“Dear stranger, welcome to this narrative. I should warn you that if, before you take one step, you feel the need to perceive the indistinct line that separates fact from fiction, memory from imagination; if logic and meaning seem one and the same thing to you; and, lastly, if anticipation is the basis for your interest, you may well find this journey unbearable.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (JAN 20, 2014)

Gilbert Gatore’s debut novel The Past Ahead, (Le passé devant, 2008) has literally taken my breath away while reading and for quite some time afterwards. Without ever mentioning either the country by name or the concept of genocide, the author brings the reader intimately close to the emotional turmoil of his two protagonists as they, from their very dissimilar post-trauma reality struggle to re-adjust to life after theirs was forever changed. They stand, without doubt as representatives for many.

Two Rwandans, Isaro and Niko, their destinies intimately linked, are both survivors of the horrors of the massacres in their country. Distinct in their voices, complete opposites in the reflecting on their experiences, their combined stories, told in parallel, create a deeply affecting portrayal of the limits of human endurance in times of greatest traumas. They are the two sides of a tragedy that is difficult to comprehend even now, almost twenty years later.

Isaro was saved as a young child by a French couple and grew up within a caring and protective family, the past more or less banned to the farthest recesses of her brain. Until that is, listening to the radio, she hears that the prosecution of the perpetrators of the massacres in her country would take several lifetimes to complete. What shocks her more than anything is the reaction of people around her: “It’s terrible, but what can you do…?” For her, the only response is to return to the country of her birth and to bring the different voices – of victims and perpetrators – into the open – to confront and to heal?

Niko, disfigured and mute since birth and rejected by all in his village, has retreated to an island that is rich in mythology and void of human beings. His mind wanders between haunting memories of the past and foreshadowing dreams. His life story emerges through his re-imagining, as revealing for the reader as to himself. Niko’s contemplations often return to self-questioning: Is he victim as well as perpetrator? Could or should he have acted differently? Did he have a choice?

These fundamental questions haunt Isaro as she embarks on her quest to “comprehend the incomprehensible,” to help herself and others, she hopes, to go on living beyond the trauma. And of course, they increasingly preoccupy the reader. Despite exploring such profound questions the narrative remains intimately engaged in the personal story. Nonetheless, comparisons to other human tragedies may come to mind.

Not surprisingly, The Past Ahead is anything but an “easy read,” despite the author’s careful use of language and, where possible, oblique references to the devastating details. What does it take for an author to enter so deeply into the conflicting mind of his anti-hero without destroying him totally in the mind of the reader? Gatore deserves more than praise for succeeding so admirably. There is poetry in Niko’s dreams; his description of his disabilities that are offset by his special sensitivities:

“His ears discern the subtlest movements. His eyes pick up the most distant sounds. His nose embraces invisible shapes. His hands detect odors beyond the trace of a hint. As for his tongue, it tracks down indescribable feelings in the air he breathes.”

Isaro may be the more real-to-life, down-to-earth character: Strong at times, yet also overwhelmed at times, emotional and sensitive to her environment and her re-assessment of her life’s challenges.

The Past Ahead is not only a powerful book, exquisitely crafted and now, finally, translated into English by Marjolijn de Jager, it is an important book that deserves a wide readership. It may be the first fictional treatment of the Rwandan Genocide by a Rwandan national. While Gil Courtemanche’s A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, may come to mind, Gatore’s book stands out in treating the tragedy in a very different kind of literary form and from a very intimate perspective.

Gilbert Gatore was born in Rwanda and escaped with his family in 1994, the year of the massacres. He was twelve years old and very much aware of the events unfolding around him, without comprehending the broader context or meaning. Absorbed by the Diary of Anne Frank that his father had given to him, he embarked on keeping his own diary. It only exists in his memory now; it was taken away by border guards during the family’s flight in Africa.

I am grateful that I was made aware of this excellent novel by the publisher and offered a review copy. This did not influence my views of the book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Indiana University Press (October 4, 2012)
REVIEWER:	Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Gilbert Gatore
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo

Bibliography:

• The Past Ahead (2008; 2012 in US)

“My mother said briskly, “After you take everything upstairs, Missak, you return the cart to Donabedian as soon as possible. Maral, put the spices in the jars, and the sugar on the top shelf. The rest goes wherever you and Auntie Shakeh find space.”

