The historical context will be unfamiliar to most readers, but the issues, of good and evil, identity and fate, are...
A historical novel set in 1850 depicts a year in Bosnia under the rule of a despotic general and his occupying army, along with his obsequious and devious court.
The politically active Andric (The Days of the Consuls, 1992, etc.) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961, the only laureate from what was then Yugoslavia. This historical novel was his final book before he died in 1975, and this is its first English translation. The grim narrative leaves little room for light and none for humor, as it describes Bosnia during this volatile year as “on the surface, rebellion, violence and fear, and beneath it age-old poverty, the meager existence of the small man and the quiet, unstoppable decay of institutions and families, of everything that had been or was held to be reputable, powerful and rich.” Into this breach, the occupying forces brought a moral cesspool and insidious gossip, while Omer Pasha Latas ruled from an inscrutable, imperious remove, as if he were above it all. For he has his own secrets and identity issues, as a Serbian Christian refugee from Bosnia (born Mihailo Latas) who had converted to Islam and established himself as a ruthless leader within the Ottoman Empire under the sultan in Istanbul. His identity, beliefs, and allegiances all have a certain malleability, as he returns to Bosnia not in the spirit of homecoming but as an outside enforcer, determined to quell any rebellion in the land where he once lived. Amid the portrayals of various members of the court, the novel’s centerpiece finds the protagonist sitting for a commissioned portrait and shows how his relationship with the painter changes both of them. The plot pivots on a senseless crime of passion, a surprising yet fitting denouement within a court marked by what one character calls “killing and lechery! Because everything in this house is infected with foul, profane lechery...and lechery kills, it must kill, for it’s the same as death, unnatural, shameful death.”
The historical context will be unfamiliar to most readers, but the issues, of good and evil, identity and fate, are universal.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68137-252-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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