The second book of Kadare's that I have read. Whereas the first that I read, Chronicle in Stone, presented the reality of WW2, The Palace of Dreams is set in an Ottoman Empire that never seems quite real - it is halfway between reality and fantasy.
The story is that of Mark-Alem, a member of the powerful but cursed Quprili family. He is sent to the Palace of Dreams and given a job. The Palace of Dreams, or Tabir Sarrail, is where the dreams of the entire Empire are sorted and stored and interpreted. In particular, signs of political unrest or plots against the state are carefully looked for. Mark-Alem experiences bewilderment at the intricate workings of the Tabir Sarrail but soon finds himself rising through the ranks.
I enjoyed this little book. Not the best book I've ever read, but enjoyable. I found that it was a little slow to start, but picked up about halfway through and eventually the slow beginning made sense in relation to the rest of the plot. I didn't identify with Mark-Alem at first - he spends a lot of his time being confused and tired - but by the end I found him to be more sympathetic. The plot and construction were a lot more subtle than I had been expecting also: instead of the towering vision of something like 1984 for example, Kadare's presentation of oppression was a lot more subtle and more of a political intrigue, which did make for interesting reading. And the basic premise and history of the Quprili family were well imagined without being overly fantastical - they were believable.
Interestingly, the symbol of the Chronicle appears here again, just as in Chronicle in Stone. I wonder if this is a recurring theme in Kadare's work? I shall just have to read more of his books to find out, something that I look forward to.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Having discovered my unexpected interest in sci-fi (never would have thought it) after reading 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale, I thought I'd try some by Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982, American) who is rather well known and has a large cult following I believe. So I saw this volume in Waterstones and having just got turned down for yet another job I thought I'd buy it to cheer myself up.
Probably not the best book to do that! The scenario behind The Man in the High Castle is that the Nazis and Japanese won WW2 and have now divided the American continent between them, with a kind of no-man's-land in the Rockies. The Nazis have carried out a Final Solution in Africa, leaving it as a radioactive wasteland and doing awful things to the corpses of the Africans. The action of the novel takes place in the Pacific side of the USA (now the PSA and run by the Japanese, although a strong Nazi presence is also there). So not the most cheering of scenarios, but an interesting concept.
The narrative follows several different characters - Mr. Tagomi (a Japanese official), Frank Frink (a Jew), Robert Childan (a shopkeeper specialising in American historical artefacts), and the mysterious Mr Baynes, among others. The narratives of these characters never quite interconnect but the actions of each have repercussions on the lives of the others.
The book is so called because of an important undercurrent to the narrative - a book in circulation despite its being banned in Nazi-controlled areas, entitled 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy', in which its author - the Man in the High Castle - imagines a world where the Allied forces won WW2 - in other words, the world that we, the reader, inhabit.
In terms of this writing, this book is quite unusual. A lot of the prose is written with the articles ('a' and 'the') quite often absent, perhaps to imitate the Japanese way of talking and thinking that is now the norm in the PSA. Many of the characters also consult the I-Ching and much of the book is made up of this, and of abstract philosophical musings. Also there are lots of snippets of German - something that I found quite hard as I don't speak a word. So it reads quite strangely, and took a while for me to get into.
My reaction to this book? Not what I expected at all, and surprisingly intellectual! Having just finished it, I feel like I didn't understand a word! Sometimes I feel like I have a hold on the underlying message of the book and other times I feel completely nonplussed. From second to second it changes from a vividly imagined political commentary juxtaposing disparate utopic and distopic visions of the past/present to the 'potpourri of pointlessness' to use Dick's own turn of phrase.
For me, this book failed to hit the mark. Perhaps because I don't really understand it, but also I think because of the way it is constructed. The separateness of the characters, and the way that the narrative flashes between them, meant that as a reader I didn't really get to know any of them particularly well, none of them becoming particularly sympathetic, and no clear protagonist emerging. This is probably intentional by Dick, however, for me as a reader it meant that I didn't really identify with any of the characters and never really got into the plot as a result. And due to my complete lack of knowledge I found the German and I-Ching sections rather isolating.
Conclusion? One I might read again, more carefully, and having done extensive research into the I-Ching and philosophy!
