Solo by Rana Dasgupta

This past week, I read two brilliant books: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes and Rana Dasgupta’s Solo. Both are oddly reminiscent of each other and share themes of music and regret. I want to read Nocturnes again so maybe I’ll write about it later this week if I find the time.

Solo is just a completely unexpected and splendid piece of writing. The book is divided into two movements. The first movement titled Life is about the life of a Bulgarian named Ulrich who lives in Sofia, his nation’s capital. This part of the book is divided into chapters named after elements from the periodic table; magnesium, carbon, chlorine, barium and uranium. I suppose the numbering in the periodic table corresponds to Ulrich’s age – 12 (Mg), 6 (C),17 (Cl), 56 (Barium) and 92 (Uranium) and they are significant because the events recalled in each of these chapters pertain to these ages. Ulrich who is now in his nineties and blind, surviving on the kindness of his neighbours, sifts through his memories. It is these memories that make up the first movement. As a child in the early 20th century, Ulrich shows a predilection to music which his mother cultivates by buying him a violin. His father, who works for the railways, detests music and burns the violin after he discovers his son playing it. His best friend Boris’ father is a chemist and from his house, Ulrich discovers a replacement for music in chemistry, a subject that his father just about approves of. Boris, who also displays a talent for music, has his skill in the craft honed through classes, concerts and recitals. Although he is tipped to become a musical genius, he suddenly gives it all up to become something of a revolutionary. Ulrich leaves for Berlin to pursue a degree in chemistry. There, he falls in love with a Czech Jew, American jazz and has an odd encounter with Einstein who works at the faculty where Ulrich studies. But, before completing his studies, he is recalled to Sofia because of a lack of funds and his father’s deteriorating health. His friend Boris is arrested and executed on charges of sedition. Ulrich marries Boris’ sister and they have a son who they name after his dead uncle. Ulrich settles into a drab life of a bookkeeper for a leather factory. His wife tires of their penury and leaves him for a protestant preacher. Soon, she heads off to the US with their son. Boris doesn’t hear from them ever again. Boris and his mother live through decades of communist rule before she too dies and leaves Boris to face the fall of the iron curtain alone.

When I had got to this point, I thought to myself, hang on a minute, I am almost half-way done and Ulrich’s pretty much through reminiscing about his life, but there’s another 150 pages to go! The first movement ends with Ulrich contemplating the “quantity of time he spent in daydreams. His private fictions have sustained him from one day to the next, even as the world itself has become nonsense. It never occurred to him to consider that the greatest portion of his spirit might have been poured into this creation. But it is not a despairing conclusion. His daydreams were a life’s endeavour of sorts, and now, when everything else is cast off, they are at hand.”

And so begins the second movement titled Daydreams. Each of its chapters are named after marine mammals; narwhal, beluga, ichthyosaur, dugong and manatee (all of which are mentioned or thought of in passing just as it was with the elements in the first movement). In the second movement, the reader is presented with what seems like a collection of disconnected short stories. You scratch your head because you didn’t know that Solo was an anthology of short stories. But, it isn’t. The echoes of the first movement come gradually and unexpectedly. It’s only then that you understand the last paragraph of the first movement, about Ulrich’s daydreams being at hand. These stories, about Boris, a musically gifted boy who lives in an abandoned town; Khatuna, a headstrong and ambitious young woman from Tblishi, Georgia and her brother Irakli, an unsure poet – all of them are Ulrich’s fantasy children. These stories are his daydreams – a life’s endeavours which have sustained him through his loneliness and old age.

I don’t know where or how to begin to appreciate Solo. It’s so magnificent in its scope, so wonderfully unusual, so human. The simple beauty of the story is heightened by Dasgupta’s writing; erudite but unpretentious, philosophical but not preachy such as when Ulrich wonders “whether his life has been a failure. Once he would have looked at all this and said, Yes. But now he does not know what it means for a life to succeed or fail. How can a dog fail its life or a tree? A life is just a quantity; and he can no more see failure in it than he can see failure in a pile of earth, or a bucket of water. Failure and success are foreign terms to such blind matter.”

Dasgupta's narrative is so matter of fact, so humble, so unassuming that you hardly realise the genius of his words like this passage in the chapter on the musically inclined boy in an abandoned Bulgarian town:

“Boris roamed through the strange museum that his town had become. He went into all the houses, and searched through their contents with no sense of trespass, for the lives had been withdrawn that once gave the things their secret pique, and now they lay flagrant and matter-of-fact. He went through drawers of old coins and certificates. He read diaries and letters with innocent curiosity, intrigued, merely, by the variety of life. He lay on the double beds of the town’s absent couples to see what they had seen as they awoke in the mornings.”

