China, Novel: Change by Mo Yan

I think I chose the right author, but I am not sure I chose the right book. Mo Yan is the pen name of, Guan Moye, one of China's most prolific and celebrated modern authors. The pen name is intended to be ironic.  It means ‘don't speak’ and he says it is a personal reminder that sometimes he says too much. The winner of numerous prizes and an author who sometimes runs afoul of the regime, he seemed like the perfect choice. But which book? He has written dozens.

I chose ‘Change’. Change is the Chinese contribution to a series of novels around the theme: ‘What was Communism?’ There is a Russian entry, a Cuban entry and of course this Chinese entry, among others. It sounded perfect, especially as Mo Yan has experienced nearly the entirety of the communist era in China. 

Change is the (semi autobiographical?) reminiscences of a country boy soldier with aspirations of becoming something bigger in life.

As such it tells his story and paints a picture of the dramatic changes he and China experience over the last 50 years. In that respect it was illuminating and useful. You get a picture of the nature of rural life - a life which seems quite remote from most of what I saw on my visit. We were mostly in the cities and even when we ventured out (to Yangshuo) I think we were only on the fringe of rural life. And even then, of rural life in 2011. That is a long way from what Mo Yan describes - the countryside of his youth.

Yangshuo country market

My disappointment with the book stems from my expectations: ‘What was Communism?’ Change is a series of snapshots of the China(s) Mo Yan experiences in his life thus far.  Change is an appropriate description for them, but they have little to do with communism.  When it comes to politics, in this piece it seems Mo Yan has followed his own advice (don't speak).  If Communism is a player in his drama, it is one that stays forever in the background and does not speak. I was hoping for something a little more overt.

Cuba, Novel: Havana Black by Leonardo Padura

Havana Black was exactly what I was looking for. You do a Google search for Cuban authors and you will, of course, be introduced to a long list of authors, with some pretty impressive reviews.  Many of them don't live in Cuba any longer, however. There are a lot of reasons for this, no doubt. If you sell a lot of books, you make a lot of money and that gives you the wherewithal to pick up and leave the island. And leaving frees you from a whole bunch of hassles both large and small.  Life is no doubt easier abroad. You can live comfortably, buy the things you like and perhaps most important for an author, you can write whatever you like. I'm guessing that is why so many of the authors I considered for this element, I ended up rejecting. They did not meet my most important criteria: they needed to still be living in Cuba.

I wanted to read about Cuba from the perspective of someone who experienced it directly - as opposed to remembering it. I wanted to read the work of someone who would have to be accountable to Cuban authorities for what he wrote.  Someone who did not enjoy the total freedom of expression that comes with exile.  But they had to be big. Big enough to be confident that they could write and still be heard - even if the regime did not like what they had to say.

I thought Leonardo Padura fit that bill. He is described as one of Cuba's best-known authors and Havana Black was the fourth in a series of detective novels revolving around his character, Mario Conde. I chose it because it afforded an opportunity to glimpse life during what Cubans call the ‘Special Period' - the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Cuba's loss of billions in aid. Havana Black was written during this period and paints a picture of Cuban’s struggles.

The story itself is your typical crime drama ‘whodunit’. Well-written and engaging enough, but perfect for me . The reality of Cuban life came through.  Through Detective Conde I felt I was experiencing things that I had seen while in Cuba but as an outsider could never really appreciate. Havana Black gave me a better understanding of how a Cuban perceived that reality.

Turkey, Novel. The New Life by Orhan Pamuk

I don't know if I had ever read a book by an author who has won the Nobel prize for literature until now. Orhan Pamuk won the prize in 2006 and the Wikipedia snippet from his Nobel announcement made him a perfect fit for the Turkish lit portion of this project: “Orhan Pamuk who in his quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.” 

The ‘clash and interlacing of cultures’.  That really sums up the Turkey I experienced during my visit there. Many times, it seemed to me that the place I was visiting with more European than many places I had visited in Europe. But if you know anything about Turkey you also know there is a lot about the place that is simply not European and there are a lot of people that like it that way and to want to preserve and enhance those differences. There is both on interlacing and a clash.

I was interested to see how this would play out in literature. In that respect, ‘A New Life’ does not disappoint. The book is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a book. He is a normal, everyday college student until one day he happens upon an intriguing woman who just happens to have a copy of ‘the book’. On his way home after their encounter, he happens on another copy of ‘the book’ and on an impulse, he buys it.  After reading it, the book and the vision it presents become an obsession. He dropped everything to pursue it - abandoning the old life and all that went with it.

