Mind Travel for Children - and their Parents too

I haven´t travel out of my hometown since the beginning of March, but my mind travels every day in remote spaces and times through the books. Truth to be told, I am living in a big, European city - Berlin - which is a universe in itself and every other day I find something interesting to do without leaving its confines. The generous natural environment keeps me mentally sane as I get my portion of hiking and nature walking every other day, and the exciting historical and cultural offer never gives me a reason to feel that my brain is about to explore, overwhelmed by boredom. Book, are a different kind of treat that keep me inspired while helping me to hone my writing skills waiting for the day when will be able to travel again and share my passion to the world wide web. 

One of perks of spending so much time at home, without any travel to plan or enjoy is the high diversity of books and authors I had the priviledge to read. In the last months I made a luxurious tour of the world discovering new interesting voices from all over the world, especially from those places I long to see - hopefully soon, hopefully in our days. Spending two full months in a hospital with days and nights measured in the rhythm of the personnel shifts and regular checkings - plus some extra occurrences will maybe write more about it one day - gave me the chance to read almost without interruption. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of books that I had on my TBR were effed in just one or two days of nonstop reading because my mind needed to be taken away from the machines and blood tests that were then my routine.

At a great extent, I was taken back to my childhood, the happy, out-of-time and politics times of it, when together with Y. we were spending days after days outdoors reading all that we´ve found in my late paternal grandfather - that we never meet but we had a glorious mythical image of it as a rebel and fighter for the rights my parents were too lenient to risk their comfort for - library and when we were done, fetching our hunger for books from the neighbours and relatives libraries. One of my favorite selection included fairy tales set in different parts of the world and historical epic poems - like Gilgamesh and Shahnameh (every time some Persian acquintances is wondering how comes that I know Ferdowsi´s epic I am answering on a neutral tone that, sorry dear we had it at home, but there is so much story behind this statement that I am trying to make it as matter-of-factly as possible) or Marco Polo travels or the 1001 Nights. Through my reading I´ve not only discovered that far, far away there were places called Persia or China or Russia (I dare to confess that I cried reading Mother by Gorki and got excited about the fights between the White and the Reds as related in the short stories from the Revolutionary Russia in the making).

Despite so much reading, we were not lonely. Me and Y. we used to have friends to play with and sometimes some children of relatives on the way to ´the country´ and the Roma children one block away and the many Hungarian friends that updated our fainted language knowledge and the Armenians whose grandparents were, like my parents, living to share their silent stories of trauma. 

In our kitchen in the big city, in that match-of-boxes kind of apartment that we always hated, we had a huge map of the world. Eating - a precarious experience after my mom took hold of the kitchen after our Nana sunked into dementia - was accompanied by stares at the map, reading the name of the countries and imagining how life may be there. We were well informed enough to do not expect to travel there any time soon, we just were curious how it is life in Papua - New Guinea, for instance - ´They are canibals there´, one day my engineer stepfather announced us and suddenly the tasteless food become unbearable to keep in our diminished stomachs.

Despite all the shortcomings, and a mother slowly advacing into her world of depression building her universe behind stumbling blocks that were more resistant than our longing for normal emotions and a simple hug, and the relatives who were disappearing one by one and our own social status that was degraded and our food and light and anything else shortages we had our books that kept our sanity. As during those two unexpected hospital months of 2020, books and thinking out of our walls and limits - physical ones included - kept me safe. Before the many interventions and surgeries and ´routine checkings´ whose number I forgot to count, I set to have something in my mind to think about, related to the last book. Some deep question about history and life and love that I expected to analyse and explore while the doctors were investigating my body. It worked, as smoothly as it worked for months to ignore the desperate signs my body was sending to my absent mind (´it will pass, it´s just a psychosomatic condition, I will get my voice back once I will settle my problems´, I used to say in denial, supported wrongly by some medical doctors that were incredulous and maybe inexperienced too to believe that at my young age I can face such a verdict, like sickness should get an age ticket before entering your body).

