Category: Other Prizes

Categories
2011 Books in Translation Other Prizes

Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld

Blooms of Darkness Translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green

Winner of the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

Five words from the blurb: Holocaust, Jewish, boy, hides, brothel

Blooms of Darkness is set during WWII and follows an eleven-year-old Jewish boy as he is forced to leave his family and hide from the Nazis in a brothel.

Blooms of Darkness is one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read. It isn’t a roller coaster of emotions, it is an endlessly bleak book without a glimmer of hope anywhere. I think the fact it is narrated by an innocent child, separated from his friends and family, makes it have even more impact. The loneliness and grief were heartbreaking and the thought of any child growing up in such terrible circumstances is hard to take.

Very little happened, but the observations and emotions were powerful and realistic – the author’s own experiences as a Jewish boy in hiding gave this book a painful authenticity. The writing style was simple and quiet and it was surprising to see how distressing a book could be without actually containing any graphic scenes.  The fear of discovery and imagining what might have happened to loved ones was enough to give this book a terrible sense of impending doom:

Hugo refused to think about what had happened to Erwin in the ghetto. One night they sealed off the orphanage on all sides, took the orphans out of their beds, and loaded them onto trucks while they were still in their pyjamas. The orphans wept and cried out for help, but no one did anything. Anyone who opened a window or went out would be shot.

It seems wrong to criticise a book for revealing the painful truth, but the continual darkness was too much for me. I longed for a few lighter moments to penetrate the bleakness, but I guess I’ll just have to take comfort in the fact that I’m lucky enough to never have experienced anything like this.

Recommended to anyone who’d like to know what it is like to be a child living in constant fear, but I’m sure it will be too distressing for many.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

Aharon has shown why he considered one of the foremost Hebrew writers. Winstondad’s Blog

…there’s nothing in the novel which makes it stand out amongst its peers and competitors. Tony’s Reading List

It’s a sombre work, because it deals with the Holocaust, but it’s beautiful all the same… ANZ Litlovers Litblog

 

 

Categories
2012 Other Prizes

Moffie by André Carl Van Der Merwe

MoffieJoint winner of 2012 Green Carnation Prize

Five words from the blurb: gay, conscript, army, South Africa, strength

Moffie is a beautifully written book about a gay man in the South African army. The novel focuses on Nicholas, a young man forced to fight in the Angolan Bush War. The shocking homophobia of the army makes life hard as he must hide his true identity from those around him.

Much of the book is based on the author’s own experience and this is obvious from the detail and vivid descriptions of the emotions involved. Unfortunately it also echoed real life in the way the plot developed – there were slow sections and then chapters where everything seemed to happen at the same time. It feels wrong to criticise a book for being too realistic, but I can’t help the fact that some sections in the middle bored me and I longed for the pace to pick up. Luckily things improved towards the end and I was impressed by the book as a whole.

The writing is best described as tender. The juxtaposition of the horrors of war with the gentle beauty of his relationships seemed to make everything more powerful.

He has survived a world I have only heard about, and getting through the army doesn’t scare him. I’m attracted to this confidence.
And so I learn a new love; one I have not yet experienced and one I don’t understand. It is the love of a friend. As we slip deeper into understanding each other, this love grows like ascending stairs; discovering new treads between the risers.

This book does contain some violent scenes, but these are kept to a minimum and the main impact comes from what is left unsaid. Instead the novel focuses on the day-to-day suffering caused by homophobic attitudes within the army and the general population.

It is a deserving winner of the Green Carnation prize and I hope that its win will bring the book to a wider audience.

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Categories
2012 Books in Translation Other Prizes

The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

The ThiefWinner of the 2010 Kenzaburo Oe Prize

Translated from the Japanese by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates

Five words from the blurb: pickpocket, strangers, past, tangle, escape

The Thief is a short, engaging book about a pickpocket who targets rich people on the streets of Tokyo. It vividly captures the roller-coaster of emotion that the pickpocket goes through as he searches for a victim and then skillfully relieves them of their wallet.

