Archive for the ‘World Literature’ Category

THE MISSING OF THE SOMME by Geoff Dyer

When I first read just the title of this book — THE MISSING OF THE SOMME — I thought perhaps it was an historical novel about World War I, or possibly a linear history of some of the men who had never come home from the fields of battle. Then, reading the Vintage description of Geoff Dyer’s slim volume, I banished those ideas in favor of curiosity about a work that “weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and film, poetry and sculptures, graveyards, and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.” Did Dyer ably marry these diverse elements and create a memorable contribution to WWI literature?

August 15, 2011 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Real Event Fiction, War, World Literature

SMUGGLED by Christina Shea

This is Éva Farkas, a Hungarian Jew, releasing a homing pigeon in the bleak courtyard at Auschwitz sometime in the early 1990s. Smuggled out of Hungary at the age of five, she has survived by living under an assumed name (Anca) in Romania, survived years of Communist oppression, years of “peeping between her fingers,” always in fear of denunciation, paying for accomodation with access to her body. Now, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, she has come home again to reclaim her old identity and embark on a life too long postponed.

August 14, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Identity, Reading Guide, Romania, World Literature

FRENCH FEAST: A TRAVELER’S LITERARY COMPANION edited by William Rodarmor

According to Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, when Homo erectus, already master over fire, threw some tubers on a spit, freeing up nutrients and easing digestion, teeth, jaws and intenstines shrunk, paving the way for the evolution of larger brains, and us, Homo sapiens. In the wilds of the prehistoric world, it’s likely our human ancestors gathered around a single fire for safety, and a communal feast, suggesting that our need to sit and break bread with each other – rather than scarfing down food, alone, in a moving car –is an ancient memory buried deep in our brains.

August 13, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: France, Short Stories, Translated, World Literature

ITALIAN SHOES by Henning Mankell

This is a compact sonata of a novel, composed in four “movements.” The title of the last, “Winter Solstice,” might have been a better title for the whole book, set mainly on a small frozen island off the coast of Sweden. It is certainly an appropriate image: the solstice is the darkest part of the year; after it, the days will get longer, but it will still be winter for a long time. This is a book about resurrection, thaw, the slow flowering of the frozen spirit, but it promises few miracles, and even at the end there are setbacks and reversals — a feeling Nordic people must know well in their long wait for Spring.

July 31, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Award Winning Author, Life's Moments, Sweden, Swedish Crime Writer, World Literature

THE SEXY PART OF THE BIBLE by Kola Boof

Eternity is an unusual young woman and an effervescent storyteller. She shares her life story in short, action-packed episodes that are embedded in evocations of colourful West-African ambience, and, underlying these, insights into societal and political upheaval in the fictional West Cassavaland, realistically set in that part of Africa. Adopted at birth and raised by two white scientists, Stevedore and Juliet Frankenheimer, she symbolizes a self-confident, stunning beauty – “pitch black and shimmering like the purple outer space of the universe.” However, she carries a secret that, once she is aware of it, will fundamentally influence the course of her life.

July 24, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Africa, Class - Race - Gender, World Literature

STANDING AT THE CROSSROADS by Charles Davis

A “story man” walks from village to village across bare African lands, carrying a heavy book bag over his shoulder, filled with an odd collection of English language classics that visitors gave to him when passing through the villages. The books have opened his mind, like windows into another world: “I have read their books and told their stories very many times. I understand them, have seen the places that made them, seen the lives they want to live…” Charles Davis’ new novel, STANDING AT THE CROSSROADS, set most likely in Sudan, is an heart-rending example of superbly imaginative storytelling.

July 17, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Africa, War, World Literature