But I was lucky and was in the end in very good medical hands and I survived. And while I am carefully doing my recovering treatments and filling my life with love for my little and big people in my life, I keep sharing with my little son the love for travel and respect for diversity. We learn together books about my ancestors and his ancestors, about what makes us one despite the different foods we eat and the different place of births in our certificates, about far away lands that we hope one day to visit together, once those bad people will be overcome by the many good people they keep under opression. I teach my son about how big the world is, and how many languages he can learn - at least the languages of our so diverse grandparents. But first and foremost, before we can travel again and see how diverse the world is, I am teaching my son to respect everyone´s right to be different and proud of it. And books do help us a whole lot during those staycation journey. 

Book Review: The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan

I am not so fond of my life during a nonsense dictatorship and I am very selective with books about a specific part of the world and those times, but curiosity when it comes to reading can overcome my skepticism and reservations. 

This book by Elizabeth Buchan who does not have direct connections with communist dictatorships or former Central and Eastern Europe caught my attention because of the title, The Museum of Broken Promises. It sounds so extremely romantic and tragic that I left my imagination run wild trying to figure out the many possibilities uncovered by this title. At a certain extent, they were answered, but I had high expectations which were partially met. 

Laure Carlyle is a British-French women who is curating in Paris The Museum of Broken Promises. People bring objects that are reminders of promises that were never kept but it not all broken promises are equal. You need to have a strong story in order to have your objects featured in the museum.

Laure´s story is complex and she is rarely keen to reveal it willingly. Once upon a time, she was an au pair working for an influential Czech family first in Paris then in Prague. The father of the family was active in the pharmaceutical industry but not his qualifications allowed him to freely travel and live in the West, but his trust in the party and the stamp of approval of the secret police. Once in Prague, Laure get involved with the member of a protest rock group, Anatomie and is herself under the secret police observation - as all foreigners were in those countries - and even arrested and almost raped. She will escape but her then boyfriend not although they promised to meet in Vienna and many years after, she is haunted by his memory and searches in vain to hear the rest of the story (after the end of the communist regime, it would have been easy to return to Prague and trace him though).

What I appreciated about the book is the normality of the story. Although the book is based mostly on researches and reading about those times, Buchan succeeded to recreate the ambiance in its normal abnormality, with people refraining from telling the truth or learning to live being tailed by the goons of the secret police. It also has interesting exchanges about the nature of communism and how it was deteriorated by people struggling to build and maintain lavish bourgeois priviledges. 

From the point of view of the story, the connections between the present - the museum - and the old story are not always throughout and sometimes, delved into the Czechoslovak story, I completely forgot that the museum exists. The book is mostly slow paced and I liked it this way, as I´ve read way too many book approaching those times from a very sensationalist Bond-like perspective and it was rarely this way. People had their lived, melted into the requirements of the regime and survived. No drama and heroic outbursts, with some noteworthy exceptions, like the case of Jan Palach who self-immolated as a protest against the dramatic crash of the Prague Spring, mentioned in the book. 

Understandable, the author is like walking on shells but writing with caution about an era and a past one did not live in is a safety belt against exagerations and distorsions. Sometimes, it may be a good idea for the local authors as well.

The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan is a good read, which respects the historical and human complexities of the time, but wished it did more from the literary point of view and story complexity.

Rating: 3 stars

Book review: Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

I am familiar with many literatures out of my geographical and cultural comfort zone, but the Japanese literature is one of those that cannot cease to puzzle me. The more I read the more far I feel from a palpable understanding of the local cultural soul. 

I´ve intellectually met Sayaka Murata through her short story Convenience Store Woman. Earthlings - translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori brings the discussion about what is normal and what is not from the social point of view to another level. A topic I have personally very conflicting thoughts about it. Although I may accept at a great extent the deconstruction of normality, even beyomd the power-focused interpretation in Foucault´s terms, I am relatively uncomfortable with the everyday interaction with not-normality on a daily, personal basis. 

´I was used with Mom saying I was hopeless. And she was right, I really was a dead loss. The rice I dished up just lay flat in the bowl instead of being nicely rounded´. 

