'The Last of the Vostyachs' by Diego Marani (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 15)

I have a thing for languages and linguistics, so I'm always happy to read books where language plays a leading role.  My final read for last year's IFFP Longlist, New Finnish Grammar, definitely fell into that category, meaning that I was especially happy when Diego Marani made it onto the longlist again this year.  The good news didn't end there. The Australian edition of his new book is about be released by Text Publishing, and I was lucky enough to get a review copy :)

*****
The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani (translated by Judith Landry - from Dedalus Books, my review copy from Text Publishing)
What's it all about?
We begin in Siberia, where Ivan (a local youth) has just been released from a prison camp.  After the death of his father in captivity, he hasn't spoken for years - for he is the last of the Vostyachs, a tribe speaking a language long thought extinct.  One day, he ventures into a village to trade furs - and happens to meet Olga, a Russian linguist who instantly realises what she has in front of her...

She is shortly to head off to an important conference in Helsinki, so she immediately contacts the convenor Professor Aurtova, an old colleague and an expert on Finno-Ugric languages.  Olga has new evidence (Ivan) linking Finnish to native-American languages, and she is burning to present the evidence - and the man - at the conference.  The thing is, this could destroy Aurtova's life's work; and when it comes to matters linguistic, he's not a man to be crossed...

The Last of the Vostyachs is  a book which really shouldn't work.  It's part Tarzan, part linguistics lecture, part pulp fiction, and it's less than two-hundred pages long.  It's a story of language death, academic selfishness, and linguistic and personal relationships - and (naturally) it's a great read :)  Marani is an expert at taking an esoteric subject and making the reader accept it as an important part of the plot, even for those who couldn't imagine anything more painful than pages of arguments about language families.

In parts, it's also a story about nature and civilisation coming into conflict.  Ivan, the wild boy, is plucked from his natural environment and sent off to a big city to be paraded in front of intellectuals at a conference.  Surprisingly though, he does learn to adapt after his initial disasters; it probably helps that Helsinki in winter is pretty much home territory for a man from Siberia...

Olga, the Russian linguist, is an interesting woman, a social scientist who is focused on her life's work, but not so blinded by success that she fails to take Ivan's feelings into account.  In a letter to Professor Aurtova, she looks at the ethics of pursuing remnants of tribes to preserve languages, wondering who really benefits:

" For a moment, I thought that it would be better to leave Ivan Vostyach there where he was, in his own land; that introducing him to people so different from himself would cause him suffering, make him feel even more alone." p.30 (Text Publishing, 2013)

"All in all, it probably doesn't matter if he carries on living among the Nganasan and forgets his Vostyach.  One peaceful human life is surely more important than the survival of the lateral affricative with labiovelar overlay." (p.32)

Does the survival of the lateral affricative with labiovelar overlay really matter that much?

The main character, however, is Professor Aurtova, a sociopathic user who will go to any lengths, sexual or violent, to get his way.  He  sees languages as invading forces and wishes to defend the purity of the Finno-Ugric family group, to the death, if necessary.  Towards the end of the book, he gives an extraordinary speech at the conference, a bizarre, racist rant about linguistic purity:

"In the world of mass culture, where the weaker languages are threatened by a new linguistic colonialism which stifles minority cultures, only ignorance can protect us from extinction.  My call to the new generations, here as in the former Soviet republics of Finnish stock, is therefore this: cherish ignorance, do not study the language of the foreigner, but force him to learn your own!" (p.164)

Erm... let's move on, shall we?

The Last of the Vostyachs is a very different book to New Finnish Grammar.  It's a lot more of a page-turner (with some farcical humour), and it lacks a little of the subtlety of Marani's previous novel in English.  Nevertheless, it's a great read, and it manages to come up with a surprising ending which turns the idea of language death on its head.  What else can I say?  More Marani translations, please :)

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
Although I enjoyed it, I'd have to say no - it's one which will finish just outside my top six.  A lighter book than New Finnish Grammar, it's still well worth reading, but I don't think it was up there with the top few books this year.

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
The panel obviously agreed with me.  A great read, but perhaps with not enough depth in a very strong year.  Having said that, there's at least one book on the shortlist that this one should have dislodged...

*****
One more stop to make on our IFFP travels, and (luckily enough) my virtual Hungarian visa has just arrived.  It's time to head off to the woods...

