Dubliners by James Joyce

   James Joyce’s collection of short stories Dubliners may not be as ambitious as his more acclaimed Ulysses or the almost schizophrenic Finnegans Wake. It is, however, an amazing piece of literature on its own and, like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is more indicative of the mind of Joyce than his later work.

   Dubliners has its roots in the 19^th century innovations in the short story as a serious literary form by the hands of especially the Frenchman Guy de Maupassant and Russian Anton Chekhov, both of whom revolutionised the short story. That being said Dubliners remains a highly original piece of literature that is marked especially by Joyce’s exceptional prosaic tempo and pacing, which makes the language flow in a remarkable way — an effect best experienced by reading aloud.

   The collection has no fixed protagonist per se but instead is composed of fifteen cross-sections in the life of various Dubliners. The stories are characterised by a dark atmosphere in which the sun never seems to rise on the isle of Ireland. A great example of this dark atmosphere is in the story Araby in which a boy, who has developed a romantic affection towards a girl, goes to the market to get her something and, in the darkness of the market, which he found closed, reflects:

   “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”

   The closing story The Dead is the highlight of the collection and stands out as the most ambitious of the stories. It details the celebrations of Epiphany, which is celebrated on the 6^th of January in Ireland, and follows Gabriel who is greatly anticipated by his aunts, the hosts. The events of the evening reinforce the main themes of the collection; id est: the themes of the mundaneness of life and routine, lack of passion, religion, politics, etcetera. Especially towards the end of the story when his wife reveals that she once loved a boy in western Ireland, who had wanted to die for her in the passion of his love, he has an epiphany: at first he was mad at his wife’s love for the boy but he soon realises his emotional ill is the sadness of not having experienced the love or passion that the boy felt:

   “Yes, the newspaper were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. … His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

   Dubliners is a great introduction to the writing of James Joyce. And had he not written Ulysses I’m certain that Dubliners would still be revered and esteemed in English-language literature for its aesthetic merit and its excellent portrayal of Dublin, and Ireland, in a time of great social, religious, and political unrest and change.

The Tragedy of Man by Mádach Imre

The Tragedy of Man is a Hungarian play by Mádach Imre[1]. In the same vein of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Goethe’s Faust, the Tragedy of Man is a play about God, Lucifer, Man, its quest for wisdom, and their relations. Although the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 profoundly affected contemporary Hungarian literature, Mádach placed himself in the larger European literary tradition, with almost no references to the Revolution or Hungarian nationalism in the play.
   While the play takes place in a biblical setting, it is not a Christian play per se (it is often critical of the Catholic church, Mádach being protestant), rather it is a play in the form of epic, dramatic, poetry that portrays mankind’s struggle for wisdom and hope using biblical and historical settings to highlight this struggle. The play begins as God creates the world and Mankind, and the Archangels praise his creation. However, Lucifer refuses to praise God and deems his work futile, as Man will want to become God over his own world. Lucifer sets out to prove the futileness of God’s work. After Lucifer induces the Original Sin, Adam and Eve are thrown out of Eden, and Lucifer takes Adam through history using illusions in Adam’s dreams. In each scene of the play Adam, Lucifer, and Eve take on different historical characters such as Adam being Pharaoh of Egypt, Lucifer being some subordinate to Adam, and Eve being a non-essential character, subject to Adam’s desire. As Adam and Lucifer reach the 1800s and beyond, Adam begins to take the role of an outside observer in each historical and future scenario. Though Adam before the journey does not recognise his sin and is hopeful for mankind and its future progress and achievements, he realises the futile and hopeless nature of mankind through his visions, each of which he is disappoints and ages him.

   The Tragedy of Man deals, most of all, with mankind’s inability to truly understand the Lord and the vain quest for wisdom. In it, the reader is constantly reminded of the fruitlessness of mankind’s struggles, much like in the Ecclesiastes, but there is a message of hope beyond all hope in the play. Although mankind is like the Eskimo in one of the last scenes of the play, unsure of his God,

ESKIMO
(at the sight of Adam and Lucifer, in a world where the sun has burned out)

                                    And do the gods still live above?
                                    Here they stand now, in the flesh.
                                    Are they good or evil though?
                                    I’ll play it safe and run away.
                                                            He makes to flee

The play is an argument that Man need not understand the ways of God and instead, in the words of God in the famous last line of the play: 

THE LORD

                                    Man, I have spoken: strive on, trust, have faith!

