via translations. Fiction and poetry in English has a reasonable readership and plenty of interesting writers.
One of my own Indian favourites is the Bengali writer Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay whose book The Song of the Little Road, about the life of a wretchedly poor family in rural Bengal, I first encountered as a film by Satyajit Ray. What I’m looking for in a novel is its ability to move me — and its ability to suggest a larger world that is somehow just beyond my grasp—vividly alive but only partly fathomable — and the last book which did that for me was not an Indian novel but a Japanese one, by Yasunari Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain.

Have you read, or do you intend to read, any of the other novels on the MAN Asian Prize longlist?

I’ve got some of the books on the list — the Murakami because I am a fan of his, and a couple of others. Haven’t read any yet.

Are you planning a third novel, and if so, is there the temptation to pick up again with any of the characters from The Folded Earth?

I know – Maya has been left in a temptingly sequelish place – but I don’t think so, not even if there is a third novel.

2011 Costa First Novel Award

2011-11-21T19:22:00.003Z

The shortlist for this year's Costa First Novel award is interesting, and unusually global. It spans works set in Jamaica, the Niger Delta, crumbling Communist Romania and a futuristic Ireland. It's another honour for Patrick McGuinness, whose 'The Last Hundred Days' was longlisted for this year's MAN Booker Prize. Here are the opening lines to the four shortlisted books:

CITY OF BOHANE by Kevin Barry (Jonathan Cape)
Whatever's wrong with us is coming in off that river. No argument: the taint of badness on the city's air is a taint off that river. This is the Bohane river we're talking about. A blackwater surge, malevolent, it roars in off the Big Nothin' wastes and the city was spawned by it and was named for it: city of Bohane.

THE LAST HUNDRED DAYS by Patrick McGuinness (Seren)
In 1980s Romania, boredom was a state of extremity. There was nothing neutral about it: it strung you out and stretched you; it tugged away at the bottom of your day like shingle scraping at a boat's hull.

TINY SUNBIRDS FAR AWAY by Christie Watson (Quercus)
Father was a loud man. His voice entered a room before he did. From my bedroom window I could hear him sitting in the wide gardens, or walking to the car parking area filled with Mercedes, or standing by the security guard's office, or the gate in front.

PAO by Kerry Young (Bloomsbury)
Me and the boys was sitting in the shop talking 'bout how good business was and how we need to go hire up some help and that is when she show up. She just appear in the doorway like she come outta nowhere. She was standing there with the sun shining on her showing off this hat, well it was more a kind of turban, like the Indians wear, only it look ten times better than that. Or maybe it just look ten times better on her.

The Dukes Of Fryup VIII

2011-11-20T15:01:00.002Z

The latest excerpt from my novel, The Dukes of Fryup:

It was so hot the ends of the streets were all wavy. It's called a mirage. The hotter it is the better the mirages get. You can get mirages of almost anything. There was a cartoon once where Daffy Duck was in the middle of the desert, really hot and thirsty. An ice cream van drove up and Daffy Duck ordered a massive ice cream, but just when he was about to lick it it vanished. The hottest place in the world is Dallol, Ethiopia. In Dallol, Ethiopia, you can probably get mirages of anything. You can probably get mirages of May Ventress's boobs and not even have to pay a fiver for them.
Dazzler's dad was setting off to work. He was wearing green overalls that looked a bit like a Ghostbusters suit, except he didn't zap ghosts, he made animal food. The mill was going to close.
Fat Gavin's dad: the long and the short of it is that it's simply unsustainable in the current economic climate.
Fat Gavin's dad worked at the mill too, but in a different bit where he had to wear a shirt and tie. You could tell Dazzler's dad thought it was Fat Gavin's dad's fault that the mill was closing. Sometimes if Fat Gavin went round to call for Dazzler and Dazzler's dad answered the door he said, 'eh up, it's little Lord Fauntleroy'.
Fat Gavin's dad: it's high time we faced up to a few cold hard truths.
Wayne's dad used to work as the mill as well, then one day he put his Ghostbusters suit on as usual and went out and never came back. Nobody knew where he was for a week. We thought maybe he'd fallen in the mincer when no-one was looking, or even spontaneously combusted. Spontaneous combustion is when you suddenly catch on fire for no reason and die, and all that's left is a pile of ash. Except Wayne's dad didn't fall in the mixer or spontaneously combust. He moved out to live with someone called Debbie. Wayne's dad said Wayne could go and live with him if he wanted, but only at weekends. Debbie used to work at the mill as well.
Dazzler's mum: fancy them getting caught in the stock cupboard like that, in flagrante.
Dazzler: I thought they were in the mill.
Dazzler's mum: it's a figure of speech.
They were going to move the mill lock, stock and barrel to Doncaster. It meant the village wouldn't stink any more. Also, sometimes the mill spilled colours into the beck by accident. It went green or blue and all the trout would die or just sit there in a trance. If they got like that you could reach in and tickle them and catch them without even a fishing rod, except when you cooked them they tasted of something like washing up liquid.
Dazzler's dad used to drive a massive truck taking animal food all over the place. He even went to places like France and Germany. His truck had a flag in and his name written out on a number plate. He had a calendar of nude women he hid under the passenger seat each time he got home. It wasn't as good as pornos, but it was still good. Sometimes he parked the truck up our street, like if he was driving out on his way to France or Germany and remembered he had to pick his packed lunch up. Sometimes he did it on purpose just to make Mr Jenkinson mad. His truck always blocked a bit of Mr Jenkinson's drive and Mr Jenkinson would always come out shouting.
Mr Jenkinson: what the hell do you think you're playing at, bringing a truck of that size down a road like this.
Once Mr Jenkinson wanted to get his car out to get to work. Dazzler's dad pretended his truck wouldn't start for ages so Mr Jenkinson was late. Dazzler's dad kept winking at us while he was revving his engine.
Dazzler's dad: it won't be long now, I'm sure there's some doors you can be knocking on in the meantime.
(He meant because the Jenkinsons are Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses go round knocking on doors and giving out leaflets. Once they came round when we were watching the rugby at Dazzler's house.
Jehovah's Witnesses: isn't it sad that there is so much anger in the world these days.
Dazzler's dad: bugger off out of it.)
Sometimes he let us have a ride in it. It had a really loud horn. Sometimes if we were going past an old fogey we'd wait till we got really close then lean in and press the horn and try to make the old fogey jump and drop their shopping. If he went to France or Germany he brought chocolate back for us.
Except now that the mill was moving to Doncaster, Dazzler's dad didn't have the truck any more. Now he just worked in the last bit of the factory. Dazzler's dad said the whole bloody place was going down the pan.

Review: The Folded Earth

2011-11-18T10:44:00.011Z

It takes a special writer to fashion something out of the ordinary from such a conventional subject: in this case, the much-plundered, Kipling-esque tale of rural India's struggle to shake off the remnants of the Raj and embrace an uneasy new political and religious future.
Anuradha Roy, however, has lifted The Folded Earth (pub. MacLehose Press) far above the dangers of cliche, both with the shimmering beauty of her prose and the effortless manner in which she unfurls a tale rich in warmth and humour, yet never straying far from its delicate, dark heart.
'The Folded Earth' is about love, loss and longing as much as it about the corruptive influence of politics and religion: the fragility of everyday existence in the mountain villages of Himalaya mirrored by the uneasy peace among Hindus, Christians and Muslims, which is already spilling blood in the valleys below.
Maya, a young schoolteacher, escapes to the mountains following the death of her husband in a climbing accident, seeking and at first finding a happiness of sorts. She helps an eccentric scholar, Diwan Sahib, complete his life's work and forges a precious friendship with Charu, a peasant girl who lives on his estate.
When Charu falls in love with a visiting hotel cook, and Diwan's nephew Veer arrives to set up a trekking company, Maya's dream of solitude is shattered. Elections are approaching, and the rise in Hindu nationalism threatens the future of her school and the life she and the locals have forged around it.
Roy's work is a masterpiece of restraint. She conjures a world of such verdant beauty it must surely have been tempting to destroy it: juxtaposing her poetic descriptions with a brutality which shatters its inherent tranquility to devastating effect.
Many have done it; many others have resisted the temptation so entirely as to render their works little more than glorified travelogues; bright pictures of magical, distant lands. Roy has achieved both: content to let the dark forces lurk without ever quite manifesting themselves, she lends an extra potency and poignancy to almost all of the central characters' choices. Their lives as they know it are, you sense, hanging by a thread no stronger than the one which Charu tears superstitiously from her dupatta to tie to temple railings at the beginning of her greatest journey.
'The Folded Earth' is a book about the power and glory of nature, and humanity's struggle to establish itself therein. The politics - and threats - ebb and flow through the scorching hot summers and frozen winters, but the mountains, and the mountain people, remain:

'In winter the barbet calls all day from its lonely perch high in a leafless tree. Its plaintive, monotonous cry is the distillation of solitude and sadness. The tourists have gone, and the summer visitors with them. Only now does the town feel truly ours...'

'The Folded Earth' - longlisted for the MAN Asian Literary Prize, and surely a strong contender - is a beautiful book that will not leave you until long after the final page. There, you will find what is perhaps Roy's ultimate anti-cliche: a happy (ish) and eminently satisfactory ending - for the time being, at least.

Some of my fellow Shadow MAL Prize jury members didn't like it quite as much as I did. You can read their reviews at A Novel Approach, Whispering Gums and Read, Ramble.

Excerpt: The Folded Earth

2011-11-16T19:34:00.006Z

This is a short excerpt from The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy, longlisted for this year's MAN Asian Literary Prize. It is reproduced courtesy the publishers, Quercus Books, and the author.

The sky over our heads here in the mountains has not the immensity of the sky I grew up with in the Deccan, where it spans the entire planet, broken only by the building-sized boulders that sit here and there on the open flatland of the plateau as if a giant's child had collected them from the giant's river and dropped them like marbles onto a playing field. In the hills the sky is circumscribed. Its fluid blue is cupped in the palm of a hand whose fingers are the mountains around us. We too are cupped in its palm and while there is a feeling of limitless distance, we have at the same time the sense that here on our hill is where life begins and ends. Here is where sky begins and ends, and if there are other places, they have skies different from our sky.

Our town spans three hills. It is far away from everywhere and very small. If you look at it from the other side of the valley at night, you see darkness dotted here and there with yellow lights half-hidden by trees. On every side there are mountains and forests, stretching many miles, interrupted only by tiny hamlets and villages so small that they might have just five houses and nothing but a foot-beaten path connecting them to the main road miles away.

One Inch Wonders #34: Lovetown

2011-11-16T11:24:00.003Z

from Lovetown by Michal Witkowski, pub. Portobello

No one ever went hungry with that tinned soup, with those potatoes, the subsidies of socialism. There was always enough to eat and a roof over your head; a lady doesn't need much to get by. Now they're building a great big shopping mall in that park of theirs; they're burying their entire history. Patricia insists she will protest. But she's only kidding. More bitterly and sadly every time.

Review: Dream Of Ding Village

2011-11-13T23:06:00.008Z

The dusk settles over a day in late autumn. The sun sets above the East Henan plain, a blood-red ball turning the earth and sky a deep shade of crimson. As red unfurls, slowly the dusk turns to evening. Autumn grows deeper; the cold more intense. The village streets are all empty and silent.

In Dream Of Ding Village (pub. Corsair), Yan Lianke, one of China's most pre-eminent and controversial novelists, tackles the harrowing topic of AIDS in his country's impoverished rural regions.
Longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize, 'Dream of Ding Village' is as gruelling as you might expect given its subject matter. But Lianke lends it an extra dimension by employing his trademark satire and black humour to thrilling effect.
Lianke's most famous work, Serving The People, about an affair between a red army soldier and the wife of a high-ranking Party official, was banned in his homeland and Dream Of Ding Village went the same way, accused of painting an unnecessarily bleak and alarmist picture of the epidemic afflicting millions of rural Chinese.
In fact, Lianke's book acts as much as an allegory of the Chinese economy's clumsy lurch towards capitalism as it does a damning indictment of a system which preaches equality but is riddled with corruption, and whose selfish clamour extends, in Lianke's expert hands, as far as the after-life.
Dream Of Ding Village is based on the true story of an horrific period in which ruthless free-marketeers coerced villagers into selling their blood and in the process infected them with the AIDS virus, wiping out entire communities.
It is narrated by the ghost of Xiao Qiang, a young boy who has been killed by his family's neighbours as retribution for the role of his father, the most prominent of the so-called blood-hounds, in spreading the disease.
Entirely unabashed by the mounting tragedy, the boy's father continues to exploit the villagers, first by selling them the coffins that are meant to be given to them free by the state, then, ultimately, by convincing them to pay to marry off their dead sons and daughters so as not to leave them lonely in the after-life.
He succeeds because this is a society long since rendered hopelessly naïve by the bludgeoning force of multi-layered, single-party rule. As the villagers fall ill and prepare to die in increasing numbers, they blithely accept changes in authority based on nothing more than ownership of the village seal. Blackmail and corruption is endemic even among the stricken: one man even schemes to be buried with the seal so as to retain his authority after his death.
This blend of hard fact - Lianke is from the province of Hunan, where the scandal was at its most devastating, and spent time living with AIDS victims and corroborating their stories - and fiction, works well in such expert hands, exposing the inherent futility of a fast-changing nation's grasp at the best of both worlds.
If Liang's choice of narrator is a little contrived, and if the story is so devoid of hope and corrupt of morals so as to be hard going at times, it is also a remarkable and unforgettable book. Lianke's beautiful descriptions of such a desolate landscape sustain the reader through this gut-wrenchingly sad tale, and give a voice to the victims of the hidden tragedy he has brought so brilliantly to light.

You can read the thoughts of my fellow Shadow MAL Prize jury members at A Novel Approach and Read, Ramble.

The Dukes Of Fryup VII

2011-11-13T12:33:00.003Z

The latest excerpt from my novel, The Dukes Of Fryup:

There's loads of loonies in our village. Some of them aren't really loonies, they just act like it. Loony is short for lunatic, which means someone foolish or eccentric. This is a list of the top ten loonies in our village.

Fat Claire
Fat Claire lives up Back Moor Lane. She lives in a tiny house and has a tiny dog. This is weird because she is so fat. She is nearly as big as John Brower Minnoch. John Brower Minnoch is the fattest man in the world. He lives in America. He weighs ninety-nine stone. Every time he wants to go for a shit, twelve firemen have to come and lift him. Fat Claire talks to herself and makes spells. She is a white witch. A white witch is like a normal witch, except not with broomsticks or potions. If Fat Claire is a white witch we don’t know why she doesn’t make a spell to go thin. We have never dared play any tricks on her in case she can turn us into frogs.

Odd Kirk
Odd Kirk lives in a shed and always keeps his curtains shut even when it's sunny. He only goes out at night. This means he is nocturnal. Other examples of nocturnal are badgers, owls and vampire bats. He's called Odd Kirk because he's called Kirk and everyone says he's odd. Dazzler's mum says you wouldn’t have him pop round for no baby-sitting, that’s for sure. He's big and has really long arms. He hangs them down like a gorilla. He might be stronger than the World's Strongest Man but because he's a loony he's not allowed to enter. The World's Strongest Man is Jon-Pall Sigmarsson. He's from Iceland. He can pull trucks.