Probably not the best book to do that! The scenario behind The Man in the High Castle is that the Nazis and Japanese won WW2 and have now divided the American continent between them, with a kind of no-man's-land in the Rockies. The Nazis have carried out a Final Solution in Africa, leaving it as a radioactive wasteland and doing awful things to the corpses of the Africans. The action of the novel takes place in the Pacific side of the USA (now the PSA and run by the Japanese, although a strong Nazi presence is also there). So not the most cheering of scenarios, but an interesting concept.
The narrative follows several different characters - Mr. Tagomi (a Japanese official), Frank Frink (a Jew), Robert Childan (a shopkeeper specialising in American historical artefacts), and the mysterious Mr Baynes, among others. The narratives of these characters never quite interconnect but the actions of each have repercussions on the lives of the others.
The book is so called because of an important undercurrent to the narrative - a book in circulation despite its being banned in Nazi-controlled areas, entitled 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy', in which its author - the Man in the High Castle - imagines a world where the Allied forces won WW2 - in other words, the world that we, the reader, inhabit.
In terms of this writing, this book is quite unusual. A lot of the prose is written with the articles ('a' and 'the') quite often absent, perhaps to imitate the Japanese way of talking and thinking that is now the norm in the PSA. Many of the characters also consult the I-Ching and much of the book is made up of this, and of abstract philosophical musings. Also there are lots of snippets of German - something that I found quite hard as I don't speak a word. So it reads quite strangely, and took a while for me to get into.
My reaction to this book? Not what I expected at all, and surprisingly intellectual! Having just finished it, I feel like I didn't understand a word! Sometimes I feel like I have a hold on the underlying message of the book and other times I feel completely nonplussed. From second to second it changes from a vividly imagined political commentary juxtaposing disparate utopic and distopic visions of the past/present to the 'potpourri of pointlessness' to use Dick's own turn of phrase.
For me, this book failed to hit the mark. Perhaps because I don't really understand it, but also I think because of the way it is constructed. The separateness of the characters, and the way that the narrative flashes between them, meant that as a reader I didn't really get to know any of them particularly well, none of them becoming particularly sympathetic, and no clear protagonist emerging. This is probably intentional by Dick, however, for me as a reader it meant that I didn't really identify with any of the characters and never really got into the plot as a result. And due to my complete lack of knowledge I found the German and I-Ching sections rather isolating.
Conclusion? One I might read again, more carefully, and having done extensive research into the I-Ching and philosophy!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
77 Love Sonnets by Garrison Keillor
I got this beautiful little book as a gift. It comes with 2 CDs of Garrison reading and singing the sonnets, which I loved. I am a big fan of his, I love the Lake Woebegon stories - I have never read them, only listened to them on tape. So the fact that I could read and listen to these sonnets was lovely.
After reading the first two sonnets my reaction was "wow! these are really good!" and this reaction continued to the end of the collection. Not to say that there aren't some weaker ones, but I was struck by how cleverly Keillor uses the sonnet form. I loved the references to earlier sonnets, for example in 'My Love' which references Bunyan, Herrick, Marlowe...but the real strength of this collection is Keillor's observations of ordinary humanness and exquisitely playful matching of language and form.
I loved this little book. Lots of it's about love, lots about sex, lots about growing old, and lots about ordinary people, and lots of other themes to boot. Beautifully written sonnets with Keillor's own brand of tender humour. Loved it.
After reading the first two sonnets my reaction was "wow! these are really good!" and this reaction continued to the end of the collection. Not to say that there aren't some weaker ones, but I was struck by how cleverly Keillor uses the sonnet form. I loved the references to earlier sonnets, for example in 'My Love' which references Bunyan, Herrick, Marlowe...but the real strength of this collection is Keillor's observations of ordinary humanness and exquisitely playful matching of language and form.
I loved this little book. Lots of it's about love, lots about sex, lots about growing old, and lots about ordinary people, and lots of other themes to boot. Beautifully written sonnets with Keillor's own brand of tender humour. Loved it.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary
Full title 'Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes'. Really good book, I highly recommend and I think it would do the world a load of good if everybody read it, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
First of all, let me say that I am a devout atheist, but that I have friends who are Christian and friends who are Muslim and friends who are Buddhists and Hindus and atheists and agnostics etc. etc. Basically, I look in a religious debates as an outsider and 99% of the time it sounds like everyone is spouting complete rubbish and not listening to each other. So it was nice to read a book as balanced and informative as Destiny Disrupted.