I breathed in gently and held it, pinched the corner of the wallet and pulled it out. A quiver ran from my fingertips to my shoulder and a warm sensation gradually spread throughout my body. I felt like I was standing in a void, as though with the countless intersecting lines of vision of all those people, not one was directed at me. Maintaining the fragile contact between my fingers and the wallet, I sandwiched it in the folded newspaper.

Very little actually happens in this short book. The plot is quite simple and revolves around the return of someone from the pickpocket’s past.

The writing quality was excellent and I was gripped to the story throughout, but on reaching the end I was slightly disappointed. Everything was too brief for me and, although I liked the ambiguous ending, a lot of the power was lost due to the subtlety of the writing.  The use of symbolism and other literary devices meant that this book will reveal more on a second reading, but I found the number of unanswered questions a little frustrating.

This isn’t a crime novel in the traditional sense, but instead uses members of the criminal underworld to explore issues of loneliness and belonging. It is a lot more conventional than many Japanese crime novels and actually shares many similarities with last year’s Booker shortlistee, The Lighthouse. 

The Thief is a well structured piece of observational literature, but it isn’t for anyone who likes everything to be tied up nicely at the end. Recommended to those who enjoy shorter stories that require a bit of thought to fully appreciate them.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

It’s sparsely written, just like its narrator, and it’s rather beautiful. Chasing Bawa

While the crime elements are all neatly in place in this book, it works on a deeper level as well, touching on the notions of psychological and social isolation,  as well as the machinations of power and fate. The Crime Segments

This is a powerful, powerful novel. I’ll be thinking about it for a long time… Dolce Bellezza

To find more Japanese literature reviews head over to Tony’s January in Japan blog.


Categories
2009 Books in Translation Other Prizes

Jerusalem by Gonçalo Tavares

JerusalemTranslated from the Portugese by Anna Kushner

Five words from the blurb: lonely, together, pain, human, impulses

I hadn’t heard of Tavares until Stu listed him as one of the best writers alive today. I decided to investigate and discovered that Saramago, one of my favourite authors, was also a fan, saying:

Tavares has no right to be writing so well at the age of 35. One feels like punching him! 

That was enough evidence for me. I immediately ordered myself a copy of Jerusalem and am very pleased that I’ve now discovered this amazing author.

Saramago was right. Tavares is an extremely good writer. The quality of the prose oozes from every sentence and it is possible to find beautiful quotes on every page. The writing was simple and engaging, but the clarity made every statement somehow seem profound.

The book focused on four characters: Ernst, who is about to commit suicide; Mylia, who is terminally ill; Hinnerk, who is walking the streets with a gun, and Theodor who is studying the relationship between history and atrocity.

…my greatest fear isn’t that the end of horror might mean the end of history, like the flatline of a man who’s just died, but rather that the graph doesn’t run to either of these extremes, but instead shows nothing but stasis, a terrifying consistency of horror over time, a sustained continuo of atrocity that leaves us no hope whatsoever.

The book was quick to read, with short chapters encouraging a fast pace. There was no central plot thread, but instead the details were woven together as the characters met and revealed their connections to each other.

I loved reading the entire book, but I’m afraid it wasn’t perfect. The ending felt a bit contrived and there were times when I felt the book was trying to be too clever.

I also found that the plot had no lasting impact on me – after just a few weeks I had forgotten almost everything about it.

Luckily these were minor problems. Tavares is clearly a very talented writer and Jerusalem contained lots of original ideas. I’m keen to read the rest of his books.

Recommended.

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Have you read any Tavares?

Are all his books this good?

Categories
2012 Books in Translation Other Prizes

The Human Part by Kari Hotakainen

The Human Part Translated from the Finnish by Owen F Witesman

Winner of France’s Prix du Courrier International and Finland’s Runeburg Prize

Five words from the blurb: author, sell, life, family, stories

The Human Part begins with an author approaching an elderly woman at a book fair. The author has writer’s block and with no idea what to write next he offers to buy the woman’s life story for €7000. She agrees, but after telling her story she begins to worry about the way he will depict certain events. The book cleverly shows how difficult relationships within a family can be and how an individual’s perception of a situation can be clouded by their history.

