Recent Readings.

Native Realm. A Search for Self-Definition by Sceslaw Milozs (translated from the Polish by Catherine S. Leach. University of California Press, 1981). 300 pages. Poland.

First of all, "Native Realm" is a work written by a poet. It's not a poetic book, yet there is something special in poets' way to constract the sentences which makes their prose simply beautiful.

Milozs' autobiography, but not in its usual sense, but rather an intellectual/ideological journey of a 20th century Eastern European intellectual whom he represents. While definitely a Polish poet, his home-country is harder to define (as is often the case in Eastern Europe). Born in the beginning of the last century in Russian empire, in Lithuanian countryside; early childhood in Russia, in Siberia where his father worked as an engineer building bridges: October Revolution days in Russia; settling in Wilno which had become a Polish city again, schoolyears in Wilno Catholic school and Wilno University - enviorment full of Polish patriotism/nationalism which pushes him toward Marxism (as it did also with lot of Jews who lived there); travels in Western Europe and a year passed in Paris; settling in Warsaw to work for Polish broadcasting; September 1939 managed to escape back to Vilnius which by this time had become a capital of independent Lithuania until 1940 the Soviet Union coup and occupation; journey back to Warsaw crossing 4 times the state borders; war years in German occupied Warsaw, surviving the Warsaw uprising; after the war representing communist Poland as a diplomat in the USA, distansing himself from communist ideology and after brief return to Poland emigrating to France. This is the geography his life-story takes place, but the narrative is more about his ideological growing and changing: Catholicism, Marxism, communism, humanism...

Something which made me think quite a lot was his criticism of Polish society's ultra-patriotism in 20s and 30s, its attemp to hold onto old (anachronistic) aristocratic customs, which in many cases also included anti-semitism and which in his clame was a big cause of Poland's misfortune during the WWII. Lot of material for thinking applying it to today's Estonia for example.

Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury (translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies. Archipelago Books, 2006). 539 pages. Lebanon.

A lyrical book about the fate of the Galilee Palestinians after the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.

The whole book is a monologue of a young man (actually about 40, but sounded young) as he speaks to an unconscious (dead) man, telling him stories about the Palestinians (in a very Arabic story-telling tradition). They have both been fighters, the older one - the younger one's intellectual father -being an archetypical fedayeen, now lying in hospital bed in coma; the younger one being unselected as non-fit for combat, has become a nurse. Both homeless men.

It's a story about homlessness, war, love and women... how the women carry on life while men choose fighting instead of living. The Palestinian forced flight from the villages in 1948, life in refugee camps, Lebanon civil war and massacre in Shatila camp... All this has been a reality for the Palestinians for almost 50 years. The author is not judgemental, doesn't point his finger to only one side in this complex issue, yet it's clear where his heart belongs - with the suffering people. The very first pages, I found myself a bit lost, disoriented as the story doesn't follow linear time-line, but quite soon everything fit in place and an epic story rolled out.

Through the protagonist the author doesn't criticize the endless fighting, but to my mind, questions it though - has it's been the best way, the wisiest, the most productive way for its people... and being a humanist he tends to sympathize rather with the women who carry on the life.

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. A Harvest Book, 1981). 260 pages. Italy.

Quite ambigous feelings after reading this book. In the end, quite tedious book for me, the last 4 pages I had to "chew" myself through. Yet, I think, I liked the narrative quite a bit - the little stories (beginning of different novels), were narrated rather vividly, I felt like watching a movie and I found the whole idea smart and intriguing, like a mystery... yet in the end while the story succumb into political allegory and the main story-line became boring, I lost interest.

I haven't given up on Calvino though, I think the next book could be "Invisible Cities" which I bought more than 10 years ago, but never got to reading it.

Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelmann (Penguin Books, 1992). 144 pages. USA.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (Scribner, 2009). 272 pages. Ireland.

It's amazing how well, smoothly written this novel is. I was totally immersed in it.