Natsuki believes she is from Planet Popinpobopia belonging to the Magic Police sent to Save the Earth. Her stuffed animal, Piyyut - see the cover - gives her magical powers. Many kids do this at a certain extent, with their imaginary friends and hopes that their stuffed animals can talk or help them when the world of adults fails them. But Natsuki keeps the same mindframe at an older age too, after being faced with an utter cruelty from her mom and killing a teacher that abused her sexually. Her escape from the Baby Factory town and mindset was to marry a man who, similarly to her, was looking to escape the social pressure. Their arrangement was to keep their separate lives while maintaining a marriage of conivence, where sexual contact was out of question. The intrusive society does not help them and they have to run away or submit and either behave properly - get a job and keep it, make children - or part ways. They run to Natsuki´s grandparents house, to join her cousin - once childhood ´husband´ Yuu, initially an alien soul too, who remained skeptical about his condition. Once becoming aware of their alien condition, the three of them are sliding into an abysmal return to their normality. Which, in Earthling´s terms means more than perfect foolishness. I´ve felt I am in a narrative deem of Peter Greenway´s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife&Her Lover. A delirious tremens...

This matter-of-factly approach of abnormality, in the vein of ´when there are no rules everything is possible to survive´/´homo homini lupus´ kind of approach, is shocking by its cruelty. In the same way that cruelty is a ´normal society´ normative. Its vital energy is used for survival only and this is probably why I am so crossed about many attributes of the characters as they are completely empty from the intellectual point of view. Intellectual life and culture too are man-made constructs indeed but they may offer sometimes a frame for discussion. 

Earthlings is like no other Japanese book I´ve read before but I am not necessarily fond of. I would be interested though to read and find out more about the local, Japanese-centered discussion about the ideas shared in this book. As I said at the beginning, the more I read the more puzzled I am about Japan - even despite spending one full year there.  

Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Book Review: The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao

One of the intellectual achievements of this strange personal and global year was to get to know a lot of diverse voices representing authors from almost all over the world. As all my fantastic travel plans are on hold as for now at least I can travel far away with only my heart and my mind getting to know facts that make me curious to explore more - hopefully in person in a near future.

Tiffany Tsao is an author and translator (Indonesian to English) of Chinese-Indonesian descent, currently living in Australia. The Majesties is a combination of literary fiction and mystery thriller - or rather (rich) family saga whoddunit. 

First and foremost, let´s start with the good things. For instance, the mesmerizing cover: a monarch butterfly on the head of a portrait whose face is made of colourful brushes. Finally a cover that is more than copy-pasting a certain format where only the title and the name of the author changes from a book to another. An excellent visual choice hard to compete with.

Another good thing about the book - which I had access to in audio format - is that there is a story which flows good, with individual episodes which are very well written. There are characters with a strong and complex personality and events they are involved to which are enfolding and are very well inserted into the narrative. The problem is when those episodes are brought together.

The Majesties is focused on the events that lead to the poisoning of 300 people at the Sulinado family gathering. Sulinado are a rich Chinese tycoon family and their killing is the work of Estella, a deceived family member. The story is told by her sister Gwendolyn, the sole survivor of the attack. Betrayed by her husband, a womanizer who ended up - as in died/being murdered/poisoned - as a fanatic born-again Christian, feeling abused by her family who sacrified her for their business interests - and she is not the only one - Estella doesn´t have anything to lose. Without a life of her own, she refuses to cope any more with the game of elegant appearances. As there is no way out, at least let´s prepare an epic revenge. Which succeeds. 

The story has an enormous potential of tension and complex turns of events, but unfortunatelly it is told on a monotonous voice which steals the charm and the literary potential of the story. Which is so pitiful.

Rating: 2.5

Political Thriller Book Review: The New Girl by Daniel Silva

´They were racing westward along the A89 Autoroute, the chief of the Israeli secret intelligence service and the future King of Saudi Arabia´.

I am a big fan of the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva but somehow I skipped the last year installment. When I´ve read the New Girl the dramatic changes in the Middle East were underway and probably those are the best news of this damned year so far: the UAE and Bahrain signed a peace treaty with the state of Israel - although they never been officially at war. The so-called Abraham Accords were announced in a sensitive political moment and at a White House occupied by a problematic president, but no one assumes that they are the result of only of a couple of months of negotiations. Probably, those historical agreements are in the making for good couple of years and hopefully, the two countries that will normalize the relationships with the state of Israel are not the only ones. 