This book was instantly engaging and I fell in love with Salme, the elderly woman, and the way she wasn’t afraid to put her viewpoint across.

First of all, and in partial defense of myself, I should say that I do not like made-up books or the people who write them. It has always irritated me that they are taken seriously, that people get so immersed in them and listen carefully to the people who write them. I am now referring to the novels and other things on the shelves labelled “fiction” or “translated fiction”. It irritated me even more when Parvo and I found out that people go all the way to other countries to find these made-up stories and that people who have studied other languages transfer these obvious lies over into our language.

Her grumpiness charmed me and I quickly felt as though I knew her. The book did a fantastic job of explaining the complex mixture of emotions that exist within a family and how life changes as everyone grows up. There were some beautiful observations, some of which were really poignant:

…human sorrow comes from never being able to be the same age as one’s children.

As the book progressed it became more complex, with the author and Salme both presenting different versions of events. The reader must piece together the information to work out the truth, but unfortunately the big secret that looms over the whole book wasn’t that interesting. Once revealed it lost its mysterious power and so I found the ending a little disappointing. Despite this problem it was still a wonderful book, containing the perfect mixture of humor and darker moments. It is easy to see why this book has won so many prizes and I’m keen to try more of Hotakainen’s other books.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

 The whole book just oozes humanity, both in showing us the faulty and sometimes ugly side of human life and opinion, and in showing us love and understanding. Iris on Books

….a marvelous and fascinating tale… Nordic Book Blog

…with a satirical, tongue-in-cheek view of modern Finland, the novel ultimately descends into darkness… Reader Dad

Categories
2011 Commonwealth Writer's Prize Other Prizes

Pao by Kerry Young

Pao

Shortlisted for 2012 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize
Shortlisted for 2011 Costa Prize for Fiction

Five words from the blurb: Jamaica, Chinatown, business, political, transforming

Pao is only fourteen-year-old when he arrives in Jamaica in 1938; fleeing the violence of the Chinese revolution. He finds a home with his mother and brother in Chinatown and they try to adjust to life in a country that is very different from their own.

I immediately fell in love with Pao and his numerous money making schemes. His transformation from innocent child to powerful man was engaging to read, but as he grew up and his crimes became more serious I found that I was slowly distancing myself from him and by the end of the book I didn’t like him at all. This could be seen as a negative, but it is rare for characters to undergo such a developmental arc and I actually found this transformation impressive.

The book does a fantastic job of explaining the history of Jamaica. Details of the violence and unrest are sprinkled through the text, giving the reader a good understanding of how the country gained its independence from the British.

So what with all him bicycle talk I never get a chance to tell Zhang ’bout the commotion, and how the dockworkers bring the whole of the downtown to a standstill. But it no matter. Next day it all over town ’bout how Alexander Bustamante get arrested because they think he the one leading the strike, and how the English government probably going to send a commissioner to look into the disturbances, that is how they say it, even though nobody can see no point in that because everybody already know what the trouble is – no work, no food, and no hope that anything going get better.

The Jamaican dialogue took a little bit of time to get used to, but once I adjusted it gave the book a fantastic atmosphere. I think this is one of those books that would benefit from an audio version as I’m sure it would come across better if narrated by a native speaker instead of the voice inside my head!

The main problem with the narrative was that as the book progressed increasingly large periods of time were skipped – this gave the book a disjointed feel. Sometimes characters were returned to after a long absence and I felt as though I no longer knew who they were and this meant I didn’t care about them.

I also felt that the story was a bit dull. So much seemed to be going on around the periphery, but the central story lacked that magical spark.

This book did a lot to explain a period of history that I knew little about and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for fiction set in Jamaica.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

 …an extremely interesting novel, perfect for summer reading. A Reading Odyssey

….the way it is written was very distracting, and eventually weakens the story itself. Jules’ Book Reviews

 Pao is an utterly beguiling, unforgettable novel of race, class and creed, love and ambition, and a country in the throes of tumultuous change. Book Dilettante