English: First Blood / German: Der belgische Konsul Nothomb writes the fictional memoir of her father, Belgian diplomat Baron Patrick Nothomb, startingEnglish: First Blood / German: Der belgische Konsul Nothomb writes the fictional memoir of her father, Belgian diplomat Baron Patrick Nothomb, starting off with him being taken hostage in Congo during a rebellion in 1964. We also hear about his childhood during WWII as an orphan in the Ardennes, and his life as the 20th century moves forward, the entire short-ish text being the author's attempt to understand the man she experienced as mysterious and shy.
Unfortunately, the novella did not quite open up to me, but that's a also a question of personal taste: The language is very clean and direct, and I see how this might appeal to other readers, just like the intriguing life story of Patrick. I, for once, did not feel like I got particularly close to the man and what made him tick. ...more
Wow, this was...terrible. Dieudonné's short story (in my German-language edition, almost every sentence gets its own paragraph, so the whole thing strWow, this was...terrible. Dieudonné's short story (in my German-language edition, almost every sentence gets its own paragraph, so the whole thing stretches over way more pages than necessary) is written from the perspective of a mother of two who visits her cousin Martin and his family for Christmas. Another married couple, friends of Martin's, are also in attendance. The chamber play is crafted as our narrator's internal monologue, an actress who looks down on the people she spends the day with, because...well, why? Because she disapproves of their attitude twoards fiscal matters? Because they gift her incense sticks? A lot of her resentment is based on mere projection. And mind you, it's not like she verbalizes her standpoints or expresses alternative views, she just sits there and internally disapproves. We don't learn whether there is anything she actively does to promote her convictions, neither verbally nor through actions during or outside this gathering. She indulges in her feelings of superiority without drawing actual consequences - and that setting is smart in the age of internet activism.
So the story could be interpreted in interesting ways: Is the narrator a bigot with a pathetic superiority complex? That's certainly an argument you could make, even if you agree with her. But then the publisher decided to add the worst afterword I have ever read. Now printed in single spaces and almost without paragraphs to divert from the fact that the text is almost as long as the short story itself, Nike van Dinther goes on a virtue signalling rampage that's only very loosely connected to the text itself, but aims to rob it of all ambiguity. After stating that COVID has made transphobia worse etc. (how? and what does that have to do with the book?), van Dinther borrows cred from people like Carolin Emcke, Leslie Jamison, Max Czollek, Kübra Gümüşay et al., so people who actually added to the national and partly international conversation, and then writes page after page about capitalism, the patriarchy, empowerment of maginalized groups yada yada yada. And don't get me wrong: These are important topics. But is virtue signalling now enough to qualify as the afterword to a literary text that opens other windows of interpretation that are now shut out, because ambiguity is...bad? Because the text needs to be framed as an intersectional outcry to smash the patriarchy? That's really a strech.
To read Dieudonné's short story critically would render it interesting, because throwing around sentences that are sure to be applauded in leftist circles is very easy, but actually speaking out, actually changing your behavior and your situation (all things the protagonist doesn't do), that's way harder. That the afterword just does what the protagonist does, that it does not question the text at all, is ironic. It even contains the sentence: "Far too often and too quickly, we just repeat what we hear where we suspect the dominant mode of interpretation." I had to laugh when I read that, because it's exactly what van Dinther does: Playing to the choir, throwing around buzzwords and gratuitous wisdom. And because the text is almost as long as that of Dieudonné, it weighs rather heavy when judging this book.
