A book for every country — A
I am reading one book from every country in the world, to document an ‘A to Z’ of world literature that rarely comes to light. This post starts with the “A’s” — from Afghanistan to Azerbaijan. Read more reviews on my blog.
AFGHANISTAN
Atiq Rahimi — Earth & Ashes (2000)
Setting: The Soviet-Afghan war.
What’s it about? An old man waits by the roadside with his grandson. Slowly his situation is revealed: his family have been killed by Soviet bombing, his grandson is deaf: “Why did the Russians take away everyone’s voices?”, he asks. The man agonises over how he will tell his son that his wife and mother are dead. A short novella but a tragically poignant vignette of a country wracked by conflict.
“You know, father, sorrow can turn to water and spill from your eyes, or it can sharpen your tongue into a sword, or it can become a bomb that one day will explode and destroy you…”
Why you should read it: Its a subtle but beautiful microcosm of the sorrows of war that can be applied to any point of Afghan history from the last forty years.
The definitive Afghan novel? Its got nothing about kites, but see instead Gulwali Passarlay’s autobiographical tale of the life of an Afghan refugee.
My rating: **
ALBANIA
Ismail Kadare — The Pyramid (1995)
Setting: Ancient Egypt.
What’s its about? The building of the pyramids as metaphor for communist rule. The premise is that Egypt’s rulers build pyramids to keep the populace in obeisance through suffering, whereas a taste of prosperity would make them demand even more.
What does it tell us about Albania? It is obviously based on the Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, but its more political philosophy than specifically Albanian.
Why you should read it: For the pleasure of considering the double-meaning in every sentence, at once story and critique of totalitarianism.
Read more: The Siege, a forensic account of an Ottoman siege of an Albanian castle and the political intrigues that drive history on. A medieval West Wing. One for history buffs.
You’ll like this if you liked: Kafka, Darkness at Noon, Gogol.
My rating: **
(*=Not bad, not missing anything. **=Good, worth reading. ***=Amazing, must read).
ALGERIA
Albert Camus — The Outsider (1942) / Kamel Daoud — The Meursault Investigation (2013)
Setting: Colonial & Post-colonial Algeria
Two for the price of one: The Outsider is the ultimate introduction to francophone literature, but its dehumanisation of Arab characters makes it more dated every year. I have always wanted to see the story told from the point of view of the mother of “The Arab” shot by Meursault on the beach: watching the murder trial that turns on whether the killer cried at his own mother’s burial.
The plot of The Outsider feels like its set in France, which is what Camus and other colonialists thought Algeria was. But the book is worth reading for the sheer elegance of its sparse, simple prose.
Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J’ai reçu un télégramme de l’asile : « Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués. » Cela ne veut rien dire. C’était peut-être hier.
Fortunately two writers have redressed the balance. Kamel Daoud tells the story from the perspective of the murdered Arab’s brother, while his sisters tale is told by Leila Abouleila’s The Insider, a radio drama. The Meursault Investigation is post-colonial Algeria’s retort.
So much of the book and the brother is the antithetical to The Outsider: the narrative is more frenetic and rambling, literally a drunk talking to you in a bar; Relationships are more complicated (“Mama’s still alive today. She doesn’t say anything now, but there are many tales she could tell.”).
The brother’s monologue rejects colonialism but is at the same time trapped by it, and by the shadow of departed relatives:
“For centuries, the settler increases his fortune, giving names to whatever he appropriates and taking them away from whatever makes him feel uncomfortable. If he calls my brother “the Arab,” it’s so he can kill him the way one kills time, by strolling around aimlessly.”
What does it tell us about Algeria? While it scorns the departed coloniser, it is brutally honest about the failings of postcolonial Algeria, into which the narrator struggles to fit.
Why you should read them: The Outsider for the prose and the blind self-assurance with which the colonialist stumbles through life. The Meursault Investigation for a demolition of that world.
The definitive Algerian novel? Perhaps not. See rather Mohammed Dib’s The Fire a raging beast of a novel seething with anger against French colonialism, in stark contrast to the existentialist passivity of The Outsider.
Background: Debate still rages on Camus’ own position on empire, his book’s failure to address colonialism.
My rating: **
ANGOLA
Jose Eduardo Agualusa — A General Theory of Oblivion (2015)
Setting: 20th century Luanda
What’s it about? A series of parallel lives in the long era of conflict following Angola’s independence from 300 years of Portuguese colonial rule. The events, set during a “bleak era of internationalised war and socialism”, are largely from the perspective of a Portuguese settler who walls herself into her apartment as colonialism ends. A agoraphobe, we see her learn to take care of herself, growing food on her balcony and trapping pigeons when her stocks run low. For some reason I find great pathos in the scene where she befriends, then kills and eats a monkey who finds his However it weaves the stories of several other characters into the narrative, thus providing a broad perspective on post-colonial Angola: the Portuguese mercenaries left behind, the revolutionaries betrayed by political machinations, and ordinary people trying to survive in a violent time. Its simple, sparse yet compelling reading as their lives intersect.
What does it tell us about Angola? A fast-forward vision of a country’s transformation from colony to oil-rich oligarchy in half a century.
Why you should read it: Its a simple but entertaining narrative that alludes at bigger events without delving into them.
