Books
Latest Reviews are added at the bottom of this page.
Ama, by Manu Herbstein
Picador Africa, 2005. 374 pages.
To call Manu Herbstein’s Ama ambitious would be to belittle the fact that the author has, in many respects, succeeded in creating a grand narrative of the Atlantic slave trade that spans kingdoms, nations, and continents.
Read the full review here.
Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic.
Translated from the Bosnian by Stela Tomasevic.
Archipelago, 2004, 195 pages.
Sarajevo Marlboro is a phenomenal collection of short stories set in war time Bosnia. Delivered by a master storyteller, it is evident why this work won the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize upon publication. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) served as an enduring warning to war mongerers in its depiction of German soldiers in World War I. Jergovic’s work delves even more deeply into themes that touch us all, beyond a soundtrack of mortars and shell shock.
Click here for the full review.
Nonfiction, translated from the Dutch by Liz Walters
Grove Press, 2008. 296p.
A sign of a great author is the ability to represent the viewpoints of good guys and bad guys alike. A lesser author, the reasoning goes, would be unable to delve into the characters and would bring out a one-sided work. The journalist Lieve Joris is certainly of the first camp. The Rebels’ Hour painstakingly depicts general Assani, a troubled rebel leader from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo who leaves his life as a high plains cattle herder to become Vice President of a country the size of Western Europe.
Read the full review, here.
The Soccer War
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Translated from the Polish by William Brand
Vintage International, 1992
Travels with Herodotus
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska
Knopf, 2007
This pair of books by the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski brims with the creativity and insight of great fiction. The Soccer War details the explorations of Poland’s sole reporter with a ‘third world’ beat, from African independence movements to Cold War flashpoints in Central America. Travels with Herodotus is Kapuscinski’s last work and is more of a meandering memoir about the shaping of a journalist who met dozens of world leaders and thrust himself into the middle of conflicts under the drudge of the pen.
Read the full review here.
Mafeking Road
by Herman Charles Bosman
Archipelago, 2008. 201 pages.
(First printed in 1947 by Herman & Rousseau)
For it is not the story that counts. What matters is the way you tell it. The important thing is to know just at what moment you must knock out your pipe on your veldskoen, and at what stage of the story you must start talking about the School Committee at Drogevlei. Another necessary thing is to know what part of the story to leave out… And you can never learn these things.
So begins “Mafeking Road”, the title story in a classic collection by the South African writer Herman Charles Bosman. The passage is at once a challenge to aspiring storytellers and a charming exposition of the author’s craft. It’s true, you can’t learn these things. Certainly not by imitation or force of will. But by reading Bosman you can get a whole lot closer. And you’ll do it laughing.
Read the full review here.
Twenty years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa – an edict under Islamic law – against Salman Rushdie for publication of The Satanic Verses, the novel is being reevaluated. It continues to call into question issues of freedom of speech and the press. What is the role of a writer? Does freedom of speech trump the concerns of minorities?
The novel bears the honor of being the one of the most disparaged – and least read – books in modern history. The controversy began in Britain, when Muslims called for the suppression of the novel. After their complaints went unheeded, they arranged a very visible book burning ceremony. (The protesters only owned one copy, and the book needed gasoline to alight.) Media coverage fanned the flames of the conflagration and before long the book had been banned in eleven countries, including Rusdhie’s native India. Rushdie spent a decade in hiding from 1989 to 1998.
Read the full review here.
–Deji Olukotun
by
Michael Ondaatje
Picador, 1999, 311 pages.
The conflict in Sri Lanka rages on, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report, with over 2,000 civilians killed during the month of January 2009 alone. This calls for the exhumation of Michael Ondaatje’s 1999 novel Anil’s Ghost. Nearly a decade old, the book remains relevant and shines for its clear depiction of human rights issues. The disjointed writing is the only impediment that prevents the novel from being required reading for any serious human rights advocate.
Read the full review here here.
Inventing Human Rights
by Lynn Hunt. Non-fiction.
Norton, 2007. 272 pages.
Lynn Hunt’s book Inventing Human Rights has an ambitious objective, to chart the birth of human rights from the eighteenth century onwards. What distinguishes this text from others – and makes it important for us – is that Hunt explores cultural trends as well. Human rights did not emerge from a political vacuum, but were accompanied by new developments in the arts. The ability of novels to induce responses in their readers may well have helped abolish torture and create human rights as we know them today.