Ansary takes the reader from the birth of Islam and the life of the Prophet through to our post-9/11 world. All the major and many minor events in the history of the Arab peoples and Islam are covered, from the original khalifas (Mohammed's immediate successors and trusted followers) through the Crusades and the Mongol invasion, from the Abassids and Umayyads to the Turks and Persians, from Akbar the Great to Ahmadinejad, from the house of Ibn Saud to the Ottomans to the Secular Modernists, from Jamaluddin-i-Afghan to Osama bin Laden.
Not everything in this book sits comfortably; I'm British and a lot of the railing against European Colonialism touched a socially-conditioned nerve of mine, but every point that Ansary made about this was valid, and there was an equal amount of railing against Arab mistakes too. I didn't agree with everything in the book, and I wish that Ansary had touched a bit more on current conflicts, the rise of the Taliban and Muslim Brotherhood, etc, as well as the life of women in the Arab world. However, the book was balanced (between Arab and Western, and between 'moderate' and 'fundamentalist' Islamic sensibilities) and written wonderfully. Ansary has a real feel for the interconnectedness of events and a sensitivity to both the 'Middle World' and the 'West', having lived in both. Also, he's a pretty good story teller, making even the driest of religious doctrines readable and understandable to your average outsider. After reading this book, I understand so much better what the Islamic faith is about, what makes it different from and similar to Christianity, and how history has led our two civilisations to the conflicts that are now raging.
Ansary refrains from calling the current conflicts raging around the world and the events leading up to them as a 'clash of civilisations', instead making a convincing argument for calling them two mismatched world views. This isn't the only book to read on the subject of Islam, or the 'mismatch' of our two cultures, but it's a brilliant place to start, and I wish that more people would read it. Maybe that way we'd understand each other a little bit more.
First of all, let me say that I am a devout atheist, but that I have friends who are Christian and friends who are Muslim and friends who are Buddhists and Hindus and atheists and agnostics etc. etc. Basically, I look in a religious debates as an outsider and 99% of the time it sounds like everyone is spouting complete rubbish and not listening to each other. So it was nice to read a book as balanced and informative as Destiny Disrupted.
Ansary takes the reader from the birth of Islam and the life of the Prophet through to our post-9/11 world. All the major and many minor events in the history of the Arab peoples and Islam are covered, from the original khalifas (Mohammed's immediate successors and trusted followers) through the Crusades and the Mongol invasion, from the Abassids and Umayyads to the Turks and Persians, from Akbar the Great to Ahmadinejad, from the house of Ibn Saud to the Ottomans to the Secular Modernists, from Jamaluddin-i-Afghan to Osama bin Laden.
Not everything in this book sits comfortably; I'm British and a lot of the railing against European Colonialism touched a socially-conditioned nerve of mine, but every point that Ansary made about this was valid, and there was an equal amount of railing against Arab mistakes too. I didn't agree with everything in the book, and I wish that Ansary had touched a bit more on current conflicts, the rise of the Taliban and Muslim Brotherhood, etc, as well as the life of women in the Arab world. However, the book was balanced (between Arab and Western, and between 'moderate' and 'fundamentalist' Islamic sensibilities) and written wonderfully. Ansary has a real feel for the interconnectedness of events and a sensitivity to both the 'Middle World' and the 'West', having lived in both. Also, he's a pretty good story teller, making even the driest of religious doctrines readable and understandable to your average outsider. After reading this book, I understand so much better what the Islamic faith is about, what makes it different from and similar to Christianity, and how history has led our two civilisations to the conflicts that are now raging.
Ansary refrains from calling the current conflicts raging around the world and the events leading up to them as a 'clash of civilisations', instead making a convincing argument for calling them two mismatched world views. This isn't the only book to read on the subject of Islam, or the 'mismatch' of our two cultures, but it's a brilliant place to start, and I wish that more people would read it. Maybe that way we'd understand each other a little bit more.
The next book I want to see is a collaboration between both Western and Arabic/Islamic historians, comparing within the same book these two mismatched world views. If any historians read this....
Friday, June 3, 2011
PS
sorry about the layout at the moment, I know that I always hate it on blogs when the labels etc. aren't immediately obvious. Can't actually see why everything is at the bottom, Blogger seems to think it's at the side but is displaying it at the bottom. No idea how to fix this but I will investigate! ;)
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
The second book by Carter that I have read. The basic story is that Evelyn is an Englishman living in a crumbling America. He treats his lover Leilah badly, and so is captured by a fertility goddess and forced to have a sex change, in order that he a) gets a taste of his own medicine and b) repopulates the world by getting himself pregnant. And yes, it is as weird and grotesque as it sounds.
