Movie Review: Empire of Passion directed by Nagisa Oshima

As much as I am sharing a wide interest in the Japanese history, culture, particularly arts, I may confess that I do always resonate - I initially wanted to write plainly ´enjoy´, but should arts be enjoyable? (rhetorical question) - with my esthetic standards. Which does not diminish at all my genuine curiosity towards this world.

Empire of Passion by Nagisa Oshima, that I watched via Mubi, is set in the Japanese countryside at the end of the 19th century. The pristine landscape is the setting for a passion-driven crime: Gisaburo, the rickshaw driver is killed by her wife´s 26-year younger lover, with her direct involvement.

The protagonists are very simple village people, living in dire poverty, driven by simple emotions: hunger, thirst, coupling. The two lovers share an animalic-like passion, that started with a short courtship, while sharing sweets brought by the young lover, recently returned from the Army and wondering aimless through the village. She has two children, one girl sent away who returns once in a while and one little boy who apparently is not in the picture most of the time, including after the husband´s murder, although she is easily wandering out of the home, often after Gisaburo comes back as a ghost.

The business of ghosts is tragi-comical in a way, but has cultural explanations. The police officer is prompted to start the investigation following various appearance of Gisaburo as a ghost and in the dreams of fellow villagers. Otherwise, everyone would have believe the official story sold for three years by Seki, the wife, according to which her husband is away to find work in Tokyo.

The community of the village creates the context of the story: they are admonishing, judging, gossiping and watching, in the end, when the two are tortured. They are the ones who in the end will decide how the story ends. A reminder of how the social pressure of the community used to - and still does - matter in Japan. But, as in the case of the two illicit lovers, they are perfectly numb, unless there is guilt or pain involved.

The so-called ´love story´ is mostly carnal, while the natural human emotions seem to be absent in most of the daily interactions. There is no kindness or gratitude and even love. There are screams - which may be some signs of emotion anyway - but it looks that most of the time the protagonists, all of them, are aimlessly swimming through a void, like avant-garde inarticulate robots (well it is a century before the robots appear in Japan, but inanimate bodies, or better said, moving corpses, describe them better).

I´ve found the dynamics between the two lovers really unteresting to watch during the developing of the story. There is a desynchronisation of their feelings: she may not be necessarily attracted to him in the very beginning, and their first sexual encounter looks rather as a rape, but her feelings - or rather attachment - to him grows thereafter. He is careful to not be caught up, at least at the beginning, pushing her out of his away and asking her to keep their affair secret, which almost breaks her heart. In the end, they are what passion made out of them, without being in charge of their passion(s). Their passion is blind. At the end of the movie, shortly before being caught, Seki is losing her sight, a symbolic ending of her own blindness, to the world and her life.  

I think that the English version of the title, Empire of Passion, is exaggerated, while the initial French title: Fantom Amour, is much appropriate to describe the story. This is not how I imagine, anyway, an empire of passion and passion in general.

Based on a novel by Itoko Nakamura, the movie was produced in 1978, when it was presented to Cannes Film Festival and awarded the ´best director´. The film director, Nagisa Oshima, touched upon delicate topics in the post-WWII Japan and therefore I am interested in watching more of his works.

Rating: 3 stars

Movie Review: A Family Tour by Ying Liang

There is a secret communication code shared silently between the people who suffered opression and whose freedom is threatened. Yes, they will say ´good bye´, like everyone does, but followed or preceded by short instructions about what to do in case ´it happens´, repeating short direction about how to escape, just in case...Individuals who escaped opression and prison and dead, they know it, and their life and the lives of those around them will always be cursed with the curse of the ´life after´.

I´ve spent my early childhood surrounded by people who wanted to live a prison of a country and were not allowed, or who were allowed but had to leave everything behind, or who did their best to escape illegaly from the prison of the country, with the price of their freedom or the freedom of their relatives, or both. What fascinated me always was the exchange between the people talking. Sometimes there were no words at all, just hands raised in vain or long silences.