Solo is a deeply moving work. You would think that a novel replete with memories, longing and regret would leave you with a sense of despair. But, strangely, I finished Solo feeling exhilarated. By far, the best book I’ve read this year.

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Şafak

“Everyone has a past” says one of the lesser characters in Turkish writer Elif Şafak’s novel, The Bastard of Istanbul; a certainty that guides all her characters, even those that deny theirs. The narrative is split between two young women, two families and two countries. Asya (the bastard of the book’s title) lives in a rambling and decaying konak – an Ottoman mansion in Istanbul with three generations of Kazanci women including her four aunts, one of whom is actually her mother. The book in fact begins with Asya’s mother, Zeliha, checking into a clinic for an abortion, an idea that she promptly abandons when she slips into a strange delirium after hearing the afternoon call to prayer from a nearby mosque. This incident does nothing to temper her rebelliousness and she goes on to open a successful tattoo parlour. Asya inherits her mother’s defiance of rules and rues her life in a house full of nagging and overprotective aunts and grandmothers. You’d think that in a book full of women, these aunts and grandmothers would be fleshed out as wonderfully robust characters. Unfortunately, most of them serve as mere props. There are no Kazanci men because they are in the habit of coming to premature ends. In fact, there hardly any male characters of any substance in the book in its entirety. The only one who has any bearing on the plot is Mustafa, Asya’s uncle who’s been missing in action ever since he was sent away to study in the US, fulfilling the dual objectives of tertiary education and ostensibly escaping an early death. Mustafa provides the link between the Kazancis and Armanoush Tchakmakhachian. Aramanoush, we are told, is a beautiful and scholarly young woman who has to balance her life between her father’s Armenian diaspora family and her self-absorbed all American mother who marries a Turk (Mustafa) partly to spite her ex-husband’s family.  

So far so good. I think I quite enjoyed The Bastard of Istanbul until about the half-way mark. Things start going pear-shaped after Armanoush decides to travel to Istanbul to find her roots. Şafak’s message essentially pertains to the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, she resorts to travelling on that now much worn road of magical realism. Somehow, atrocities don’t seem so heart-rending when they are recounted by shoulder perching jinns. The stories that intertwine the two families smacked of the Brazilian telenovellas that one of Asya’s aunts is fond of watching. Şafak attempts an analogy between Zeliha’s rape by her brother (I hope I didn’t spoil it for anyone) and his subsequent distance and denial of his family to the Armenian genocide in Turkey. This comes across as somewhat crude. In fact, I think part of the reason why this device doesn’t work is because we learn that Asya is the child of an incestuous rape from a jinni. Interestingly, Şafak (like Orhan Pamuk) was charged with insulting Turkishness for daring to refer to the genocide as the genocide and threatened with 3 years in prison. Thankfully, international pressure led to the charges being dropped. Good writer or not, it pisses me off to no end that people are still being persecuted for the words they write. I had a Kurdish friend, originally from Turkey, who I have regrettably lost touch with it. I remember her telling me about how the secret police came into her house in the dead of night and started interrogating her father. His crime, possessing and reading contraband; books written in Kurdish. The police swept the books off their shelves and lit a bonfire with them, right there in the middle of their flat and told them the next time it wouldn’t be books going in the fire. That was in the 80s and here’s Şafak being targeted in 2007 in a country pretending to be Europe.  

I know this is going sound callous but I wonder if The Bastard of Istanbul deserves to be singled out. At the end of day, this isn’t some meticulously researched indictment of Turkish culpability; it’s just fiction and moreover of the soap operaish variety. In fact the most overriding shortcoming of the Bastard of Istanbul is not the story but the language. I feel kind of let down after the high of the Time Out Mumbai article about which I had blogged 2 weeks ago. Şafak rewrote the book in English on her own and the ESL shows. Alright, I am being mean but the language just doesn’t cut it and result is a passable work. Clearly, Şafak’s got miles to go before she becomes an accomplished writer in English or in any language for that matter. 

A Literary Fantasy

I recently discovered a blog by an Aussie Indian who (despite the hyphenated Mumbai in the blog url) I think lives in Delhi. In a post on this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, Desiderata writes about a shockingly bad session moderated by that purveyor of campus tales, Chetan Bhagat, with three writers whose books are on single women, namely, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Ira Trivedi and Anjum Hasan. Apparently, “it turned out to be less a discussion and more of Chetan Bhagat appearing to be angling to get laid by” Ms. Trivedi.” Desiderata goes on to say that Ira Trivedi is “a Columbia Business School graduate and quite possibly has a brain cell or two in her head, but this certainly was not on show at Diggi Palace (the venue of the festival). Her fellow panellist Anjum Hasan sat tersely on, arms folded, looking like she wanted to grab the closest mike stand and clobber both Trivedi and Bhagat with it.” Dear, dear Anjum – what were they thinking, making you share the platform with these two dolts. How I wish you’d actually clobbered them with a mike and possibly stuffed one end into Bhagat’s mouth... oh no, that wouldn’t work seeing as his head is already far up his arse. 