Is it too much to say ‘the New Life’ is a metaphor for Modernity and the west? The old life being Turkey’s religious and traditional path? You’d have to read it your self to decide, but it did not seem like such a stretch to me. And in Pamuk’s clash of civilizations, who is the victor?  I couldn't say. The end is a little obscure.  Probably a Nobel Prize requirement.

Germany Novel: Die Unvollendete by Reinhard Jirgl

When I think about it, I always find it somewhat strange that I am much better versed in German literature than I am in American or English language literature, generally. (Way) back in the day, I was a German major. I actually have a BA in German and with that comes reading a lot of German lit.

It is that experience that made me think it was important to include literature as one of my “25 Things”. When I was reading modern German literature in the 1970s they were processing the trauma most of the authors had just experienced: Nazism and World War II. Their writing provided a human perspective that illuminated the cold histories I was reading for the political science classes. It still does.

Only now the focus is a different trauma: the experience of communism and life in the GDR. I chose Jirgl’s book because of the perspective it offered on the lives of the “other Germans”. The fact that the author has been awarded leading prizes for German literature is telling. He's speaking to Germans in a way that resonates with them.

“The Unfinished” is the English title given the book, which is the story of three women forced to flee Czechoslovakia during the ethnic cleansing of Germans after World War II. They have the bad luck to be driven out of the frying pan (Czechoslovakia) into the fire (Soviet Occupation Zone - GDR)  Their life is one of longing, driven by deprivation and the absence of a sense of belonging. There is no happy ending. They are born and they die without ever having had an opportunity to live.

Why does this strike a chord? I think it speaks to feelings I heard expressed in Germany. Germans seem to realize that there is still a debt to pay, even today, some 65 years after the end of World War II. Immediately after the war that debt would have been obvious, but now? What do today's Germans owe? An 80 -year-old German today would have been born in 1930 and would have been just 15, at the war's end. What would they owe? And to whom?

I think Germans recognize a debt to their countrymen who endured the GDR. After World War II, West Germans experienced a speedy return to prosperity and a comfortable life. They were not required to pay a high price for Nazism.  That debt fell to the Germans in the east. Soviet occupation and imprisonment in East Germany was a price only paid by some.

Germans knew it at the time and I think they still do. In the book, the women have an old friend who was also exiled from the “homeland” (Sudetenland) after the war. She ended up in the west and enjoyed prosperity. Every year she would send a Christmas package of items impossible to find in the GDR. Slowly, her feelings of obligation to the less fortunate wane, eventually leading to an abrupt end. At that end, the reader does not sympathize with the “Westie”, condemned to subsidize. Rather, the break underlines the continuing debt West Germans have to the East Germans who went there – where, but for the grace of God, go I.

Russia; Novel - 2017 by Olga Slavnikova

“Winner of the Russian Booker prize, a sensational novel of Russia set exactly 100 years after the revolution.”

Well that's what the book jacket says anyway. 400 pages of pointlessness is how I would describe it. 2017 is a dystopian tale of a Russian everyman Krylov who finds purpose in his life through a relationship with a chance encounter. His happiness is not meant to last, however, it seems. I say it seems because at the end of the book I was looking for the missing chapter. You know the one where they bring the story to some conclusion, where after reading it you put the book down with a sense that you know what happened. I don't think that chapter exists. I think the author thinks the book was done.

The book is the story of a gem cutter, Krylov, who cuts illegally mined stones. He meets Tanya (who turns out to be the wife of his stone connection). They have an affair premised on the principle that they never learn anything substantial about each other including real names, phone or address. Each day they make a new appointment. If they ever miss one, the chain is broken and they are lost to each other. Of course, they miss one.

At the end of the writing (not the end of the story because that has no conclusion) every character is left a loose end. Krylov may or may not be about to strike it rich, Tania may or may not reconnect with him and the background theme, Russia, may or may not be on the verge of a new revolution.  

The point of reading Russian literature was to get an alternative sense of a Russian mood. I may actually have gotten that. Politically the big question today is about where Russia is headed. Democracy or dictatorship? It could go either way. The Russian people sometimes seem to be helpless observers with no control over their destiny. There is potential for real improvement and there is potential for disaster. It is by no means clear which outcome will manifest. In that sense 2017 is a good metaphor. Krylov is in the same place. Okay I get that. Just one thing, did it really need to take 400 pages to get to that conclusion?