Background: One small, petty act sums up the poisoned gift of decolonisation that forms the backdrop of this book:
“Fourteen years ago, the departing Portuguese poured concrete down the elevator shafts…” [From an article in the LA Times]
Further reading: The book is part of a great LRB article on Angola’s war against apartheid by Jeremy Harding.
Tip: Agualusa’s book was part of The Financial Times’ pick of the year — the only review of 2015 literature I know of that had a section for translated fiction.
My rating: **
ANTIGUA & BARBADA
Jamaica Kincaid — Lucy (1990)
Setting: East Coast USA
What it’s about: A live-in nanny from “the islands” becomes the witness who lays bare the hypocrisy of a wealthy US family.
Why you should read it: For the compelling, but hard-to-read, exposure of dark secrets from the narrator and the people around her.
You’ll like this if you liked: Wide Saragossa Sea.
My rating: *
ARGENTINA
Ricardo Guiraldes — Don Segundo Sombra (1926)
Setting: The Pampa -Argentina’s lowlands.
What’s it about? Idealised pastoral coming-of-age cowboy tale set in the Argentine Pampa. While it gives a very sanitised, idealised vision of life as a cow-herd, it is built on a touching relationship between a troubled orphan and a mysterious drifter. However, it is bereft of any politics and race that must be present in a ranchers society built on generations of oppression of indigenous peoples.
You’ll like this if you liked: Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Jack London, Zorba the Greek, John Williams’ Butchers’ Crossing.
Why you should read it: A simple, charming coming-of-age novel, rather let down by its ending and the lack of ambiguity of any of its characters.
What it tell us about Argentina? They like their mate! It tells you more about how urban Argentina idealised its rural past rather than the actual reality of that past.
The definitive novel? Not Jorge Luis Borges and his short stories? I never got into this fantastical stories, and didn’t get a feel for Argentina from them. This is another side of Argentina beyond Buenos Aires — however fancyful (though it probably tells you a lot more about how the bourgeois perceived the countryside than it actually was).
Still on my list: Anything about life under the Junta.
My Rating: *
ARMENIA
Axel Bakunts — The Dark Valley (1927)
Setting: Armenia just before and after Soviet rule
What’s it about? Short stories full of pathos: raw and unforgiving pictures of rural life. His realism cost him his life in Stalin’s purges.
It’s worth reading for the vivid descriptions of Caucasian nature, always with a dark undertone which leads to the dark reality of peasant life. The outside world sometimes intrude heavily on the inhabitants of the valley, but most often is brutally honest about their own human flaws, exposed in small vignettes of village life.
Still on my list: Something that engages with the Armenian Genocide — though the events may be too terrible for literature to express.
My rating: *
AUSTRALIA
Peter Carey — The Kelly Gang (2000)
Setting: 19th century Australian outback
What’s it about? A cowboy/gangster movie in the outback, where the heroes are Irish convicts. Turns history on its head by telling the infamous gang’s history from their perspective: a serious of injustices carried out by a brutal state and police force against the Kelly family. It also describes a PR war between the gang and the police for the support of the community. As in other Carey novels the vernacular style of the narration (told through the fictional pen of Ned Kelly himself) gives the novel a great pace — making it a quick and pleasant read.
The police are a menacing presence from the start:
“Into this shadowy world Sgt O’Neil did come with queer white hair which he were always combing like a girl before a dance he were v.friendly with us children and on the night in question he brung me the gift of a pencil.”
My rating: **
AUSTRIA
Robert Seethaler — A Whole Life (2013)
Setting: 20th century Austrian Alps
What’s it about? The life of an orphan, labourer, farmer, widower, soldier, Alpine guide.
The arrival of tourism and the construction of ski lifts transforms his life.
When the builders arrive “resembling an enormous herd of cattle”, he hesitates to join the cheering crowds:
“He felt despondent, without knowing why. Perhaps it had something to do with the rattling of the engines, the noise that suddenly filled the valley. Nobody knew when it would go away again, or whether it could go away again.”
Why you should read it: An easy read because it is easy to sympathise with the protagonist; rather too easy given the period in which the book is set. He rarely makes any difficult choices, and World War II and several years in the gulag pass by a bit too quickly.
The definitive Austrian novel? I am happy for an alternative to Joseph Roth and the classics The Radetzky March and The Emporer’s Tomb which provide colourful portraits of the Habsburg Empire, but are too stiff and caught up in bourgeois concerns like army rank and procedure, feeling a step removed from real life.
What does it tell us about Austria? A realistic portrait of pre-tourism Alpine Austria — a different Austria from Vienna and its ringstrasse.
Still on my list: Meir Wiener — The Downfall of Ele Falek. I would still like to read more about working-class life under the Habsburgs.
My rating: *
Azerbaijan
Sabir Ahmadli — various short stories
What’s it about? Strong, sardonic stories of war during and after the fall of communism. Some stories are almost reportage, others are fantastical, like the story told by a dead protestor floating at sea writing a letter to their mother, whose story is interrupted by seals bumping into him (“Mother, one moment, so many seals are swimming around me here in the sea!”).
My rating: *
Pick of the bunch:
Earth and Ashes
For its simple but overwhelming style and the overwhelming pathos contained within just a few simple scenes.
Gaps: Left out Andorra and Aruba.
Help needed:
Next up come the Bs: any tips for great books from the Bahamas, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brunei or Bulgaria?
More books here: https://uk.pinterest.com/tcoombes/a-book-for-every-country/
