"Where there are critical books of immense complexity and learning, dealing, but often at second or thirdhand, with original work - novels, plays, stories. The people who write these books form a stratum in universities across the world - they are an international phenomenon, the top layer of literary academia. Their lives are spent in criticising, and in criticising each other's criticism. They at least regard this activity as more important than the original work. It is possible for literary students to spend more time reading criticism and criticism of criticism than they spend reading poetry, novels, biography, stories. A great many people regard this state of affairs as quite normal, and not sad and ridiculous..."
From the Preface of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1971)
Quote of the Month - July 2012
"I a-m g-o-i-n-g h-o-m-e. The keys of the typewriter she writes on have already been rubbed smooth, the individual letters can scarcely be distinguished from one another. It is still the same typewriter she brought with her on that odyssey from Berlin to Prague, from Prague to Moscow, and then from Moscow to Ufa in Bashkiria, and near the end of the war, when her son could already speak Russian fluently, back again to Moscow and finally, Berlin. She carried the typewriter in her hand through many streets of many cities, held it on her lap in overcrowded trains, gripping its handle tightly when in this or that foreign place, alone on an airfield or at a train station, she didn't know where to go, when she'd lost her husband in the throng, or else his duties took him elsewhere and he'd boarded a different train. This typewriter was her wall when the corner of a blanket on a floor was her home, with this typewriter she had typed all the words that were to transform the German babarians back into human beings and her homeland back into a homeland."
From Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
From Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
Jenny Erpenbeck (*1967)
Another female writer who read at the EdBookFest - Jenny Erpenbeck, born in East-Berlin, former German Democratic Republic. And she, too, comes from a family of writers: her grandfather Fritz Erpenbeck was an actor, author and founder of the journal Theater der Zeit. His wife Hedda Zinner was a former actress who turned to politics becoming a left-wing journalist. During WWII they emigrated to Vienna and Prague, moving on to the Soviet-Union in 1935, returning to East-Berlin after the war. Jenny's father John Erpenbeck, born in Ufa, Russia, is a physicist and author and her mother Doris Kilias was a translator of Arabic literature (e.g. Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz). Nevertheless, Jenny first learned the trade of a bookbinder before turning to the theatre. She started at the Humboldt University of Berlin, changed to study Music Theatre Director at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory and completed her studies in 1994. As a freelance director she directed at various opera houses in Germany and Austria. About that time she started also to write. Her first very surreal novel The Old Child gained her all attention right away. Her second novel The Book of Words turned out even more surreal and dreamlike. Her absurd style had Michel Faber write in a review: "[Jenny] is one of the finest, 
most exciting authors alive" (The Guardian, 30/10/2012). And it was Michel himself interviewing Jenny at the EdBookFest. Her third novel Visitation was the focus of the evening - another enigmatic novel with a (haunted?!) house as a framing character, its changes of ownership mirroring the political transitions spanning several decennials. "When you come from the East, when you've seen your country disappear, you understand how quickly things can change. Suddenly, everything seems surrealistic!" (EdBookFest, 2011). As the former GDR with its dark secrets 'haunts' her first two books, her third novel is set on a bigger canvas - eventually, the change of the GDR becomes only one of various transitions. Seemingly, those changes and their accompanying losses are 'haunting' Jenny herself. Her fourth novel bears the title: Things that Disappear...
most exciting authors alive" (The Guardian, 30/10/2012). And it was Michel himself interviewing Jenny at the EdBookFest. Her third novel Visitation was the focus of the evening - another enigmatic novel with a (haunted?!) house as a framing character, its changes of ownership mirroring the political transitions spanning several decennials. "When you come from the East, when you've seen your country disappear, you understand how quickly things can change. Suddenly, everything seems surrealistic!" (EdBookFest, 2011). As the former GDR with its dark secrets 'haunts' her first two books, her third novel is set on a bigger canvas - eventually, the change of the GDR becomes only one of various transitions. Seemingly, those changes and their accompanying losses are 'haunting' Jenny herself. Her fourth novel bears the title: Things that Disappear...Quote of the Month - June 2012
"Rabia is watching me from a distance. She's been watching me closely since I got back from Islamabad last week after Beema's mother's funeral. She doesn't know whether to trust that I'm well.
I'm not well, but I 'm getting there. I still wake up some nights screaming from dreams of Omi. I still miss Ed. I find myself weeping uncontrollably in moments when I least expect it, and I know it's for Mama. But already I can feel this begin to pass into a quieter grief, one that will become part of my character without destroying me.
I make that sound so easy. Nothing about this has been easy. But somehow I find I really am strong enough to bear it. And I recognize how remarkable, and how unearned, a gift that is."
From Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie
I'm not well, but I 'm getting there. I still wake up some nights screaming from dreams of Omi. I still miss Ed. I find myself weeping uncontrollably in moments when I least expect it, and I know it's for Mama. But already I can feel this begin to pass into a quieter grief, one that will become part of my character without destroying me.
I make that sound so easy. Nothing about this has been easy. But somehow I find I really am strong enough to bear it. And I recognize how remarkable, and how unearned, a gift that is."
From Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie (*1973)
From Bangladesh to Pakistan, Karachi to say - to another novelist with a long family history of (female) writers: Kamila Shamsie is daughter of Muneeza Shamsie (writer, journalist, critic), niece of Attia Hosain (writer, feminist, broadcaster) and granddaughter of Begum Jahanara Habibullah (writer), just to mention a few. "It was much later that I realised how important it was for me to grow up in a family where the written word mattered so deeply" (K.S. in The Guardian, 1/5/2009). At first Kamila Shamsie, born in Pakistan, didn't recognise her special link as all her relatives are/were writing in Urdu. She, herself, writes in English which seemed a huge difference to her. Additionally, Kamila only started writing, specifically about Karachi, when she moved to America as a student. She wrote her first novel In the City by the Sea while she still attended the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts where she got her MFA after a BA in Creative Writing from Hamilton College. Due to her homesickness she began writing about Karachi however, her books never became travelogues. She covers a broad view on places, writing about lost cricket matches, broken promises and religious confusion while concentrating also on violence and (hidden) political restrictions. As Kamila mentioned at the EdBookFest, there is actually a boom of writing of the experience of political events. Writers in English mainly dare to write more of social problems than writers in Urdu. It's writers in Urdu that face problems with a secret censorship as they reach a wider audience. On the other hand, writers in English reach a more influential and politically intellectual readership.
But Kamila not only writes herself, she has also been a judge for various literary awards, as the Orange Award for New Writers and the Guardian First Book Award. I read her fourth novel Broken Verses and have been very much impressed by the compassion combined with the intelligence of her characters. I savoured particularly her highly articulate use of language - all in all a stunning and impressive novel on love and loss of dear ones and a near physical pain when facing the truth. It seems to me needless to say that she already won several serious literary prizes for her five novels. P.S.: various titles are translated into Dutch, German and Danish.
As I loved her writing, I'll offer you another piece from Broken Verses:
"The joke of it, of course, is that we ourselves become slaves to the stories of our own characters. Our invented narratives of self determine our actions and reactions - I am brave; I am fickle; in such and such a situation I will behave in such and such a fashion. Character is just an invention, but it's an invention that serves as both reason and justification for our behaviour. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy that guides our lives, worming its way so deep beneath the levels of conscious thought that we forget there might have been a time when our 'defining traits' seemed less than inevitable. We are able to look back on our lives and chart our 'development of character', never seeing that it's the development of a storyline, and the longer we live with it the more boxed in we are by the rapidly diminishing variedness of our imagined selves. What we can't ever accept is that we might never know who we are."
Quote of the Month - May 2012
"Now Sohail wonders if he should have reserved a little pity for these men. He feels the tug of an earlier self, a still-soft self: geographer, not guerrilla.[...] It is the softer self who leads him to explore the room behind the munitions store, who slides open the heavy metal door, who palms the wall, searching for a light switch - who is met with a sight that will continue to suck the breath out of him for a lifetime to come."
From The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
From The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
Tahmima Anam (*1975)
Tahmima Anam was a complete unknown writer to me. Never heard nor read anything of or by her. When I bought the ticket to see Hanan Al-Shaykh, Tahmima was the complementary author that evening. Young Tahmima was sitting rather shy and demure next to Hanan, obviously acknowledging Hanan's status. But the minute Tahmima reacted to Hanan's recollection of her mother's accusation (see also 'Quote of the Month - April 2012), Tahmima became more and more involved and stronger in her appearance. Having listened to her carefully, Tahmima certainly gained her place next to Hanan.
Tahmima Anam was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her father, Mahfuz Anam, is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star who also worked as a media expert for the UNESCO. Consequently, Tahmima grew up in Paris, New York City and Bangkok. During those years she completed her education in the US where she earned a PhD as anthropologist from Harvard University. Nevertheless, it seems as if her family's background - her own father being editor, her grandfather, Abul Mansur Ahmed, a well-known writer - tugged at her eventually. She turned to writing, completing in 2005 a creative writing course at the University of London with a Master of Arts. Her first novel, A Golden Age was published in 2007 revolving around the Bangladesh Liberation War. The theme echoes in her second novel, The Good Muslim, thus making both books sequels of a "projected trilogy" (Ophelia Field, The Daily Telegraph (11/05/2011)). When Tahmima was interviewed at the EdBookFest, she referred to the 'wounds that war leaves on souls' and its damaging effect. Her own family, both parents and grandparents were closely involved in the Liberation War. What happens to people that are/were involved in a war? How does war influence their future? And how come that, as in The Good Muslim, even years after a war ended families are still fractured? Both her books, A Golden Age and The Good Muslim won Tahmima serious literary prizes. Her style is being described as 'gripping' and 'mesmerizing', her latest novel reviewed as being "a timely drama about the unpredictable effects of religious zealotry and political violence as well as a keen examination of survival and forgiveness" (Valerie Miner, LA Times (14/08/2011)). Probably, we will hear more from her, if not at least read about the third sequel; keep an eye on her - she's certainly worth it!
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