Books & Reviews Archive

The book is set in Nigeria between 1960 and 1970 and is divided into two parts: the early 1960s in a Nigeria newly emerged from British colonial rule, marked by an apparent social tranquility; the late 1960s in Biafra (in southeastern Nigeria), where the predominantly Catholic Igbo fought an ill-fated war of independence against northern Nigeria, dominated by other ethnic groups that were predominantly Muslim. The narrative opens with the arrival of one of the protagonists, Ugwu, at the home of Odenigbo, a mathematics professor harboring fiery revolutionary ideas, anti-Western sentiments, and an impassioned defense of African identity. Ugwu is still a boy, yet he displays a keen intellectual ambition and deep devotion to his master. Two sisters then enter the scene, Olanna and Kainene, daughters of a wealthy and powerful family, strikingly different from one another: the former gorgeous, educated, and irremediably in love with Odenigbo, captivated by his intellect and culture; the latter pragmatic and entrepreneurial, who soon falls in love with Richard, a young Englishman who has arrived in Nigeria to write a book on African society. The novel is skillfully constructed around the impact of dramatic events (war, violence, and famine) on the relationships among the various characters and on their struggle to survive and salvage a sense of normalcy in their lives. The first part of the novel frames the characters' experiences within a society intensely stratified in social terms and still dominated by British culture. The two sisters, educated in London, react differently to the corruption of their milieu. Olanna moves in with Odenigbo into the academic world, brimming with ideals and often inconclusive debates about the country's future and its independence from the Western world. Kainene, on the other hand, embraces the rules of the business world, embarking on an entrepreneurial career with cynical boldness. A severe rift opens between the two sisters. Olanna discovers that Odenigbo has slept with another woman, fathering a daughter with her, and out of fury has a brief affair with Richard. The estrangement between the sisters is subsequently accompanied by Olanna's decision—both incomprehensible and courageous—to adopt the child born of the union between her husband and the other woman. The second part of the novel follows the protagonists amidst a war that grows more cruel and violent with each passing day. Gradually, poverty and destitution take hold, family structures shatter, the baseline of respect that ought to govern human relations dissolves, and everything—even body and soul—becomes currency for sheer survival. The protagonists themselves take part in episodes of extreme violence: Olanna is caught in a massacre, narrowly escaping only to discover during her flight that a woman is carrying her own daughter's severed head; Ugwu, conscripted into the army, is drawn into a gang rape; Odenigbo collapses psychologically, turning to alcohol and betraying his wife. Kainene and Richard, who seem more insulated from the terror of the war, watch powerlessly as one of their servants is slaughtered: the decapitated body stumbles forward before collapsing to the ground. The protagonists do not truly live; rather, life sweeps them along, and in the end they find themselves as though > in a candlelit room, where things are seen in shadow, only by half-glimmers of light . It is difficult to summarize the events of the book's second half, as the narrative often seems to lose its central thread, fracturing into distinct episodes and a multitude of characters. What remains striking, however, is the contrast between the dramatic gravity of the events and the serenity of the narration. It is as though the protagonists were moving through a dream, a nightmare from which they are certain they will awaken, returning to the world that dissolved with the war. The violence that engulfed them leads them to repress the horrific episodes they experienced, driving them to forgive even transgressions, mutual betrayals, abandonments, and acts of cowardice. “There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.” Bonds are formed that shatter traditional social stratifications, such as the deep friendship between Olanna and Ugwu. Certainties dissolve, as do Odenigbo's; new allegiances are forged, such as Richard's devotion to the Igbo people; the struggle persists through entrepreneurial drive placed at the service of the community, as in the case of Kainene, who meets her death trying to secure vital food and medicine for her refugee camp. This sense of impermanence, of incredulity, stems not so much from the plot and dialogue as from the prose itself—never overwrought or emphatic, but consistently quiet, composed, and measured. The author's gaze is fundamentally introspective, reflecting how the protagonists witness and experience external events. In this light, the tragedy of Biafra becomes a universal one, which could be set anywhere people are overtaken by war and violence: Bosnia, Rwanda, and today the Horn of Africa and Pakistan. Can one remain oneself in the face of collective catastrophe? The novel offers no simple affirmative answer, but points instead to the resilience of each individual and the conditions in which each must endure the tragedy. Despite its length, the book is a deeply compelling read, both for its prose style and the emotional depth it explores: there is no forced psychological inquiry or striving for dramatic effect; the author simply describes, leaving it to the words, the characters, and the events to convey the tragedy of an entire people. A certain fragmentation nonetheless emerges, stemming from the overlapping of events and characters. Why read it? Because it depicts a tragedy that could unfold anywhere in the world: it portrays how easily one can be consumed by violence.