A Family Tour by Ying Liang is the story of a young film director forced to leave mainland China for Hong Kong after producing a film with a subversive message against the authorities. For five years, she haven´t seen her ailing mother, who is about to make an important surgery. Before that happens, she plans to meet her in Taiwan, together with her husband and son. The mother is taking a tour and a couple of small presents later, they are allowed to follow the bus discretely and spend some little time together. 

The film director himself is refugiated to Hong Kong after a similar encounter with the censors of the Popular Republic of China. However, the story can be replicated from all over the world. All those having to do at least once with an oppressive regime will instantly recognize the secret exchange between people on the run. People whispering for avoiding their words being fully understood or not sharing their escape plane with everyone for fear of being caught. 

A Family Tour succeeds to speak that language of the nostalgy for home of the displaced. The young film director is asked during a short encounter with media during a film festival in Taiwan she participates where is home for her: China or Hong Kong? None of it, she answers in a whim. 

The mother-daughter encounter is such an emotionally-filled process. There are many words that fail to be told and empathy gestures stopped. The memories are revisited and rebuilt and confirmed every single time. And there is, as usual, in such cases, betrayal, lot of it. The betrayal of the mother who for the price of not losing her country is keen to cut contact with her daughter, to officially accept the fact of it. 

I love very much the daughter´s genuine refusal to accept the double standards and her revolt and the passion for the mission of her work. If I would have continued to live in a prison-country, I would have for sure end up in one of their many prisons. But in a way, I can understand, without empathize, with the steadiness of the mother in cuting the contact in other to protect everyone. Her sickness and refusal to stay with her daughter´s family in Hong Kong, because she longs to go back to her native Sichuan, put things in a deeper human perspective. This is why the daughter is so alone, no matter what. People fighting for freedom with no compromise are usually very alone. 

I appreciated how poetically the story is told through the images: long slowly movement of the camera, the focus on the faces of the actors and the integration of the poetic innuendos.  

As for now, the movie is available to watch on Mubi. 

Bookreview: The Heartbeat of Iran by Tara Kangarlou

Politics, say one of the many people interviewed and featured by journalist Tara Kangarlou in The Heartbeat of Iran, separate the world from love. I may add that when used abusively together with politics, religion can do the same. 

Heartbeat of Iran is a collection of interviews with people from Iran. Doctors, artists, musicians,  painters, burger joint owner, saffron lover, the ayatollah (black turban) watching Western movies like Me Before You and sharing his thoughts on Instagram (as for now, the only social media channel not officially blocked in Iran) ...There are so many faces of the everyday human of a country with over 80 million people.  

Iranian-born Tara Kangarlou is an award winning journalist working for NBC, CNN, Al Jazeera ald Al Monitor, among others. In 2015 she reported from Iran for Al Jazeera during the nuclear negotiations, but also about the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and the refugees from war-torn Syria. 

The collection of interview is aimed at a certain extent to feature the people who are not usually getting a voice in the Western media. The everyday citizen of the Islamic Republic who may not necessarily have a political opinion, but it´s directly affected by the politics of his or her country. There are people who despite their financial and professional possibilities, they decided to stay and live their life in their country. 

Some of them represent minorities living in Iran, as the Jews - including the ambitious young chief rabbi of the Iranian Jewish community, Yehuda Gerami whose position need to be understood in the complex political context of his country -, Armenians, Zoroastrians and Baluchis. There are women with outstanding careers and ambitions, such as Nikoo Cheheltani, one of the few female divers in Iran, or the blind Sima Raisi who succeeded to get a PhD or Laleh Seddigh, the only Muslim female race car champion in the world. Noteworthy is to mention that the majority of the people featured are not only given a voice, but also a face, as the interviews are illustrated with insightful photos of the protagonists.

Many of them belong to the so-called #ZheneKhoob - the Good Genes - an expression reserved for children belonging to influential - religiously, financialy, politically, or all the three at once - families that helped them to get a job or start a business. In a way, children are not guilty for the sins of their fathers and some of them may use their social and finacial capital to make a chance, although there is no guarantee.