Marcie Flapjacks
Marcie Flapjacks lives in the last house going up to the tip and wears clothes that make her boobs hang out. She wears bright red lipstick and stilettos even though she's old. Dazzler's dad says she's mutton dressed as lamb. He also says she's away with the fairies, and she's a right tart. We looked up tart. It said, an open pastry case containing jam. She gets drunk and dances and sings in the middle of our street. If you shout 'show us your tits' at her, she sometimes does, except she never has when we've tried. Once we went up to her house and waited ages for her to come out.
Us: show us your tits.
Just when we shouted it Mrs Jenkinson walked past.
Mrs Jenkinson: I do beg your pardon.
We don't know why she's called Marcie Flapjacks, she just is.

Limp Man
There's another thing we forgot to mention about Limp Man. He's always staring at the pornos but pretending not to.

Skinny Annie Ellis
Skinny Annie Ellis lives up the High Street. She's the thinnest person in the whole wide world. If you held a bit of string up in front of her you wouldn’t be able to see her. She has suckered-in cheeks and fish-lips. She looks like a ghost. This is because she's anorexic. We looked up anorexic. It said, involving, producing or characterized by a lack of appetite.
Dazzler's dad: what that lass needs is a good square meal.
Bobby Sands was an anorexic. He was a Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer. Skinny Annie Ellis used to be a school dinner lady. She's probably anorexic because of seeing school dinners every day. The worst school dinners in order are curry with currants in, boiled fish and frogspawn. If you had to eat them all together it would be a triple forfeit. Once we sneaked up to Skinny Annie Ellis's house and left a Mr Kipling's French Fancy on her front path. The next day it was still there but squashed.

The Hunchback Kid
The Hunchback Kid works on the fair but he's not a gypo. He has a lump on his back like he has a pillow stuffed up his tee-shirt, but he doesn't. He works on the swingboats. He shouts at you to get off when your five minutes are up. He stands where he can look up the girls' skirts. Round the back of the swingboats is where May Ventress shows you her boobs for a fiver. Wayne's brother says May Ventress is a slag. We looked up slag, it said, vitreous refuse left after ore has been smelted. If the Hunchback Kid touches you when he gives you your change, you have to wash your hands or you might grow a hump as well. Once Gareth Outhwaite slapped his hump for a quid.

Trolleyman
Trolleyman walks up and down the street pushing a Liptons trolley with nothing in it. There's a line of spit going from his mouth to the pushing handle. He talks to himself. Fat Gavin's mum says the poor man must be suffering from shell-shock. Once we followed him to find out where he lives, but he just kept going up and down the street. We started chucking rocks at him to make him stop. One even hit him but he carried on. Then Old Dobbo came out.
Old Dobbo: leave the poor man alone.

The Knicker Ripper
The Knicker Ripper ripped Sally Jenkinson's knickers off down by the canal. The cops never found him. Some people think Sally Jenkinson made it up because she's a Jehovah's Witness. Once she got Wayne done at school for lifting her skirt up. Except she wasn't making it up that time, Wayne actually did it. He said he wanted to see what colour knickers Jehovah's Witnesses wore. The answer is white. If there was a reward, we would launch a special investigation into the Knicker Ripper. Our list of suspects is:
1 Limp Man
2 Odd Kirk
3 a gypo

The gypos (who we've already told you about)

Zack
Zack's a sort of loony because he never talks. He just runs round pretending to be a car. Once we were laughing at Zack's pretend car because it wasn't making any noise. Gammy Leg Arthur came past. Gammy Leg Arthur got gangrene and had to have a bit of one of his legs sawn off.
Gammy Leg Arthur: don't you listen to them Zack, they just haven't heard of electric cars yet.
We thought about adding Gammy Leg Arthur to our list of loonies for saying that. There's no such thing as electric cars.
Wayne: what happens if there's a power cut.
Fat Gavin: what happens if you're driving in the fast lane and someone turns the plug off.
Dazzler: or if you drive too far from the plug and the wire snaps.
Once we tried to get Zack to talk by tying him up in the car park woods. We told him we'd let him go if he said please. Then we saw Holly and Chantal walking up the high street, so we ran off to follow them. We completely forgot about Zack. After it got dark, Holly and Zack's mum came round crying because she couldn't find Zack. We said we'd go on a special mission to find him. We ran down to the car park woods and untied him and took him home. We said we'd found him up the lane. Holly and Zack's mum gave us loads of chocolate bars.
Holly and Zack's mum: how can I thank you boys enough.

Review: Open Door

2011-11-10T10:58:00.006Z

Open Door is a small town deep in the Argentinian Pampas named for the sprawling psychiatric hospital to whose fringes it clings. It is in this increasingly blurred no-man's-land between presumed sanity and insanity that Iosi Havilio's intriguing, bewildering novel invites us to wander.
The story's unnamed narrator is a vetinary assistant in Buenos Aires whose friend and lover, we are led to believe (but never entirely convinced) commits suicide by jumping from a bridge.
The narrator, who witnesses the incident but cannot be sure of its veracity, drifts to Open Door, where she has treated a horse which shares its name with its owner, an ageing rancher, and where circumstances will contrive for her to stay.

On the way to the stable, Jaime tells me the horse is called Jaime, like him. He blushes a bit as he says it. He falls silent, regretting having mentioned it. He opens the stable door but doesn't go in, pointing out the horse from a distance, saying that he'll wait for me here. I tell him that he doesn't have to, that he can come with me if he wants. Jaime fixes his eyes on his packet of tobacco and concentrates on rolling a fat cigarette. I don't insist. I'll go an examine him, I say, and Jaime responds with a long drag. He waits at the entrance, one foot inside, one foot out.

In Open Door, the narrator develops an obsession with a local girl: their frequent, seemingly deliberately gratuitous sexual activity, the blurring of boundaries between identities, the constant flitting between past and present tense: all imply a restless, disturbed kind of fantasy.
Havilio's minimalist prose shears events of their purpose or consequence: the narrator spends her days having sex and taking drugs with the girl, who may or may not have reached the age of consent. She is occasionally asked to return to the city morgue to identify bodies fitting her former lover's description. In between, she pores over the history of the hospital, which, inexplicably, she finds in rare French form on top of a bedroom cupboard, and of which Jaime - the man, not the horse - professes ignorance. Open Door is a vast estate whose purpose, we are told, is to advance the treatment of those incarcerated by providing them with the illusion of freedom.
It is that notion of freedom which the novel, with all its strange, disjointed events, forces us to address. As Oscar Guardiola-Rivera poses intriguingly in his afterword: 'What if all the incidents I've touched on are merely the fantasies of a patient interned in Open Door?' Furthermore, 'what if we're all mad, oblivious to the fact that the whole world of capitalism + every man for himself is one big Open Door?'
'Open Door' is a confusing, bewildering, riveting book; a paen, of sorts, to both the pursuit of solitude and the futility of that pursuit. Its scenes and characters will haunt you for days after, but never offer better answers. It is unlikely Havilio's imminent sequel will shed further light. It would be a shame if it did.

Open Door is published by And Other Stories. You can champion it at the Guardian's World Literature Tour blog.

Q&A: Banana Yoshimoto

2011-11-08T11:08:00.004Z

Banana Yoshimoto's latest book, 'The Lake', has been longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize. In longlisting it, the Prize committee said: 'While The Lake shows off many of the features that have made Banana Yoshimoto famous - a cast of vivid and quirky characters, simple yet nuanced prose, a tight plot with an upbeat pace - it's also one of the most darkly mysterious books she's ever written.' It is available in the US here, or electronically here. A full review will follow in due course. For now, here's a Q&A with the author, courtesy the publishers, Melville House:

What inspired you to write The Lake?

The abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea was big news in this country at the time I was writing The Lake. I believe that this incident has cast a shadow over this novel gently but surely. I wanted to write about the small happiness of people who suffer in silence.

Chihiro and Nakajima's relationship has a hypnotic, mysterious rhythm. Can you talk about the nature of this relationship?

I just wanted to create the sense of quiet rippling on the surface of a distant lake throughout the novel. You could say that these two people are connected through the things that they have lost. It is distance that enables them to notice, for the first time, what is between them. That's the kind of relationship they have.

Your prose is very rhythmic; do you ever listen to music while writing?

In fact, I do not listen to music while writing. I feel my own rhythm would go out of tune if I listened to music.

Many people have asked us why you have not done press about your books here [in the US] before. It's odd to have a best-selling US author who has had such little contact with the media.

I didn't mean to hide myself or anything. I must admit that my opportunities to expose myself through the media have been very limited ever since I entered the stage in my life where I have to devote myself to looking after my child and my parents.

You are one of the most (if not the most) popular female novelist in Japan. What, if any, challenges have you faced as a popular female writer in Japan?

Everybody seems to be rather interested in the number of books I sold and how much money I earned, rather than the content of my work. This makes me rather unhappy.

Do you have any advice for young and aspiring writers?

I would say to them, 'just write and write'. Without any fancy theories or logic.

The Lake opens with a vivid dream. Do you yourself have a rich dream life?

Yes, I do. I have many rich dreams. I go to sleep for dreams, they are the seeds of my work. When I do not know what to write, sometimes I find my next story in a dream. I should probably never wake up, that way I would have more stories to write.

When you write, what readers do you have in mind?

I have in mind sensitive, somewhat adolescent people who are stuck between reality and fantasy. Young, rebellious people like to read my books, but I guess what I really like is to encourage young adults who still have playful, adolescent minds.

Review: The Wandering Falcon

2011-11-05T14:34:00.007Z

Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon is set in the heart of the stateless stretch of mountains where the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran meet: an area mythologized by news bulletins as lawless, tribal Taliban hidey-holes, buzzing only with unmanned drones.
Ahmad gives a rare voice to this forbidden region's human collateral as he follows the wanderings of a boy named Tor Baz - the Black Falcon - through its many different, complex cultures and honour-bound societies.
Ahmad writes of a region pre-Taliban, but its roots are plain to see in a land where 'imputation of immorality meant certain death', and whose relentless hardships breed a perverted if somewhat understandable sense of justice:

'Despite their differences, the two tribes [Mahsuds and Wazirs] share more than merely their common heritage of poverty and misery. Nature has bred in both an unusual abundance of anger, enormous resilience, and a total refusal to accept their fate. If nature provides them with food for only ten days in a year, they believe it their right to demand the rest of their sustenance from their fellow men who live oily, fat and comfortable lives in the plains. To both tribes, survival is the ultimate virtue. In neither community is any stigma attached to a hired assassin, a thief, a kidnapper or an informer.'

The region is changing. Governments are beginning to patch up their porous borders, threatening to irrevocably alter the lifestyles of the wandering tribes who have migrated between mountains and plains for centuries. The young are beginning to look less towards their elders and more to the distant cousins who have grown rich selling opium in the city.
Ahmad captures this creeping change through an extraordinarily successful narrative device, in which the wanderings of Tor Baz act as a conduit for the author to shine his light on each new tribe or clan in turn: often, that is where the role of Tor Baz ends, as the story loops away to engage others before we meet him again, often chapters later, elsewhere. This clever conceit enables the author to stay true to the traditional storytelling techniques of the region, at the same time deftly weaving in elements of a more modern, character-driven tale.
Ahmad's book laid unpublished for thirty years before his wife convinced him to seek publication. Now 78, Ahmad, who served in the border regions as a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and later as minister in the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul, has been rewarded with a longlisting for the prestigious MAN Asian Literary Prize.
'The Wandering Falcon' is a deeply affecting book which provides a riveting insight into an area which the West is all too ready to write off as a vast outdoor training school for bandits and bombers. What Ahmad has, in fact, crafted out of this land of endless dust-storms and unforgiving mountain ranges is a beautiful testament to the triumph of the human spirit.

It's not just me who loved 'The Wandering Falcon'. You can read the thoughts of my fellow Shadow MAL Prize jury members at Winstonsdad and ANZLitLovers.

The Dukes Of Fryup VI

2011-11-04T13:29:00.000Z

The latest short excerpt from my novel, The Dukes Of Fryup

The top three girls to snog in our school, in order from best to worst, are:

1 Holly Hewlett
2 Chantal Brown
3 Lucy Williamson.

None of us have snogged any of them. Willo says he snogged Joanne Green at the fair once, but he's lying. Fat Gavin hasn't snogged any of them, because he's a great fat flump. That's what Wayne says. Wayne says Fat Gavin's so fat the only girl who'd ever want to snog him is Sally Morris. Wayne's the only one who can call Fat Gavin a big fat flump because he does karate. Wayne could burst Fat Gavin's belly open with one kick. If he did, so much food would spew out that we'd all drown in it. It'd be like a giant Crackerjack gunge tank. If anyone else calls Fat Gavin a big fat flump, he tries to bellyflop them to death. He almost bellyflopped Gregory Mouncey to death at the swings once. We told Fat Gavin Gregory Mouncey had called him a great fat flump, even though he hadn't. After half an hour Gregory Mouncey's face started going blue and we told Fat Gavin he should probably stop. Big Daddy bellyflopped King Kong Kirk to death. It was on the news.
You'd never snog Sally Morris, not even for a million pounds. You'd get the lurgi and die before you could spend it. It takes five years to count to a million. If you gave May Ventress a million pounds she'd show you her boobs two hundred thousand times. Fat Gavin worked it out on his calculator.
Chantal Brown is a Paki. That's what Dazzler's dad says. A Paki's a kind of nigger. There are loads of niggers in borstal. Niggers are proper brown and come from Africa. We've never seen a nigger except on the telly. May Day is an example of a nigger. She was in View To A Kill. May Day is the hardest woman in the world. She chucked a man out of a helicopter and just laughed. We went to the cinema to see it. There was a bit where you could have seen May Day's boobs, but she was walking the wrong way.
Someone: oi, turn round.
Everyone laughed, and the old fogeys with torches went round shushing everyone.
Someone: stupid nignog.
Everyone laughed again, except maybe Chantal Brown. After the film we went home and Holly's mum was in her garden.
Holly's mum: was it worth watching then, ooh that Roger Moore.
We looked up nignog in Fat Gavin's dictionary. It said nightwear and nigrescent, but it didn't say nignog.

The next day we were having tea at Dazzler's house.
Dazzler: mum, I don't like mushrooms, they're nigrescent.
Fat Gavin snorted a bit of his food out because he was trying not to laugh. It came down his nose like a carrot-coloured bogey. It just made us laugh even more.