Harry Potter lives with his aunt and uncle, a prosaic bourgeois family who hate, above all, that > anyone speak of anything that shouldn't be, no matter if it is in a dream or even a cartoon, (...) it might be a dangerous idea . As in the fairy tale of Cinderella, Harry is treated dreadfully by his aunt and uncle, the butt of his cousin's stupid and brutal pranks; in short, he is a victim, orphaned by parents considered eccentric and better left unmentioned. Strange letters begin to arrive: they invite Harry to a boarding school for witches and wizards. His uncle destroys the mail, but it keeps on coming; he then flees with the family to unreachable places; all in vain, as mysteriously the mail arrives everywhere. He must accept that his nephew has been admitted to a school where they teach "what shouldn't be"; he must even accompany him to platform "nine and three-quarters," the track that isn't there. The first part of the book is built entirely on paradox, between what is real and what could be, what we often wish were so and experience through fantasy. It is the best part of the novel. From that point on, we follow Harry to his peculiar school, where the magical arts and the secrets of witches are taught, but where the mechanisms of any boarding school are at work: rivalries, friendships, discipline and how to break it, strict teachers, indulgent ones, the likable and the unlikable. The boarding school, a dark castle, conceals a mystery: a three-headed dog guards a Philosopher's Stone, the possession of which grants immortality and bestows powers capable of conquering the world. Harry suspects that a teacher wants to seize it to hand it over to Voldemort, the Lord of Evil, whose name no one dares utter, so great is the fear. Adventures, perils, and acts of courage test Harry and his circle of friends; in the end, there is a twist, with a direct confrontation between Harry and Voldemort. How did the boy manage to resist the force of evil? > If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He did not understand that love as powerful as your mother's for you would leave its own mark , giving Harry protection forever. And again, > only one who wanted to find the Stone, find it, but not use it, would be able to get it . The author skillfully blends magical and adventurous elements with an environment familiar to adolescents, namely school. The narrative pace is not as intense and surprising as one would expect, not least because one remains aware that the danger is merely apparent and will always resolve for the best. The salvific role of the super-wizard Dumbledore flattens Harry's autonomy, excessively aided by forces and figures far above him. The book fails to fully become a *Bildungsroman*, in that the young protagonist never fully matures into adulthood. If one compares *Harry Potter* with *Treasure Island*, the difference between Jim and Harry is striking: the setting is always exceptional, but the former emerges a man, while the latter remains an adolescent, subordinate to the adults. Is this perhaps why youngsters read *Harry Potter* and not Stevenson's great book? Because they can cling to the illusion that someone or something will always help them in life? The chief virtue of Rowling's novel is the writing: elegant, clear, effective, grammatically flawless. The book could easily be used to teach the most demanding forms of the English language. Why read it? Beautiful English

What an ordeal! It is an extremely tedious book, so steeped in intellectualisms as to make one lose both the sense and the direction of the reading. Herzog, a scholar of Romanticism, has been left by his second wife. He enters a phase of physical and psychological delirium, wanders between New York and Chicago, and imagines carrying on a correspondence with figures from his life, as well as with scholars and men of letters. In the end, he retreats to his country house and lapses into absolute silence: “at this time he had no messages for anyone. Nothing. Not a single word.” The book’s final sentence encapsulates its profound meaning: a verbosity that conceals the loss of meaning. For 340 pages (for 13. 600 lines) the author sustains an entirely fragmented narrative, devoid of narrative rhythm, yet brimming with adjectives and “parentheses.” Postmodernism engulfs both the philosophical and the personal plane of the book: everything is muddled, and there is neither a metaphysics nor a certainty to anchor oneself to. It is not marriage, which is a source of betrayal and misery (the figure of Madeleine); it is not romantic relationships outside marriage (Ramona, who nevertheless expects an ongoing relationship); it is not cities, by now reduced to mere rendezvous spots and places of rest; above all, it is not philosophy and literature, which often constitute a useless ornament and a cumbersome superstructure. Perhaps children and the family of origin are the only bonds that matter in a world confused