Life in the Mongolian Steppes

This book by a Czech author, Petra Hulova, b.1979, translated only into German - 'Kurzer Abriss meines Lebens in der mongolischen Steppe' - describes the life of a woman, Djaza [transliterated into German], born into a Mongolian family growing up in a ger (yurta) in the steppes of Mongolia.
Ms Hurlova has herself lived in Mongolia for a while - in fact, she has a bit of a Mongolian slant to her eyes; she studied Mongolian at university - the things you can study in Prague!

The story is told very simply - Dzaja grows up in a family with four children, where she is one of two 'bastards' produced by her mother while her mother's husband was not looking; one has a Chinese streak and the other is more Russian. While he and the family accept these two children, at school it is more difficult. Life in general is not that easy, although the family is one of the more prosperous ones. An older sister dies in a horserace, the Russian one goes mad over a boy and gets sent away to Ulan Bator, as does eventually Dzaja. They both find work - but what kind of work - and Dzaja eventually produces a child. Neither of these two sisters ever marry. Meantime in the steppe the youngest sister marries and settles down to country life.

The book is very interesting in its detailed description of Mongolian life - I recognize the descriptions of urban life from my experiences in Kyrgyzstan, with the bazaars, the micro-raions around the town (as in Vilnius, for that matter), the settlements of gers round the outside of the micro-raions, the general neglect, the drunkenness, the meat markets, aspects of Soviet hospital care, also some of the food (though Mongolians also drink salted, fatted [rancid?] tea like the Tibetans). But there are also significant differences to Kyrgyzstan; eg Buddhism pervades everything, the dead are left out in the open for nature to take care of them.....

The structure of the book is a bit strange; Djaza is the narrator for most of it, so much so that her name is never mentioned, and when one or two other narrators (all female, which is a bit of a pain) tell their stories into which she falls, it takes a long time to work out who this 'Djaza' is they are referring to - in her own part her name was never mentioned. I wondered a bit whether the main part of Djaza's had not been long enough to fill a whole book - but on the other hand the stories told by the different people present completely different views of Djaza's account - a story of non-communication in families, I guess.

The only really irritating aspect of the book is the lack of translations of Mongolian words, of which there are many - yes, there is a list at the end of the book, but it is very far from complete. Had someone been lazy here? Sometimes that makes parts of the story difficult to understand.

But generally, it is very interesting and worth reading for someone who goes to work in Mongolia. If they speak German...

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Another wonderful read which I swiped off the table at the Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann in Berlin - I did not think it would have been translated into English, but here it is!

It's a story about a boy, Aleksander, who grows up in Visegrad in former Yugoslavia, where, shortly after the death of his grandfather, the war breaks out, and in time he and his family flee to Germany.

The book describes a magical boy's childhood, where he goes fishing with his grandfather who is a convinced communist, how he argues with his teacher at the school when the picture of Tito is taken down from the classroom wall, huge family gatherings with a page-and-a-half of the description of the menu....and very gently it slides into a child's view of the war, where people shelter in the basement of high-rise buildings, neighbours suddenly become enemies, people are killed in ways too cruel to imagine....before the journey to Germany, where Alexander grows up.

Then, rather surprisingly, the book's second part seems to tell the same story again, but differently - it's as if the first part is autobiography (though it probably is not, even though the author and the main protagonist share the same name), and the second part is the main protagonist's book that he writes; but knowing the first part is essential to the understanding of the second part.

The style of writing is magical - I've read a few books from south eastern Europe, and they all have a peculiar style in common - where the story is written in what seems to be a very plain way, but it's full of little clusterbombs (unfortunate association here) filled with absolute, often bizarre and very funny, gems. Reminds a bit of the films of Kusturica, though it's perhaps not quite as bizarre as his. This is even shown in his chapter headings, eg 'how sweet is dark read, how many oxen are needed for a wall, why Krajlevic Marko's horse is related to superman, and how it can be that a war comes to a party'.

Well worth getting, either in English or in German.

Don't call it Night

Actually, this book by Amos Oz is already 12 years old, first published in 1996. I just came across it somewhere, whilst looking for family birthday presents (she says, rapidly wracking (sp?) her brain, is there anyone she's forgotten recently?).

It's a leisurely kind of book, set in one long summer in a town in Israel, claimed back from the desert - and perhaps the desert will reclaim it in the future. Nothing much goes on in the town, except that a teenager died of drugs, his father, living abroad wants to start a residential rehabilitation centre.