    The play, of course, also deals with a wide variety of themes and ideals. Most notably is the notion of nationalism and liberalism, which Adam first thinks inhibits man, but later realises the value of, as Lucifer shows him a future without nations. Adam asks a question still relevant today; whether or not nationalism, or lack thereof, is worth it:

LUCIFER

                                    […] Don’t you think

                                    That nationalism was a petty concept?
                                    Prejudice gave it birth, and rivalry

                                    and narrow-mindedness were its defence. […]

ADAM

                                    All that I dreamt of is fulfilled at last. […]

                                    I’ve one regret: the nationhood ideal,
                                    Which could have survived […]

                                    Our souls need limits, fear the infinite,

                                    Scattered too wide they lose the power within;

                                    They cling to everything, the past, the future;
                                    I fear too big a world will not be loved
                                    As much as the soil in which our parents lie.
                                    A man who’d shed his blood to save his children

                                    Will shed but tears at best for mere acquaintance.

   Moreover, although Eve is a marginal character, she is also used to give the tragedy a romantic and poetic twist, Eve being the one that saves Adam from his imminent doom, and their poetic declarations of love lightens the mood of their hopelessness, as love so often does:

EVE

                                                                        I tremble, Adam.

                                    And heaven too has fallen silent.

ADAM

                                    I hear it still within your breast.

EVE

                                    When clouds obscure the eye of heaven

                                    I see it still within your eyes.

   Thus, the Tragedy of Man, unique in the context of Hungarian literature, is one of the most noteworthy pieces of Central European literature, and although the role of God in relation to the human condition is not as relevant within the artistic standards and thematic foci of the post- and metamodern culture of the early 21^st century the issue of mankind’s hopelessness in the world is still relevant and interesting, with the play's theme of nationalism being increasingly relevant in the Western world, too. Arguably, some of the poetics of the play has been lost in translation, as this particular translation focused on retaining meaning rather than poetic form. However, the play is tragic, hopeful, and still incredibly poetic, and the argument it presents, that there is hope beyond all hope, is its virtue: it finds a optimistic pessimism within the futileness of mankind’s desire for wisdom.

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[1] Mádach Imre is the native form of his name; Hungarian naming customs order the surname before the given name.

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

Written by Galician[1] Austrian-Jew Joseph Roth, the Radetzky March is a dynastic novel about a young Austrian dynasty, the Trottas.

The Radetzky March spans three generations of the newly ennobled Trotta dynasty from the decisive loss of the Austrian army at the Battle of Solferino in 1859 to the first years of the Great War as the last scion of the Trotta dynasty, Carl Joseph, lives through the premature westward exodus of ravens from the Russian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian border province of Galicia as if he were Ramses the XI. watching the sun setting on the western banks of the river Nile, on the Pharaohs tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

After Infantry Lieutenant Joseph Trotta saves the Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph I., at the Battle of Solferino he is ennobled and awarded the Order of Maria Theresa. Thus, the Slovenian soldier with peasant roots from the village of Sipolje has become “Joseph von Trotta und Sipolje”, a member of Austrian nobility. Although he considers his elevation an insult and does not change his way of life, his family view him as a changed man – nobility . He visits his father for the last time at his estate and has a last drink of rakia[2], and thus a new dynasty is born. Joseph Trotta resents the aristocratic culture and his own legend as the “Hero of Solferino”, yet cultural intricacies make way for their haunting presence in the lives of his son and grandson. Joseph does not allow his son, Franz, to fulfil his military ambitions and instead destines him to become a government official. However Franz decides his son, Carl Joseph, should become the soldier he could not. And although Carl Joseph does become a soldier, he is a terrible soldier, and is not only haunted by the ethos of his grandfather, Joseph von Trotta und Sipolje, but also depression, Death and his Slavic peasant forebears. He constantly finds himself reminiscing the peasant past that he never lived. As he reflects: “Does the plough belong in my hand and not the sword?”

The novel deals not only with the lives of the dynasty members but also the various bureaucratic, political and social structures in Austrian society. The novel, for example, shows how the Austrian media handled Slavic nationalism when the narrator comments on the wording of the media in regard to a Sokol gymnast’s slet[3] in Bohemia(modern-day Czech Republic) in which representatives from “Slavic nations” were present (the Austro-Hungarians were highly suspicious of Slavs).  It also gives insight into Austrian German culture and virtues through the relations between the family members, with the father-son relationship especially explored. The often decadent officer’s milieu, too, is scrutinised as Carl Joseph is stationed in Galicia with accounts of gambling, women and brothels, drinking, and amassing debts to dubious Jews.