That was how our war began. It didn’t start with blaring newspaper headlines announcing a pending invasion, nor was it signaled by the drone of warplanes overhead. Our war commenced that afternoon when my mother stockpiled groceries so that, no matter what this new war might bring, her family would have something to eat.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (JAN 7, 2014)

The setting is World War II Paris — when the Germans begin their occupation of the city, the protagonist of this story is just turning sixteen. Maral Pegorian and her older brother, Missak, are part of an Armenian family displaced to France after the Armenian genocide. They are stateless refugees and have made the suburb of Belleville in Paris, their home. Maral’s father is a cobbler and owns a small shoe shop hoping to one day pass on his skills to his son.

Missak, on the other hand, has different plans. He is a skilled artist and wants to work as an apprentice at the local print shop while spending most of his time secretly helping the French resistance. As a girl from a fairly conservative family, Maral can’t do much to help her brother, even if she sometimes wishes she could. “Was this to be my lot? Stuck in an apartment knitting or sewing or cooking while waiting for the men to come back from some adventure? It made me want to take the kitchen plates and throw them out the window just to hear them smash into a thousand pieces on the cobblestones below,” she laments.

Easily the smartest in the family, Maral goes through school even with the war progressing all around her, and towards the end of the story, graduates with an offer of admission to one of France’s most prestigious universities.

The Pegorian family’s fate is not unique to Paris or even to Armenians. Their neighbors, the Kacherians (also Armenian) are scraping the barrel to get by as are the many mixed families (including Jewish folks) in the neighborhood. Food is hard to come by — it’s mostly bulgur and turnips that the Pegorians manage to finagle with their ration card. There’s hardly any butter or meat to be had and even onions can be a rare delicacy. Despite the evident sufferings of the citizens during the Occupation, the children somehow manage to be themselves. Maral, in fact, falls in love with Zaven, one of the Kacherian sons, and Missak’s best friend. The two meet surreptitiously and pledge themselves to each other. Yet the best laid plans don’t always come to fruition.

Zaven and his older brother, Barkev, are swept up by the force of history and spend time in a German camp which changes them forever. The war crimes they witness leave permanent scars on their psyches — and ripples from these will eventually touch everyone they know including Maral.

History plays out in more than one way in this touching novel by Nancy Kricorian. With the weight of the Armenian genocide on their shoulders, the Armenian families in All The Light There Was, only want to lie low and not be subject to more tragedies. Maral’s parents have witnessed the horrors of the massacre personally and understandably it defines their life perspective in many subtle ways. When a Jewish family next door is rounded up by the Germans, the Pegorians hide the youngest girl in that family in their own apartment until the child is ready to be shipped to her aunt in Nice.

The Armenians in Maral’s generation might be removed from the immediate horrors of the Armenian genocide but they use the lessons learned from it to know that survival depends on many complicated factors. They are not ready to judge when they see their fellow brethren wear the American or the German uniform in the war.

In the end this story is a coming-of-age tale about Maral, a girl of promise at the novel’s start but who gradually gets worn down as the story moves along. “This is the story of how we lived the war, and how I found my husband,” Maral says at the beginning. The path toward finding her husband is not necessarily the most optimal but of course this is wartime and everyone’s lives are shaped by it. For someone who was fairly strong-willed at the beginning, it is a little frustrating, if understandable, to see Maral give up her education and instead fall into what comes more easily.

All The Light There Was is told through Maral’s voice and her perspective. In one sense, since she doesn’t do much except to bear witness to events that happen around her, this point of view feels limiting at times. The lens is never trained away from Maral and it occasionally gets claustrophobic. Yet it is precisely because the story is told through Maral’s voice, that the reader gets to feel what life was like for everyday citizens in occupied Paris. You realize that even during the worst wars, life can plod along — and even shine through — with grace. The beautiful cover art in this book drives home the point gracefully. Maral and her boyfriend are up front, lost in each other, while the rest of Paris goes on around them. You realize that while teenagers are often self-centered anyway, in times of war, this can be an essential mechanism to get through its many tribulations.