The basic premise of the story (chauvinist pig gets turned into a woman so he sees how he likes it) sounded promising - profound but with room for some dark humour. But this story went off at completely the opposite direction to what I expected. In fact I was a little disappointed - it isn't the story I expected, and it isn't the story I would have written.
This being Carter of course, the book is full of vivid description, poetic and grotesque language, and enough symbolism to sink a ship. In fact I've decided taht the way Carter writes is not so much in terms of a coherent plot, but more a string of vivid and symbolic scenes strung together by common characters. If you want a plot, don't read this book. However, Carter's vision is vividly painted and if you want a profound and challenging read then this is the book for you.
The depiction of a crumbling America was perhaps my favourite part of this book. It is horribly described, the first thing Evelyn sees when he arrives in America is a man who has just been stabbed, and it gets more and more horrible as the book continues. However Carter's vision of America was very interesting and imaginative. Surreal, but interesting, and not incomparable with the worlds of Fitzgerald and Steinbeck.
In all I was disappointed with this book. Hard to explain why. I think it's because there is no subtlety about Carter's message. Instead of allowing the message to develop through plot and characters, she thrusts it down the reader's throat with heavy-handed symbolism and gore. I found the fertility goddess's chant (something along the lines of Oedipus this, Oedipus that, Jocasta Jocasta Jocasta!) among other aspects ridiculous and actually laughable. There is no subtlety here, absolutely none, and boy did I miss it! The understated vividness of Austen and George Eliot, the poetry of the Brontes, the real-world believability of Iris Murdoch, the sharply-observed and humourously constructed messages of Jeanette Winterson's work...Carter stands out against the canon of great female writers for her surrealist and unflinchingly hideous descriptions, but she lacks, despite the scholarly references peppering The Passion of New Eve, the intelligence and wit of other female writers past and present. I found her writing interesting when I read The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman, but found New Eve hard to swallow.
I know it's simplistic but I rate this 4.5 / 10, and would only read it again if I were studying it!
Not that I've consigned Carter to the back of the bookshelf, mind, but it will be a while before I read her again of my own free choice.
The basic premise of the story (chauvinist pig gets turned into a woman so he sees how he likes it) sounded promising - profound but with room for some dark humour. But this story went off at completely the opposite direction to what I expected. In fact I was a little disappointed - it isn't the story I expected, and it isn't the story I would have written.
This being Carter of course, the book is full of vivid description, poetic and grotesque language, and enough symbolism to sink a ship. In fact I've decided taht the way Carter writes is not so much in terms of a coherent plot, but more a string of vivid and symbolic scenes strung together by common characters. If you want a plot, don't read this book. However, Carter's vision is vividly painted and if you want a profound and challenging read then this is the book for you.
The depiction of a crumbling America was perhaps my favourite part of this book. It is horribly described, the first thing Evelyn sees when he arrives in America is a man who has just been stabbed, and it gets more and more horrible as the book continues. However Carter's vision of America was very interesting and imaginative. Surreal, but interesting, and not incomparable with the worlds of Fitzgerald and Steinbeck.
In all I was disappointed with this book. Hard to explain why. I think it's because there is no subtlety about Carter's message. Instead of allowing the message to develop through plot and characters, she thrusts it down the reader's throat with heavy-handed symbolism and gore. I found the fertility goddess's chant (something along the lines of Oedipus this, Oedipus that, Jocasta Jocasta Jocasta!) among other aspects ridiculous and actually laughable. There is no subtlety here, absolutely none, and boy did I miss it! The understated vividness of Austen and George Eliot, the poetry of the Brontes, the real-world believability of Iris Murdoch, the sharply-observed and humourously constructed messages of Jeanette Winterson's work...Carter stands out against the canon of great female writers for her surrealist and unflinchingly hideous descriptions, but she lacks, despite the scholarly references peppering The Passion of New Eve, the intelligence and wit of other female writers past and present. I found her writing interesting when I read The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman, but found New Eve hard to swallow.
I know it's simplistic but I rate this 4.5 / 10, and would only read it again if I were studying it!
Not that I've consigned Carter to the back of the bookshelf, mind, but it will be a while before I read her again of my own free choice.
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