While we learn much about falconry and medieval warfare, we learn rather too much about inflicting pain.
A novel that sets out to humanize and demythologize Vlad the Impaler...though he’s still very naughty.
The chief rivalry here is between Turks and Christians in the 15th century. Those sides are represented by Sultan Murad Han—and later by Mehmet, his son—and by Vlad Dracula. We first meet Vlad as a janissary, a 17-year-old Christian slave in the Turkish court, and find he’s a fine pupil, speaker of numerous languages and even reluctant scholar of the Koran. What begins as competition and gamesmanship between Vlad and Mehmet escalates into hatred, especially given the fact that Mehmet’s father, the sultan, has had Vlad’s father beheaded and Vlad’s older brother Mircea tortured and buried alive. Mehmet is pushed over the edge when Vlad kidnaps the young sultan’s new concubine, Ilona, and spirits her away to Wallachia, the small kingdom where Vlad has his castle. For six months, Vlad endures the tortures (literally) of the prison at Tokat, mercilessly flayed (and worse) by a dwarf and his able, sadistic assistant. At Tokat, Vlad not only learns but internalizes the prison motto: “You torture others so they cannot torture you.” And indeed, Humphreys’ narrative is filled with stomach-wrenching scenes of violence. (We find out, for example, that Mehmet has had the stomachs of seven servants slit open because one of them had stolen a cucumber, and he wanted to find the thief.) Vlad eventually embarks on a quest to free Constantinople from Muslim rule, an impossibility given the odds against him, but he does have the satisfaction of exacting revenge on some of his previous enemies.
While we learn much about falconry and medieval warfare, we learn rather too much about inflicting pain.Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4022-5351-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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