Ultimately the story ends with a ray of hope. “This world is made of dark and light, my girl, and in the darkest times you have to believe the sun will come again, even if you yourself don’t live to see it,” Maral’s father once tells her. As the reader turns the last page, you hope that the sun will indeed come again and shine down on the young and vibrant Armenians.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 57 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (March 12, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Nancy Kricorian
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Armenian history: Skylark Farm by Antonia Aslan The Last Day of War by Judith Claire Mitchell More occupied Paris: The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

Bibliography:

• Zabelle (1998)
• Dreams of Bread and Fire (2003)
• All the Light There Was (March 2013)

“The only real innocent among them all was me…As I said those words to myself, I suddenly heard how dangerous they sounded; to be innocent in the midst of guilty was, after all, the same as being guilty in the midst of innocent.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (AUG 9, 2010)

There are many reasons we read: for enlightenment, escape, education, and in some rare instances, to confront ourselves with truths and insights we never would have encountered otherwise.

Brodeck is one of those rare instances. It is, quite simply, one of the best contemporary books I have ever read. And I have read a lot.

The book – which reads like an allegory or dark adult fairy tale – transcends those genres by strongly tethering itself to recognizable events and images. Brodeck, by many indications, appears to be Jewish, yet he served as an acolyte to a priest in his youth, implying that he isn’t. The locale appears to be in France’s Alsace-Lorraine, yet many of the geographical features do not fit. And the Nazis have wrecked havoc in the region, yet they are never mentioned by name.

What we DO know is this: Brodeck has been taken prisoner of war and has scratched and scraped his way to survival, serving as “Broderick the Dog” to sadistic camp officials. Against all odds, he has returned to his insular village where he is greeted with less than 100% enthusiasm.

And now, an elusive no-named stranger referred to as the Anderer – the Other – has appeared in the village with his horse and donkey and sketch pads, serving as a mirror to the truth of the village’s betrayals…its cowardice dishonorable conduct, spinelessness and moral stain. Early on, we learn that the village participated in a mass murder of the Anderer and it falls upon Brodeck – a low-level bureaucrat who now makes his living cataloguing the area’s flora and fauna – to write a whitewashing report about the event.

Brodeck himself is “the other;” he is an orphan, with only the sketchiest recollections of where he comes from and how he got to where he is. He knows that “each of us was a nothing. A nothing handed over to death. Its slave. Its toy. Waiting and resigned.” His survival has not changed that fact: “The others the ones who came out of it alive, like me – all of us still carry a part of it, deep down inside, like a stain. We can never again meet the eyes of other people without wondering whether they harbor the desire to hunt us down, to torture us, to kill us.”

His quest to discover what really happened to the Anderer is also a personal quest; to find out his own back story. At the start, the reader knows little: we know he has a mute wife Amelie and a young baby daughter and that he is merely tolerated by the village. As the book progresses, the picture begins to fall more and more into focus.

As he interacts with the various members of the community, he at one point meets with the village priest. In one of the most harrowing passages, the priest says, “Men are strange. They commit the worst crimes without question, but later they can’t live anymore with the memory of what they’ve done. They have to get rid of it. And so they come to me, because they know I’m the only person who can give them relief, and they tell me everything. I’m the sewer, Brodeck. I’m not the priest; I’m the sewer man.”

This book achieves something I thought would be impossible in literature: it universalizes the Holocaust. It offers up Brodeck as “every man” and his tormenters as “every man” as well. It reveals mankind’s ability to perpetrate the worst deeds and to turn its collective eye elsewhere when heinous deeds are being perpetrated. It displays our fervent struggle to forget and to absolve ourselves in the worst of times.

The prose is luminous and masterful. For that, I must partially give credit to the incredible translator, John Cullen. In reading international books, I’ve learned that a good translator can make or break a work of literature, and Cullen does Philippe Claudel proud. As for Claudel, his insights are astounding and his words are transformational. Some of the scenes are exquisitely painful to read; I gasped and shed tears on some of the more horrific.