and fractured in its unity. > The drama of this stage of human evolution seems to be... the age of a special comedy....perhaps the revenge taken by numbers, by the species on our impulses of narcissism (as well as on our demand for freedom) is inevitable. In this realm of multitudes, self-consciousness tends to reveal us to ourselves as monsters . In the preface to the book, Malcolm Bradbury underscores two important aspects of *Herzog*. The book was published in 1964, and its narrative style and sentence syntax opened a literary strand that is dominant today: the dissolution of the novel's structure. Many modern writers (think of Paul Auster himself) are deeply influenced by Saul Bellow. The novel no longer possesses completeness and unity, but is instead an assemblage of “zig-zags” reflecting the fragmentation and contradiction that dominate the individual, self-consciousness, and society. With the novel, one does not seek to provide a verisimilar representation of the world, but pursues, as Saul Bellow said in his Stockholm Nobel lecture, “a hut in which the spirit takes shelter.” The second aspect is the philosophical one. Herzog quarrels with modern thought and moves through the realm of ideas. His internal turmoil is primarily due to an existential anguish that finds no answer in a world dominated by metropolises, the masses, science, and organized power.

The book depicts a parallel narrative set across different historical periods. The protagonist inherits a house that once belonged to an Elizabethan-era alchemist (the setting is London). The story of this figure is thus evoked, overlapping with the narrative of the protagonist's gradual discovery of the house (or of himself). The style is verbose and tedious, devoid of the slightest narrative pace..

The theme of sleep purports to be the book’s unifying thread, to the point that the novel is divided into parts corresponding to the various stages of sleep. In reality, it is a device—perhaps overly intellectual—to tell the story of the love between Robert and Sarah. We find ourselves in a university hall of residence. Sarah suffers from a sleep disorder that leads her to confuse dreams with reality. At their first meeting, Robert tells her he has just lost a cat to which he was deeply attached. Sarah dreams that Robert has lost a twin sister, Cleo, who does not actually exist. And it is upon this misunderstanding, originating in Sarah’s secret—her sleep disorder—that their relationship takes root: > as she left, they looked directly into each other's eyes for the first time; and something happened then, some connection was made, just for a moment . Their relationship is built on confidences, which > ranged freely over feelings, friendship, families and gender, shared intimacies and self-revelations which became deeper and more frequent as the objects themselves grew larger and more complex . The relationship between Robert and Sarah cannot, however, develop into a true romantic affair, partly because Sarah is a lesbian and partly due to Robert’s inability to translate his feelings into romantic advances. Their story remains in limbo until Sarah’s and Robert’s paths diverge: their university years come to an end, and when Sarah terminates a relationship with a woman, Robert realizes he is incapable of seizing this opportunity to translate his affection for his friend into a sexual relationship. At this point, the plot (in truth, the narrative constantly jumps between past and present, complicating the reading experience) shifts into the future, when the university residence has been converted into a sleep clinic—as it turns out, run by Sarah’s first lover, a paranoid man convinced that his mission in life is to find a way not to sleep. This is the least convincing section of the book, which seems to slide into a thriller, peppered with superficial musings on psychological science and references to analogies between dreams, fantasy, and cinema. The finest pages are those chronicling the life of Sarah, now a schoolteacher, in some way haunted by her sleep disorder—with which she has come to terms—and ever waiting for Robert, the only person with whom she knows she is truly in tune. Only towards the end of the novel is it revealed that Robert has undergone gender reassignment (because he understood his true nature, or out of love for Sarah?), becoming Cleo, a physician specializing in sleep disorders. And, like any thriller, everything is resolved, and Cleo can finally reveal herself to Sarah. The book’s primary virtue is the prose: pleasant, brilliant, and fluid. Its chief flaw is the inconclusiveness of the events and the characters: everything remains superficial, creating a palpable disconnect between the narrative structure of a thriller and the unmistakable ambition to deliver something more. What, exactly? It is impossible to say. Why read it? The individual pages read exceptionally well; the story as a whole disappoints.

