'Exposure' by Sayed Kashua (Review - IFFP 2014, Number 11)

After a little time in Iraq, today's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize stopover takes us to Israel, where we'll hang around in Jerusalem and meet a couple of the country's Arab inhabitants.  They're very different people, but their lives are inextricably bound - by a small scrap of paper...

*****
Exposure by Sayed Kashua - Chatto & Windus
(translated by Mitch Ginsberg)
What's it all about?
We first meet a lawyer in Jerusalem, a young Arab living in comfort with his wife and two children.  While he's happy with his lot, he knows deep down that he has missed out on certain facets of a more cultural upbringing, so he likes to buy books from time to time (even if he doesn't always read them...) in an attempt to build up some cultural street cred.

One day though, after buying a copy of Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, he finds that he's getting more than he bargained for.  Inside the book, there's a love letter - one which the lawyer is convinced is in his wife's handwriting.  It's at this point that we jump back a few years to a second strand of the story, one in which a young social worker is about to meet an attractive young woman.  Perhaps the lawyer's suspicions aren't that far off the truth...

Exposure is an interesting, highly plot-driven book, a novel which, in addition to constructing a race against time over two different periods, takes a look at the lives of the (successful) Arabs of the Israeli state:

"Lawyers, accountants, tax advisors, and doctors - brokers between the noncitizen Arabs and the Israeli authorities, a few thousand people, living within Jerusalem but divorced from the locals among whom they reside.  They will always be seen as strangers, somewhat suspicious, but wholly indispensable."
p.10 (Chatto & Windus, 2013)

Our lawyer is a prime representative of these people, and he has become fairly successful in his dealings with the poorer Arabs living in Jerusalem.

The social worker is a different story.  He has just started out on his professional path, wasting his time in a clinic where there's very little to do.  An outsider from a young age, he's in no hurry to return to his village, detesting the overgrown children who strut about there:

"I couldn't figure out how it was that these overgrown kids could still intimidate me.  You idiots, you assholes, if only you knew what I know.  If only you knew what you look like to people who don't live in these little hole-in-the-wall towns.  If only you could see how lame your lives are.  If you had even the slightest awareness of your social status, you'd lock yourself up in your house and never come out." (p.273)

However, he's also struggling to find a place for himself in a confusing, alien society, a second-class citizen living amongst the elite.  It's then that he begins a part-time job looking after a young Jewish man in a coma, a man who he actually resembles physically.  This resemblance leads to an idea which will both change his life and threaten the lawyer's attempts to track him down years later.

This book was published in the US under the title Second Person Singular, and both the title and the cover (with an Arab man hiding his face behind a book with a Jewish man's face on the cover) hint at a subtle, literary text.  This UK version, by contrast, is going for more of a thriller vibe, with its short title, familiar thriller-style design and an intriguing blurb:

"Maybe it was just a game, I don't know.  But suddenly, I was someone else, someone unfamiliar, foreign..."

Having read the book, I tend to think that the British publisher had the right idea - this is a book to pitch to thriller readers, not fans of literary fiction...

Did it deserve to make the shortlist?
No, sorry, not in my opinion.  It's not a bad book - although it starts very slowly, the pace slowly increases, and it's definitely a page-turner.  The two-strand idea works well, culminating in a meeting which closes the story off nicely (I'm still not completely sure whether the ending is clever or cheesy though...).  It's not really a book that I'd expect to see in this kind of prize, however, with some fairly pedestrian prose in places.

While it's actually not the worst of the books I've read from the longlist so far, I'd have been very disappointed if this had made it into the final six.  Which is not to say that I wouldn't recommend it.  If you like the sound of this plot, please go ahead and read it - just don't expect anything too profound...

Why didn't it make the shortlist?
I'm not really sure why it made the longlist, to be honest...

*****
Well, moving on from Israel, it's time to pack up and head off to Japan, where we'll be meeting a whole array of characters in a fairly short book.  Once again, however, things beneath the surface are a lot darker than they first appear - if you were looking forward to a happy read, you might be waiting a while...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Seven

Today's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize review is of the second of the two Israeli books on the longlist.  However, this one is not set in modern-day Israel, but rather in eastern Europe, during a very familiar period of world history.  A warning before we set off - today's story is not one for claustrophobes...

*****
Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld (translated by Jeffrey M. Green)
What's it all about?
The setting is a small Ukrainian town during the Second World War, a place where the many Jewish inhabitants are preparing for the worst.  As the German occupying troops slowly begin to empty the town of Jews, parents attempt to smuggle their children into the mountains, where, hidden with peasant families, they will be relatively safe.

This is to be Hugo's fate too; however, unable to find a trustworthy companion for her son, Hugo's mother decides instead to put the life of her eleven-year-old in the hands of her good friend Mariana - a woman who happens to be a prostitute.  Instead of hiding out in the mountains then, our young friend spends the closing days of World War Two hidden in a cupboard at the local brothel.  Will he be discovered by the Germans?  More importantly, will he escape from the experience with his morals intact...

The majority of Blooms of Darkness is spent with Hugo, either in his cupboard or in Mariana's room, and this lends the book the claustrophobic atmosphere I mentioned at the start of the post.  Hugo initially sees Mariana as a sort of ersatz mother, but the longer he stays, the more the relationship changes, the unreal isolation corrupting their feelings for each other.

This relationship between Hugo and Mariana will probably cause problems for many readers of Blooms of Darkness, and rightly so.  It's thoroughly plausible, and the more we learn about Mariana (her alcoholism, her terrible childhood) and the terrifying environment the two of them are existing in, the more we understand why and how things turn out the way they do.  Mariana, although physically a woman, is just as immature as Hugo.  However, it's still disturbing, and were the genders to be reversed, there would probably be a lot of very angry readers.

