A sometimes-picaresque, sometimes-somber, always memorable portrait of life in all its glorious complexity, no matter how...
A modern classic of Hindi literature bows in English.
Parrots, metaphorical and literal, flit about this shaggy tale originally published in 1995 by the renowned Bhopal-born writer Ahtesham. “Zamir Ahmed Khan couldn’t understand how an entire species of bird could fall from grace for such a small act of ingratitude,” writes Ahtesham early on, noting the parrots’ failure to attach themselves to humans with doglike bonds of affection. Besides, Zamir notes, “to raise a parrot“ is proverbial for nursing a bad habit. Something is wrong with Zamir, but he doesn’t quite know what, and he never quite figures it out. The start of the story finds him calling on a gold-toothed Doctor Crocodile, who can find nothing wrong with him apart from a certain existential ennui. Not reassured, Zamir stumbles through life, encountering one parrot and one bad habit after another, while Ahtesham explores the lives of his fellow Muslims in ways that would sometimes seem to approach heresy: Here a woman returns from a hajj to Mecca glad to have survived the throng, saying scornfully, “Everyone goes through the motions, but no one has the brains to get the hidden meaning behind.” There Zamir, having learned to drink alcohol and commit indiscretions of the flesh, misunderstands the meaning behind a woman’s dark confession; “I didn’t tell you all this just to make you my secret keeper," she yells, throwing a volume of Freud at him as he makes good his escape. “Booze is as far as it goes!” he laments. “No gambling, no women. That’s the limit!” Alas, the limits are permeable, and if Zamir ends up no less discontented, he learns to appreciate simple things such as counting “flocks of birds as they flew from one end of the sky to the other,” even in the face of the disaster that put Bhopal on the map.
A sometimes-picaresque, sometimes-somber, always memorable portrait of life in all its glorious complexity, no matter how wearying.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8101-3758-5
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Northwestern Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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
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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