Some evocations to works such as Camus’ The Stranger and Ibsen’s Enemy of the People come to mind but make no mistake: this is a highly original work. In the end, I knew that I had read something fiercely important – a modern masterpiece.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 16 readers
PUBLISHER:	Anchor; 1 edition (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikidpedia page on Phillippe Claudel (French)
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and ExcerptBrodeck wins Independent Prize
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More fiction about genocide:A Sunday at the Pool at Kigali by Gil Courtemarche Gotz and Meyer by David Albahari

Translated Bibliography:

• Grey Souls (2003)
• By a Slow River (2006)
• Brodeck (2007; 2009 in US)
• Monsieur Linh and His Child (2008; 2011 on Kindle)

Movie (writer and director):

• I Loved You So Long (2003)

“You have to jump!” someone yelled.

My father and some boy holding a basket over his head were below. I gnashed my teeth and grasped the branch more tightly, angry and embarrassed.

Papa held his arms out. “Jump!” he shouted.

I hesitated, thinking I don’t want to die again. I whimpered. In order to avoid my subsequent thoughts, I jumped. Papa and I tumbled to the wet iroko fruit-covered ground. I scrambled up and pressed myself to him trying to hide as he took off his shirt. I quickly slipped it on. The smell of the mashed fruits was strong and bitter in the rain. We’d need a good bath to get the smell and purple stains off our skin. Papa’s clothes were ruined. I looked around. The boy was gone.

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes (JUN 3, 2010)

Who Fears Death is a supernatural odyssey set in an alternate, post-apocalyptic Africa. The unnamed event that devastated this alternate Earth destroyed most of its technology.

Onyesonwu spent her first several years leading a nomadic life with her mother in the desert. The product of a brutal rape, Onye is half Okeke and half Nuru. Her obvious physical traits from her mixed blood brand her as an ewu. The word means born of pain, and many people believe that those born of violence will themselves become violent. They are despised and shunned.

One day, when she was eleven, she studied the feathers left by a sparrow an eagle had just killed. After feeling strange and wretching, she blacks out and wakes up in a tree, with no idea how she got there. She learns later that she had transformed into a bird and flown miles away.

Onye defies her mother and loving step-father to undergo the rite of circumcision. She feels that bucking tradition would make her even more of an outcast, bringing them more shame. One of the most compelling aspects of this novel is the close relationships that form between the eleven-year-old girls who share the ritual. Finally, Onye, the pariah, has friends, peers with whom she can confide and count on.

Onye’s abilities continue to manifest. She can heal wounds and even briefly animates her dead step-father on his funeral pyre when she is sixteen. Mwita, an ewu himself, works for the only person who can help Onye understand the changes happening to her. He tries to get his master to teach Onye, but Mwita’s arrogant master refuses to teach a girl.

Okorafor’s characters are ultra-real with hauntingly intimate thoughts and inner conflicts. Onye journeys through the desert while journeying from helpless outcast to powerful adversary and reluctant savior of her people. Mwita, whom she cannot help but love, provides perspective, balance, support and strength to her when she needs it.

The novel’s alternate Africa is shackled by tribal warfare, genocide, oppression and the subjugation of women. Who Fears Death speaks to all of these issues and more with an engaging tale that will stick with you long after you’ve read its last page.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 63 readers
PUBLISHER:	DAW Hardcover (June 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Nnedi Okorafor
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide Ann Wilke’s interview with Nnedi Okorafor
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Two authors that she reminds us of: Octavia Butler Nalo Hopkinson Read our review of: Kabu Kabu

Bibliography:

• Who Fears Death (2010)
• Kabu Kabu: Stories (2013)
• Lagoon (2014)
• The Book of Phoenix (2014)
• The Man

Young Adult:

• Zahrah the Windseeker (2005)
• The Shadow Speaker (2007)

Children’s:

• Long JuJu Man (2009)
• Akata Witch (2011)
• Iridessa and the Secret of the Never Mine (2012)