Enough with my political enthusiasm. There is enough to talk about in Daniel Silva´s book. Allon, the Israel´s top spy is operating on behalf of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia - KBM - who has many similarities with the controversial MBS - who allowed the women to drive, but also locked his relatives in Ritz Carlton and also decided the murder of an inconvenient journalist, which in the book is called Omar Nawwaf. 

Allon is trying to save the world balance in the Middle East from a Russian-led conspiration and it sounds as post-Cold War as possible. Realistic yet embelished and antagonised with the courage of writing imagination. Although, as usual, the story has a high dosis of suspense, cruelty and unknown terrorists, as well as old characters, as the Philby daughter, former chief of the British intelligence that spied for the Russians, I´ve felt more than once that the story of the Saudi Crown Prince disbalanced the story and many details were too much molded in order to replicate the real-time events and the character. Otherwise, expect a very suspensful ending.

Silva´s latest, The Order is approaching a topic not necessarily very popular those days, but often associated with a hollow of darkness...Hopefully will be able to finish it in the next four weeks.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Book Review: Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer

It´s not an everyday literary occurence to stay in love with a book I was waiting to read for a long time. Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer - which I had in audiobook format - was a pleasant surprise coming from the author of Septembers of Shiraz, that was also turned into a movie. Surprise because of the maturity of the writing and the complexities of the characters.

I will explain further my literary surprise. I´ve read in the last years a good number of books written by authors of Iranian origin - most of them living in the USA. Especially in the last months, there are a couple of aclaimed titles that were published placed within the events before and after the setting of the Islamic Revolution. Not all of them are equal and the emphasis on the history instead of the focus on the development of the story and of the characters is detrimental to the quality of the writing. Indeed, for the average non-Iranian especially European and American reader, a lot of historical background for understanding the complex Iranian history is needed. But the art of the writer is to create contexts and stories that may save the reader from a long - not always interesting - historical ramble, otherwise available in non-fiction books.

Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer do have some historical - pedagagical intermezzos - but what prevails in the end is the strength and failures of the characters. Especially of the storyteller, Hamid Mozaffarian, member of an educated family that left Iran after the Revolution. He stayed and reached modest professional achievement, in the end as employee of the Cultural and Foreign Affairs ministries.

Why exactly Hamid is telling the story is not clear. Looking for an excuse? For an absolution - including from himself? Trying to repeat his father encyclopedic preoccupations but at a more mundane level?

Hamid betrayed his father - not necessarily as a Freudian temptation. Why, is also not very clear, rather a mixture of youngish lack of conscience and blind enthusiasm and careless for the consequences, as trying to proof his new identity towards the new rulers. His father was against the Shah but assumed that by keeping his position within the Ministry of Culture he will destroy the system. He ended up becoming the system. Hamid will try the same and will end up in the same way. But he will be lonlier as ever: estranged from his family and his child, alienated in a world that he helped to be built - as a post-revolutionary auxiliary interrogator - unaware of its terrible turn of events.

This is what happens when intellectuals - or people with education - accept for different reasons the morganatic marriage with violent ideologies or with mindsets that pretend that killing a part of the population has religious or political excuses.

The ambiance of the story is often heavy but Sofer saves the day with hilarious references and encounters - from the guidance sought by opening My Uncle Napoleon to the religious dangers represented by an indecent woman on a cameo or the visualisation of judicial files brought home into a grocery plastic bag. I´ve always find dictatorship a source of tragi-comical inspiration, but only when you are an observer from afar, not a direct actor of historical events.

A special note to the reader of the audiobook: Navid Navid. A professional actor based in Germany, he made the reading original and alive, bringing sounding color into the story. The only problem - the horrendous French pronunciation, but for once I can be tolerant with such failures.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Book Review: The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

Michael´s mother is Greek Cypriot - his grandparents call him Mikaelis - and his father is Jamaican. He is growing up in London, gay, surrounded by love and friends, but still not feeling ´enough´.