The book is narrated by a couple, with him, Theo, aged around 60, and her, aged around 45; they narrate it directly, first person singular, or it is told through their eyes. But it always takes a while to work out in each chapter who is telling the story. In passing it looks back at their lives, and the lives of others. There are many, many dramatis personae (listed in more than two pages at the end of the book), though the drama itself flows along in a very low-key approach. Things happen, resistances are met, interest is lost, the summer goes on, the school holidays start, but it all seems very calm underneath. Occasionally peripheral characters suddenly get a great role, and spurt out their life stories in a way that reminds of Beckett's Lucky in 'Waiting for Godot'. In some ways it reminds me of Zeruya Shalev's books, using the same narrative style. It's quite different from Oz's other books, though it does also have humour, again in a very low-key way.

It's a nice read, and lovely in the way it describes small-town life in Israel. I just don't think as 'out-of-town' being desert. Also a slim volume and very recommendable for reading on the plane or in a hospital bed.....

Lenin only got as far as Lüdenscheid

Lüdenscheid is a dead-, dead-provicincial town in darkest provincial Germany, quite close to where I grew up (in a virtually identical location). When was Lenin in Lüdenscheid?

He was not. It's an autobiographical book by Richard David Precht, a German philosopher journalist type of person, who wrote a book of this title - and it seems a film based on the book will come out on 5 June. But it's archetypally German, full of references to a particular time and place; not sure how marketable it will be outside Germany.

Precht was born in Solingen 9 years and 29 days after me; Solingen is not so far from where I grew up, and if he describes this as 'provincial' he does not know 'really provincial'! His parents were left-leaning, to the degree of communism , which in the 1960s and particularly the 'terrorist' 70s was not necessarily the best move. But since his father worked in private industry, rather than for the state, it was ok.

Given his parents' left-leaning sympathies the family was involved in all sorts of leftish activities, like the 'Naturfreunde' which seems to be a leftish-leaning environmental organisation, various communist outfits, but also with Terre des Hommes, through whom the family was one of the first in Germany to adopt Vietnamese war orphans. The children's reading material was strictly censored (oh God, don't remind me!) though with a slightly different emphasis than my censorship was - though it seems both he and I were not allowed cartoons. The musical tastes tended to be anti-establishment, and when he was allowed to bring an LP to school to listen to during art lessons, it lasted a whole two minutes. The mother toyed with the idea of the 'Summerhill' style of raising her family, but only in as far as 'her nerves could stand it'. Nevertheless, it seems that things like cleaning teeth, clean and unrepaired clothes, and behaving well in school did not have the highest priority in the family; on the contrary, the parents seemed to be quietly pleased when bolshy young Richard stood up to the sometimes very elderly teachers (I should have tried that - I would have been dead!). This made it difficult for the Precht children to fit in with the average Solingen provincial crowd - the mother's way of dressing the children, often in cast-offs regardless of the gender of the previous wearer did not help either (I notice that on the cover photo the about 6-year-old Richard appears to be wearing a girl's vest).

He writes about the confusion caused in his leftist worldview when the Baader-Meinhof group and its associates started murdering people, and when, at the end of the 70s all sorts of people, former commies or otherwise, suddenly moved to the Green end of politics.

I can relate to a lot of the feel of that period, even though by 1975 I was out of Germany. Some of the aspects of the upbringing were similar, like the absence of a TV, the censorship of reading materials and music (though I would not have dared reading or listening to anything that might not have been approved), the move to dull grey houses in the 'burbs, the music lessons (despite appearances to the contrary, his mother was surprisingly bourgeois).

It's quite an interesting book, though I find it a bit hard work trying to understand all the ins and outs of German politics; quite often he goes into the politics to such a degree that I wonder if he is padding things out a little - after all, the book was supposed to be about him. I also wonder how the present-day generation of young Germans will be able to relate to this rather interesting and exciting period he is describing, which is now long-gone. The rot set in with the year after mine at school, when the young ladies all became very conservative.....

Lenin and Lüdenscheid? It seems that Lüdenscheid was the furthest west point reached by 'Young Pioneers' type camps....Never knew it had that in it!

Suitable books?

A British friend has just been admitted to hospital here in Lithuania - nothing life threatening. Since it's a bowel complaint grapes are probably not suitable prezzies. I looked at my books - she has a different style of reading from me, I suspect - homed in on Donna Leon (of whom a new episode is on German TV tonight!).

'Blood from a stone' and 'Death in a Strange Country' I decided were perhaps not the most suitable titles, under the circumstances.....