It was almost a year since Bobby Allan died. A few weeks after, someone had gone up and pinned some flowers up on the new fence. Then loads of other people went up and did the same thing until it looked like a flower shop. Some of them had cards with them, but you couldn’t read most of the messages because they'd been washed away by the rain. When the flowers died they just hung there brown and wrinkly, and the plastic wrappers flapped in the wind. Then one day they all disappeared. People wrote letters to the Gazette asking where they'd gone. Wayne's brother said the gypos must have come and nicked them, to hide the truth about the curse. In the end the council said they took them because they were causing a safety hazard.
Our mums: it's a flaming disgrace what they've done to that poor lad's tribute.
Our mums: hasn't his mother suffered enough.
Now no-one went up and hung flowers there. Gareth Outhwaite and Keith Ingleton went up once to see if they could find any bits of Bobby Allan's motorbike or blood. They climbed the fence but they couldn't find anything. When Wayne's brother found out he got Gareth Outhwaite and nearly strangled him, then he shoved him in the beck. He told him to let Bobby Allan rest in peace.
Wayne's brother: that goes for the rest of you and all.
Nothing else had changed, unless you included Dolores Craven's boobs growing even bigger. It was like everyone had forgotten about Bobby Allan. Even Frog Eyes had gone back to sitting on the war memorial steps. Sometimes she even sat right at the top, next to Wayne's brother. Wayne's brother probably thought now that Bobby Allan was dead, Frog Eyes would get back with him. Wayne's brother still spat and shouted at everyone, and Kenny The Cormorant was still a dick. Since he got rid of his bike he'd just started going round on the back of Wayne's brother's.
We still had Bobby Allan's bandana. It was hidden in a secret compartment in Fat Gavin's bedroom. It was too risky to hide it at any of our other houses. Once Dazzler's mum found a catalogue open at the bra page tucked down the side of Dazzler's bed.
Dazzler: it must have fell open.
The bit of blood had gone brown. It didn't smell of anything. We hadn't looked at it for ages. We thought about putting it on his grave. Boby Allan's grave was next to Mickey Turnbull, the boy from our school who got killed in a car crash. When Mickey Turnbull died, there was a special assembly to tell us all about it. Everyone was sad for a bit, then they just carried on. They took his name sticker off his drawer and his coat peg, and someone else sat in his seat.
We decided there was no point putting Bobby Allan's bandana on his grave because if we did, the next time his mum came to visit she'd have another epi and chuck it away. Also because it would give us protection when he avenged his death.
It was too hot to avenge Bobby Allan's death at the moment, so we just walked round doing stupid things like daring each other to knock on doors or steal stuff from the Liptons. The summer holidays had only just started but there was nothing much else to do. They said it was going to be one of the hottest summers on record. If Gregory Mouncey was out it was a bit less boring, because we could do stuff to him. You told him things to make him go near the beck, like there was a massive trout in it or a girl sunbathing with her top off.
Gregory Mouncey: no there isn’t.
But we'd keep telling him until in the end he believed us. Sometimes it took all day. Once it even took two days. We told him there were some gold coins under the waterfall. Fat Gavin even got some coins from his coin collection and pretended to get them out of the beck and showed him. Gregory Mouncey made us swear on our lives. We swore on our lives except we crossed our fingers and reflected our watches back so the swear went back on him. Then he came up to look, and we pushed him in the beck.

WIN! The Devil All The Time

2011-11-03T07:56:00.004Z

Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All The Time (pub. Harvill Secker) is out today in the UK. To celebrate, you can win one of three prize copies, courtesy the publisher. Just leave a comment below. Either add a link or check back in a couple of days. Winners will be drawn at random. For a review, an interview and an excerpt, scroll below.

MAN Asian Literary Prize 2011

2011-11-02T14:09:00.008Z

The longlist for this year's MAN Asian Literary Prize looks strong and varied. It includes books from Japan, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Bangladesh. Here are the opening paragraphs to each of the longlistees. Various reviews will follow in due course.

THE WANDERING FALCON by Jamil Ahmad (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
In the tangle of crumbling, weather-beaten and broken hills, where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, is a military outpost manned by about two score soldiers.

THE GOOD MUSLIM by Tahmima Anam (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
Eight days after the end of the war, Sohail Haque stands in a field of dying mustard. The petals of the mustard flower, dried to dust, tickle his nose and remind him of the scent of meat, which he has not tasted in several months.

REBIRTH by Jahnavi Barua (Penguin India)
You certainly took your time to show up. Year after year, we waited, your father and I, nerves jangling… I never gave up on you, I want you to know that.

THE SLY COMPANY OF PEOPLE WHO CARE by Rahul Bhattacharya (Pan Macmillan/Picador)
Life, as we know, is a living, shrinking affair, and somewhere down the line I became taken with the idea that man and his world should be renewed on a daily basis.

THE COLONEL by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (Haus Publishing)
I'd better put my cigarette out first…
This was perhaps the twentieth butt that he had stubbed out since nightfall. He was feeling suffocated and he had smoked so much that he had lost all sense of taste. The cracked pane in front of him had steamed up. It was unusually quiet.

RIVER OF SMOKE by Amitav Ghosh (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
Deeti's shrine was hidden in a cliff, in a far corner of Mauritius, where the island's western and southern shorelines collide to form the wind-whipped dome of the Morne Brabant.

IQ84 by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker)
The taxi's radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janacek's Sinfonietta - probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn't seem to be listening very closely, either.

THE FOLDED EARTH by Anuradha Roy (Quercus/Maclehose Press/Hachette India)
The girl came at the same hour, summer or winter. Every morning, I heard her approach. Plastic slippers, the clink of steel on stone. And then her footsteps, receding. That morning she was earlier.

PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER by Kyung-sook Shin (Knopf/Weidenfeld)
It's been one week since Mom went missing.
The family is gathered at your eldest brother Hyong-chol's house, bouncing ideas off each other. You decide to make flyers and hand them out where Mom was last seen.

THE VALLEY OF MASKS by Tarun Tejpal (HarperCollins India/Fourth Estate)
This is my story. And the story of my people.
It is not a long story. Some men would tell it in the time it takes to drink a glass of bittersweet Ferment. And then there are those who would tell it in such detail that barrels would be drained dry and they would not arrive at its end.

DREAM OF DING VILLAGE by Yan Lianke (Grove Atlantic/Constable)
The dusk settles over a day in late autumn. The sun set above the East Henan plain, a blood-red ball turning the earth and sky a deep shade of crimson. As red unfurls, slowly the dusk turns to evening. Autumn grows deeper; the cold more intense. The village streets are all empty and silent.

THE LAKE by Banana Yoshimoto (Melville House)
The first time Nakajima stayed over, I dreamed of my dead mom.
Maybe it was having him in the room that did it, after having been alone so long.

Excerpt: The Devil All The Time

2011-11-01T08:03:00.005Z

Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All The Time is published in the UK on Thursday. On its release date this blog will have three copies to give away, courtesy of the publishers, Harvill Secker. Scroll down for a full review. Tomorrow, read an interview with the author. In the meantime, here's an exclusive extract.

The couple had been roaming the Midwest for several weeks during the summer of 1965, always on the hunt, two nobodies in a black Ford station wagon purchased for one hundred dollars at a used-car lot in Meade, Ohio, called Brother Whitey's. It was the third vehicle they had gotten off the minister in as many years. The man on the passenger's side was turning to fat and believed in signs and had a habit of picking his decayed teeth with a Buck pocketknife. The woman always drove and wore tight shorts and flimsy blouses that showed off her pale, bony body in a way they both thought enticing. She chain-smoked any kind of menthol cigarettes she could get her hands on while he chewed on cheap black cigars that he called dog dicks. The Ford burned oil and leaked brake fluid and threatened to spill its metal guts all over the highway anytime they pushed it past fifty miles an hour. The man liked to think it looked like a hearse, but the woman preferred limousine. Their names were Carl and Sandy Henderson, but sometimes they had other names, too.
Over the past four years, Carl had come to believe that hitchhikers were the best, and there were plenty of them on the road in those days. He called Sandy the bait, and she called him the shooter, and they both called the hitchhikers the models. That very evening, just north of Hannibal, Missouri, they had tricked and tortured and killed a young enlisted man in a wooded area thick with humidity and mosquitoes. As soon as they picked him up, the boy had kindly offered them sticks of Juicy Fruit, said he'd drive for a while if the lady needed a break. "That'll be the goddamn day," Carl said; and Sandy rolled her eyes at the snide tone her husband sometimes used, as if he thought he was a better class of trash than the stuff they found along the roads. Whenever he got like that, she just wanted to stop the car and tell the poor fool in the backseat to get out while he still had a chance. One of these days, she promised herself that was exactly what she was going to do, hit the brakes and knock Mister Big Shot down a notch or two.
But not tonight. The boy in the backseat was blessed with a face smooth as butter and tiny brown freckles and strawberry-colored hair, and Sandy could never resist the ones who looked like angels. 'What's your name, honey?' she asked him, after they'd gone a mile or two down the highway. She made her voice nice and easy; and when the boy looked up and their eyes met in the rearview mirror, she winked and gave him the smile that Carl had taught her, the one he'd made her practice night after night at the kitchen table until her face was ready to fall off and stick to the floor like a pie crust, a smile that hinted at every dirty possibility a young man could ever imagine.
'Private Gary Matthew Bryson,' the boy said. It sounded odd to her, him saying his full name like that, like he was up for inspection or some such shit, but she ignored it and went right on talking. She hoped he wasn't going to be the serious type. Those kinds always made her part of the job that much harder.
'Now that's a nice name,' Sandy said. In the mirror, she watched as a shy grin spread over his face, saw him stick a fresh piece of gum in his mouth. 'Which of them you go by?' she asked.
'Gary,' he said, flipping the silver gum wrapper out the window. 'That was my daddy's name.'
'That other one, Matthew, that one's from the Bible, ain't it, Carl?' Sandy said.
'Hell, everything's from the Bible,' her husband said, staring out the windshield. 'Ol' Matt, he was one of the apostles.'
'Carl used to teach Sunday school, didn't you, baby?'
With a sigh, Carl twisted his big body around in the seat, more to take another look at the boy than anything else. 'That's right,' he said with a tight-lipped smile. 'I used to teach Sunday school.' Sandy patted his knee, and he turned back around without another word and pulled a road map from the glove box.
'You probably already knew that, though, didn't you, Gary?' Sandy said. 'That your middle name is right out of the Good Book?'
The boy quit chomping his gum for a moment. 'We never went to church much when I was a kid,' he said.
A worried look swept across Sandy's face, and she reached for her cigarettes on the dash. 'But you been baptized, right?' she asked.
'Well, sure, we ain't complete heathens,' the boy said. 'I just don't know any of that Bible stuff.'
'That's good,' Sandy said, a hint of relief in her voice. 'No sense takin' chances, not with something like that. Lord, who knows where a person might end up if he wasn't saved?'
The soldier was going home to see his mother before the army shipped him off to Germany or that new place called Vietnam, Carl couldn't recall which now. He didn't give a damn if he was named after some crazy sonofabitch in the New Testament, or that his girlfriend had made him promise to wear her class ring around his neck until he returned from overseas. Knowing stuff like that only complicated things later on; and so Carl found it easier to ignore the small talk, let Sandy handle all the dumb questions, the pitter-patter bullshit. She was good at it, flirting and flapping her jaws, putting them at ease. They had both come a long way since they'd first met, her, a lonely scrawny stick of a girl waiting tables at the Wooden Spoon in Meade, eighteen years old and taking shit off customers in hopes of a quarter tip. And him? Not much better, a flabby-faced mama's boy who had just lost his mother, with no future or friends except for what a camera might bring. He'd had no idea, as he walked into the Wooden Spoon that first night away from home, of what that meant or what to do next. The only thing he had known for sure, as he sat in the booth watching the skinny waitress finish wiping the tables off before turning out the lights, was that he needed, more than anything else in the world, to take her picture. They had been together ever since.
Of course, there were also things that Carl needed to say to the hitchhikers, but that could usually wait until after they had parked the car. 'Take a look at this,' he'd begin, when he pulled the camera out of the glove box, a Leica M3 35mm, and held it up for the man to see. 'Cost four hundred new, but I got it for damn near nothing.' And though the sexy smile never left Sandy's lips, she couldn't help but feel a little bitter every time he bragged about it. She didn't know why she had followed Carl into this life, wouldn't even try to put such a thing into mere words, but she did know that that damn camera had never been a bargain, that it was going to cost them plenty in the end. Then she'd hear him ask the next model, in a voice that sounded almost like he was joking, 'So, how would you like to have your picture took with a good-looking woman?' Even after all this time, it still amazed her that grown-up men could be so easy.

The Devil All The Time

2011-10-31T07:56:00.006Z

Donald Ray Pollock's first novel, The Devil All The Time, is out in the UK this Thursday (pub. Harvill Secker). To celebrate, and in honour of the fictional setting for both Pollock's novel and his astonishing debut short story collection of the same name, it's Knockemstiff Week all week on this blog. On Tuesday, there will be an extended excerpt, courtesy the publishers. On Wednesday, an interview with the author. And on Thursday, exclusive to this blog, there will be three copies available to win, again courtesy the publisher. On Friday.. well, I haven't thought about Friday yet.
There's surely no better time to kick off 'Knockemstiff Week' than Hallowe'en. It's darker, dirtier and scarier than anything that's going to come round your house swinging pumpkins. Quote them an excerpt, and it will likely be enough to make the Trick-or-Treaters scatter. Its first fifty pages come complete with two human sacrifices, a beating so savage its victim "sits around with a coffee can hanging from his neck to catch his slobbers", and crucifixes dripping with roadkill maggots. And that's before the serial killers get started. Details magazine listed the book's Five Most Disturbing Passages. That old warning to readers of a sensitive disposition may hold true more than ever. But Pollock paints so rich a picture of this rural Armageddon that the shocks never seem gratuitous. Indeed, focusing only on the depth of the dirt does this book a disservice. Instead, Pollock's sharp, kinetic prose will likely leave you cheering his crazy cast of characters on.
If you liked his short stories, you'll love The Devil All The Time. In many respects - all good - it's Knockemstiff: The Novel. Part of the story is set back in the dark Ohio holler where nothing much has changed: "Four hundred or so people lived in Knockemstiff in 1957, nearly all of them connected by blood through one godforsaken calamity or another, be it lust or necessity or just plain ignorance."
Pollock's pitch-dark short stories shook up the literary world, and reviews of The Devil All The Time in the US, where it was published earlier this year, suggest it will do the same. Publisher's Weekly said: 'If Pollock's powerful collection 'Knockemstiff' was a punch to the jaw, his follow-up... feels closer to a mule's kick.'
Spanning a couple of decades from the end of the Second World War, its bunch of plot strands include a serial killer couple, Carl and Sandy Henderson, who trawl the South in a beat-up old wagon - "the man liked to think it looked like a hearse, but the woman preferred limousine" - seeking out horny young hitch-hikers to fuck (there really is no point in putting it any nicer), kill and photo. There's a pair of fire-and-brimstone preachers, one of whom lost his legs glugging back poison to prove his faith in the Lord. There's a corrupt County Sheriff, no end of knocked-up ex-virgins, and there's Willard Russell, pouring sacrificial blood on his 'prayer log' in a vain attempt to stop his wife Charlotte's slow death by cancer. At the centre of it all, there's the Russells' son Arvin, trying to make sense of the crazy, bleak world he's being raised in.
The real genius of Pollock's book is that through the maggots-and-all of his characters' daily existence, the grime never feels forced. It's a necessary, vivid part of each plot strand (they come together in one of the finest last lines you'll read). Nor is Pollock tempted to patronize such down-at-heel folk. He grew up in the real-life Knockemstiff and slogged in a paper mill for thirty years. There's no doubt he knows what makes them tick. Hank Bell, marooned in Maude's store since the 'Knockemstiff' days, listens to kids whooping at cars on the concrete bridge and still dreams of getting out as far as Cincinnati.
"A few of them hung there almost every night, regardless of the weather. Poor as snakes, every one of them. All they desired out of life was a car that would run and a hot piece of ass. He thought that sounded nice in a way, just going through your entire life with no more expectations than that. Sometimes he wished he weren't so ambitious."
In a recent interview, Pollock described his book's genre as "gothic hillbilly noir". He may have been half-joking, but you couldn't put it better. He's the best example of a rich literary seam doing what Hank Bell never will, and spreading out of Appalachia. The more that follow, the better. The Devil All The Time confirms Pollock as one of the brightest new leaders in American, and indeed global, fiction. It is frankly, unquestionably, my book of the year so far.