My favorite story that may be a subject for a novel in itself is of Pedram Safarzadeh, about the sad wandering childhood accompanying an opium addict father that ended up being an addict and homeless himself. But in the end he was stronger than his demons and right now is just living a normal life, as everyday average people do. The story impresses by its strength and dramatism. The social and political context are relevant but it is the very human struggle which in the end matters. And this is more or less what happens at the end of each and every one of the stories featured in this book.

Book like The Heartbeat of Iran may or may not explain what happens right now in Iran. But at least it gives voices to some of his humans. Humans that based on the rich history and culture of thousands of years may deserve much better rulers than what destiny brought them in the last century or so. 

Rating: 4 stars

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

Meet Me By the Sea

I had just a single plan this weekend: read and review as many books as possible from my huge pile of NetGalleys accumulated through my last 5 years of membership to this fantastic network aimed at offering ARCs to passionate reader - like me, and you, my dear reader. My aim was mostly reached, with loads and loads of beautiful children books that I´ve read on repeat to my son, who is also surprised by the sudden generosity of my time. True, I am spending a lot of time at home those days, homeoffice-ing, but this means that I work and work and work more than before when I only had eight hours to finish my tasks. 

Oh, all the books I´ve read this morning! About polar bears leaving their homes, or who doesn´t want to sleep as required during the winter season, or about dinosaurs refusing to abide to the rules (it seems that not only the dinosaurs are having such problems, after all), about a father and a son baking a huge cake and inviting people to share it (well, the book was obviously written before our children learned that they cannot have a party due to the pandemic and anyway they need to keep their distance otherwise they will have to stay in the quarantine or even enter the lockdown; so many complicated words and contextes our children are learning so so fast those days...). Or the book about Mila who is missing his mommy in the first week at school and learns how to share her sad feelings because it´s better than keeping everything running poisonously from within. So many great ideas and book that can, after all, compensate the missing milestones skipped by many of our children forced to stay at home those days.

I must confessed that my love for children books is much much older than the five years old of my son who is a voracious listener to his good morning or midday or evening stories, that I keep reading him in 3 languages (now he´s is love with Spanish for ´very pure heart´ reasons and insists to learn some new words in this language too and I am pleased to obliged once in a while too). Every time I am starting a new language - yes, it´s present continous as every time I do have some time I love to improve or learn new words and languages - children books are my main source of inspiration. After all, when you are able to talk with a child, you can consider that you achieved an acceptable level of language learning as children need clarity in communication as well. When you´re babbling, they will let you know in the cruelest way. 

But I also love reading children books as a genre in itself. Enjoying them for the simple and genuine way they convene a message and tell a story. I translated some books too, and hope to publish my own children book soon, once I am brave enough to overcome the drawing block. After so many years of practice, my drawing skills still stings and maybe I should one day accept that that´s it and find someone to do it for me...Food for thought for the next months.

When I consider reading children books for myself, there are two main things I always look for: 1. the quality of the writing and the choice of the topic 2. the quality of the illustration (which should be very beautiful, thus the high standards I am expecting to set for myself). Those two elements are not always meeting, with most cases neglecting to match perfectly - or smoothly - the visual part with the choice of words. 

But once in a while, I am just falling in love with a book, and its illustrations...

Like when I´ve got to know Meet me by the Sea, by the very talented Taltal Levi. 

Annoyed by his parents unavailability, a girl decided to go all by herself, out in the woods and far away by the sea, where she can breath deeply the quietness. On her way, she is joined by a fox that nested on her sleeping bag she skillfully set up during a night she spent in the woods. Later on, she is joined by her parents that finally may realize that the wild things are always out of the (home) office.

The story flows slowly, as a river, as a step-by-step journey the girl takes. Indeed, the woods can be a frightening new place, but her inner peace and love for nature are the shield protecting her against any eventual accident. She is not afraid, rather happy and curious surrounded by so many beautiful things a and creatures. 

The author creates the tension perfectly through the pastel-lit images and words. The story is easy in itself, but ´simplicity is the ultimate sophistication´, isn´t it?