The novel presents itself in the form of a manual. The author envisions teaching how to become rich in Asia, a continent in profound transformation. > Why persist in reading the much-lauded, yet so tedious, foreign novels... if not out of a desire to understand those distant countries that, because of globalization, increasingly affect your life? What is this desire of yours, in its essence, if not a quest for self-learning? . The chapter titles and their sequence mirror the crucial stages of an ascent up the social ladder. For each of which the author offers the proper instructions: leave the countryside and move to the city, get an education even at the expense of family members, avoid falling in love and pursuing ideals, learn the ropes of business from a master and then discard him without scruple, be prepared for violence, make deals with criminality, bribe bureaucrats and the military, resort to debt without fear. > Going into debt is a way for the small to become big, for the big to become enormous, a glorious abstraction, the promise of tomorrow today, yes, a liberation from time..... going into debt is to be immortal . A splendid definition of rampant capitalism! In short, it takes a great deal of work, but one must also be ruthless, open to fraud. It is equally true that at each of these stages there are alternatives. Life is a constant fork in the road between what one has become and what one might have been. For instance, one could have helped one’s parents and siblings more by giving up an education; one could have followed the girl one went on to love, vainly, for an entire lifetime; or one could have stayed closer to one’s wife and son so as not to lose them, not to let them become strangers. A gently ironic and seemingly light style guides the reader along the protagonist’s peregrinations as he marches toward wealth with resolve yet with an inward sorrow, as if compelled by destiny, by an irresistible force. This is Asia—tumultuous, violent, and ripe with opportunity: either play the game, or succumb. > Through the windows of your office you see your city altering around you, any urban zoning and planning constraints slipping away, deep foundations and skeletons of buildings occupying the land that just a few years ago an aerial photograph would have shown frothing with opulent baroque villas . As often happens, success is followed by a fall from grace—in this case, illness and bankruptcy. The advice is to “focus on the fundamentals”: cut expenses, keep as low a profile as possible, accept defeat. And so our protagonist does, and we expect a decline unto death, in utter solitude. This does not happen, however, because our author provides an exit strategy—unhoped-for, if implausible. Our protagonist meets the girl he loved in his youth, who in turn has attained success only to find herself sorrowfully alone. The long-yearned-for love becomes reality in old age, and both realize that true happiness lies in giving oneself to the other, in wishing for the other “not to be alone.” Is the whole thing then reduced to a fairy tale? On the other hand, > all of us are in flight from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to escape from our status as fugitives... there was a time when everything was possible. And there will be a time when nothing is possible. But in between, we can create . The novel is a fresco of one of many possible lives. We could conceive of others, and thus it is fitting that the author offers us a happy and tender ending. Why should it not be possible to imagine one? Reading the book in English brings to light the distinctiveness of the writing—rich in uncommon vocabulary, though free of neologisms, and characterized by a complex syntactic structure, at times difficult to follow. Mohsin is undoubtedly a refined writer, possessing a stylistic imprint all his own. He ought, however, to return it to greater sobriety. He, too, stands before a fork in the road. Why read it? It is deeply enjoyable.