It´s only for you to decide your identity said Michael, the character of The Black Flamingo, that I had access to as audiobook, read by the author himself in the clean British accent. He is looking for his own magic, but once he got it he is happy to share it with the others. This magic means for him playing in drag. ´I am a man and I want to wear a dress on´ it´s the identity he wants to dress on too. Your gender, assumed by birth and attributed mostly in the society context may matter but should not limit someone. 

In Michael´s world, everything is a choice and this choice empowers. Even coming out it is a personal matter. When done, it should happen for and to yourself, not because other people expect you to behave in a certain way. 

Written from a voice of a teenage searching for identity and ways to express the book has a message to anyone, no matter your choice of gender or ethnic background - personally I´ve loved a lot the idea that you cannot be half/quarter of something, you are a full human being; wish I had this answer long time ago when peopel were counting the percentage of my (very) complex identities I inherited from my very complex family: It´s your choice to defnite - or not - yourself. And this is a very beautiful life line...

The style of the book is easy and addresses probably a teenage audience, but it states simple yet sometimes hard to achieve objectives. Happily, Michael´s world is not stained by open violence and parental denial - his father is absent and his mother, when hearing that he is gay was ´ok with that´, although later when he wondered ´how do they know I am gay´, his mother answered plainly: ´Cruelty is part of life´ - but finding one´s place in this complicated world is not easy. Michael´s message is empowering and his fairytale inspiring.

Rating: 3 stars

My Poetry Book of the Year: Sin by Forugh Farrokhzad

If there is one single poetry book to read over and over again this year, it will be Sin by the less-known Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, excellently translated into English by Sholeh Wolpé, a poet herself.

It´s very difficult to find quality modern and contemporary poetry in flawless English translation. Farrokhzad is one example, altogether with Shamloo or Sohrab Sepehri. Persian poetry sounds, indeed, much better in the original language with the special inflections of the language, but translating them to the non-Persian poetry reader is an act of justice for the beauty of their verse. Especially when, as in the case of Farrokhzad, they are on the black list of the current rulers of Iran. Her brother, the gay entertainer Fereydoon Farrokhzad, was murdered in Germany part of chain murders ordained by the Islamic Republic in 1992. Her sister Pooran Farrokhzad was the author of the first women encyclopedia in Iran.  

Farrokhzad had a short yet creatively rich life - she died in a car accident in her early 30s - being is compared with the young rebelious women of universal poetry like Silvia Plath, Anna Akhmatova, Maria Tsvetaeva or Dahlia Ravikovich. Also a film director, she had to fight against the conservative realm of her everyday life and strict family environment. Her child was taken away and she divorced, and was interned in mental institutions where, among others, she went through electric shocks treatments. 

Her first collection of poems Asir (Captive) was published in 1955. Other volumes and poems followed, published by literary reviews and edition houses. Her openness about intimacy and sexual encounters was new for the public and often she was accused of irreverence. What I´ve discovered myself while reading Sin - which is a selected collection of poems from previous volumes, including the postumous Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season - is the complexity of feelings she finelly yet firmly is relating to and about. Sometimes, the words make an arch in the skies like the fluidious characters of Chagall and you feel yourself within the realm of feelings. This approach of full intimacy and declared love was maybe not comfortable to the Persian culture, especially at the time she created as it is not now. The Western reader, familiar with outbursts of feelings and declarations of love, will be overwhelmed too though, as the feelings expressed in Farrokhzad poetry are genuine and definitive. It´s not encounter it is love.

I don´t read too much poetry in translation, but the one provided by Sholeh Wolpé does not sound like a translation. It flows original and flawless and it is such a pleasure for the brain to be able to read this poetry. 

´Happy, because we love

Heartsick, because love is a curse´.

Book Review: If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

´Tehran isn´t exactly safe for two girls in love with each other´.

I had quite a lot of expectations from If You Could be Mine by Sara Farizan. The topic - gay love in the Islamic Republic of Iran - is interesting beyond the literary approaches. The book was the acclaimed debut of the Iranian author living in America. I don´t know directly how does it feel to be a gay person in Iran, but being gay is considered an ´illness´ and gender change is an official policy, which make the Islamic Republic the second in the world after Thailand for such interventions.