So while I wouldn't say Dieudonné's story is particularly strong, it offers interesting points for discussion. Afterwords to literary texts should interrogate them....more
Good overview of the history and general aims of the Greater Region, an interregional organization in the EU encompassing the territories Lorraine in Good overview of the history and general aims of the Greater Region, an interregional organization in the EU encompassing the territories Lorraine in the French region Grand Est, Wallonia, the Federation Wallonia-Brussels and Ostbelgien in Belgium, Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany as well as the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (http://www.granderegion.net/). ...more
French: La Vraie Vie / English: Real Life This novel hits you over the head with its overt symbolism and graphic violence, but you can't deny that highFrench: La Vraie Vie / English: Real Life This novel hits you over the head with its overt symbolism and graphic violence, but you can't deny that highly decorated Belgian author Adeline Dieudonné is throwing a real punch here. We meet our unnamed protagonist and narrator when she's ten and learn about her abusive father who is obsessed with hunting and her submissive mother who the kids both pity and despise for her weakness. When the narrator and her brother witness a freak accident involving one of the most gleeful of summery and breezy images, an ice cream van, she explains the trauma of her younger brother with evil spirits that have invaded him - and sets out to save him from the evil that surrounds them...
As we accompany the siblings over the next five years, Dieudonné creates some cleverly ambiguous images that oscillate between nature and nurture, between imagination and reality and between sexuality and power - often, she evokes a gloomy and surreal atmosphere that proves to be highly effective. The narrator thinks that evil resides within a stuffed hyena that stands in her father's trophy room and watches her brother talk to the poor creature; she finds both imagination and science as escape routes; and as she discovers her sexuality, she identifies it to be connected to a deep-rooted power within her.
The extreme violence the book explicitly illustrates has caused quite a stir: We witness the father, a passionate (big game) hunter, humiliating, assaulting and torturing his family, the brother starts torturing and killing animals as well as degrading his sister, and the mother, the narrator and one more female character become victims of horrific physical and psychological male violence born out of hatred against women. The scenes are frequently over the top, like a horror movie juxtaposed with fairy tale -like elements (the elderly woman who tells stories, the saving prince a.k.a. "the champion", the dark woods etc.); the composition underlines that this is a bitter, twisted tale of a lost childhood. The narrator hopes that her and her brother's real life will start once they get away, but the reality they are facing in the meantime is almost impossible to bear - this is not even about finding happpiness, it is about survival.
The graphic content of "Real Life" makes My Absolute Darling (feat. elaborate descriptions of incest) pale. In part, the story reminded me of the fantastic Ghost Wall which also talks about a dominant abusive father who submits his daughter to a very similar experience, but Sarah Moss employs less brutality and adds a fantastic political dimension - her language is also more precise and lyrically intense. I have no problem with violent books (hello, Black Leopard, Red Wolf), but in Dieudonné's case, the gore is sometimes simply employed to shock and it then lacks sufficient narrative purpose apart from rattling readers. This is a janus-headed text, a trashy shocker combined with some excellent, multi-layered narrative ideas.
Well-worth reading because it is very unusual and part of a gloomy wave of postmodern Belgian literature (see also The Discomfort of Evening or Het smelt) that seems to become a proper movement. But nuanced, sublime literature it is not. If you want to learn more about the novel, you can listen to our podcast episode (in German). ...more
"Dass die Rauchsprache erst nach dem Verzehr von "Psylocibinen" erlernbar wird, von Pilzen, die "aus den Tiefen des Kosmos mit Hilfe von Asteroiden au"Dass die Rauchsprache erst nach dem Verzehr von "Psylocibinen" erlernbar wird, von Pilzen, die "aus den Tiefen des Kosmos mit Hilfe von Asteroiden auf die Erde gebracht worden (sind)" (Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, 126), führt uns wieder zurück in das Tim und Struppi-Land, zu Hergés Album Der geheimnisvolle Stern. Auch auf dem Meteoriten, dem geheimnisvollen Stern, der wie eine "Vergrößerungsmaschine" funktioniert, spielen Pilze eine Hauptrolle: Sie vergrößern sich und lösen sich nach der Explosion in nichts auf." (Aus: Christian Kracht revisited: Irritation und Narration)...more
English Edition: "Ostend - Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark" How does it feel if you have to leave your home country and you aEnglish Edition: "Ostend - Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark" How does it feel if you have to leave your home country and you are forced to watch it disappear from the exile? For many authors who fled the Nazis, their home had disappeared long before the war started, they saw the spiritual destruction, the moral decline and the rise of barbarity as the end of Germany as they knew it. Many of them later killed themselves or drank themselves to death - because their belief in humanity was shattered, because the fact that their native land had aimed to destroy them and they were outcasts wherever they went was too much to bear. Some, like Thomas Mann, started to agitate against Hitler from their exile - just this week, German President Steinmeier re-opened Mann's home in Los Angeles which was an important meeting place for exiled writers and shall now become a meeting ground again (http://www.dw.com/en/german-president...).