This book explains, in fine prose, why FictionthatMatters.org exists in the first place. Books can change the way we think — and the way we act.
Read the full review here.
A Drifting Life
by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 856 pages.
Anyone considering going to school in the fine arts should first read Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s memoir A Drifting Life. This opus by a pioneer of the Japanese comic form manga is a masterclass in creativity and and the craft of storytelling. Written over ten years, the memoir traces Yoshihiro’s early development as a manga artist from the late 1940s to the late 60s.
This review picks up where my article about Tatsumi from the PEN World Voices Festival ended.
Taken together, A Drifting Life and The Push Man and Other Stories offer a rare window into the mind of a creative artist in his prime.
Shortcomings
by Adrian Tomine.
Drawn & Quarterly, 2007. 108 pages.
Adrian Tomine is not a bold new voice in comics. He has already arrived. He has met with success, drawing covers for The New Yorker and illustrations for Rolling Stone. He has also published the series Optic Nerve since he was in high school, and released two volumes of short stories. His longer narrative Shortcomings is a humorous culmination of meditations on race and relationships.
The story follows Ben Tenaka, a thirty-something Asian American who manages a movie theatre in Oakland. Ben’s relationship with his girlfriend Miko is on the rocks. He is cynical and complacent, and can’t control his temper. When Miko decides to fly to New York for an internship, Ben sifts through his troubles with the help of his friend Alice. Together they unearth disconcerting truths about Miko and discover that Ben’s problems are of his own making.
Shortcomings is a book full of awkward moments that are so rarely captured in other media, but which permeate our lives. Hesitation, hurt feelings, confusion, pauses to read body language — Tomine captures all of it in his comics with both wit and sensitivity. This makes his characters live and breathe on the page.
While Tomine has already arrived, he is on the crest of a new wave of creative artists called the Brooklyn School.
Click here to read the full review.
The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
by Emmanuel Guibert (drawings), Didier Lefèvre (photographs), Frédéric Lemercier (layout / design)
Translated from the French by Alexis Siegel
FirstSecond Books, 2009. 267 pages.
After reading The Photographer you will want to become one of two things: (1) a doctor; or (2) a pacifist. You will not, in all likelihood, wish to become a photographer.
The Photographer chronicles the harrowing journey of a photojournalist who accompanies a group of doctors into Afghanistan. It is the mid-1980s, and the Soviet Union is engaged in a protracted war against Afghani resistance fighters in a hot zone of the Cold War. The U.S. is covertly funding the mujahideen to weaken the Soviet Union’s military. Humanitarian missions can only travel at their own risk.
Doctors Without Borders — then relatively unknown in the U.S. — hires photographer Didier Lefèvre to document the organization’s mission to establish field hospitals in the remote hamlets of Teshkan and Yeftal. To succeed, they must climb mountain passes teeming with wolves, hike through valleys controlled by drug runners, and navigate the fractious politics of Wahhabi fundamentalists. Somehow Lefèvre survives, and leaves yearning to do it all over again.
In the Afghanistan of the 1980s, if your horse collapses, you leave it to whinny in the canyons. Your body can be mutilated by shrapnel at any moment, and army helicopters buzz like raptors, ready to strafe your caravan with bullets. Survival is the ultimate goal in a climate that can stretch from 120 degrees Fahrenheit to raging snow storms.
Notes for a War Story
by Gipi
Translated from the Italian by Spectrum
First Second Books, 2007. 125 pages.
This gripping coming-of-age graphic novel warns us that the experience of mass trauma can erupt anywhere, anytime. The cause of this war isn’t revenge, however, it’s patriotism with its attendant voraciousness. And you don’t know how you’ll act until it happens to you.
Notes for a War Story follows three teenage boys through a fictional war torn country that looks and sounds a lot like Italy.
San Donato. San Giuliano. San Martino. Where we’re from, all the villages had saints’ names. When they bombed a village it felt like they had really hurt somebody. Not a village but a town, an individual person.