(Photo: Bhagat's in the centre with Ira on the left and Anjum on the right)

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Some years ago, at an office secret Santa do, I was the beneficiary of Murakami’s Underground, an account of the nerve gas attacks in the Tokyo subway by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, told through interviews with victims. The book was interesting, if a little monotonous, but I can’t help thinking of how morbid a gift it was to give someone at Christmas. Still, I should consider myself lucky compared to the poor sod who got a cheap deodorant or even my own not so secret Santa who received a bible bound in a green plastic cover. Since then, I have shunned translated works the way I avoid going to the mall (read mela) on Sundays. Recently, I have been making amends so I decided to give Murakami a second chance.  

Wild Sheep Chase is one of Murakami’s earliest works, the first to win him critical acclaim and is the final instalment in the Trilogy of the Rat. But, apparently, other than the narrator and his friend (the Rat), there’s not much to link the three novels. There are references to incidents in Wild Sheep Chase that take place before the events in the book but nothing so significant as to make you hanker after a sense of continuity.  

Wild Sheep Chase commences with a divorce and a funeral. We learn of these events through the voice of an unnamed narrator. It wasn’t until I was halfway through the book did I realise that none of the characters had any names. Only the Rat, the narrator’s cryptic friend, has some semblance of a name and even then it’s not much. The namelessness isn’t at all jarring – in fact, it’s so subtle that you almost don’t realise it and I suppose it is a significant element in what Murakami is trying to communicate about post-modern Japan. Even the morose events that begin the story are treated perfunctorily and dismissed just as quickly despite their impact on the protagonist’s life. Murakami’s outlandish novel of magical realism is oddly a social critique on the nihilism of life in Japan.

The narrator, who works in a small publishing firm, attracts the attention of the Boss, the ailing head of a quasi-legal entity that controls both the government and the economy. In fact, it’s not really the narrator that the Boss is interested it; it’s a photo he’s published in a client’s newsletter, of a herd of sheep in a mountain pasture. Amidst the herd of black faced, white fleeced animals, is a very special sheep, one that has a star mark on its back – a dream sheep. The dream sheep is a being purported to have special powers. It enters men of average capabilities and renders them extraordinary. The sheep, having spent a lifetime in the Boss, has suddenly disappeared, leaving a dying host. The Boss’ representative coerces the narrator into finding the sheep with the promise of reward and the threat of death. To find the dream sheep, the narrator must first locate his friend who took the picture, the Rat, a man who doesn’t want to be found. So, the narrator and his girlfriend (a plain looking, laconic woman whose perfect ears he’s besotted with) head north to Hokkaido to ferret out both rat and sheep in what’s truly a wild sheep chase.  

At first, I found the book odd and the language unsure. But, this is the sort of story that grows on you. Murakami’s style is beguiling and without realising it, you are lulled into his world and just as you get used to its strange pace, you are shaken from the reverie by the deus ex machina that concludes the book. I am not a fan of magical realism but I found Wild Sheep Chase bizarrely enthralling and I find myself looking forward to more of Murakami.

Abandon by Pico Iyer

Would it be fatuous and expected to say that I abandoned Abandon? There are so many reasons why I ought to have liked Abandon. Iyer is clearly a good writer. He welds words together into beguiling permutations that make you stop and wonder.  

“In England people take you by surprise the longer you know them, and only slowly often after many years, could you begin to make out the hidden staircases and false fronts behind which they conceal their treasures; here the surprises came all at once and even the surfaces were variable.”  

But, somehow the strength of Iyer’s dreamy language isn’t enough to enthral. The Sufis bore me and had I known that they figure prominently in the book, I would have never borrowed it. But even if I set the Sufis aside, the story just seemed a real drag. John Macmillan is an Englishman in LA working on his thesis under the tutelage of Javad Sefadhi, an expert on Sufi poetry. He meets a mysterious woman named Camilla Jensen with whom he commences an odd relationship which revolves around driving up to the mountains that frame the city.  

Iyer relies on dialogue to carry forth the story, particularly conversations between John and Camilla. Regrettably, these represent the weakest writing in the book. There is also a tendency to use repetition as a device to reinforce. References to ‘abandonment’ explicitly permeate the book. The result is forceful and unimpressive. The romance (which is in fact the novel’s subtitle) between John and Camilla seems foolish, unhealthy and pointless. Yet, I think Iyer intends their relationship to come across as heart-rending and void-filling. Abandon all hope whilst you read this pointedly unremarkable novel.  

