TREASURE TROVE OF STORIES

First things first—many thanks to the Publisher and the translator for bringing these stories to the world and for bringing back Bhuwaneshwar from the obscurity for us, who would otherwise never have known of this genius. 

One thing you'll notice is the beginning of all these 12 stories. The writer immediately sets such a background with philosophical or narrative or scenic description, that you'll be drawn to it.

In the Sun Worship, a sickly student and a doctor are trudging the dark, damp and dingy isolated city in the night and are at the cusp of hopelessness, disgust and optimism. The images and the dialogues are so piercing that they'll stick with you forever. The story is a timeless worship on human condition. The existential crisis among pre-independence people is so evident in the story. A Glimpse of Life is a story of a 65 year old man who is in his death bed, and his devoted wife. Love and memory are the center of the story. Alas, the Human Heart and Aunty are stories of deep-seated love but the turn of events takes us from horror to tragic latitudes. It must be a wit and generosity of the writer, that he allows readers themselves to understand the story for its subtlety.

Why are there so many duplicates when the original itself is so despicable?... I don't know—I don't know how anyone can live without having a compelling contract with life. – Sun Worship

The story of Freedom: A Letter must definitely had been a revolutionary in those days when it was published, when today it is still a societal cult when a woman decides to raise a child born without a wedlock on her own. The metaphors and remarks appeal and reflect upon life and freedom and their vitals. It is sometimes bleak but the character come out victorious at last. In the Womb of the Future is set in the backdrop Spanish Civil War. It can be considered a classic war story of love, war, tragedy and devotion. Masterni revolves around a Christian woman who teaches children in a Hindu village. It must have been rare that such stories of beyond the curtain of colonialism were written during those times. The empathy and emptiness shaped in the story is at core a facet of personal ruins created during those times of hegemony.

Don't you feel that we neither live our lives nor die our own deaths? The charity hospital-gown-like life neither looks good nor fits well, and, even if it is clean and washed, death inhabits it like the stench of chloroform… Man himself has created birth and death so that it may elevate himself with these poetics. – Freedom: A Letter

It was dawn in the Carcasonne region of France. The cruel rays of Helios had attacked the earth after slaughtering the stars. The face of the firmament was red with anger. But it grew calmer upon seeing its unchallenged dominance spread through the atmosphere. Who could tell when the flame of revenge flickering in its depths would flare up into a blaze? – In the Womb of the Future

Mother and Sons is one of the most dramatic tragedy-comedy stories in the collection. But at deeper level, the observation of a dying woman and of course that of the author touches those inner layers of human characters and fate, such that the rawness and the vulnerability of life becomes palpable. One Night, like the author says at last, is just like a poetry. You'll just collect the ripples as you move along the story. Bhuwaneshwar's stories effortlessly gives life to the characters and images, just as easily as breathing. The inner world of Prema seems exotic, but by the end, all fits so well! So is the story Postmaster. The open ends of Bhuwaneshwar's stories shows his understanding and power of storytelling.  

When the pace of life quickens, it turns into something like ease. It seem that we have conquered our bonds and boundaries, we have moved on from struggle, but this is a difficult delusion. We don't realize it and neither did the poor postmaster… Imagination is resistance against life and nature. – Postmaster

War is another keen and observant story. Set inside a rail, the harmony inside the disharmony, the comedy inside the meaninglessness and the drama of the characters makes it one of the liveliest stories of the collection. The last story of the collection Wolves is probably one of the best tales as gripping as those of Marquez or Grimm Brothers. When the story makes you believe the improbable feat, the story has won. Wolves proves Bhuwaneshwar's strength as a great storyteller. 

You won't find age-old clichés in the stories. Bhuwaneshwar takes the meaning in simple and caustic words and put it in front of your face—you are shocked, taken aback or just want to cry sometimes or reflect in horror. The deviation in the style proves the wittiness of the writer and his attention to detail and differentiation. I have said it before, the intro for every story is unique and a signature style of the author, where he mixes his colors of the story like an artist does in his palette. Individual dilemmas, moods and crisis are so much objectively presented in these stories, none of them seems like they cannot fit or blend with our lives today. You'll feel the intensity burning inside the characters; you cannot escape their fate; you become a part of their lives.  

Author: Bhuwaneshwar
Original Text: Hindi
Translator: Saudamini Deo
Publisher: Seagull Books https://www.seagullbooks.org

Source: Review Copy from the Publisher

LABYRINTH OF THE ABSURD

Do you remember the Arab killed by Meursault in The Stranger? Do you know his name? Do you know what happened to his body? No! Nobody knew until Kamel Daoud reimagined that character, his life and fate. The Meursault Investigation is a narrative told by Harun, who is the brother of Musa – the Arab who was killed in the Camus's epic philosophical novel of the absurd. The philosophical absurdity has been passed down to Harun as well, who is very much like Meursault. Harun is telling the story of his brother, his mother and himself to an unnamed investigator in a bar in Oran, Algeria, where they meet every evening

My brother was the one who got shot, not him! It was Musa, not Meursault, see? There’s something I find stunning, and it’s that nobody — not even after Independence — nobody at all ever tried to find out what the victim’s name was, or where he lived, or what family he came from, or whether he had children. Nobody. Everyone was knocked out by the perfect prose, by language capable of giving air facets like diamonds, and everyone declared their empathy with the murderer’s solitude and offered him their most learned condolences. Who knows Musa’s name today?