The characters in the book, Nasrin and Sahar are in love since they were little children, but the social and political circumstances were against a love together. Nasrin, a spoiled girl from a rich family, will be married while Sahar is considering a gender change operation. The dynamics between the two are relatively simple and I was expecting more complexity given the religious and political context. Nasrin is manipulating Sahar who is introduced further to the gay world of Tehran by her gay cousin Ali. At a certain point, when Ali is offering her to move together to Turkey, Sahar has a patriotic outburst, but completely out of the blue and without any further explanations or demonstrative behaviors in this respect. Sahar, which is presented as the intellectual, reasonable character of the book is sheepish and is lacking any complexity - either emotional or intellectual. She is just following blindly Nasrin, no matter how much she is used by her. 

Personally I was curious to find out more about the young life in Tehran besides the nose jobs, lavish parties and secret outlet stores (the kind of information easily available from the Rich Kids of Tehran Instagram account anyway). There may be for sure better books written on this topic around the libraries.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Book Review: Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

´Forget about readers, I rarely have friends´.

The voice of Japanese women writers is becoming strong and particularly complex lately as it attacks nonchalantly former taboos topics, such womanhood in the society while praises the wild independence of the body and the soul. Mieko Kawakami that I´ve discovered two years ago, is one of them.

After reaching the end of Breasts and Eggs - I had the book in its audio version - I needed a break. A break to figure out what I really think about the book. It is dense and attacks frontally so many women-related topics that you don´t have to be necessarily Japanese - although a middle knowledge about women in Japan is required - to be in sync with the ideas and challenges.

The women from this book, which is made up of two different novellas - but I will not keep copying and pasting from the description as I think this is not an important part of the story - are on the forefront of their lives: single mothers, single by choice, women without men and not interested to negotiate their lack of sexual interest. And what a time to be alive, when you can even get pregnant and be a mother - the highest traditional label a woman can aspire to - without a man. 

The diversity of voices and women is overwhelming and makes it easily to identify at least with one of them. Or rather, to the limitations and stumble blocks a woman has to overcome in order to move further or simply live their lives as genuine human beings. In the words of one of the characters, a woman cannont become a Budha, she needs to get reborn as a man first. 

I´ve read in the last months many books - mostly literary works - that deal with the women social and physiological status and their limitations but Breasts and Eggs is definitely covering all and even more aspects of this condition. It shakes to the ground your beliefs and safety in order to rebuilt it again on a better, self-oriented basis. Maybe you want to have children and enjoy your family life while being offered the social status and stability through your man, but it is all you ever wanted? Can you beat the worm of doubt any more after reading this book? I would be so curious to read more by Mieko Kawakami, maybe not necessarily about the woman condition only...

Rating: 4 stars

Middle Grade Book Review: Amina´s Voice by Hena Khan

I love middle grade books with a multicultural touch because it helps me to understand a world where children can freely share and assume their identities - ethnic, religious particularly. 

Amina´s Voice by Hena Khan is about the life of an American-Pakistani faily living in Greendale, Milwaukee, in the USA. A place where different religions and denominations are coming along together and the schools share the usual diversity we associate with the American dream. All went well until one night someone vandalized the local mosque, but the action proved the strength of the community against any form of extremism. A planed Qu´ran reading competition will be hosted in a Presbyterian church and everyone will help to rebuild the destroyed mosque. ´We all have to stick together in times like this´ is an optimistic message of unity against extremism. We will not know who exactly attached the Muslim center, but the solidarity aftermath is more important for the overall message of the book.

The author focuses on the positive experiences and the efforts towards a middle-path of living and practising the identity, particularly the religion. Even Bhai Jaan, Amina´s uncle visiting from Pakistan which favors a stricter way of Muslim life will be in the end convinced to tolerate a girl singing in public. 

Amina and his brother Mustafa are a projection of how a second generation practising Muslim immigrants in America can be. Accomodating other people´s identity and accepting who you are - as Amina´s friend and colleague, the Korean-born Soojin who wants to take an American-sounding name after naturalization - is a challenge at any age, particularly in the pre-teens years. 