From the top of the forest trees, everything looks so small, we, as humans included, with all our hard game of emotions and complicated working hours. By the sea, everything looks much better and clearer. It´s where she, in the end, will meet her busy parents too.

I just wanted to share my love for such beautiful stories wrapped in dreamlike pencil touches. 

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: This book, as well as all the other children books mentioned in this post were offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Book Review: A Lover´s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo

Something is happening this year with my reading list that two weeks into the year already and I haven´t fully enjoy ANY of my current reads. (There is a book that may have a potential for a four-star review but I am still struggling to finish it, although a relatively short one, but the intensive work of the last days prevented me from it).

A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo is a book I´ve read many years ago, in German. I loved very much the idea of the book but was disappointed by the execution. The conversations between lovers were stereotypical and false, sophisticated on purpose.

A Lover´s Discourse is a continuation of the idea - lovers from two different cultural environment, trying to cope with the other´s diversity sometimes in a very adverse and conflictual way. As in the case of the ...Dictionary, when it´s come to intellectual exchange the two lovers are both of them in an alienated state of mind. Here, when he says something, she is wondering rhetorically and keeps telling her own little story. The book is envisioned like a long letter the woman - Chinese-born, moving to London to pursue a PhD, falling for a German-Australian man, a desirable immigrant, getting pregnant, failing to accomplish her dream - writes to her man. The story takes place during the pre- and post-Brexit referendum which amplifies the alienation and jeopardizes her future chances of the future she was aiming at when arrived in the UK. The book is the story of their relationship.

The title is from a book by Roland Barthes and there are other intellectual references in the book, like Walter Benjamin. Indeed, we are wearing the language as a skin, as Barthes said. But the skin has a natural flexibility and so has the language. The fact that the woman in the book applied for a PhD in London, in English, and things that ´hangover´ may be the name of a place, it´s belonging to a very different intellectual category. In relationships when the two belong to different cultural and linguistic realms misunderstandings and alienation and the feeling of loneliness are an occurence, but so it´s the chance of a beautiful dialogue, even it takes place in a language that it is not the mother tongue for any of the two. However, in this book, the fact that the two of them are different and want to maintain their differenve on purpose turns tragi-comical any attempt of a dialogue. 

However, there is something that I really liked about this book that I had access to in audiobook format: the beauty of the cover. 

Rating: 2 stars

Book Review: Luster A Novel by Raven Leilani

I am not so far from my 20s, but they were definitely much different than some of the popular literary characters nowadays. To be more honest, although I am deeply grateful for not being any more in my 20s, I haven´t had at all the feeling of being wasted and failing at relationships and borderline desperate. Maybe in fact I have to do with characters belonging to a cultural context foreign to me?

Edie, the character of Luster by Raven Leilani, a much praised novel published in 2020, is one of those characters that no matter how much I am trying to sympathise with, I can´t. I tried, but in the end, she does and will never do belong to the group of people that will be part of my life. A failed painter living in a rat infested home, she hooks up with a man over a decade her senior, Eric, married and going through couple therapy. Their kind of relationship is supervised by Rebecca, his autopsist wife, which sends him bullet-points kind of directions to follow in their relationship. Actually, this autopsist aspect was the one and only that made my imagination go a bit wild, but unfortunately, it was only me, not the book. Edie is visiting a morgue with Rebecca but well, there is far from a noteworthy visit.

After a little bit into the relationship, Edie will be fired from her publishing job and ends up for a while sharing a room with Akila, a young girl that may be adopted by the couple. Edie is black in a white town and she longs to be loved and part of a familiar environment - both her parents are dead - but until the end of the story, when she seems to get back into her painting mood and the moment is beautifully described, with a detail for inner revival, I just listen and listen to the book, chapter after chapter, with no emotional attachment to anything was going on in the story. 

As in life, it´s part of the reading experience, to do not necessarily find any need for attachment in books or people that are not my cup of tea. Seriously, in real life, if any of my girlfriends would have hang around married men in their 40s using them part of their couple therapy, I would have do my best either to kidnap the said girlfriend from the story or to just run away from her. I don´t think that this is how capitalism will be ever conquered or dismissed. 