Harun is dissatisfied the way his brother was killed and not even given a name. While the whole world read the book and took empathy for the killer Meursault, all but the Musa's family bore the tragedy of the death. A story of disintegrated family in the backdrop of Algerian colonial history of death and hate, The Meursault's Investigation is a rare story just like it's rare that the victims are able to write for themselves in most cases. A novel no less than a mirror for the Camus's novel, but the turbidity inside will reel you in. At times it becomes a great tragedy while at others it turns into a great horror born out of death, ignorance and traces of love.

With beliefs held by Harun and his personality, it is easy for the readers of Camus to understand the conflict, doubts and controversial remarks he makes in his story. It is what it is!

The oil fumes nauseated me, but I loved the virile, almost comforting roar of the engine, like a kind of father that was snatching us, my mother and me, out of an immense labyrinth made up of buildings, downtrodden people, shantytowns, dirty urchins, aggressive cops, and beaches fatal to Arabs. For the two of us, the city would always be the scene of the crime, or the place where something pure and ancient was lost. Yes, Algiers, in my memory, is a dirty, corrupt creature, a dark, treacherous man-stealer.

In the Camus's novel the mother is dead even before the novel starts, however in Daoud's novel, he has created a psychological drama keeping the mother alive who cannot forget Musa and their lives are forever doomed with it – a tragedy; a haunted life. Harun and his mother share a secret, that to some extent reduce the burden of Musa's death, revenge and the agony of memory. However, at the same time, nothing settles the inner world of Harun which is like a storm in a sea.

This novel hit the silent water with a stone and created ripples. It broke a silence of an era. However, this is not an anti-Camus or anti-The Stranger novel. The Meursault's investigation is a perfect literary experiment, which has fully utilized the scope and mood of the Camus's famous novel. Everything is justified. You cannot dismiss the ideas, even if you don't believe in them. A troubled childhood of Harun after the death of his brother and his slow transformation into the likes of Meursault fully carries the philosophical realm of Camus's novel. The drama Daoud creates between Harun and his mother will leave you struck forever. I think, the relation is one of the greatest thrillers that can be generated from a tragedy.

You’re here because you think, as I once thought, that you can find Musa or his body, identify the place where the murder was committed, and trumpet your discovery to the whole world. I understand you. You want to find a corpse, and I’m trying to get rid of one.

If you recall the last sentence of The Stranger "To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.", the final chapters of the Daoud's novel have such a force (enough to spark controversy) much in the same way Camus comes to that last line which justifies it all.

The last day of a man’s life doesn’t exist. Outside of storybooks, there’s no hope, nothing but soap bubbles bursting. That’s the best proof of our absurd existence, my dear friend: Nobody’s granted a final day, just an accidental interruption in his life.

The novel is a labyrinth of dilemmas, absurdities and personal crisis. Camus started it and Daoud finished it. You'll think of The Stranger in a different way after reading this book.

Author: Kamel Daoud
Original Text: French
Translator: John Cullen
Publisher: One World Publications https://oneworld-publications.com/subject-fiction/translated-fiction/

Source: Review Copy from the Publisher

TRAGEDY OF THE HUNGER

The year is 1946. It's winter. Desolation, hunger and atrocity have fallen upon those who are left behind – mostly women and children. In East Prussia, the German civilians have become the target of hate and cruelty of the stationed armies of the war-winning nations.

Among many such families with no fathers or husbands left to support, the story takes us close to the family of Eva, Lotte and Martha, who have taken refuge in a woodshed close to their old home which has already been seized. While mothers collect the leftover scraps of food and potato peels, or whatever they can find, children collect the firewood. However, both jobs are not easy; they have to deceive, run and hide amid the war torn town from the victorious army. Inside the shelter, it is cold and hunger that torments them, and outside they have to run for their lives.

here are women digging trenches, dying from hunger and fatigue;

here are children setting off shells left behind by the war;

here are wolves that have grown accustomed to eating human flesh;

here is a dog with a blackened human hand in its teeth;

here are the eyes of the starving, here is famine, famine and famine;

here are corpses – death and corpses;

here are the new arrivals, colonists, destroying everything that has survived – churches, castles, cemeteries, drainage systems, animal pens;

here are the empty and desolate fields, in which even the wind loses its way, not finding a single familiar path among the ruins and barren wastes;

here is postwar Prussia, trampled underfoot, raped, stood against a wall and shot.

Soon in the story, Heinz, the eldest son of Eva, who has just returned from Lithuania, and Albert, son of Martha take on a journey to Lithuania to find work and bring food for their families. The family slowly disintegrates, losing members one after the other – Monika, Brigitte and Renate, all leave or are separated from their family and take journey into the unwelcoming world ruled with hatred over love. Such children populated the area during the war, who would thieve, beg, sell themselves, sold by others, even by their parents, would cross the border, were killed in the attempt… – they were called the 'wolf children.'