In his book, Weidermann tells the story of exiled writers spending a last summer together at the Belgian coast in 1936 before they get scattered all over the world and Europe starts to burn. The story centers around the friends Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, but also features many other important writers like Irmgard Keun, Egon Erwin Kisch, Ernst Toller, Arthur Koestler, and Hermann Kesten. Zweig and Roth, both of them Jewish, had a very close but also complicated friendship, as Roth was a heavy drinker (obviously rooted in depression) and as much as Zweig wanted to help his friend, he could not find a way.
The genius of the book is how Weidermann shows that although - or because? - the writers sense that the worst is still to come, they want to be happy together, in the sun, at the beach, one last time before everything falls apart. Weidermann juxtaposes their fascinating personalities, the dynamics of friendship and the lightness of Ostend with the rise of fascism and how it impacted the writers' situation. At the end, of course, everthing will be lost: Ostend was almost completely destroyed during the war, Zweig killed himself in Brazil, Roth died of his alcoholism in Paris, Toller killed himself in New York, Koestler killed himself in London.
Full disclosure: I picked up the book because I love the Belgian coast and because I wanted to learn more about the writers the story portrays, and although it is written by Weidermann - he is one of the hosts of an important TV show about literature in Germany (https://www.zdf.de/kultur/das-literar...), and I often find him a little boring, tbh. But this book is a great - I did not expect this, Weidermann, shame on me! :-)
So go and read this book, and then drive to Ostend and visit the house of James Ensor!...more
Currently being translated into English under the title "The Melting" (Macmillan)
This book has created quite a stir: Flemish novelist Lize Spit has soCurrently being translated into English under the title "The Melting" (Macmillan)
This book has created quite a stir: Flemish novelist Lize Spit has sold more than 100,000 copies of her debut novel in its original Dutch version (which, for a Belgian book, is an insane number), the movie rights were sold three days after initial publication, and translation rights are also highly requested. 29-year-old Spit is supposed to be the new, fresh and edgy voice of Belgium, and as someone who regularly enjoys hanging out in Bruges I was determined to board the hype train and join in the songs of praise for this book. Unfortunately, it turns out I don't like it.
We meet Spit's protagonist Eva while she is driving home to the small Flemish village she grew up in - and she has a block of ice in her trunk. The story slowly reveals what Eva intends to do with it and why, painting an oppressive panorama of a gloomy childhood with parents who are alcoholics, neglect, hopelessness, loneliness, and children's escalating power games that finally result in a terribly brutal scene - which brings us to the core of the novel: The most striking feature of the text is the explicit and unrelentingly detailed depiction of physical and psychological violence, pain, and self-harm.
It would be unfair to say that Spit only aims for the shock effect and you could certainly find artistic justifications, but mind you, the passages that feature physical violence and self-harm are absolutely disgusting. In addition to that, Spit likes to dwell in the description of cringeworthy details. In my opinion, the overall story, message, or artistic merit is not worth the torture that reading these passages encompasses. In fact, the depth of the story does generally not justify the length of the book. Let me sum it up for you: Belgian villages are not as idyllic as they might seem, and children can be brutal, especially when they are neglected and didn't learn to empathize. You're welcome.
So all in all, a disapponting read that excessively showcases brutality - and still manages to keep the reader disengaged. Plus point: The ending is really shocking and extremely well done....more
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