I appreciated the simplicity in portraying the inner family dynamics and how both parents are both commited to respect their traditions in a way which accommodates and respects other people´s identities. The voices who count in this book are children´s and the adults are mostly the regulative background who may allow or challenge their behavior, but largely in a mildly, not dramatic tensed way. Therefore, the book is both useful for children and their parents, both with a multicultural background and just curious to learn about other cultures and communities as well as about how co-existence may look like in a democracy.

Rating: 3.5 stars

WWII German Stories: The Spy Woman from Charité

Based on a true story, The Spy-Woman from Charité - read in the original German language Die Spionin der Charité - by Christian Hardinghaus is focused on a resistance group against the Nazi establishment around the famous surgeon Ernest Ferdinand Sauerbruch who operated at the Charité between 1929 and 1949.

The role of German physicians, especially from the famous Charité hospital, is highly controversial and a fiction book does not bring clarity in their role of the eugenics and other controversial Nazi-led medical politics. Sauerbruch himself was a main personality of the Nazi medical establishment, with positions in various academic and medical comissions and being awarded numerous medals. Professionally he was considered a main personality and the official post-war narrative was that he played a role in countering the eugenics programs within the hospital as well as for treating and saving Jewish patients and operating various resistance circles.

The book by Christian Hardinghaus follows this narrative, fictionalizing the story of Sauerbruch personal secretary that, among others, seduces and recruits for his boss an important German diplomat, Franz Kolbe that further communicated with the future CIA director, Allan Dulles, during the war operating from Switzerland. Sauerbruch wanted to take ´his country back´ and was able to smoothly move between various Nazi centers of command to hide his traces. 

In the book, the details of the center of resistance from the Charité was kept secret for 30 year and revealed for an American journalist. There are no shadows and everything seems to be clear for the author. The story is interesting, with some suspenseful episodes, with clear distinctions between the good and the bad, but the historian in me was maybe expecting more sophistication. Probably the said historian should rather read more history and less fiction when it comes to such complicated encounters.

Rating: 3 stars

Flash Fiction Stories Review: Memoirs of a Lagos Wedding Planner

Flash fiction applies to stories of maximum 1,000 words. One of the most entertaining example in this respect is the SMITH Magazine, whose 6-word game I used to play passionately week after week a couple of years ago. The flash fiction stories do have a plot, dialogues and action, but everything should be concentrated in a very short amount of words. Big literary names as Kafka, Hemingway, Saadi of Shiraz or Daniil Kharms, to mention only few of them tried their hand to this type of writing as well. My latest collection of flash fiction was written by Tolupe Popoola - Memoirs of a Lagos Wedding Planner.

Popoola is a Nigerian-born writers living in England that authored several colllections of short fiction and a novel. Memoirs was my first for me and I am happy to add her on my list of Nigerian writers to follow. The ten stories are inspired by the everyday experiences of a wedding planner in Lagos. A well chosen and a never ending source of inspiration. You got all the emotions, feelings, stress, craziness and family dynamics in short installments. 

The tone is descriptive, matter of factly, focused on describing facts and events. Sometimes I had the feeling I am reading some entertainment pages in glossy magazines - the style of flash fiction was actually promoted by glossy magazines like Cosmopolitan, for instace, so the category may suit. As the topic is well chosen, the stories are the various illustrations of the encounters of a wedding planner which happens to operate in Lagos, therefore the geographical and social emphasis. 

Some of the stories are so hilarious that I couldn´t stop by laughing a bit. And as I was about to finish the book I started to miss this world and felt a bit frustrated for the limited amount of stories included in the memoir. I would have love to stay for at least the same amount of pages...

Rating: 3 stars

The Attraction of Storytelling: The Colours of Beauty/Die Farben der Schönheit by Corina Bomann

For various reasons, more or less clear, I do have difficulties in writing my stories lately. I lost my pace, my coherence and my hunger for words, being left often suspended somewhere between the words that wait to be told and those who will never be written. But life is still young and I don´t despair. I am trying every day to bring back the source of stories. The more I try the more surprised I am of the opportunities and the diversities of books I am offering myself to read as an alternative to my dry writing. Latest success was to delve deep into a story while listening to an audiobook, my latest literary passion.