A story about a young Irish woman emigrating to the US, in Brooklyn in early 1950s. A glimpse of history - the economic hardships in Europe, a prosperity of America, race-relations (not only literally).

Eilis is an introverted girl, smart, analytical... Lot of reviewers have said that she was annoyingly passive, I don't find it so. But I found her to be strangely unemotional and passionless considering the young men she has close relations. The question remained to me - whether she didn't love Tony, whether it was her character - unpassionate?

A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous. Brief Thoughts.

A Woman in Berlin. Eight Weeks in the Conquered City. A Diary by Anonymous (translated from the German by Philip Boehm, Metropolitan Books 2005), 261 pages. Germany.

A diary written during the months of April till June of 1945 while the Soviet Army reached Berlin. It's an account of a civilian, a woman, a Berliner of the time when the old rules and laws didn't apply any more and when the new ones hadn't been established yet. When there was nothing to protect the civilians except their own wisdom and fate; when the hopes for the future were extremely vague.

The diary is written by a very intelligent, well-educated woman who is at the same time well down-on-earth. The text is smoothly written, well readable as the author was a journalist. It's a first-hand honest account of what the ordinary Berliners had to live through during the first weeks of the Soviets' victory - rape of women, looting of the city, hunger...
The raping of women by the Soviet soldiers has not been an unknown fact. I remember reading the novel "The Beach" by a Russian author Yuri Bondarev which dates to the same period and mentions the same things although it's a love story in the first place. It seems that because of the many circumstances (war, Nazi crimes) it was never truely considered a crime: and understandably, compared to the crimes committed by the Nazis, what did the little "fooling around" of the Soviet soldiers matter. I remember a former Soviet soldier telling in a British documentary that their soldiers just wanted to razvlekatsa - to have fun, considering what they had had to go through. And after reading this diary, it's quite believable that in most cases it really wasn't a punishment operation which was committed on German women. In lot of cases the men, mostly officers, even politely asked if they might.... although the answer yes was in the best interest of the woman. Yet I feel that the author's tone is not accusing, she sees the Soviets as less developed(!) and is even sympathetic toward them (being travelled to the Soviet Union in thirties, she was aware of the reality its citizens had been living in); besides describing the army's love of vodka and habit of stealing (watches seem the special obsession) and looting, the absence of manners, she also describes the real human side of some of the officers she encountered.
We see how the women coped with the ordeal, how they even joked about it to make the present better tolerable. And also how the German men dealt or not dealt with the raping of their women - how in so many cases the blame turned toward the victim rather than the true cause of the problem. In this way, it's rather the German men she is accusing in her calm but direct way.

A diary also gives a good insight of what were the attitudes of the ordinary Germans toward their leaders at the end of the war, their attitudes and fears towards the Russians, how they saw their future as a nation who had lost the war.

What suprised me the most was how contemporary the author sounded. Like a modern 21th century woman, especially taking into consideration that about 30 years earlier it was indecent for a lady to even utter the word leg (a fact I remember from Stefan Zweig's "Day of Yesterday", I think).

Well worth of reading.

The Emigrants by G.W. Sebald. Brief Thoughts.

The Emigrants by G.W. Sebald (translated from the German by Michael Hulse, A New Directions Book 1996) 237 pages. Germany.

A novel in 4 stories which the author tracks. The stories stand separately, the only connection they share is time-space in which they take place - the first half of the 20th century Europe. It's not a war-story nor a Holocaust story per se, as it doesn't describe the horrors directly but at the same time the dreadful shadow of Holocaust is present, is perceived through all the narrative. It shadows the lives of the characters while the author gathers the fragmets of their lives.

They are 4 Jews (one only 1/4 Jew, but it didn't "excuse" you in the eyes of Nazis) - different lives, different circumstances. Two of them have been living in exile long before the Nazis came to the power, one escapes from Germany in 1939 and one lives in France in thirties and returns to Germany when the war was already going on (as a 3/4 Aryan, he was just sent to the Easetern front, not in the camp). Neither of them was prosecuted directly, yet the suffering of their families, the ones they loved, the collective suffering of their nation was enough to break them psychically. And although they all lived many years after the war had ended, they lived in exiling themselves from life, aloof from life, feeling better in nature (or in art in one case) than in human surrounding.