The Dukes Of Fryup V

2011-10-30T10:28:00.003Z

another brief extract from my novel, The Dukes Of Fryup

The whole village went to Bobby Allan's funeral, except the gypos and loonies, and some old fogeys who couldn't walk, and Scotch Gordon because he had to open his fish and chip shop.
Dazzler's mum: I can't believe the nerve of that man, thinking about cold hard cash on a day like this.
Scotch Gordon: someone's got tae feed the mourners.
It looked like it might rain. The sky was grey, like a giant school jumper had wrapped tight round. Everyone was wearing black. There was no colour except Scotch Gordon's fizzy orange fish and chip shop sign. The church was packed and loads of people had to stand outside. We stood in the graveyard so we could get a good look. The hearse crept up and the men who were waiting opened the boot and got Bobby Allan's coffin out. They walked up the path to the church like they were in some kind of slow-mo replay. Dazzler whispered he wished he could press a fast forward button, but they'd likely drop the coffin that way. Bobby Allan's mum and dad were scuffing up behind them. His mum was clutching into his dad and crying. Her sobs stuck on the air. They were all you could hear save the clomping of feet. She was holding Bobby Allan's leather jacket. Its tassels were hanging down over her arm. The chip shop smell was making us starving. While the funeral was on everyone just stood round in small circles and smoked fags. They peered at the sky like they were looking for answers. The music was muffling out but not what the vicar said. We bezzed down to Scotch Gordon's to see if we could get free chips because we were mourners. We made our faces all sad before we went in.
Scotch Gordon: get tae fuck.
They brought Bobby Allan's coffin out and tugged it over the grass to the grave. They dipped the coffin in and Bobby Allan's mum chucked a bit of mud on. Everyone was bawling out. Just when Bobby Allan's mum stood back, Wayne's brother pushed through and dropped Bobby Allan's Outlaws bandana on top. It sat there like a scrap of sunshine. Bobby Allan's mum collapsed on her knees.
Derek Green: bugger off out of it.
Everyone went to help Bobby Allan's mum. While they were fretting, Derek Green reached down and got Bobby Allan's Outlaws bandana and tossed it away. It flitted down right at our feet. We just stared at it for ages then looked round and saw no-one was looking. Wayne bent down and got it and stuffed it in his pocket. Our hearts were banging like our bodies had drums inside. We backed off and tried to look like we weren't rushing. Wayne's brother and Kenny The Cormorant were sat at the church gate smoking fags. They stared at us so hard it was like they had x-ray eyes. We didn't stop or talk till we got to the car park woods. We went in the trees and Wayne unfurled it. There was a spot of what might have been Bobby Allan's blood. Bobby Allan was the best scramble biker we'd ever seen. He could ride on the ridge with no hands and blindfolded and not fall off.
Dazzler: do you really think Bobby Allan rode his bike of the cliff like they said.
Fat Gavin: how was your brother miles ahead when it happened.
Wayne: maybe he did a false start.
Dazzler: maybe they were doing two laps and Bobby Allan was behind because he was about to lap him.
Me: maybe Kenny The Cormorant was hiding in the bushes and jumped out and pushed him off.

In the next few days after the funeral Wayne's brother starting spouting off about what happened. Everyone crowded round listening and he never told us to fuck off, even when we stood on the steps. Kenny The Cormorant sat next to him but never said anything. Dolores Craven sat there puffing a fag. Only Frog Eyes wasn't there. Gareth Outhwaite and Samantha Harper were even laughing. Samantha Harper was small and fat and we didn't even know why she was allowed on the steps, unless she fucked like a rabbit.
That's when Wayne's brother started talking about the gypo curse. He said the night before Bobby Allan got killed, the Outlaws had gone up past the quarry to the big lake and had an argument with some gypos. They started to ride off, then Bobby Allan made them stop and went back and chucked a rock at their caravans. The rock smashed out one of the windows and a baby started crying. One of the gypos ran out and shouted something after them. They couldn't understand what it was, but it sounded like some kind of ancient language, which is what gypos always use for curses. Wayne's brother said it was definitely a curse that killed Bobby Allan, because he rode straight off the edge like he was in some kind of trance, and he didn't even scream when he was falling, or when he landed like a stamped-on slug. He said after he and Kenny had raced off for an ambulance, they got back and Bobby Allan had moved so his legs were straight and his arms were folded neatly over his chest, which is the way folk are always laid out when they're cursed.
Everyone just hung round listening and nearly forgetting to breathe.

Later we got Bobby Allan's bandana out again. We had a vote on the truth of how Bobby Allan might have died. There were two votes for Wayne's brother or Kenny The Cormorant having something to do with it, and two votes for a gypo curse. We all took it in turns touching the bit of blood on Bobby Allan's bandana. If you touch the blood of someone who's been killed by a gypo curse, the only way to stop it cursing you as well is to find out the truth and avenge his death. That way you'll never get cursed again and you'll get a good fortune and a long life. We put our hands on top of each others and draped Bobby Allan's bandana over the top. We swore on our lives and crossed our hearts and hoped to die in the name of the Dukes of Fryup.

Review: The Life & Death Of St Kilda

2011-10-28T11:02:00.006+01:00

Most of us have harboured romantic notions of being cast away on a remote island. Somewhere in the Pacific would be nice. Somewhere with fish and fruit and friendly, scantily-clad natives. Somewhere to forget the pressures of the modern world.
It's unlikely St Kilda embodies many Utopian idylls - not unless your idea of paradise is a speck of rock in the north Atlantic whose gales are so strong they blow sheep off the top of the precipitous cliffs, and where puffin porridge is the only thing ever on the breakfast menu.
St Kilda is a tiny archipelago plonked almost one hundred miles off the west coast of Scotland. It was inhabited for at least two millennia, but the remaining population was finally evacuated in 1930 when ekeing out an existence finally proved too tough.
Tom Steel's chronicle of the island, 'The Life & Death Of St Kilda' (pub. Harper Press), first published in 1975 when a number of the evacuees were still alive, and republished this year to mark St Kilda's appointment as the UK's only dual UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a compulsive, painstakingly researched read.
Steel reveals the islanders' constant battle with nature, navigating huge seas to reach the dangerous cliffs where they would catch and kill the fulmars and other seabirds which sustained the community through the winter when the severe weather would usually cut the island off from any outside contact for months:

'Mary Cameron, daughter of one of the island's last missionaries, remembers a storm that literally deafened the people of the village: 'One particularly severe storm,' she writes, left us deaf for a week - incredible but true. The noise of the wind, the pounding of the heavy sea were indescribable. This storm was accompanied by thunder and lightning, but we could not hear the thunder for other sounds.''

Strangely, the islanders didn't care much for fish, instead subsisting on the meat of the 12,000 fulmars caught each year, their feathers packed off to the mainland for pillows and their ruby-red oil for use in lamps. Other seabirds - in particular puffins and guga, or baby gannets, were also eaten:

'breakfast usually consisted of porridge and milk, with a puffin boiled in with the oats to give flavour.'

Steel places the blame for the community's gradual decline squarely at the feet of meddling mainlanders who, he says, 'seduced [the St Kildans] into thinking that perhaps their way of doing things was no longer the best.'
Religion, war, and the disruption through tourism of a society which had survived centuries on purely socialist principles all contributed to St Kilda's demise. But you can't help feeling Steel is being rather simplistic in his implied belief that without those outside elements, there might have been a community struggling on on the islands even now.
Steel's almost obsessional interest sometimes clogs down the narrative, but his book is nevertheless a fascinating historical document, which challenges our comfy stereotypes of isolated island life.

Erich

2011-10-26T15:35:00.001+01:00

from 'Luminous Dictators'. More here

One Inch Wonders #33: Lean On Pete

2011-10-25T16:54:00.005+01:00

from Lean On Pete by Willy Vlautin, pub. Faber

I blew the ten he gave me at the movie theater. I watched a comedy about a newcaster, and I bought a hot dog and a Coke and a candy bar. When it was over I snuck into another movie about a ship's captain who sails around getting into fights and a kid gets his arm blown off.

Review: Turner Prize 2011

2011-10-23T12:24:00.006+01:00

A sense of apocalypse blows through this year's Turner Prize exhibition at Gateshead's Baltic Mill, scattering Martin Boyce's paraffin-paper leaves and rattling the boarded-up shop-fronts of George Shaw's eerily deserted Coventry council estate.
But the show put on by the four finalists is anything but depressing. Critics are calling it the best in years, and it's all the better for being transferred from its usual home at the Tate Modern to an old flour mill on the bank of the Tyne.
Shaw paints the places of his youth in thick Humbrol enamel, stripping the long-abandoned buildings and rusting railings of all architectural meaning, yet at the same time enabling them to ooze with adolescent possibility.
Shaw's paintings, existing in a kind of timeless twilight under leaden grey skies, muse on themes of memory and ageing. Shaw says: "in many ways, the paintings are painting my journey out of this world."
Boyce's is a low-lit and deeply affecting space, speckled under a canopy of concrete trees and centred around a modernist table of old metal and wood incised with words and phrases which hint at some long-gone human inter-action.
It's beautifully presented, and best described by the critic Charles Darwent in the Independent On Sunday, who said: "the look is theatrical, like the set for a brutalist production of The Cherry Orchard."
Karla Black's work is apocalyse in pastel: her strewn, spattered scruffs of paper and plaster at first resembling a giant, bashed-up Lush shop or a Lilliputian expedition into a hastily abandoned children's nursery.
It's only when you head into the centre of Black's work that it becomes truly affecting, fulfilling Black's intention of making the viewer feel somehow psychologically vulnerable, but in a strange, touching way that makes it hard not to smile.
Hilary Lloyd's video installations are the most perplexing, designed so that the projectors and their attached electrical equipment are afforded equal importance as the screens' flickering, looping films.
Lloyd's work is given an extra dimension by its placing against a large window opening out onto the river Tyne and grey, brutalist Gateshead beyond. It's tough to categorize, but her work, in particular Moons, which flits over a soundtrack of city hum deliberately lowered as if to ease sub-consciously into its new environment, is certainly not without merit.
Overall, it's a great exhibition, already predictably derided by the Mirror as "a dog poo bin and some crumpled paper" for readers who are presumably terrified by the idea of having to plunge deep into their own emotions and challenge existing preconceptions about art and life.
For those of us willing to to face such a challenge, this year's Turner Prize does an admirable job of providing answers.
Two more things: visitors should also catch an extraordinary, top-floor installation by Mike Kelley and Michael Smith - A Voyage of Growth and Discovery - about the man-child Baby IKKI's journey to the notorious Burning Man festival in the Nevada Desert.
Also, just five minutes' walk from the Baltic, on the site of the former Gateshead post office, the excellent Workplace Gallery is currently showing its exhibition, 'Double, Double', and is well worth a visit. More details here. Oh, and bang the front door hard.

Review: The Collaborator

2011-10-21T12:15:00.005+01:00

Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator (pub. Penguin/Viking) shines a light on the often forgotten Kashmiri conflict through the eyes of a teenage boy who grows up in the remote village of Nowgam on the disputed Line of Control.
Waheed tells a harrowing story of long-standing, senseless violence in a beautiful land of precipitous valleys and high peaks, 'some shining, some white, some brown, like layers of piled up fabrics'.
Born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir, the author handles such a sensitive subject well, framing the crushing brutality within a very human tale of betrayal as the narrator's three close friends disappear over the border to join the militant struggle:

Two years ago, Hussain was the first to disappear from the village. The musically possessed, the gentlest and the noblest of the group, was the first to fall.
We had met as usual in the street on a Sunday evening, and had bantered away into the night. But the next evening, he was gone. Vanished. That evening he had looked calm, relaxed, as usual, moving from one foot to the other as he always did, while he listened to Gul Khan's retelling of his latest infatuation. Gul had taken a liking to Nuzhat, Commander Chechi's dimwit daughter, or more accurately, her swelling chest, and was trying hard to make his anecdote funny to give us the impression that he wasn't too serious about the girl. Like the rest of us that sweet October evening, Hussain listened, and laughed, but the next evening he was gone.

Stranded in his village, the narrator is forced to collaborate with the Indian forces and is given the thankless job of heading into the valley to count the corpses and loot their personal effects, fearing each day that he will discover the bodies of his friends among them.
'The Collaborator', longlisted for the Guardian First Book award, is a brave first novel. If it occasionally falters - the boy's tormentor, Captain Kadian, is a drunk, bloodthirsty tyrant whose total lack of redeeming features makes his frequent, profanity-spilled rants a struggle - Waheed's plot remains admirably free from cliché.
Since Aravind Adiga won the Booker Prize for 'White Tiger', it has become almost fashionable to embrace bright new fiction from the sub-continent. Yet many have failed: strip away their vividity, and they have precious little left to say. The same accusation cannot be levelled at Waheed. 'The Collaborator' is as important as it is engrossing, and its author most certainly one to watch.

One Inch Wonders #32: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

2011-10-20T10:15:00.004+01:00

from 'Retreat' in the collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, pub. Granta

Sometimes, sometimes, after six or so large drinks, it seems like a sane idea to call my little brother on the phone. It takes a lot of solvent to bleach out such dark memories as my ninth birthday party, when Stephen, age six, ran up behind me at the goldfish pond at Umstead Park and shoved me face-first into the murk.