The tale of the Trotta dynasty’s rise and fall parallels that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Habsburgs. The narrator often follows the perspective of the Emperor in the timespan of the novel, Franz Joseph I, who interacts with each of the generations of Trottas and is a haunting presence in all of their minds. We follow his well-meaning endeavours to help the Trottas from his temerarious nature at the Battle of Solferino to his senility and death.
It is hard to miss the irony of the fact that the very same battle that caused the ennoblement of the Trottas is the battle that is often cited as the beginning of the end for the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs. It was the point at which the age of multi-national European empires had ceased and instead the age of nation states ushered in: “The Kaiser was an old man. He was the oldest emperor in the world. All around him Death was circling, circling and mowing. The entire field was already cleared, and only the Kaiser, like a forgotten silver stalk, was still standing and waiting.”

This is all done in the most elegant way possible. The novel, which is frequently called the best political novel ever written and is canonized in German literature, is written with language so beautifully descriptive yet implicit that it becomes a pleasure to read it not only for the immersion offered but also for the political references and the intricacies of the characters that you become so familiar with. It brilliantly tells the story of Trotta dynasty while also delving into the social, political and bureaucratic issues of the charmingly backward Austria-Hungary. It serves as an idolisation of a time perceived to be “simpler” and “less decadent” by many in the years after the Great War.

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[1] Eastern European Galicia, modern Western Ukraine

[2] Symbolic of Balkan culture; especially the southern Slavic culture which provided the Austrians many grievances

[3] Influential gymnast’s organisation throughout Slavic nations, often political and nationalistic lobbying for pan-Slavism and Slavic independence. A slet was a gymnastics festival and gathering of Sokols

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1Q84

1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most extensive novel to date. The plot is simple, it is a love story between the two main characters – the unraveling of the numerous life-changing events, incidents and complications on the other hand is much more complex. The genre defining attributes are plentiful, it is a fantasy, a work of fiction, yet a contemporary crime novel, mystery and a romance - all in the world of magical realism. Both of the protagonists, Aomame and Tengo, live a somewhat trivial and solitary life under the charming spell of familiar simplicity. A vivid, inspiring memory of a brief mutual contact some 20 years ago lies deep within the two, an encouraging reminiscence which by a series of both indirect and explicit events converges the two parallel narratives into a greater whole. 

However, as enchanting as it may sound, the book may not appeal to everyone. Characteristic for the author, the narrative is filled with long, some may say redundant and perfunctory descriptions of not only the characters but even the most common objects and everyday chores. A critique of this overly delineated narrative can be agitated for by the principle of Chekov’s gun, a principle Murakami himself covers in the book. I believe the contrary – the widespread and thorough descriptions add greatly to the immersion in the text, thus making the story that much more personal and alive. With the right mindset one gets the impression of being at the core of the story and in complete coherence with the main characters. The unordinary and unreal seems just as unordinary and unreal is it would in the real life – it does not feel as a mere work of fiction and imagination in a setting so trite, casually well-known and thus so identifiable.
   

The novel addresses some of the great and universal themes in literature and in the humankind as a whole including love, death, hope and personal development. It portrays a life of solitude fueled by the yearning for another human being as a means of a psychical, but also quite literal physical survival. The great theme of love is depicted on a personal and intimately deep level which may serve as a lesson or an inspiration for many. A fierce struggle between hope, dreams and reality comes to life in the different characters and their development throughout the narrative. Family, relatives, friends, acquaintances and complete strangers all play a role in an epic so close and true to our own life, yet at times so far away that it makes one think of the uncomprehending in the grand scheme of things and events which, directly and indirectly control our lives.

So who would I recommend this book to? A person that likes to read and is not frightened by the sight of a refrigerator sneakily disguised as a book. It is big, it is heavy, and unless you are hungry and ready to devour the entire supply you should probably not read it.  
Aylulu

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I had very high expectations the first time I read “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. Khaled Hosseini’s first book “The Kite Runner” overwhelmed me, and I could not imagine that his second book would be as good, but I was wrong.

The author, Khaled Hosseini, has been able to tell about the history of Afghanistan, from the end of the monarchy to the rule of the Taliban, in an interesting and heartbreaking way.  Khaled tells about the history of Afghanistan through two women main characters. The main characters have very different backgrounds, but to survive the rule of Taliban they have to stand together.