A large group of people with their hands down by their sides, feet dragging along the road that led past the yard, moving in step, slowly, impelling itself forward from one edge of the mist to the other. To where? Who knows… They looked like they had died a long time ago. Heinz was frightened that the death mask was right – he had died a long time ago, as had these skeletons passing by.

The novel is cinematic. The power of the images and scenes transports us to the heart of the post war Prussia. A corpse frozen by the side of the road; swirling snow and darkness that gives a grey and gloomy tone to the story and the hardship of the characters; a man hanging from the branch of a tree; the life in a decay; animal struggling with hunger; the emptiness, void and the cold that takes place of the soul of the living, who are confused whether to keep hold of the hope or die like so many before during the war; frozen earth where families cannot dig deep graves for the dead ones; wolves feeding on the frozen corpses; when life becomes so unbearable that you wish your child were dead or you yourself were dead… the passages, dialogues and the drama will make you stop reading time and again, and reflect the hunting sharp images of the war, people and their cries.

‘We found a murdered woman in a farmhouse. She was naked and they’d sliced open her belly, a tiny baby had fallen out of her belly, it was in a sack like the egg, the sack was split. I suppose the baby had tried to come out, but had frozen. They were both like pieces of ice, the woman and the child.’

In the Shadow of Wolves is a tragic account of women and children left behind the war. Adults are recruited in the war and they die, but what becomes of the young ones? They try to adapt and survive, run and hide, eat and sleep. The common necessity of human beings drive them to take horrific measures in the struggle to survive. Such were the fate of those 'wolf children' who wanted to live. The novel is one of the best war novels written that has captured the fate of the fateless, horrors in the hope of being alive and especially the struggle of children for whom live became harsh before they were even grownups. There is nothing more tragic when a child has to live like an adult!

Author: Alvydas Šlepikas
Original Text: Lithuanian
Translator: Romas Kinka
Publisher: One World Publications https://oneworld-publications.com/subject-fiction/translated-fiction/

Source: Review Copy from the Publisher

KNOW THYSELF

Imagine, you could write a genealogy of your own. Or at least describe them in your own version: narrative and reasons. The first story in the collection, Genealogy, offers a unique look into our existence and leaves us with a food for thought. Yamazaki is playing with a fireball of life and her juggle is one of the most playful version of life I have ever read – if Darwin had read this before, he wouldn't have bothered to write a long book on the origin. In mere four pages, we have a history written down; a saga of how sex, stories, art, earth and sky, language and music came into being.

One day, there was a light. The light hit a rock… The rock fell into the sea, and became amoeba, and the amoeba began swimming around.

The second story of the collection The Untouchable Apartment is a story of long separated ex-boyfriend: Hideo Mano, and girlfriend: Kandagawa. The story starts with Kandagawa's dream in which she is unable to touch the physical objects in her old apartment she once shared with Mano. Few days before this, she receives a call from Mano and they decide to visit their old apartment place, in which there is now a vacant lot. They visit the old town where they lived together and go to shops, park and university where they had common share of life experience and lightly reminisce their time together;  now that they have separate lives. Both of them keep a stone from their old apartment lot. But why do they do it? Why do they even meet? What connects separated ex-lovers? Do we really forget what we leave, and do we really love what we keep? We'll find ourselves strolling with the pair, and dwell on our modern believes.

"That time is never going to come. People have always got married, all throughout history. There's never been a time when people didn't marry."

The third and final story of the collection Lose Your Private Life gives the name to the collection: Friendship for Grown-Ups. The protagonist of the story Terumi Yano is a novelist. What we'll know as the story progresses is that she is having difficulties in the progress of her novel, however the conflict starts outside it, when she meets a musician at a program. Musician Matsumoto lives in Kyoto and Yano lives in Tokyo, and their casual talk about their likings start a kind of friendship between them. Only that Yano falls for the musician and wants him to start recognizing her true self, beyond being a writer whom he appreciates. 

I think finding someone you think is so special that you want to marry them is far more amazing thing than creating prose.

As two artists exchange messages and frequent between the two cities, the relationship turns a different way. What results is a thoughtful exploration of how an artist struggles to establish his/her identity outside what is known to everyone or him/herself; it's like opening the Johari window, only that it brings unexpected troubles; or may be not. We have read so much about a doppelgänger identity conflict, but what about the inner world of the writers? The story of Yano may or may not reflect the experiences of all other artists, but it certainly does represent most of them. The conflict of relationship and of identity exploration takes us to a different sphere in the story we believe we know; but we really know it? What is private to a writer and what is not? We dive into their world in the story.

As said in the forward by Aimee Bender, the three stories of Yamazaki captures those fluid moments from our life when all things are possible at a time. I was very much reminded of the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once while reading the Genealogy, especially the lively rocks. We are so many things at a time, we think of so many things at a time, and we try to become so many beings at a time… "Existence is but a brief crack of light…" – These stories are all about us. If you don't see them, read these stories!

Author: Nao-Cola Yamazaki
Original Text: Japanese 
Translator: Polly Barton
Publisher: Strangers Press https://www.strangers.press

Source: Review Copy from the Publisher