Man Booker Prize 2011

2011-10-17T10:12:00.006+01:00

(click links for longer reviews)

Unless you've been stranded in a Siberian dacha or cast adrift on the Victorian high seas, you won't have missed the criticism of this year's Booker Prize shortlist.
In some ways, it's understandable. It doesn't help when judges leak strange requirements like 'readability', nor when an eminently worthy quest to find the best book of the year is constrained by a bizarre publisher submission process.
That said, the way the so-called literary establishment has turned its venom on teh six books on the shortlist has bordered on the hysterical. Champions of heavyweights like Alan Hollingshurst and Salman Rushdie have screamed loudest. The Booker, by their omissions from the shortlist, is accused of 'dumbing down'.
All of which is frankly bollocks. Any prize which changes its judging panel every year is bound to have good years and bad - or rather, years in which the majority of the shortlist appeals to a different demographic. It hardly justifies taking your ball home and re-shaping it into an unnecessary new Literature Prize.
What the heavy lit-crit lot seem to have a problem with is the sheer audacity of this year's list. Debut authors and independent publishers abound. For the back-slapped and arse-licked literati, this adds up to something seriously amiss.
The misplaced, scattergun criticism is best exemplified by the disdain heaped upon AD Miller's paean to modern Moscow, Snowdrops. It is alarming that some of those who are purported to possess such great lit-crit minds can write it off as some kind of one-dimensional pulp thriller, when anyone can see it's more multi-layered than a babushka's under-skirts: a brilliant evocation of Russia's out-of-control capital city, as well as a sexy, gripping and entirely believable exploration of the nature of obsession.
I think Snowdrops deserves to win. Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers is another strong contender: a black, Coen Brothers-esque tale of two bloodthirsty brothers which turns the traditional Western inside-out.
Esi Eduygan's Half Blood Blues is a worthy, surprising story of a black jazz band's experiences in wartime Berlin and Paris; Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie is s rollicking high seas adventure which also superbly captures the essence of Victorian London; Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English is perhaps the weakest of the lot, but there is still much to the said for his young narrator's endearingly innocent description of gangland London in a story framed by the death of Damilola Taylor.
And then there's Julian Barnes' The Sense Of An Ending - a smart, slim, thoughtful musing on memory and how it alters with age, selectively being massaged to reinvent the past.
For now, it's the critics of the Booker Prize who seem to have short memories. Too many years the Prize has been weighed down by dirges that tick all the boxes for technique but sadly lack on plot. This year's shortlist is fun, bright and, well, readable. Above all, it's a one-off: depending on your point of view, a glitch in the system or a welcome break. Either way, we should all just get over it.

The Dukes Of Fryup IV

2011-10-16T22:18:00.003+01:00

Here's a (very) brief extract from my novel, The Dukes Of Fryup:

Jeremy Scott was born again. Being born again is when you suddenly start believing in God. It's the worst thing that could happen to you in the whole world, apart from getting cancer or going to borstal. Some of the things you have to stop doing if you get born again are smoking fags and looking at pornos and chucking Gregory Mouncey in the beck. You're not allowed to gel your hair or go out on your bikes on Sundays. You have to go to church and help out at Blue Peter Bring-And-Buy sales. You have to be nice to people even if you hate them. You have to un-crush your testicles.
You can't help being born again. It just happens, like you're walking along and a flash of lightning suddenly hits you. Lightning is God's finger. If he burns you you go to hell. If he doesn't burn you you're born again. It happened to Alex, one of the leaders at Adventurers. Adventurers is like a youth club, except it's all about God.
Alex: I used to be a bad lad until I let the Lord in.
Dazzler: how did you let the Lord in?
Alex: He allowed me to see the error of my ways.
Wayne: what if the Lord got in and you didn't want him in, like the hippies at Stonehenge?
Alex: it doesn't work like that.
Just in case God was listening and thought we were asking him because we wanted to get born again, we told Alex to fuck off and ran out.
We made a secret pact that if any of us got born again, the rest of us would kidnap them and make them smoke fags and read pornos and chuck Gregory Mouncey in the beck until God got so mad he came back and un-borned them. We weren't sure that was exactly how it worked, but we didn't want to risk it.

Review: Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert

2011-10-13T22:04:00.008+01:00

Maybe Michael Krondl's paean to the world's best desserts ought to carry a health warning. It's impossible to push through his 'Sweet Invention - A History of Dessert' without experiencing a serious sugar rush.
Then again, in this calorie-counting, desperately dieting generation, what's so wrong with that? Using the example of two 'perfectly coiffed and fashionably trim' ladies tasting desserts in a Belgian pastry shop, Krondl opines:

Too often, our puritanical culture dismisses pleasure as, at best, a means to an end and, at worst, a sign of moral turpitude, an indicator of weakness. We are repeatedly told that immortality - or at least a long life - comes from self-denial. And yet, is a life of abstemiousness worth living? Is pleasure so inessential? I looked at the women's lips, still pursed in rapt attention even as they finished the final bite, and had my answer.

Krondl's history is sliced into six portions, loosely frameworked around the spread of sugar's influence from its original refinement in India, across the Middle East and Europe and ultimately to the United States, where the anti-calorie backlash is most obviously embraced.
Krondl examines the - literally - God-like influence of Indian ghee and the complexity of Turkish baklava, where he is told: 'the learning process is like a university, it takes years to learn.' Blending contemporary travelogue with historical research, Krondl keeps his narrative, unlike so much of his subject, impressively slimline.
In western Europe, Krondl comes across the sanguinaccio, an Italian chocolate dish thickened with blood, as well as Viennese tortes and teetering Parisian pastries. He winds up in the States - 'the sweetest place on earth' - where cup-cakes come mega-produced and dessert is less a patient, ancient art and more a divine right to be devoured as big and fast and sweet as possible.
'Sweet Invention' underlines Krondl's status as a food historian of considerable repute. His book is as close as it gets to a definitive history of dessert. Only, be warned: it won't work wonders for weight loss any time soon.

Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert, by Michael Krondl, is published in various formats by Chicago Review Press.

One Inch Wonders #31: Boxer Beetle

2011-10-11T13:39:00.002+01:00

from Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman, pub. Sceptre

I'm not a secret Nazi. I feel sick when I think about what they did. So do you, probably. And if just the thought can provoke a spurious little shiver of survivor's guilt, imagine what it's like to pick up an SS dagger in your hand. I don't know of any experience like it: you feel like you're doing something terribly wrong, and yet you know if can't be wrong because you're doing no harm to anyone.

Interview: Tommy Zurhellen

2011-10-10T16:44:00.006+01:00

Tommy Zurhellen's 'Nazareth, North Dakota' is a spectacular re-telling of the New Testament set in the 1980s Badlands. It's a landscape of love motels and dirt bike daredevils. It's published by Atticus Books, and you can read an excerpt here, and a full review here. Below, the author tells all about religion, truck-stops and wave machines.

Do water-beds with built-in wave machines really exist [Early in Naz, Roxy and Dill escape to a Motel de Love where they hole up in the Here To Eternity suite, complete with a water-bed with a wave motion button]?

If they don't, they should. Luckily I write fiction, so I don't have to worry; if something sounds believable to a reader, then it is, and it becomes an authentic part of the illusion. There's no such town as Nazareth, ND on any map, but in my world there is. In the waterbed scene, I wanted the room that Roxy and Dill chose at the Motel de Love to be completely over the top, almost a cartoon, so when it came to the bed, you know I had to go big. Personally, I've only slept on a waterbed once, back in college, and there was no wave motion, except when my girlfriend out of the bed.

Did you set out to write a contemporary novel frameworked by the New Testament; to what extent did it help or hinder your plot development?

Good question. I did a lot of research on the New Testament accounts, and what I liked most was all the things left out -- whole chunks of time left up to the imagination. One thing I didn't want to do with this project was simply 'fill in' those blanks - I wanted to celebrate those omissions. That's why the book is so fragmented, I guess. Knowing the framework helped me because I knew where I had to end up. The fun of writing this book was choosing the path to get there.

Why choose North Dakota, in particular, for the Second Coming?

The book is really about loneliness and family, and there's no better place to talk about those things than the prairie of western North Dakota. Plus, if your hero has to go out into the desert to be challenged by Satan for 40 days and nights, well, you need a desert. If you haven't been to the Badlands of North Dakota, you're missing one of the most beautiful deserts in the world. Another reason I chose North Dakota for this book was the idea of Nazareth itself, two thousand years ago: in the New Testament, when folks find out this Messiah is from Nazareth they scoff, because it's just some rural backwater. I wanted to simulate that in our modern world.

To what extent are your characters based on real people?

Some characters in Nazareth, North Dakota are based on historic characters from the Bible stories: the wicked Sheriff of Galilee County, Severo Rodriguez, for example, is my best guess for King Herod. And Daylene Hooker, the new girl in town, is the modern version of Mary Magdalene. It was a lot of fun to create characters based on any details I could glean. And then there are characters in Naz who aren't based on history. There's Daredevil Lonnie, for instance. He's not from the Bible, but every good story needs some guy named Daredevil Lonnie, so he made the cut.

What's more daunting: Nineveh, or Saturday night at a Flying J truck-stop?

Depends on what you're looking for. If you want old fashioned sin and deprivation, go to Nineveh. But if you want a patty melt and a brawl with a guy named Noogie, stick with the Flying J. Truck stops in America are a world all their own, and you can get almost anything there, for a price. If you are down to your last twenty bucks, I'd definitely choose the J.

Do you see your book as in any way making a comment on the extraordinary influence of religion in the US today?

To be honest, it didn't start out that way. But if you're going to set your Messiah story in contemporary America, you can't help but think about the influence of religion in everyday life here. It's a source of a lot of hypocrisy, especially when election time comes around. But I didn't want to make fun of the Messiah story, I wanted to tell it straight. Hopefully I did that.

What kind of reaction has your book received from religious folk?

I do know a few people who kindly refuse to read it, solely on the basis that it's about Jesus. I think they automatically think I'm trying to tear down the Bible story, but that's not the case at all. You have to tread lightly though. I'm not out to offend anyone, I just want to tell a good story.

Tell me as much as you can about the sequel?

Zombies and werewolves galore! No, I'm kidding. The sequel is called Apostle Islands, and it comes out in August 2012 from Atticus Books. I'm working on it right now! Nazareth, North Dakota ends with the Messiah walking out into the desert for his 40 days and nights; Apostle Islands picks up where Naz leaves off. It's a challenge, because he comes out of the desert and does things that are hard to describe, like miracles. There will be twists and surprises just like the first book. I don't want to give it away, but everyone knows someone betrays the Messiah... but did they blame the right guy? So, if you enjoyed the multiple voices and collage-type narrative of Nazareth, North Dakota, you'll definitely enjoy the sequel.

One Inch Wonders #30: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

2011-10-09T12:40:00.006+01:00

from Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle, pub. Vintage.

None of us had Adidas football boots. We were all getting them for Christmas. I wanted the ones with the screw-on studs. I put that in my letter to Santy but I didn't believe in him. I only wrote to him because my ma told me to, because Sinbad was writing to him. Sinbad wanted a sleigh.

Review: Atlas Of Remote Islands

2011-10-07T10:23:00.004+01:00

When I was young I had a small globe I used to spin and dream of trips to far-flung lands. The place I dreamed of most was Chad: with its geographical position slap-bang in the heart of Africa and its pleasant light green hue, it promised both political power and fertile soil: out there, somewhere, a real-life land of plenty.
I'm still obsessed with going to Chad. Even a touch-down at N'Djamena airport would be enough (and probably wisest). I've read all about its despotic rulers and shrinking lake. I know it never enters World Cups. I know it's got a bit of a problem with the Sudanese. I know the nearest Chadian Embassy to the UK is in Belgium, and I know you can fly direct with Air France from Paris. I dream of exiting customs, planting my feet firmly on the edge of a hot, deserted, dusty highway and thinking: what on earth now?
Judith Schalansky's contention is that I should let it stay that way: a dream. In the introduction to her Atlas Of Remote Islands - sub-headed 'fifty islands I have not visited and never will' - Schalansky writes: 'Anyone who opens an Atlas wants everything at ones, without limits - the whole world. This longing will always be great, far greater than any satisfaction to be had by attaining what is desired.'
The conceit for Schalansky's book, published originally in German and translated into English for Penguin, is both blatant and brilliant: a travel book about places that will always be off-limits. Of the fifty islands featured, many are uninhabited, others home to a remaining handful of hardy souls: all, though so small, possess mountainous histories.
Schalansky's venture is lent added poignancy by her childhood growing up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. Poring over atlases was her one means of escape: 'I had already grown used to travelling through the atlas by finger, whispering foreign names to myself as I conquered distant worlds in my parents' sitting room.' Thanks to Robinson Crusoe and Fletcher Christian, desert islands have always been served up as stereotypical Utopian paradises, where food and fresh water and happy, scantily-clad natives abound. The narrative snapshots presented by Schalansky alongside the beautifully detailed maps of each island are designed, it seems, to shatter that myth.
There are stories of shipwrecks and castaways, right enough, but most fall short of Tom Hanks-Hollywood endings. The Disappointment Islands in French Polynesia are so named because a boat of starving sailors led by Ferdinand Magellan, jubilant at making land after fifty days drifting at sea, eating soaked leather mast-straps to survive, discover precious little to satisfy their hunger or thirst. When a French slave ship runs aground on the Indian Ocean island of Tromelin, less than one kilometre square, in 1760, the slaves are the only ones to survive, left to consider their fate: 'they are free, but trapped as never before, slaves now to their desire to survive.' Fifteen years later, the remaining seven women and a baby are rescued by a passing ship.
But while the tales of tragedy and hardship in 'Atlas Of Remote Islands' bring home the fragility of human existence, they do not quench the thirst for adventure, nor do they shatter the inherent romanticism of the distant voyage. On the contrary, they impel you, from the safety of your armchair, to set out from the harbour and see what you can find. One day, some day, if I do indeed find myself stood on that dusty highway in powerful, fertile, thoroughly landlocked Chad, I'll have Judith Schalansky to thank for it.

Review: Down The Rabbit Hole

2011-10-06T09:53:00.006+01:00

Today there was an enigmatic corpse on the TV: they cut off his head and he wasn't even a king. It didn't look like it was the work of the French either, who like cutting off heads so much. The French put their heads in a basket after cutting them off. They put a basket just under the king's head in the guillotine. Then the French let the blade fall and the king's head falls off and lands in the basket. That's why I like the French so much, they're so refined. As well as taking off the king's crown so it doesn't get dented, they take care that his head doesn't roll away from them. Then the French give his head to some lady to make her cry. A queen or a princess or something like that. Pathetic.

Tochtli is seven years old. He lives with his father, Yolcaut, otherwise known as 'The King', in a heavily guarded compound somewhere in Mexico. Yocault is a drugs baron. Their only visitors are hit men, prostitutes and the occasional corrupt polician. Tochtli loves samurai, hats and dictionaries, and dreams of adding a rare Liberian pygmy hippopotamus to his private zoo. There's a good chance he'll get it, but at what price? The drug war is escalating, body parts are popping up on TV and the net is closing in on the increasingly paranoid Yolcaut. As the tension rises, it threatens to destroy Tochtli's relationship with the one man he thought he could trust. The first novel by Mexican writer Juan Pablo Villalobos illustrates the absolute futility of materialism, and how a constant diet of guns and violence can corrupt young minds. It's wild, chilling, touching and hilarious. At seventy pages it's a slither of a novel, but Villalobos' rich prose makes every word count double. It was selected for the shortlist of the 2011 Guardian First Book Award by readers' nominations, and was published by the visionary, subscription-funded And Other Stories.