Giuliano is a runaway from a middle class family who joins up with two street kids, Christian and Little Killer. Together they scratch out a simple existence in bombed out buildings until they meet the gang lord Felix. Felix is a local tough who peddles illegal goods on the black market (we never learn what the mysterious items are.) The allure of easy money draws the boys deeper and deeper into Felix’s schemes. Soon the three friends must pit themselves against the Russian mafia, and eventually, the guns of war.
Read the full review here.
Incognegro
Written by Mat Johnson; Art by Warren Pleece
Vertigo, 2008. 136 pages.
Mat Johnson’s graphic novel Incognegro probes deeply into America’s horrific racial past. This story combines a film noir procedural investigation with insightful social commentary.
On the sleuth
Set in 1920s America, the story depicts Zane Pinchback’s undercover investigations of the lynchings of blacks in the South. Pinchback is a light-skinned black who, with a little help from a pomade and hot irons, can straighten his hair and pass for white. He has successfully infiltrated a number of lynchings by printing the names of the perpetrators in his Harlem-based newspaper. But the Ku Klux Klan is becoming suspicious and Pinchback vows to give up his beat after they nearly catch him undercover at a hanging. He is then drawn back to the South when he learns that his very own brother is next in line for the gallows.
This is a vivid, brutal tale of America’s sordid history that benefits greatly from Warren Pleece’s art. The images are laced with dark shadows, underscoring the racial distinctions made along color lines. The backstory of journalism moves the narrative forward at a frantic pace. Racial identities shift rapidly; blacks become whites, women become men, and everyone has an ulterior motive. Johnson successfully recreates a political era in which at least several thousand blacks were lynched. (Many more lynchings were never recorded.)
Laika
Written and Illustrated by Nick Abadzis
First Second Books, 2007. 208 pages.
ISBN 13: 978-1-59643-101-0
As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, it may be easy to forget a different 40th anniversary that occurred decades before. That anniversary marked the Russian Revolution, and the Soviet Union decided to commemorate its founding by lobbing the first living creature into space. Her name was Laika – and she was a dog.
America was already in shock after the unexpected launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957. The launching of Laika into space just one month later seemed to confirm fears of Soviet technical superiority.
Nick Abadzis’ graphic novel Laika imaginatively retells this strange episode of the Space Race. Based upon meticulous research into space agency archives, the story follows the dog Laika from her birth to a difficult life as a stray, and eventually her untimely arrival at a space agency laboratory. Kind, empathetic, and always playful, Laika quickly wins the hearts of her caretaker Comrade Dubrovsky and the entire lab.
But as charming as the cute dog may be, she has been drawn into the center of the Cold War, and becomes a tool of the state. Laika has been given a higher calling. We watch her proceed through rigorous pre-flight testing and, eventually, stare up at the steaming engines of a giant rocket.
Read the full review here.
Waltz with Bashir
Written by Ari Folman, illustrated by David Polonsky
Metropolitan Books, 2009. 128 pages.
Global opinion towards Israel reached its nadir in 1982, when the country invaded Lebanon and stormed through Beirut on a questionable pretext. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers were killed along with thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians, mainly civilians. Israel’s ostensible aim was to purge the region of an increasingly belligerent Palestinian Liberation Organization. But it soon emerged that several hundred Palestinians were brutally massacred at Sabra and Shatila by Lebanese Christians — while Israel looked on. The Defense Minister in charge was no less than Ariel Sharon.
Waltz with Bashir revisits this troubling episode through the eyes of a former soldier. Part memoir, part creative masterwork, the graphic novel depicts Ari Folman’s difficult attempt to recreate his own role in the conflict.
Folman was present at the massacre, but his memory of it mysteriously vanished. The story unfolds as he speaks with former members of his regiment, patching together the disjointed fragments of his military service. He quickly discovers that he was not the only one to have repressed memories of the incursion into Lebanon. Each encounter draws Folman closer to the disturbing realization that he may have been involved in the massacre — and he may have even been a perpetrator.
Alan’s War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
by Emmanuel Guibert
Translated from the French by Kathryn Pulver
First Second, 2008. 336 pages.
I do not like to use the word genius because of its ability to divide some people from the rest of us. But I can think of no better description for the French author Emmanuel Guibert.
Guibert strives to invent a new artistic style for each work that he illustrates. He has drawn goofy, almost grotesque children’s characters for Sardine in Space and photorealistic landscapes of rural Afghanistan in The Photographer. But while his artistic explorations reveal a constant desire to challenge himself, his brand of genius does not emerge from self-absorption. Rather, it is Guibert’s abounding generosity that sets his work apart. He doesn’t just write well — he listens with the patience of Vasudeva.