 

My main issue with the book is very different though.  In short, it's incredibly dull.  I know it's not the done thing to criticise anything connected to the holocaust, but this really has little to recommend it.  It's a doughy mish-mash of various ideas and stories (the tart with a heart, the cupboard of The Diary of Anne Frank, a doomed attempt to flee, reminiscent of Tess of the D'Urbervilles) which left me wondering what it was really all about.

In short then, not one I'd recommend.  There are a million books out there describing the atrocities of the wars in Europe, and while Blooms of Darkness does take the reader into a relatively under-described region, there's nothing in the novel which makes it stand out amongst its peers and competitors.

Does it deserve to make the shortlist?

Erm, sorry, not this one.  It's not terrible, but I've read too many better books recently.  The translation isn't bad, and any limitations in the language are probably due to the original style.  There are some moving moments towards the end of the book, but it would be very hard not to have any in a book with this setting.  There just isn't enough there for me.

Will it make the shortlist?

Probably not.  There will be people who like this, for the setting, the unfolding relationship between Hugo and Mariana and the melodramatic end.  I can't see the judges elevating this above many of the other longlisted titles though; it's too average.

Then again, I said pretty much the same about Please Look After Mother...

*****

That's all for today :)  Join me for the next leg of the journey, when we'll be hitting Paris - Vive la différence!

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Six

It's time to leave Europe once more on our Independent Foreign Fiction Prize travels as our next stop is Israel.  The weather will be fairly nice for our visit, and we'll be enjoying a short stay in a small village and getting to know some new friends.  Sometimes it's nice to just slow down and relax :)

*****
What's it all about?
Amos Oz's Scenes from Village Life, translated by Nicholas de Lange, is a series of elegantly written sketches about the lives of people in an Israeli village outside Tel Aviv.  Each of the first seven tales features one of the inhabitants of the village of Tel Ilan, but most of the characters appear elsewhere, popping up in supporting roles in someone else's story.  These seven stories, taken as a whole, give us an overview of what life in the village (against the backdrop of certain political and military issues) is like.  However, the eighth tale, an extremely different story to the others, makes the reader look at matters in a new light...

In one way, the village appears to be an idyllic, pleasurable place to live.  People amble around its streets, walking through the memorial garden, waving to neighbours as they pass.  However, beneath the peaceful surface, things are not quite right.  Each of the protagonists has secrets they are keeping from the outside world, feelings they are trying to deny themselves.  Without revealing anything over-dramatic, Oz nonetheless depicts a place full of sad, haunted people.  Whether it's the mayor, wandering the streets looking for his wife, certain he won't find her, the doctor hoping her beloved nephew will arrive for a visit, or the lovelorn teenager trying to make a connection with the local librarian, each of the characters seems incredibly lonely.

Part of the beauty of the book is the care the writer takes in creating these characters.  The reader can see the villagers as they pass by thanks to the individual traits Oz sketches out.  Benny Avni, the mayor of Tel Ilan, leaning into the wind as he roams the streets; the 85-year-old former politician Pesach Kedem, his head bent almost at right-angles.  It also helps that the translation is excellent, virtually flawless, simply a joy to read.

If the characters are well drawn though, then the village is even more so.  Just as the various characters stroll in and out of view, so too do the local landmarks.  The memorial garden near the town hall, the centre of Tel Ilan, appears in most of the stories, its park bench playing a significant role in a couple of them.  This is also true of the water tower, a structure about which we learn more as the book progresses, becoming less abstract and more detailed with each mention.  It's tempting to surmise that only from the top of the tower, the highest point in Tel Ilan, can we get a real overview of what is happening in the book...

The information we are given about the town may even explain the malaise affecting the people.  Tel Ilan, an easy drive from Tel Aviv, is slowly becoming a trendy getaway for city folk, a place to shop for local artwork and mingle at the weekly markets.  For the locals though, this means a shift from the isolated village life, and the slow death of the old farming traditions.  While most people benefit from the changes financially, it seems that the villagers are struggling to adapt mentally to the new reality.  They have more money, but is it at the expense of something more important?

Of course, this is Israel, so there are other, unavoidable, matters at play.  Oz doesn't stress the realities of the conflict in the Middle East, but the issue is constantly in the background.  In a few of the stories, shots ring out in the night, unexplained and largely ignored; the water tower, with a bunker at the base, turns out to be marred by bullet holes; in the penultimate story, Singing, the only one to even remotely address the political issues, planes scream over the village, disturbing the evening entertainment unrolling below.

And the final story of the collection, In a faraway place at another time, simply adds to this feeling of uncertainty.  We have no real indicator as to whether it takes place in the future or the past - all we know is that it depicts a society of greedy, selfish, degraded people, and it's not pleasant.  What does it mean?  No idea.  It's a very depressing note to end the collection on though...

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Definitely.  I loved this book; I probably enjoyed it more than any other I've read so far, and it's one I'd like to read again (and possibly have in my personal library).  The interconnected tales and the understated sadness pervading them hit a chord with me, and Nicholas de Lange's wonderful translation doesn't do it any harm either.  Brilliant :)

Will it make the shortlist?
I'll say yes for this one.  Most of the other reviews I've seen have been extremely positive, and Oz is a very well-known writer, one who will already have many backers.  It's a little different from many of the other contenders, and I think that is a positive.  Also, if the panel are looking for a non-European book for the shortlist, I'm pretty sure that this is it...

*****
Another one down, many more to come.  That's all for today, but don't despair - I'll be back with another slice of IFFP longlist delight very soon ;)