Review: Nazareth, North Dakota

2011-10-03T10:33:00.011+01:00

Nazareth, North Dakota is a fictional place, as far as I can make out, unless it's so small it's dropped off the Google map entirely. But it wouldn't be in the least bit surprising if it did exist: the US is studded with Bible-named towns - Bethlehem, Tenn; Galilee, Miss; and real-life Nazareths from Kentucky to Texas: each one a testament (pardon the pun) to the historic significance of religion in American life.
Tommy Zurhellen's Nazareth, North Dakota, is a place quite unlike anywhere else, real or not. Hunkered in a dust-bowl on the brink of the Badlands, it's a place of frayed family values and corrupt local politics; fugitive moms, daredevil stunt-bikers and a couple of wayward cousins, either one of whom may or may not be the Son of God.
Zurhellen's extraordinary, sprawling novel has been described as an allegory of the New Testament; the whole thing ripped up and re-deposited in America's third least populous state over three decades starting in the 1980s. But that hardly does it justice: his book is far too inventive to be any more than loosely frameworked by scripture; and it's by no means any kind of attempt to spread the word: the two most overtly religious characters are both wandering preachers, one of whom quit his family to leave Gideon bibles in love motels.
Nor is Jan, one of the potential Saviours, shut away in theology classes through his youth. He works shifts at the meat counter of the SuperValu, where he eases boredom by shaping the ground beef into models of the Starship Enterprise. 'Brothers', says one pastor to a bunch of others increasingly concerned at their rapidly dwindling flocks, 'we all say we're men of God. We say our job is to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah on earth. But what if the Messiah did come from a little town in North Dakota? Would we even know it?'
Zurhellen's Nazareth is a place whose way of life is underpinned by futile aspirations of wholesomeness - of schoolgirls on charity cupcake stands 'with pastel print dresses blowing in the warm September breeze like flags at a theme park', and set in a deep-rooted conviction that that wholesomeness will be achieved via religious means: statistics put North Dakota as America's most religious state, with just three per cent of non-believers.
There's a kidnapped baby, a horribly corrupt old Sheriff, the world's oldest man, a young girl whom it turns out will do just about anything to get herself saved -'everyone knew the Sheriff's stepdaughter had a reputation for being a free spirit, but not this free, especially on a Sunday' - and, as if this crazy fire-and-brimstone tale was not enough, an escaped circus elephant thudding the Plains.
Raucously engaging from first to last, Nazareth, North Dakota delves into the superstitions of the State's earliest settlers, and raises important contemporary questions about what some might figure is the over-importance of religion in US life today. But it's also a much simpler story about love and loss and the importance of choosing your own path, no matter what life throws at you.
Zurhellen's admirable attempt to remain largely faithful to the framework, at least, of the New Testament, allows him to create a series of fragmented stories, and resist the temptation to wrap the whole lot up with a nice bow on top. The last page leaves a whole lot open: Zurhellen is already working on a sequel, Apostle Islands, due in the summer of 2012. If it's anything like Nazareth, North Dakota, it will be another crazy, sprawling, irresistible treat, and another sure-fire contender for book of the year.

'Nazareth, North Dakota' is published by Atticus Books. It is available direct from the publisher, and also from Amazon and Kindle. You can read a short excerpt here.

One Inch Wonders #29: Middlesex

2011-10-02T10:25:00.006+01:00

from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, pub. Bloomsbury

The most famous hermaphrodite in history? Me? It felt good to write that, but I've got a long way to go. I'm closeted at work, revealing myself only to a few friends. At cocktail receptions, when I find myself standing next to the former ambassador (also a native of Detroit), we talk about the Tigers.

Excerpt: Nazareth, North Dakota

2011-09-30T09:26:00.011+01:00

Sometimes you stumble into a book totally out of the blue that makes you sit up and take notice. Maybe a mis-type in Google or a link to a link to a link on Amazon. Nazareth, North Dakota by Tommy Zurhellen is one such book. It's published in the US by Atticus Books - it's also available universally on Kindle. A review will follow. For now, courtesy the publishers, here's a great clip:

Joachim's Tractor & Tire employed three men in the busy summer months; Annie liked to call them her Billy Goats Gruff, due to their ages being spaced perfectly in descending order, and their willingness to pawn off work and blame on whichever of them wasn't in the room. Sven Anderson was sixty; he had worked there ever since the shop opened in a surplus Quonset hut they got from the air force. Emile LaCroix was forty; he worked full-time at the shop for the harvest season, then drove a truck in the winter. Lonnie was, well, Lonnie. He didn't know much about engines yet, but it wasn't for lack of enthusiasm. If she didn't pay the kid a dime he'd probably still show up every day; he wore the oil stains on his coveralls like merit badges. She had in fact never once seen him wearing anything but those blue coveralls with the big Joachim's logo on the back, even at the movie theater. On the front he'd stitched his name: Daredevil Lonnie. He called himself the local daredevil, even though the biggest jump he'd done with his dirt bike so far was Turtledove Creek, which everyone knew was fifteen feet apart at its widest and just damp dirt most of the year. He'd talk about working up to a jump across the Little Missouri, but Annie hoped it was just talk.

One Inch Wonders #28: God's Own Country

2011-09-29T15:27:00.010+01:00

from God's Own Country by Ross Raisin, pub. Penguin

I was up early. The sun had just started to show himself when I stepped into the yard, a ball of orange half-hid behind the Moors. That was the best time, when the Moors were coming alive with creatures waking in the heather, and the dark was shifting to reveal a mighty heap of purple, spreading fifty miles to the sea.

Excerpt: The Sense Of An Ending

2011-09-27T14:41:00.003+01:00

Here's an excerpt from the Booker-shortlisted 'The Sense of An Ending' by Julian Barnes, courtesy Jonathan Cape:

I could tell Veronica was perplexed by my approach. Sometimes she answered briefly and crossly, often not at all. Nor would she have been flattered to know the precedent for my plan. Towards the end of my marriage, the solid suburban villa Margaret and I lived in suffered a little subsidence. Cracks appeared here and there, bits of the porch and front wall began to crumble. (And no, I didn't think of it as symbolic.) The insurance company ignored the fact that it had been a famously dry summer, and decided to blame the lime tree in our front garden. It wasn't an especially beautiful tree, nor was I fond of it, for various reasons: it screened out light from the front room, dropped sticky stuff on the pavement, and overhung the street in a way that encouraged pigeons to perch there and crap on the cars parked beneath. Our car, especially.
My objection to cutting it down was based on principle: not the principle of maintaining the country's stock of trees, but the principle of not kowtowing to unseen bureaucrats, baby-faced arborists, and current faddy theories of blame adduced by insurance companies. Also, Margaret quite liked the tree. So I prepared a long defensive campaign. I queried the arborist's conclusions and requested the digging of extra inspection pits to confirm or disprove the presence of rootlets close to the house's foundations; I argued over the weather patterns, the great London clay-belt, the imposition of a region-wide hosepipe ban, and so on. I was rigidly polite; I aped my opponents' bureaucratic language; I annoyingly attached copies of previous correspondence to each new letter; I invited further site inspections and suggested extra use for their manpower. With each letter, I managed to come up with another query they would have to spend their time considering; if they failed to answer it, my next letter, instead of repeating the query, would refer them to the third or fourth paragraph of my communication of the 17th inst, so that they would have to look up their ever-fattening file. I was careful not to come across as a loony, but rather as a pedantic, unignorable bore. I liked to imagine the moaning and groaning as yet another of my letters arrived; and I knew that at a certain point it would make bean-counting sense for them to just close the case. Eventually, exasperatedly, they proposed a thirty per cent reduction in the lime tree's canopy, a solution I accepted with deep expressions of regret and much inner exhilaration.

Review: The Sense Of An Ending

2011-09-26T09:24:00.005+01:00

Reviewing a book by one of the foremost exponents of literary fiction of his generation is a little daunting. My qualifications for such a job don't add to up to much: I flunked English A-level because I didn't like the analysing bit, and my favourite all-time Booker Prize winner is Vernon God Little. So there you go: that's my disclaimer of sorts.
'The Sense Of An Ending' (pub. Jonathan Cape) is the only overtly 'literary novel' on this year's shortlist. There's been a lot of gripes about that, but I think it's fair. Fans of the literary genre could hardly have wished for a stronger representative.
'The Sense Of An Ending' concerns Tony, the narrator, who has seemingly resigned himself to a broadly unsatisfactory trudge through what remains of his middle age when he receives a lawyer's letter which impels him to re-examine and re-evaluate his past.
Tony's recollections sweep us back, initially, to the reckless frustration of his adolescence, where he and his somewhat pretentious clique delight in the struggle to make sense of the inherent futility of everyday life, until the arrival in their lives of the mysterious Adrian Finn alters their group dynamic for good.
Barnes is especially brilliant when describing the awkwardness of this period: a first girlfriend with a body "as tightly guarded as a fisheries exclusion zone"; others who "were physically comfortable with you, took your arm in public, kissed you until the colour rose, and might consciously press their breasts against you as long as there were about five layers of clothing between flesh and flesh."
'The Sense Of An Ending' is a taut, thought-provoking book, often snort-out-loud funny in a manner which propels the reader to exercise his or her own memory in search of that something deeper which lies beyond the initial flicker of recognition.
It's a slim volume, but with writing of this quality that is neither here nor there. In parts, Barnes' plot zips along with an urgency which you may say is uncharacteristic of the genre: all told, it excels at in exploring the wider context of how all our memories are exploited and redefined by age.
'History,' opines Finn, 'is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.' I live in hope that one day I'll truly believe I passed my English A-level with flying colours, and sustain myself with embellished tales of the girls I knew. Until then, I'll rely on Barnes to explain things far better than I could ever dream.

One Inch Wonders: Guardian First Book Award Longlist 2011

2011-09-22T18:39:00.006+01:00

Here are the opening paragraphs for the 10 books longlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award. The Villalobos book was picked by members of the public. They're a fine-looking mix of fact, fiction, politics and poetry.

The Possessed by Elif Batuman (Granta)
In Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, a young man named Hans Castorp arrives at a Swiss sanatorium to visit his tubercular cousin for three weeks. Although Castorp himself does not have tuberculosis, he somehow ends up staying in that sanatorium for seven years.

Sidereal by Rachel Boast (Picador)
Anything to overwhelm
your own thoughts and feelings,
you took to touring the waterfalls -
Lodore, Moss Force, Scale Force -
for their savage sounds.

The Book Of Lies by Mary Horlock (Canongate)
My name is Catherine Rozier, please don't call me Cathy. If you do I'll jump. Don't think I'm bluffing. It's a 3000-foot drop and even though I'm fat, I'm not fat enough to bounce.

Chavs by Owen Jones (Verso)
It's an experience we've all had. You're among a group of friends or acquaintances when suddenly someone says something that shocks you: an aside or a flippant comment made in poor taste.

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (Bloomsbury)
You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought. It was all on the ground outside Chicken Joe's. It just felt crazy.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker)
The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions on advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

The Emperor Of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Fourth Estate)
On the morning of May 19, 2004, Carla Reed, a thirty-year-old kindergarten teacher from Ipswich, Massachusetts, a mother of three young children, woke up in bed with a headache.

Down The Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos (And Other Stories)
Some people say I'm precocious. They say it mainly because they think I know difficult words for a little boy. Some of the difficult words I know are: sordid, disastrous, immaculate, pathetic and devastating.

The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed (Penguin)
Captain Kadian takes a large swig from his glass tumbler, closes his eyes for a moment, smacks his lips and says, 'The job's not that hard, you see, you just go down once a week or fifteen days, and the money, the money is not bad at all.'

The Submission by Amy Waldman (Heinemann)
'The names,' Claire said. 'What about the names?'
'They're a record, not a gesture,' the sculptor replied. Ariana's words brought nods from the other artists, the critic, and the two purveyors of public art arrayed along the dining table, united beneath her sway.

One Inch Wonders #27: Nothing To Envy

2011-09-21T14:40:00.008+01:00

from 'Nothing To Envy: Real Lives In North Korea' by Barbara Demick, pub. Granta

The histrionics of grief took on a competitive quality. Who could weep the loudest? Who was the most distraught? The mourners were egged on by TV news, which broadcast hours and hours of people wailing, grown men with tears rolling down their cheeks, banging their heads on trees, sailors banging their heads against the masts of their ships, pilots weeping in the cockpit, and so on. These scenes were interspersed with footage of lightning and pouring rain. It looked like Armageddon.

One Inch Wonders #26: The Ballad Of Trenchmouth Taggart

2011-09-20T09:30:00.006+01:00

from 'The Ballad Of Trenchmouth Taggart' by M Glenn Taylor, pub. Blue Door

If Trenchmouth thought he'd finally had a religious experience that morning, he would re-evaluate his experience that night. The curvy woman's name was Anne Sharples, and she had a slight penchant for bedding men of the cloth, a bigger penchant for moonshine.

Review: Half Blood Blues

2011-09-18T17:14:00.006+01:00

Esi Edugyan's Booker-shortlisted 'Half Blood Blues' (pub. Serpent's Tail) is a convincing and compelling tale of friendship and betrayal spanning half a century. It tracks two men from Berlin's pre-War jazz boom to the fall of Paris and ultimately to present-day Poland, where, as octogenarians, they set about discovering the truth behind the disappearance of their former band-mate.
It is ambitious in scope but Edugyan is clearly undaunted as she brilliantly unravels the legend of Hieronymous Falk, a precocious young trumpeter whose fate is unknown since he quit his hideout and headed to a café for milk one night in occupied Paris in 1940, and was never seen again. Falk was German, twenty years old, and black.
Fifty years later Falk's former colleagues - Sid, the narrator for whom time has not healed a guilty conscience, and the brash, outspoken Chip - are persuaded to revisit Berlin as star guests at a festival dedicated to Falk and his music. There, shocking secrets begin to emerge about their past, forcing Sid and Chip to re-evaluate their friendship.
Told in Edugyan's breezy, colloquial prose which seldom blows a false note, this is ostensibly the story of Sid's life, from the earliest days when he and a young teenaged Chip had their first experience of an underground jazz club in their home city of Baltimore.

I was in love. Pure and simple. This place, with its stink of sweat and medicine and perfume; these folks, all gussied up never mind the weather - this, this was the life for me. Forget Sunday school and girls in white frocks. Forget stealing from corner stores. This was it, these dames swaying their hips in shimmering dresses, these chaps drinking gutbucket hooch. The gorgeous speakeasy slang. I'd found what my life was meant for.

They are lured to Berlin's swinging jazz scene but the illusion dosen't last long. Escaping the city after a violent incident which puts their safety at risk, they flee to Paris only to find the Nazis fast approaching, and black jazz music not especially high on their agenda.

Hiero and me threaded through Montmartre's grey streets not talking. Once the home of jazz so fresh it wouldn't take no for an answer, the clubs had all gone Boot now. Nearly overnight the cafes filled with well-fed broads in torn stockings crooning awful songs to the Gestapo. We took the side roads to avoid these joints, noise bleeding from them even at this hour.