Elif Şafak & The Love of a New Language

In last fortnight’s Timeout Mumbai, I came across an article titled Rumi With a View - an interview with a Turkish writer named Elif Şafak who in addition to writing in her native tongue, also writes in English. She wrote her latest novel The Saint of Incipient Insanities in English. When the reporter asks her why she chose English, she replies: 

“For the last four or five years now I’ve been writing in two languages, both English and Turkish and I’m enjoying it very much, although I have to say it’s not easy for me because English is an acquired language. I wasn’t raised bilingual. I started learning English when I was 11 years old. But the thing is, I think the age we’re living in is the age of mobility, the age of migrations, multiculturalism. It is perfectly possible to dream in more than one language.  

English is a very mathematical language. It’s very cerebral. Turkish for me is very emotional. It’s the language of my grandmother, my early childhood. So to each language I feel connected differently. Each language has its own rhythm and all you need to do is discover it. Because we do not shape language. Language shapes us. As you switch from one language to another you become a different person. And I like that. I like to commute between languages the same way I like to commute between cultures. If I write in English and I come back to Turkish I hear Turkish differently. If I write in Turkish and I come into the English language, I travel into this language as if it was continent.”

What splendid imagery! To picture a language as a land and to contemplate writing in that tongue as a journey of discovery of one’s self and others through that continent as Safak puts it. When I read what I have written so far and I don’t mean the reviews that I have posted on this blog, I feel I have not even breached the shoreline of original writing, let alone traversed its interiors. When I write, where my wrists rest on the wooden rim of the sliding keyboard ledge, where skin turn discoloured, I feel the chaffing of the manacles of unoriginal thought. Each sentence bound by the mediocrity of stock phrases. I have so far to go. 

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

Perdido Street Station is set in New Crobuzon, a decadent and polluted city in a Gothic fantasy world run by steam punk technology. There is eccentric technology in the form of coal powered robots called constructs which coexist with thaumaturgy, a form of magic. This world is populated by humans and all sorts of other sentient beings inspired by world mythology. There is also a class of outcasts called the Remade, criminals who pay the penalty of being remade with bits and pieces of humans, animals and machines. The city is ruled by a bunch of insecure despots who run a police state akin to the one in Orwell’s 1984. In the midst of all of this is Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, an overweight rogue scientist. His lover, Lin, is a Khepri, who are red bodied artistically inclined beings who have scarab beetles instead of heads. Issac is approached by Yagharak, a Garuda who wishes to fly again after having his wings chopped off as a consequence of a crime he commits. In attempting to figure out a solution, Issac begins an intensive study of flying creatures. He acquires a strange multicoloured grub which grows up to become a consciousness sucking monster called a slake moth. The moth escapes and frees four more of its kind and thus starts a reign of queasy, sleepless terror over New Crobuzon. The rest of the book is pretty much about Issac and his friends hunting the moths and in turn being hunted by the moths, the city’s militia and a bunch of gangsters.

Perdido Street Station is an engrossing work and completely unlike any fantasy I have read before. Miéville doesn’t shy away from language that evokes the ugliness and peculiarity of the world he has created. For instance, he leaves us in no doubt as to the fact that the city smells pretty much like shit and the descriptions of inter-species sex were really something else. Unfortunately, there are too many sub-plots, the writing is too dense and there are far too many dead ends. At 640 pages, it’s also a tad long. All in all, Perdido Street Station makes for a bizarre and off-beat diversion but it doesn’t make me hungry for any more of Miéville’s madness.

Miéville was in Bombay this month as part of the British Council's LitSutra Events about which I had written an earlier post which you can read here.

Revisiting A Disobedient Girl

Last year I read a brilliant debut novel by Sri Lankan writer Ru Freeman.  It's an intelligent and moving book.  Unfortunately, judging by reviews by bloggers, it seems to have got lukewarm responses.  I think people have failed to understand that it's not merely a story of two disadvantaged characters in a third world country but a deeply poignant and sophisticated story about women.  

The book has only recently been released in India and my thoughts on it have been vindicated by Sumana Mukherjee's review in the Mint Lounge.  She writes that "In Latha and Biso, Freeman has created two women who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best of fiction’s feminist protagonists. Feisty, confident, enterprising, independent and completely unafraid to love, they demand life on their own terms and never shy away from paying the price".   She also echoes my thoughts on the title,  "I also wish they had thought of a title that didn’t channel Sidney Sheldon!"  But, the few things we can fault Freeman with are really irrelevant because as Mukherjee astutely puts it "So beguiling are Freeman’s people, so empathetic her voice, that the reader is swept along the twin strands to a finale that is as uplifting as it is organic."

You can read my original post on A Disobedient Girl here. 

You can read Sumana Mukherjee's review in the Mint Lounge here. 

And here's Ru Freeman's blog. 

A boot for a bicycle