Alan’s War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope embodies Guibert’s skills perfectly. He pioneered a new water color technique that transforms each panel into a vibrant, sensuous image. And he turns the story of an ordinary American soldier into an extraordinary tale because of his own patience for detail. It is no surprise that Alan’s War took eight years for Guibert to produce. Released in three volumes in France, we are fortunate to enjoy the collection in a single American work.
Berlin: City of Stones
by Jason Lutes
Drawn & Quarterly, 1999. 212 pages.
Jason Lutes’ Berlin: City of Stones is a timely read in light of the troubled world economy. The graphic novel imagines Germany between the world wars before Adolf Hitler stormed to power.
Germany had lost World War I just a decade before and the severe economic sanctions imposed by the victors had crippled the country. The weak Weimar Republic suffered from rampant unemployment, causing angry German citizens to join political parties with vastly different ideological bents. War veterans with amputated limbs hobbled through the streets as the nation attempted to rebuild. People were hungry, confused, and angry. And they needed someone to blame.
Berlin is a timely read because today’s economic climate gives a tiny, frightening taste of the frustrations that could give rise to the Nazi regime. The book suggests that the Germans were not all passive citizens waiting for an authority figure, but also active dissidents who were violently silenced.
The National Socialists were committed to order and authority; the Communists to a worker run state; the rich, to sustaining their wealth. The country was ripe with tension, with riots and protests liable to explode at any moment.
The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Translated by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand
Penguin Classics, 192 pages. 1983, reprinted 2006.
At one point Ryszard Kapuscinski was the only Polish journalist reporting in the entire continent of Africa. He wrote during a time of significant upheaval, when peoples were shaking loose their colonial shackles with grand visions in the 1960s and 70s — often to succumb to sinister dictatorships. His news articles arrived in Poland through phone calls, spotty telegraph connections, and all manner of inventive communication. These pieces were informative, but Kapuscinski’s lasting legacy may be found in his insightful reportages, which he nicknamed ‘journalism by foot’. These pieces allowed him to share more personal observations that were not fit for the daily news.
Colossal Stature
Kapuscinski is at his best with The Emperor, his 1974 reportage about the 44 year rule of the Ethiopian monarch Haile Selassie. Selassie was a diminutive ruler of colossal stature. His army defeated the Italians under Mussolini. He kept lions at his palace, feeding them scraps of meat, and maintained a dozen opulent palaces throughout the country. He modernized Ethiopia’s infrastructure and drew his country into global politics, traveling the world with his elaborate retinue.
But the Emperor’s closest confidants suggest that he was a brutal, cunning ruler. He encouraged a culture of corruption and kept secrets, striving to maintain his power at all costs. When Ethiopia was wracked by famine, he refused to even criticize the noblemen who had horded foodstuffs, preferring loyalty over justice. Such shortcomings eventually led to the downfall of Haile Selassie’s regime by a coup d’état in 1974. He spent his final days in power in an office stuffed with hard cash and a few hundred million dollars collecting interest in overseas bank accounts.
Stuffed!
Written by Glenn Eichler
Illustrated by Nick Bertozzi
First Second Books, 2009. 128 pages.
In Stuffed!, a new graphic novel by Eichler and Bertozzi, a corporate benefits administrator inherits his late father’s amateur museum of oddities. Hidden amongst the nick-knacks and curiosities is a very lifelike statue of an African male, replete with loincloth and what appears to be the broken shaft of a spear. Tim’s father always called the statue ‘The Bloodthirsty Savage’. But Tim’s family doesn’t want the statue around in their suburban home. So Tim takes ‘The Savage’ to a museum, kicking off a convoluted, hilarious journey to give the figure a proper home.
It soon turns out The Savage — which they tactfully rename ‘The Warrior’ — is in fact a real, stuffed man from Eastern Africa. But returning him to his homeland is not nearly as simple as it seems. Add to this mixture a crazed hippie brother, museum bureaucracy, memories of a horrible father, a few diplomats, and racial politics and you get one hell of a nutty fruitcake.
READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE.
–Deji Olukotun