Edugyan's plot zips along in spite of its various strands, the apparent inevitability of Falk's fate never a burden, and holding back a couple of joltingly surprising plot twists.
Edugyan's novel shines a light on one of the conflict's forgotten groups, black Germans - or the 'Black Shame', despised by Hitler for their historical descendency from soldiers of the French Colonies who were sent by France to occupy the Rhineland as part of the peace treaty of the First World War.
'Broke Heart Blues' is arguably the most accomplished and ambitious novel on the Booker Prize shortlist, and would make a fine winner. It has also been longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. Whatever happens in the months ahead, Edugyan is clearly here to stay.

One Inch Wonders #25: The Wrestling

2011-09-17T10:31:00.005+01:00

from 'The Wrestling' by Simon Garfield, pub. Faber

Dave Soulman Bond: The Big Daddy era was a turning point. I'm not saying Daddy wasn't a good wrestler - the crowd loved him, he put arses on seats - it's just that he wasn't really a technician. It became a downward trend then. The first couple of years of Daddy was okay, but after that...

Review: The Last Hundred Days

2011-09-16T09:56:00.005+01:00

'The Last Hundred Days' (pub Seren) is a smart chronicle of the months immediately prior to the downfall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Patrick McGuinness imbues the story of grim, grey Bucharest with florid turns of phrase you would expect of a poet. The razor-sharp similies begin in the second sentence: the relentless monotony of crumbling Communist life 'tugged away at the bottom of your day like shingle scraping at a boat's hull.'
The framework for the tale of Ceausescu's demise comes in the form of the first-person narrative of a young English academic, who arrives in Bucharest to assume the role of his mysterious departed predecessor. This unnamed narrator is soon inveigled in a dark world of corruption and paranoia involving various members of the party hierarchy.
In this crushingly bleak world, the heightened senses invoked by such fleeting acquiantances are brilliantly handled by McGuinness:

'her face was dark, her eyes at once stormy and aloof. Her skin was tanned, her mouth lipsticked bright red and her hair black and shiny as a Politburo limousine. Arresting was the word, though we tried to use it sparingly in a police state.'

McGuinness conjures a convincing portrait of the state of blanket paranoia: among his ragged cast of fictional, semi-fictional and real-life characters, you never quite know who to trust, and with good reason: most are hopelessly corrupt, many double-crossing agents of the feared Securitate. It is a city shorn almost entirely of logic or reason, where vast presidential motorcades sweep their passengers to luxuriant lunches through half demolished streets snaking with food queues:

'you could queue for four hours only for everythign to run out just as you reached the counter. Some forgot what they were waiting for, or couldn't recognise it when they got it.'

Perhaps the most indelible images of the Romanian revolution came from news footage of dramatically disabled children packed in dark, dirty orphanages; McGuinness explains that many were the result of failed, self-administered attempts at abortion in a society were the practise was not only outlawed, but where a 'celibacy tax' was imposed on women who did or could not have children.
It is McGuinness's admirable desire to stay true to the chronology of real-life events which provides one of the book's few flaws. While regimes in most of the rest of eastern Europe were collapsing, Romania stayed true to Communism to the very end: only in the final handful of the last hundred days did Ceausescu's ultimately shocking downfall become inevitable.
This leads to stodgy periods, particularly in the third quarter of the book, when the pace of the narrator's personal narrative also falters, and begins to beg questions over how such an inconsequential foreigner could continually find himself at the centre of so many key components to the uprising.
But overall, this is a fine, worthy book. If the plot itself strains, the quality of McGuinness's prose never falters: crisp and evocative and studded with the kind of humour you can't help feeling the Bucharest residents must have clung to in order to get through those boat-scrapingly boring final days:

'daily life was felt less as Stalinist terror than as shady ineptocracy - brutish and clumsy, sometimes comical, usually absurd. Our sense of the system's viciousness was offset by our belief that it was not sufficiently organised to implement that viciousness.'

Review: Jamrach's Menagerie

2011-09-14T18:44:00.009+01:00

On the face of it, maybe 'Jamrach's Menagerie' doesn't seem too promising: another addition to the age-old genre of high seas adventures of shipwrecks and cannibals and mythical beasts. What's more, it's apparently underpinned by the same small boy/big cat conceit that swept Yann Martel to the Booker Prize in 2002.
Nothing could be more misleading. Sure, Carol Birch's 11th novel (pub. Canongate) - deservedly shortlisted for this year's Prize - ticks all those boxes. But with her rich, colourful narrative and a cast of characters imbued with so generous a spirit that you can't help but cheer them on, Birch has fashioned an epic fable to more than match most that have gone before.
'Jamrach's Menagerie' tells the story of Jaffy Brown, a young urchin plucked from the jaws of an escaped tiger by Mr Jamrach, a dealer and collector of some of the world's most exotic creatures. Their resulting friendship culminates in Jaffy signing up for an epic voyage to discover and capture a mysterious dragon whose safe return will make them rich.
It's a tumultuous tale of shipwrecks and sea shanties, dragon hunters and toucan traders, gaudy whores and drunken sailors, told from the first-person perspective of a by-now ageing Jaffy.
Where Birch really triumphs is in her glorious evocation of Victorian era London - a London smeared with the shit-stench of the Bermondsey tanneries and its Limehouse docks teeming with all forms of human and animal life:

A brown bear danced decorously on the corner by an alehouse called Sooty Jack's. Men walked about with parrots on their shoulders, magnificent birds, pure scarlet, egg-yolk yellow, bright sky blue. Their eyes were knowing and half amused, their feet scaly. The air on the corner of Martha Street hung sultry with the perfume of Arabian sherbet, and women in silks as bright as the parrots leaned out from doorways, arms akimbo, powerfully breasted like the figureheads of the ships lying along the quays.

It is a world the young Jaffy only briefly comes to know, hoicked through its crowds by his new friend, the street-wise Tim, Jamrach's trusted assistant, and his younger sister Ishbel, an impish siren for whom Jaffy's as-yet unrequited love will torment him throughout his lusty voyage and the extraordinary ordeal which will change his life for ever.
It’s Ishbel, ultimately, who does more than most to lift this book above the slew of broadly similar seafaring tales, lending to Jaffy's narrative a longing and an urgency which leads you to flit through the pages barely pausing for breath.
Above all, it's a vivid, rollicking yarn, almost Twainian in its scent for further adventure. Those who believe they have read it all before ought to give it a try. Failing that, they should let us know which they believe to be its equal, because I for one will be first in the queue to read them.

One Inch Wonders #24: Snowdrops

2011-09-13T09:57:00.010+01:00

from 'Snowdrops' by AD Miller (pub. Atlantic)

Inside there was a dance floor with three podium dancers - two energetic and topless black girls, and in between them a male dwarf wearing a tiger stripe thong. Katya pointed up to the ceiling. Two naked girls, sprayed with gold to look like cherubs and with wings attached, were flapping above our heads.

Interview: Gavin James Bower

2011-09-12T10:11:00.006+01:00

Gavin James Bower's second novel, 'Made In Britain', is published in paperback at the end of this month by Quartet Books. For now, it's available via Kindle for £1.99. It's a grim, honest account of growing up in an ailing provincial town. You can read the opening excerpt in the post below. Here, in an exclusive Q&A, the author talks about social ills, inspiration and, er, Fred Dibnah.

When I clicked to download your book, I almost mistakenly clicked 'Made In Britain' by Fred Dibnah. As fellow Lancastrians, I imagine you'll be honoured by the coincidence. How do you think stalwart Fred Dibnah enthusiasts might react if they were to make the reverse-mistake and accidentally buy your book?

I really am honoured - more so than if anyone stumbled on my book having searched for Evan Davis [who also wrote a book called 'Made In Britain], that's for sure. (Our approaches to post-industrialisation couldn't be more polarised.) I grew up in the shadow of the mills - the chimneys being a kind of ironic, pseudo-phallic indictment of a policy of emasculation. Dibnah was like the Brian Cox of industry; he loved machinery, and building, and making, and grafting - and he really did think it wonderful. Plus, he climbed massive chimneys all day. Top bloke.

Steaming on (pun intended), your story of small-town strife was lent an extra perspective by the recent riots. Were you surprised? It strikes me the despair and disconnectedness in your book almost portended them.

Ten years ago there were race riots in the North - Oldham, Bradford and Burnley (my home town, and the setting, loosely speaking, for MiB). I use the official term 'race riots' when really these were about communities not feeling like they had a shared cause - and instead viewing 'the other' as the problem. The riots recently, in London and elsewhere, were quite different. The causes were clearly political and, post-crash - with consumerism more rampant and capitalism more vulgar than ever - there's a real sense of young people not only being pissed off, but feeling like they have no stake in the future. Coupled with a sense of powerlessness that really can't be understated, it's worrying for any society when those charged with the task of building a future don't believe in one - and don't believe they can make a difference anyway.

'Made In Britain' is bleak and violent but also funny and not without hope: not exactly the "feral underclass" being shuddered about by politicians today. Is this blanket knee-jerkism part of the problem, and was your book a conscious effort to challenge certain stereotypes?

Everyone's a critic now. Everyone's a commentator. Knee-jerk reactions - live, accompanied by a constant scrolling ticker of banality - is part and parcel of everyday life now. Owen Jones covers the demonisation of the working class in post-industrial Britain well in his book, Chavs. I wanted to approach it through fiction, by creating characters - made-up characters, admittedly - who aren't clearly classifiable. And I wanted to tackle the love-hate relationship I have with where I'm from - something most people can relate to if they've grown up in a small town (post-industrial or otherwise). Is it grim up North? Are our teenagers drug-using, computer-game-playing, apathetic layabouts with no sense of purpose beyond signing on? The stereotype sensationalises. It sells papers and fills airtime. There's no subtlety, no sense of the uneasy romance of a life sitting in a pub at noon drinking cans of lager through straws - a life where that's as good as it gets. I wanted to conjure some of that imagery and give you something tangible, too. Something that will linger after it's all over.

To what extent did you draw on your own personal experiences for 'Made In Britain'?

The town and my experience growing up there informed every page. The dialect, the vernacular and turns of phrase - they all come from very real situations, or my dad going off on one about the state of the place. A lot of what Hayley's dad says comes straight from my dad. As for the plot - the stories that drive the book along - that's all made up. There is no Charlie, no Russell, no Hayley. But they're everywhere in towns like Burnley.

Your publisher, Quartet Books, has adopted an interesting tactic - sell the e-book for £1.99 immediately prior to the paperback's release. It strikes me as an ingenious plan, especially in a climate where many of the so-called major publishers seem to be running scared of the so-called 'e-book revolution'. Do its opportunities excite you?

I'm not excited about the prospect of a market flooded with shite, or the prospect of print one day being niche. I am excited about the prospect of people being able to quickly download and read a short book like mine, tell their friends - share it, even - and for a fairly nothing amount of money. How publishers monetise that is a separate issue. As an author, I just want people to read my work - but I also want to live off it, too.

I ought to ask, have you got an opinion on this year's Booker Prize shortlist?

No!

What have you liked recently, and what are you working on now?

I'm working on a third book - a non-fiction title for Zer0 Books on the surrealist writer and artist Claude Cahun. Recently I've liked anything and everything about Claude Cahun. I've no time for anything else.

Made In Britain

2011-09-12T10:06:00.003+01:00

(courtesy Gavin James Bower & Quartet Books)

Chapter One

Russell

I could love you.
I pass a girl crossing the canal on my way home. It's dark but our eyes meet, and there's a connection.
We could talk, I think. We could laugh.
We could spit on the heads of imaginary tourists taking boat trips along the water below us. They'd have to be imaginary, of course, because nobody ever visits here.
I live on Every Street, in a town that's so common it might as well be called Every Town. Half of the houses on our road are boarded up, the Asians are taking over and the only shop isn't even a shop; it's a Co-op Funeral Care. It used to be a pub before the landlord, a man called Dorian who liked dressing up as a cowboy, got arrested for masturbating over a guest's face while he was asleep.
I want you, I think as the girl walks away from me. I want you to want me.
I want you to creep up behind me while I'm sitting at my desk, doing homework, and wrap your arms around my neck.
I want you to whisper my name.
'Russell…'
My granddad always used to tell me that I should be an artist, because of my name. It's Russell Crackle. Apparently Dad was a bit of an eccentric when he was younger, spending all his time reading books and listening to music in his room. He had his name changed by Deed Poll when he was 21. Mum never bothered to change it when he left us, because you have to pay.
I walk down the grassy embankment and up the main road that leads to my house, passing what used to be Lambert Howarth. By the time she was my age Mum had left school and got her first job there, but it's closed now.
Life is transient, I think as I walk through my front door. But love, well, love is different.
Love is forever.

Charlie

Jenny's passed out on my lap, a bottle of White Lightning in her cold, pale hand.
I'm up the canal, and can see the whole town from where I'm sitting. The old mills to my left, the rows of terraced houses boarded up now on that side of town, and the council blocks where Trafalgar Flats used to be, before they knocked them down. Straight ahead's the new bus station, lit up in purple. To my right's the new sports centre, which used to be the multi-storey, and next to that's the new multi-storey, which used to be the sports centre.
I take the bottle from Jenny, chuck it under the bench, and pull her close to keep her warm. I stroke her hair and she smiles, half asleep.
'Am I drunk?' she asks, her eyes closed.
'Back in a sec,' I say, after she doesn't say owt else, then, smiling to myself, 'don't go anywhere, love…'
I climb over the wall behind us and piss in the canal, my back to town, the abandoned train track in front of me. Brooker and Digger are slumped against the wall. Nicola's with them, fumbling with a baggie. She looks fucked.
'Lend us a fag,' I say, coming up behind them.
'Fuck me!' Brooker shouts. 'Yer scared shit outta me!'
Brooker likes snorting speed and getting into scraps. He goes to my school and we've knocked about since day one. I met him when he was going round cuffing everyone with a fifty pence piece. I thought it was funny, at the time. He's only small, Brooker, but he's from Stoops Estate so knows a thing or two about fighting. He plays football for school and Centre of Excellence, like me. He was top scorer this season, but he's best known for kicking the shit out of people on the pitch. In our last game, against St Ted's, he tackled this lad so hard he ended up being carried off and needing bolts and pins and that in his leg. He might be a scrawny fucker but he's scared of no-one, the little knob.
He stands up, hands me one.
'Got a light?' I ask, looking at Nicola. She tries to line up some ket on a pocket mirror, but spills it. I look back at Brooker as he rummages in his pockets then lights my fag for em. 'You should take her home, you tight cunt.' I stare at him, so he knows I mean it. 'She's spinnin' out.'
'OK, OK,' he says. 'We were only 'avin' a bit o' fun -'
'I'm fuckin' off anyway,' I interrupt. I'm tired and not in the mood to get into an argument with him. 'I'm gonna take Jenny home…'
'Yer comin' out tomorro'?' Digger asks, chopping up what's left of the K.
Digger likes Brooker and getting into scraps. He goes to my school and all and I don't remember when I met him but, for as long as I can remember, wherever Brooker was he was too. He's stocky and tough, the kind of lad you'd describe as being carved out of wood.
'Prolly,' I say, even though I know full well I will be.
I walk Jenny home. She lives just up from the canal, about fifteen minutes, but it takes twice that 'cause she's falling all over the shop, deadweight. It's only when she hugs me on her front step I realise she could've walked quicker, and without my help.
'In a bit,' I say, not wanting to linger.
'Why d'yer waste yer time wi' us lot?' she says, holding my hand and hugging me.
'What d'you mean?' I say as she pulls me in, tight. Her hair smells like strawberries and cider.
'Those two… knobs,' she says, slurring her words a bit. 'Why d'yer hang round wi' 'em? Why d'yer waste yer time… wi' us… wi' me?'
'I dunno,' I say, trying to get away again. 'It's a laugh…'
'Yer think yer too good for me, don't yer?' she says, a bit OTT, pulling me back towards her again then kissing me hard on the mouth.
I step back and look at her. It's sloppy but she tastes nice, of vanilla chapstick, so I pull her back into me and shag her right there, against the front door, just to shut her up.