'Leyla'

Came across an interview with Feridun Zaimoglu reading a paper on the flight to Vienna recently. I like books by Turkish authors, especially when they are about Germany, too and straddling two cultures. Turns out that 'Leyla' has only marginal involvement with Germany, but never mind. It's fascinating! It's also not translated into English, which is a shame - most of his books aren't, but this one would lend itself well.

Leyla is the youngest daughter of a family with 5 children living somewhere in East Anatolia. The father is an extremely violent drunkard and the family cringes and cowers every time he comes home. He has few friends and anyone who looks at him wrongly gets a broken nose, to say the least. Needless to say, they live extremely chastely.

The book covers the whole lifetime, from Leyla's early days to after the father dies (given that Leyla is the narrator you ask yourself, who actually is the book about). Leyla has her protectors in her teacher, and her friends, and somehow she gets married off as the first of the 3 daughters, marrying a generally kinder kind of person, though the marriage is also not easy.

Alongside all this there are fascinating details about how things are done in very conservative Anatolia, how women dress and how they should behave, how laundry should be washed, and later how girls should interact with boys or not, how already then some girls are liberated, how the family moves to Istanbul and lodges with richer relatives (not entirely to their delight), what they think of the Istanbullus, how the father's business affairs keep pulling the family to ruin, repeatedly, and how the family, and Turkish society changes.

There are a few glitches - for example at the start of the book reference is made to sons being lost to the Korean war (in the 1950s), and later something is mentioned which must have happened after 1981, which makes me think our Leyla got married unusually late in life.

Zaimoglu in fact spent only the first year of his life in Turkey, but no doubt grew up in a Turkish community in Germany, and so has been able to research the cultures he describes. The book is much more readable than Orhan Pamuk's books; it's more outgoing and lively, but it also operates at a different level. (Zaimoglu looks rather more outgoing and lively than Pamuk, too...)

Well worth a read if you want to know more about rural Turkish culture (of 40 years ago, or is it?), and you speak German.

Picture from Wikipedia.

The Yacoubian Building

This is not a funny way of spelling 'Jacobean'. Forget half-timbered cottages. This very grand Cairo building, described in the eponymous book by Alaa al Aswany, was built by Mr Agop Yacoubian (could also be transliterated 'Agopian', 'Yakopian', 'Hakopian' – basically translates as 'Jacobson'), the Armenian, for the cream of Egyptian society in 1934, naming it after himself (there's a similar custom in Istanbul, where many buildings have the names of the original owners, eg the 'Pamuk Buildings'). At that time Cairo was like any European capital, clean, tidy and 'everyone knew their place'. Educated Egyptians had gained their education abroad and many had a secret hankering for life in France.

A revolution and many changes in society later, the building has come down in the world during the period of the first Gulf War described in the book. Shacks on the roof, used for storage by the first tenants (whose servants lived in their flats) were later used as accommodation for servants, and later still lost their association with the flat they belonged to and are now rented out to all comers – who still have a very posh address. Some of the flats continue to be rented by the original tenants, others have new residents, such as the mistress of an ambitious capitalist or a gay newspaper editor.

The book follows the lives of a number of people in the building, over a (slightly unclear) period of a few months. Some people take benefit of opportunities offering themselves to them – even at some considerable price; others, prevented from achieving their dream for seemingly unjust reasons, change their lives completely; some get very close to disaster but manage to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat; others, out of greed or ambition, get themselves into very expensive hot water indeed. The level of violence perpetrated within the building, or to its residents in other locations, is quite high. I would worry about renting a flat there!

The book offers a fascinating, and rather scary, insight into life in modern-day Egypt (has anything changed in the last 15 years?). There's the contrast between the elderly, and sometimes not so elderly, western-oriented people on the one hand and the young Islamists and their desire to become martyrs for the cause, if they have to, on the other; there's the police who, it seems, can be bought by anyone, and whose methods of investigation/interrogation are far from sensitive; there are employers who satisfy their needs with the young female employees; and there are the many fly-by-night dodgy characters who you shouldn't trust with anything. But there are some decent people, too – though they seem to make themselves vulnerable to abuse by all the other groups.

At one stage you think that the book might be a bit disappointing, and that it might only give a snapshot of people's lives; but in fact most situations are resolved by the end, though not always as you might like. It's very readable and would be quite nice to read on a flight from London to Cairo, though it is a bit denser, more intense, and much better written than the average airport novel.

(Book reviews normally go into my Viola in Vilnius blog, but this fits better here).