Die Farben der Schönheit by Corina Bomann - which I listened in the original German language - is the first of a trilogy featuring the life of Sophia, an average Berlin-born girl following her dream of being a chemist. Estranged from her family after getting pregnant with a married man, she has to abandon her Chemistry studies and moves to Paris with her artist girlfriend. From there, she is offered the chance of working for the famous cosmetics queen and art collector Helena Rubinstein. But Rubinstein´s life circumstances and the Great Depression will put Sophia in difficult situation and she will soon deal again with uncertainties and change of fate.

What I really liked about this book was the flow of the story. The facts are simple and so is the ways in which they are further shared. Sophia´s story is about a simple girl that by the game of circumstances and her resilience went close to personalities of the time, both in Paris and the NYC. But she was assigned by the author to tell a story where she is the main character. 

The historical facts about Helena Rubinstein and her complex personality are relatable but I will not call this book a historical novel. Rather, it is a book about a woman whose character is built through the interaction with different environments and various experiences and this story is what really counts. 

Probably will be curious to read at a certain point the continuation of the story, but as for now, I got the right dosis of inspiration to slowly move on the right side of the writing journey.

Rating: 3 stars

Explaining Tragic Historical Moments in Children Voice

I´ve always found difficult to explain to children tragedies, both personal and historical, in writing or through direct speech. How, for instance, to explain in an easy, without the adult emotions, to a child, that once upon a time one country stand united in killing my relatives and other 6 million innocent people? Or that other humans, made from the same flesh and blood as the rest of the humans, might happily wipe me and the rest of my family out of the maps and world because we are assumed to pray to a different Gd or born with a different name.

Judith Kerr in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - I had access to the audiobook version in the German language, Als Hitler das rosa Kaninchen stahl - succeeded to give children voice to a terrible century in a very genuine way. 

Anna, the daughter of an inconvenient Jewish-German journalist, is forced to leave Berlin together with his brother Max and his mother. They join their father first in Switzerland, but there is no place for the truth of his father, therefore they move to Paris, a stop before crossing the Channel and moving to England. 

We, as adults, we may take those changes of language and environment and address as a serious challenge and we can keep complaining and talk about it for ever. Children, though, they see it in a different note, with a curiosity of world adventurers and with the innocence that does not see the trauma, the dangers and the difficulties. Playing with children whose language they cannot understand, learning a new language and trying to keep quiet during the passport control from Germany to Switzerland are facts that a child will just register. The meta-analysis comes later, eventually during a therapy session. 

I am in love withe Anna´s voice and with the art of the author. I´ve read other books by Judith Kerr but this book is something to remember for a long time and probably would be curious to watch the movie too that was released the last year. But about my relationship with me and movies made after books in another post...

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn

´But the human brain is rather a strange thing´.

I will add, that the human brain is also a fascinating thing, but this is rather an observation in cold blood, when one does not feel oneself moved by any emotion, but just overview facts and brain mechanisms from afar, with amused scientific curiosity. Almost like the main character in Almond by the Korean author Won-Pyung Sohn, who wrote and directed a number of short films. The book is translated by the San Diego-based Sandy Joosun Lee. 

The narrator of Almond is a young man that from an early age was diagnosed with alexithymia, which refers to the inability to express your feelings. His amygdala, the almond-shaped structures in the brain were not working properly. ´The words ´emotions´ and ´empathy´ are just meaningless letters in print´.

He grew up with his single mother and grandmother, who tried to challenge this inability, not only by feeding him almonds - which may be good for the brain development - but also teaching him to extend his network of associations, including by translating emotions into words. ´Mom was like a playright and never tired of using her imagination to come up with different situations´ (...) I needed to read the true meaning behind words, as well as memorize the proper intentions behind my responses´. 

The main character is having a long way ahead, going through shocking and highly violent episodes, at the end of which his emotional limits are challenged. The level of aggressivity described is raw but told with a matter-of-fact voice of someone who really is beyond fear.

The book is made of short chapters, with a fotographic impression. It´s a simple story with a complex emotional weight. I personally appreciated the innovative-creative way in which such a diagnosis is realistically inserted into a narrative and the literary developments. 

Rating: 3 stars