Hayley

Dad knocks on the door to tell me I've got a brew waiting on the landing. I live with him 'cause my mum died of lung cancer when I was thirteen. He does his best, but I miss her loads.
Every night before bed I lock the bathroom door and sneak a ciggy on the loo, freezing my tits off with the window open so Dad doesn't catch me. I'll be dead if he does. Then I take a long shower to warm up again. Sometimes, I sit down in the bath and let the water hit me in the chest until it turns so red I look like a lobster when I get out. But tonight I just let the spray hit me in the face.
I've been for a walk up the canal with Gemma, my best friend, and all this eyeliner what she gave me is running down my face and drip-dripping at my feet. I stare down at my piggy toes - I hate my feet 'cause they're so massive, well, size six, which I reckon is massive for my age - and watch the black swirling its way down the plughole.
I usually have a good cry in the shower, 'specially when I'm missing Mum. Now's no different, but I soon start singing to cheer myself up again. She always used to say life's more fun with a song, and I should belt one out every chance I get. Tonight it's 'Daydream Believer'. Mum's favourite.
I only get through one verse, though, before Dad taps on the door again, telling me my brew's going cold. I can't sing when I know people are listening.
'OK Dad,' I say, stepping out then grabbing my hairbrush. 'Cheer up, sleepy Jean...' I mime into it. 'Oh, what can it mean, to a... daydream believer, and a... homecoming queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen?"

Excerpt: The Old Man And His Sons

2011-09-09T13:05:00.012+01:00

Heoin Bru's 'The Old Man And His Sons' is a gripping chronicle of the daily struggle for survival on the remote Faroe Islands. First published in Faroese in 1940, the book was translated into English by New York publishers Eriksson in 1970, and has been unearthed and re-published this year, by translation experts Telegram, the translation imprint of Saqi Books. It's one of the best books I've read this year. You can read my review here.

Follow Saqi Books on Twitter @saqibooks, and on Facebook here.

Here's an extended opening excerpt:

A school of blackfish is in Seyrvágs Fjord – two or three hundred small whales, swimming silently round in little groups, and longing to be back in the broad ocean again, for this is not the way they intended to go. Man has turned them aside from deep-sea voyaging, to pen them into these narrow waters.
In Seyrvágur everyone is on the move. Tooting cars, packed with men from the other side of the island, come nosing their way in through the village streets. Fully manned boats come thrashing through the fjord to set folk ashore. Every mountain track is alive with men hurrying down to Seyrvágur. And so people flock in from every direction, crowding the village. Every courtyard is packed. The crowd surges through the street, down to the quayside and into the boats – a vast, bustling throng of whale hunters.
Over here, you can see sturdy old men clad from head to foot in their thick homespun, their heavy whaling knives at their belts. These are the men who grew up at the oar, and trod out the mountain paths. For them, all journeys were long journeys and risky ones. They are all keyed up to meet any problem, and they take life very seriously. These men stride onwards with ponderous footsteps – strong men of few words.
And over here, you can see the young fellows dressed in their sweaters and overalls, with their cloth caps on their heads. They have simply come along as they were, because they were only going whale driving in Seyrvágs Fjord. These are the men who built the roads and the landing stages, who learned to deck in their fishing boats and install motors in them. They measure time and distance differently from the older folk. Journeys are shorter for them, and time is not such a serious matter. These men are lighter-footed, lighter-hearted, and more lively-spirited than the older people.
In Seyrvágur village every door is flung wide open, and friendly, smiling villagers stand on their stairways inviting everyone inside. ‘Don’t stand out there, now, come along in and have a bite to eat!’ they say. And the limited house-room is soon full, though there is still plenty of room in their friendly hearts.

That morning, when the alarm was given summoning everyone to the whale drive, Ketil and his son Kálvur were mowing their hay in the meadow near the village. The instant they heard the shouting, they threw down their scythes and hurried home. Taxis were already starting up, and the motorboats were throbbing away at the quayside. But Ketil thought they ought to walk. ‘We don’t save up our money to go joy-riding,’ he said. Kálvur didn’t care to walk over the mountains, but Ketil tried to talk him around into it. ‘It’s stupid, wanting to spend your money on taxis.’ He measured down his leg with his hand, and then stretched his hands out sideways. ‘If we keep the money and buy whale meat with it,’ he said, ‘we’d get a piece as big as that!’ This convinced Kálvur, and he agreed to walk.
They fully equipped themselves. They took along a whalehook, a harpoon, a length of rope, a casting-stone and a whalespear, and set off.
‘Look how fast the taxis are driving, Father,’ said Kálvur enviously, trudging along, bent under his burden.
‘Just think of that big piece of meat, my lad, and don’t grumble. We’ll get to Seyrvágur soon enough. Dogged does it. Now, take it easy up the hill as far as the pass. There’s no hurry. No need to go twenty to the dozen on the way to a Seyrvágur whale drive.’
Kálvur stubbed his toes on a stone. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to go along the road, Father?’ he asked.
But Ketil did not care to do that. ‘The old fell-track has been good enough all my lifetime, so it’ll be good enough today.’
Kálvur did not reply, and they trudged determinedly onwards. Ketil panted, and moaned, ‘God grant we make a whale-killing, that’s all I pray! Now I can’t move another inch – not a step – I’m swimming in sweat! But if only we get them ashore! Ah, well, this’ll be my last whale hunt, I think.’
And the old man struggled on, moaning as he clambered over the fellside, but determined to win through.
They reached Seyrvágur and walked down to the quay, where a boat was just ready to cast off. ‘Can we come along with you?’ asked the old man.
‘Of course, come aboard.’
So they slung their gear into the boat and began to lend a hand.
Just as they stepped into the boat, there was a flurry of activity and a babble of voices back in the village. An excited crowd came down to the boat-houses, led by one of the hunt foremen, a handsome, broad-shouldered fellow from Seyrvágur. In one hand he held a harpoon, and in the other a leg of dried mutton. He walked with long, swift strides – a man of much responsibility, now entering on his task. Now he had to show what he was capable of, both as a hunt foreman and as a Seyrvágur man. So he leapt into his boat and hurriedly pushed off. ‘Off we go, then!’ he called out.
The mass of boats moved forward. Motors throbbed, oarlocks creaked, and sails swelled to the breeze. And the whole fleet set out to the hunt.
Ketil and Kálvur were aboard a medium-sized row-boat called The Troll. The old man was quite out of breath after the walk, and asked the crew to excuse him from rowing. They gladly agreed. Then he sat in the stern, and spat out over the water towards the next boat. He added, ‘You’d better put me ashore when we come to Tindhólmur. I’m not very much use in a whale hunt any more. But if a whale comes my way on the shore, I expect I should be able to deal with it.’
‘Yes, we’ll put you ashore there,’ said the men. One of them asked him for a chew of tobacco.
‘Of course, of course,’ he replied, rummaging in his waistcoat pocket. ‘On a whale hunt, the tobacco always goes round, that goes without saying.’
The men were discussing the prospects of making a kill. Kálvur simply sat listening to what was said, but he did not join in. If he was spoken to, he would mumble a reply, hang his head, and blush. He very much wanted to know just where the whales were, but he did not dare to ask, for fear of looking foolish. For perhaps it was a thing everyone ought to know in advance, or perhaps it was silly to ask where they were, as if they weren’t in the same place every time. No, it was better to be careful and say nothing in front of strangers, for if he asked anything silly, they might make fun of him. He could just imagine how they would answer him.
‘The whales are in Seyrvágs Fjord,’ they would say.
‘I know that, but whereabouts in Seyrvágs Fjord?’
‘In the water!’ And then they would all have a good old laugh at him. Or someone might answer, ‘Oh, no, they’re up in the village. The biggest one’s taking it easy in an armchair by the boathouses near Ólavsstova!’
And Kálvur was horrified at the idea that he, a stranger, might be so treated. ‘I would rather they had not let me in their boat at all. Then I might have joined up with someone better than this rascally crowd,’ he thought.
The whales were swimming quietly around, some way off Selvík, when the boats approached them. The District Sheriff now sailed out to these people he was commanding for the day, then turned about, and all the boats drew up in a crescent to begin the drive.
The whales would lie quiet for a time, side by side, with their black heads sticking straight up out of the water. Then they would sink for a bit, come up to blow, and sink once again. It was like this the whole time. Sometimes they would shake themselves a little, and rub one against another. Then their skins would squeak together, and the old men would turn their heads, striving to catch the promising sound from this great harvest that had come to them from the ever bountiful sea.
Slowly, the hunters pulled up toward the whales. In every man’s hand was a casting-stone – a simple implement consisting of a stone three or four inches across, firmly secured to a length of fishing-line. As soon as they were near enough, the hunters splashed the water vigorously. The whales swerved round, threw up their tail fins and dived. The boats paused. No one knew exactly where the whales would reappear. But then they came in sight again, right out toward Múli headland, still moving. The boats were left far behind, as the whales carried on with the same speed right toward the little bay at Tindhólmur, so fast that no one could keep up with them. When the whales realised that land was ahead of them, they veered slowly around again. But now the boats were ahead of them, barring their way. So they turned and swam right along past the low cliff of the island. The people on the shore stood gazing at them. It was magnificent to see how splendidly the whales came streaking forward, the whole school tight together, with a single course and a single velocity.
Now their heads would appear, and you would hear the whales blowing; their dorsal fins would cleave the surface of the water, and you would see the full length of their bodies.
Then, with a bubbling noise, the water would surge around their heads, and they would be lost to sight, all except the light blue streaks left by their side fins. So sure was their course that it seemed as though they had forgotten the narrow space into which they were confined, and unhindered were once again shaping their course through the vastness of the ocean. But now they came to the rocks by the coast, so they would have to turn westward, past the skerries. But here, too, there were boats, and the whales turned around and went back once again.
Now one boat went forward to the whale flock, to begin the kill. A man stood up in it, making his way to the prow. He raised his whalespear, and plunged it down into the water.
The hindmost whale leapt forward, wounded, and, trailing a thick stream of blood, pressed sharply into the back of the flock. This made the other whales panic, and they rushed in toward the land. But around the coast of Tindhólmur there is no sand onto which the whales can be beached. There are rocks by the shore, and the whales turned back to sea again. So all the boats now came forward, and their crews made free with their spears.
Meanwhile, Ketil was sitting on a mound looking on. He was in a high state of excitement – his eyes were bulging and he was waving his arms about. Every time the whales moved toward the bay, he took heart. ‘Yes, yes, the Lord is going to be bountiful to us! Strike, now, strike! Where’s The Troll? Why aren’t they coming forward to help the kill, when it’s all going so well?’ Just at this moment, the first blow was struck. ‘Get at them now! Every man with his spear!’ he shouted, waving his arms excitedly and stamping his feet. When he saw the blood stream out, he called out, ‘Well done, well done! Those fellows are nearly all from Vestmannahavn,’ he added. ‘They should always send in the Vestmannahavn men first, because they know how to handle their spears better than anyone else.’ And he became so excited that he threw himself down on the sward and started pulling up bits of turf. But if the whales should turn toward the sea for a moment, he would start to lose courage, and pray every good power for help, lest the whales should slip away back to sea and this rich harvest of meat be lost.
The whales swam around in ever-diminishing circles among the boats, while more and more of them were speared and trailed thick streams of blood behind them. By degrees, the water reddened, and the sand and mud were stirred up from the sea bed, so that before long the whales had lost all sense of direction, and were swimming aimlessly hither and thither, each one his own way. The hunters were soaked in sweat, but still they struck at the whales. The more blood there was in the sea, the more frantically they worked, striking as far as they could reach with their spears, and when a whale came close to the boat, they would give it a deep stab before pulling out the spear again. A few whales were so badly wounded that they quickly died, but most of them fought hard for life. They would be speared and would dive, surface, and be speared again, and between one boat and another, would get fearfully cut up. There were whales whose strength gradually ebbed away until they sank without a struggle. Other whales struggled forward, dragging their intestines behind them, their bodies waterlogged, swimming deep and snorting painfully, blood welling out of their numerous stab wounds. When a whale of this sort approached, the hunters would be filled with pity. ‘Better finish this one off,’ they would say, and they would gather around it to shorten its agony.
The people on the shore had now fallen silent, for though they rejoiced in the hunt, they were a little abashed at the slaughter, sobered to see the whales so mutilated and dying – those same whales that a little before had been swimming briskly and beautifully, with all the gleam and pride of the mighty ocean upon them. Yet other whales thrashed frantically among the boats, shooting half out of the water and charging forward regardless of obstacles, whipping up a foamy wake as they passed. These were the wild ones, a danger alike to boat and to man.
As the killing progressed, only a few of these whales continued to thrash about. Every time they approached a boat, they would be speared and thrust under the water. But suddenly, a whale reared right up by the gunwales of The Troll, and fell, dead, across her stern. All the crew leaped out and made their way to other boats. Kálvur, however, was too slow, and was dragged down with the boat.
This was too much for the people on the shore. The women buried their faces and wept, while the men, trying to take the incident with composure, could only stand speechless and stare.
Ketil, just at that moment, was sitting and scolding a young man who was trying to cut the spine of a stranded whale, but was cutting too low down, and meeting with little success.
This irritated the old man. He was not worried about his son, who would find some way of freeing himself and coming up again after he had struck bottom. ‘What a butter-fingers you are!’ he said to the man who was cutting the spine. ‘You carry a knife, and you can’t even cut a whale. You’re hacking at it like a booby.’ Ketil had become so excited by the hunt, that he couldn’t bear to see a stranded whale incompetently killed. He crawled down through the grass and out between the rocks on the shore. ‘Get away from that whale, you bungler, and let me cut it,’ he said. But the old man was over-eager, and not quite dextrous enough, for his knife slipped from his grasp, and fell against a rock. ‘Oh, hell and damnation, now I’m ruining my knife,’ he said.
‘All the same, don’t swear about it,’ said a lay preacher who was standing nearby.
‘Don’t swear about it!’ repeated Ketil, staring back at him. ‘I ought to swear a good deal more than that. What else could any proper whale hunter do when he can hardly heave himself about? Sit still quietly, I suppose, while these butter-fingered boobies slash God’s gifts in pieces? And now I’ve ruined my knife as well – the edge is bent right over.’ But all the same, he finished off the whale.