Sebald doesn't do much explaining, but rather shares the fragments, facts he has gathered. The remainder you have to guess, you have to sense yourself and build the whole picture from the fragments. Photos of people, places, buildings which accompany the text help you in this process of perceiving the era. I guess, knowing the Europe's history would help reading this book. For example, you may think if the fact that one of the protagonist's family emigrated to the UK (by accident, as the real aim had been the USA) in 1899 from Lithuania, had something to do with the anti-Semitism then not infrequent at all in Russian Empire or was it beacuse of the economical reasons? Was his alienation from his wife a consequence of his confession of his actual origin (Jewishness)? Was the author's great-uncle's free submission to torture via electric shock "therapy" an attemp to lessen his pain (guilt) he felt because of what had happened in Europe with Jews while he was peacefully living in America? The author doesn't have the facts about the cause and he doesn't do interpreting.
Reading the description of the little girl's childhood in the beginning of the last century German village, written by one of the protagonist's mother during the Holocaust years in Germany (she died in the concentration camp during the war while her son was in the UK), I couldn't help but felt an immense sorrow - the life had been nice, peaceful, people went on with their lives; what was the madness that had to destroy it all! History has its cause, sometimes hidden from us... In the end, the Europe, the world emerged a totally different place.

Sebald's narrative is dense, thomasmann-like to my mind. The sentences are somehow heavy, the feeling which the German authors have always given me.
A text I would like to return to.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapy. Brief Thoughts.

Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon 2007), 352 pages. Iran.

It's hard to say anything new about the book. It has got a lot of publicity recently, being reviewed a lot.
It was my first graphic novel to read (not to consider childhood comics). I was just captured by it, it was difficult to put it down. Even that I had seen the movie "Persepolis" twice before I began to read the book.

It's enjoyable as a coming-to-age story, as a family story, as a story of Iran's history in the second half of the 20th century.
Satrapi has succeeded to balance quite well the serious subject and humour, so it's "digestable" to the broad audience.


As the author said in one of her interviews - the book is pro-Iranian, the opposite of the claims of the Iran government which has said that the book was anti-Iranian. I have to agree with Satrapi - the book shows you the very human side of this country, its people. How current considering latest developments there.

Fires on the Plain. Brief Thoughts.

Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka (translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris, 1957 Alfred A. Knopf) 246 pages. Japan.

I hadn't heard anything of this book nor the writer, found it by accident while browsing library's WWII books. But I'm glad I picked it up.

For many years, WWII existed in my consciousness primarily as Europe's war, especially as the Eastern front. This is what we learned at school, this is what the movies were about which I saw... Only later I fully realized that it truely was a world war. Yet I think that Fires on the Plain is the first novel I've ever read about the war on the Pacific.

The story is set during the few months in the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945 in a Filippine island Leyte. The Japanese army in the island is completly disorganized under the heavy attack of the Americans. On this background we see the protagonist's, Private Tamura's - excluded from his unit as too sick, mostly aimless wandering on the tropical island. Devoid of hope and almost from the very beginning aware of his inevitable death, still trying to survive. Sometimes delusional from starvation and exaustion. Now and then his isolation is broken and he finds a motive to go on. There is no heroism here, only heroism of trying to remain human while there seems to be only two options - dying as a human-being or losing your humanity. What struck me, was the total lack of comradship - at this stage of being, everybody is for himself only- your former fellow soldier may be the enemy for you, even more dangerous than the ones you knew as enemy before - homo homini lupus.

There was no colourful writing yet the result was vivid and powerful. The impression of starving soldiers, the remains of the once powerful army, barely marching through the tropical forests, trying to reach the far-away last post which their army is supposed to still hold, knowing that even this may not mean a rescue for them; the impression of soldiers in rags dying quietly from starvation...