The first main character is Mariam, who has spent her childhood living in a tiny hut with her mother in the outskirts of Herat. Her father is a wealthy businessman, who lives in Herat with his wives and family – he only visits Mariam once a week and does not really care about her, but Mariam loves him endlessly. Her biggest wish is to live with her father, but this has terrible consequences and she is forced to marry an older man, Rasheed, from Kabul.

The other main character, Laila, is the exact opposite of Mariam. She has grown up in the same neighborhood that Rasheed and Mariam lives in. Her brothers were fighting against the Russians in the mountains during her childhood, but her best friend, Tariq, was always by her side.  Tariq’s family decides to flee from Afghanistan, when the warlords start bombing Kabul. Mariam is left alone and she ends up marrying Rasheed, even though she does not love him.

The relation between Mariam and Laila is very tense in the beginning, but they are brought together when Rasheed starts making their lives a living hell. Rasheed is dominating and abusive, and the resolution of the conflict is absolutely horrible and painful.

Khaled Hosseini uses the characters in the story to give the reader an insight in the history of Afghanistan. Laila’s brothers fight against the Russians and both died in the war. Her father is a teacher, who are interested in war and politics, which leads to a lot of talk about the current situation in Afghanistan.  Rasheed is a sham, who tries manipulates the political system.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a book that makes you think and reflect a lot. It is heartbreaking to read about the cruelty toward the women and know that it is a reality in many Afghan homes. Women were worth nothing and it really shocked me, that not only the Taliban but also the average Afghan had so low thought about women.

It is not an easy book to read, but it is hard to let go of it when you first start. Personally, I love books that you can learn something from but also makes you reflect and think about current conflicts and issues.

Khaled Hosseini delivered a perfect second book and I would highly recommend it to anyone, who wants a good read. 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Steven Chbosky

The book The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a book about the problems and challenges that follow when you are coming of age. It is about mental illness, friendship, love and youth and shows us not only the wild, exciting and scary life of the average teenager, but also the difficulties of a young adult struggling with mental problems. Meanwhile he is pushed into taking the responsibility that is necessary, when you are finally forced to live your own life, no longer standing on the sideline.

In the book, we follow the young boy Charlie as he begins his first year of high school. Around a year ago, his only friend, Michael, committed suicide and thereby left Charlie all by himself. In his first days of school, we see him as he tries to get used to the life as a lone freshman, whose grades are only high because of sympathy and who spends his life watching and observing instead of participating. This all of a sudden changes as he meets Patrick and Sam, stepbrother and stepsister, senior students, who shows him how life as a teenager can be. He is introduced to the world of drugs, alcohol, parties, girlfriends, sex and love in the most innocent way, helping him, combined with the guidance of his new English teacher, Bill, to participate in the world instead of standing on the sideline.
What makes the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower so special is the gracefully chosen narrative technique, that the author Stephen Chbosky has used. Letters written to an unknown character make up the chapters of the book and it is often implied that our protagonist does not know this character personally. The fact that our protagonist/narrator writes these letters anonymously gives us a mix of total honesty, in an almost diary-like form, and direct addressing to the intended reader. The almost childlike unsophisticated and spontaneous writing gives you, as a reader, the feeling of being told the direct thoughts of our protagonist, meanwhile giving you his exact look at the world, which is clearly very different than most.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a different, humorous and pleasant book and, as only the best books do, it leaves you with a blend of feelings like heartbreak, a sense of betrayal, amusement, nostalgia, sympathy and anger. It is short, easily read, straightforward and amusing and it can be recommended to anyone who either are or have been fighting through the weird and confusing life as a teenager.

The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus.

A young subeditor, Michael, is invited to a fashionable London birthday party for celebrity movie star Hugo Marks. Suddenly he finds himself among models, movie stars, wannabes and rock musicians and as the evening progresses he is invited to an after party. Here, he encounters the hedonistic lifestyle and the ups and downs of the world of celebrities.

His story is told through an elusive author William McKenzie who tries to get a novel published. McKenzie, who is reluctant to meet with his publisher in person and thus insists on only contacting her through email, gradually reveals more and more sleaze, intrigue and moral decay revolving around the encounters at the afterparty. Yet, as the novel progresses (both McKenzie’s and Bennedictus’), it becomes more evident, that there is a perfectly good reason for McKenzie’s elusive ways..

The Afterparty is a remarkable novel in which the reader is thrown further and further into a well written whirlwind of dishonesty, excitement and satirical and perceptive comments on modern life at the beginning of the 21^st century.