The Last Chronicle of IFFP 2012

As some of you may recall, I took part (not so long ago) in a rather audacious venture entitled the Shadow IFFP in which yours truly and a bunch of intrepid bloggers attempted to read all fifteen longlisted titles for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and second guess the opinions of the real panel - something we proved to be very bad at.  But isn't that all over, I hear you cry, past tense?  Well, not quite...

You see, I did my best to get through all of the fifteen titles, but in the end I was only able to notch up fourteen, my library, which had been amazing up to this point, failing to get my purchase request back to me on time.  Luckily, they didn't give up - and neither did I.  This post is review number fifteen; so, have I saved the best for last?

*****
What's it all about?
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (translated by Judith Landry) was shortlisted for the real prize, beaten to the award by some book I don't particularly wish to talk about now.  The story is set during the Second World War, but the plot actually has little to do with the war.  We are presented with a journal of sorts, written in Finnish, with an introduction and frequent commentaries from a navy medic, Doctor Friari.  The main writer is Sampo Karjalainen, a Finnish sailor (and amnesiac) found in Trieste after having been attacked and left for dead.

When the good doctor, a native Finn, sees the name sewn inside the sailor's coat, he realises that he must be a countryman and promptly decides to nurse him back to health - and teach him a little of the native language he appears to have forgotten.  Once back in Helsinki, Sampo sets about mastering the notoriously tricky Finnish vernacular, hopeful of recovering his memory and his past.  That depends of course on whether he has one - and whether Doctor Friari's assumption was correct..

I loved this book, but considering the subject matter that's not a huge surprise.  My background is in linguistics and intercultural communication, and the vital connection between language and culture is the cornerstone of the novel.  Poor Sampo is adrift in a strange world, bereft of his early experiences, and he clings to the language he has been told is his, desperately trying to master in the space of a few months what would normally take an adult a lifetime.

Marani is a master linguist, and his evocation of an adult learner's struggles with a new language is a delight, the bewildered seaman adrift on a sea of rounded vowels and nouns with fifteen declensions, grasping onto any recognisable sound emerging from a speaker's lips as if it were a lifebelt or a sturdy piece of flotsam.  Sampo listens and listens, enjoying the sound of the words even if he does not quite grasp the meaning, storing up vocabulary in his mind for later perusal.  However, despite his passion for the language, he can't help wondering whether Friari has made a mistake, one which will doom Sampo to failure; for as Friari himself remarks:

"A learnt language is just a mask, a form of borrowed identity; it should be approached with appropriate aloofness, and its speaker should never yield to the lure of mimicry, renouncing the sounds of his own language to imitate those of another.  Anyone who gives in to this temptation is in danger of losing their memory, their past, without receiving another in exchange." Dedalus Books, 2011 (p.52)

As much as the story is about Sampo and his struggles though, it is also about those characters who attempt to help him, unable to avoid the temptation of scribbling on the tabula rasa of his amnesiac personality.  Doctor Friari, a Finn forced to leave his homeland after the civil war, sees what he wants to see when he stumbles across poor Sampo, desperate to redeem himself and his family in the eyes of a fellow Finn.

When Sampo arrives in Helsinki, he finds himself under the wing of Pastor Olof Koskela, a charismatic, patriotic Lutheran minister, a man with a passionate knowledge of Finnish myths, determined to teach Sampo his forgotten heritage.  Where Koskela attempts to fill in linguistic and historical gaps, a nurse, Ilma Koivisto, tries to help him in a more emotional way.  Sadly, none of Sampo's benefactors are able to convince him that he really is Finnish.  The more time passes, the more doubts arise:

"I had a distinct suspicion that I was running headlong down the wrong road.  In the innermost recesses of my unconscious I was plagued by the feeling that, within my brain, another brain was beating, buried alive." p.77

This feeling of uncertainty pervades the novel until its climax; when we discover the truth, it is as shattering to the reader as it is to poor Sampo...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?

Absolutely.  New Finnish Grammar is a wonderful book, and easily finished up on my shortlist.  If you're not as interested in linguistics as I am (and that's a distinct possibility!), I can see how the constant language analysis might grate.  For me though, this book was an intelligent, thought-provoking study of the importance of language and culture to our mental well-being.  I wouldn't have minded at all if it had taken out the main prize :)

*****

And that's it!  Our trip to Helsinki means that the journey has finally come to an end, albeit a rather belated one.  I've thoroughly enjoyed my trip around the world, courtesy of the IFFP, but now it's back to the daily grind...

...of reviewing more translated fiction :)