I think it's an honest account and certainly a universal one which may apply on any war:

I could see that he was dead tired. I looked him over carefully to make sure
that he had nothing which I might need, then continued on my way.

It was strange to look at the uniforms that wrapped these transformed bodies
and to see how successfully they had survived their former owners.

"What, are you still here? You poor fellow! When I'm dead, you may eat
this."

How then could these dead people have lost their buttocks? My mind had
dropped the habit of logical reasoning, and it was not until one day I happened
to notice a body that still retained some trace of living suppleness and
suddenly felt a desire to eat its flesh, that the answer dawned on me.

Evidently there is also a philosophical/religious (Christian mysticism if I may call it this way) level in the book which I didn't fully comprehend.

The brief summary of the impression the book gave me with the words of the author:

Why was I not overcome with nausea? At the time I had no such reactions. Perhaps
nausea is simply an unconscious device of the egoist, who, when hears of horrors
outside the course of his present serene existence, allows only his stomach to
respond.

Reading Challenges

It's a bit late in the year, but I still decided to commit myself to a few reading challenges. To organize my reading and writing down my thoughts in English. I don't know if I'm able to produce any decent book reviews (it's been a while since I last wrote endless number of esseys on books in high- school), more so in English. But I think a little bit of mental challenge is good for me right now.
So I'm new in book blogging, not so new in reading though.
I intend to participate in 2 challenges, some books will count for both challenges.
Here are my initial lists which I may change according to if I get all the books I intend to read.

• War Through the Generations Reading Challenge 2009

My goal is to read at least 5 books from my list.

1. The Winter War by Antti Tuuri (translated from Finnish). Finnish-Russian war in 1939-1940.
2. The Living and the Dead by Konstantin Simonov (translated from Russian). Chaos on Eastern front in 1941.
3.Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka (translated from Japanese). Lost Japanese soldier in the Philippines.
4.Maus II. A Survivor's Tale. And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman. Holocause story, graphic.
5.April in Paris by Michael Wallner (translated from German). German soldier in Paris, French resistance.
6.A Woman in Berlin. Eight Weeks in the Conquered City. A Diary by Anonymous (translated from German). April-June 1945 in Berlin after the Russians had taken the city.
7.A Soldier's Legacy by Heinrich Böll (translated from German). German soldier in Normandy and on the Eastern front in 1943.
8.The Silence of the Sea by Vercors (translated from French). German soldier in France.
9.The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald (translated from German). Emigrants, concequences of the WW II and the Holocaust.
10.The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer. American soldiers on a Pacific island.
11.Ahasveeruse uni by Ene Mihkelson (in Estonian). Postwar years in Estonia. or Graves Without Crosses by Arved Viirlaid (translated from Estonian). Postwar years in Estonia, "forest-brothers" or Memories Denied by Imbi Paju (translated from Estonian) - 20th century history of Estonia, postwar years, Stalin's repressions.

• Orbis Terrarum 2009

My initial reading list:

1. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (translated from French) - Iran
2.Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka (translated from Japanese) - Japan
3.April in Paris by Michael Wallner (translated from German) - Germany or The Soldier's Legacy by Heinrich Böll (translated from German) - Germany or The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald (translated from German) - Germany.
4.The GULAG Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (translated from Russian) - Russia
5.The Winter War by Antti Tuuri (translated from Finnish) - Finland
6.To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - UK
7. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow - USA or The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer - USA
8.Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury (translated from Arabic) - Lebanon.
9. Black Docker by Sembene Ousmane (translated from French) - Senegal
10.Fragments of Memory: A Story of a Syrian Family by Hanna Minah (translated from Arabic) - Syria.
11.The Harp and the Shadow by Alejo Carpentier (translated from Spanish) - Cuba or Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes - Mexico
12.Native Realm. A search for Self-Defination by Czeslaw Milosz (translated from Polish) - Poland.