This year, I am already 11 years past my reading goal but none of my selection impressed me over 3 stars. Maybe I am going through a process during which my literary tastes are changed maybe I still haven´t found the right books. Search in process...

Rating: 2.5 stars

Book Review: Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen by Amrou Al-Kadhi

What about if we are trying to go beyond the traditional definition and assignment of genders? If we allow people to be what they really want to do, without further ado?

I am very grateful lately for the impressive amount of books - many of them memoirs - exploring the Muslim identity. Especially for an outsider as me it enlarges significantly the perspective and gives space to a deeper understanding of misunderstood and marginalized on purpose identities.

Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen by Amrou al-Kadhi - which I had as an audiobook read by the author - is a story about the discovery of drag as a space to experiment with gender for a young Iraqi-born, British-bred Muslim. Assigned a role in Spielberg´s Munich at 14, in the role of a terrorist´s son he often felt imprisoned by his race, religion and cultural heritage. A curious kid looking for attention, especially his mother´s, navigating the gender segregation of his upbringing, Amrou had to redefine more than one identity.

Race and heritage felt like a prison for a long time, until he learned, through lots of failures and disappointments and dramatic encounters - sexual as well. The author of The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen was strong enough to build up a life he expected to, in Britain. 

He is a fine observer of his own evolution, with all the intricacies and drama that breaking up with your past, which includes your manipulative parents and relatives, only in order to start anew once he was able to come to terms with his own identity - gender-related, Muslim, human being. Ironic, self-ironic, tragic, Amrou al-Kadhi is able to assign to each life stage and episode its own tone and momentum. This creates a multiplicity of voices reflected into the story which are gathered together into Amrou al-Kadhi´s unique personal account.

I like the author´s voice and genuine honesty and this literary encounter encouraged me to continue this year my searches on topics like queer and Muslim identity. I am thankful to live in a time when such topics can be easily associated and the experienced shared to wider audiences.

Rating: 3 stars 

Memoir Review: How we Met by Huma Qureshi

What would you tell to your children about how you met your spouse? Was the love strong enough to fight against all odds? Did it start as a friendship, or you were introduced by your relatives, or met through a matrimonial agency, or maybe you met online?

This is the main topic of Huma Qureshi inspired memoir How We Met. It is her story of falling in love with her husband, Richard. Her love story is not dramatic, does not end with her, a Muslim, running out of her home and marrying her non-Muslim husband. Her brothers did not follow her to London for revenge. And she did not denied her religion. None of the dear topics of the books dealing with the meeting between two cultures and religions that should be exclusivistic and ending up with the complete denial of his/her own roots in order to start a new, religion-free life.

Instead, Huma´s story is how she grow out of the pressures of her environment, achieving a career as a journalist - and not as a lawyer or a doctor - finding the man of her life after painful dating episodes and after living under the pressure of delivering the best of herself, but only what other people were expecting from her. 

Her meeting with Richard brought her out of her cultural and religious comfort zone, but in fact, for the first time she was talking with someone with whom she could share her ideas and life and stories. Their different backgrounds were part of their identities, but their meeting did not diminish or altered what they were. Instead, it solved the conflict between displaying what she was versus of who she really was, a tension Huma experienced during her dating adventures. At the very end of her 20s, she was feeling like a leftover, under the pressure of a religious community intolerant towards single people, especially single women. 

Her decision of moving to London, shortly after the death of her father, was a challenge that did her good. On her own, she focused rather on her professional aims instead of making marriage her sole reason to exist. She learned to be kind to herself which is not as easy at it sounds because it requires a lot of perseverance and acknowledgement of one´s aims. 

Now, happily married with three energetic children, she is looking back to recreate a journey not as a rebelious person but of a person learning how to negotiate her boundaries within her own community. A happy meaningful marriage means more than sharing the same childhood stories.  Her life she settled for involved a lot of negotiation and compromise, but also a lot of kindness and love. This is how she succeeded to make space for a life of her own, which keeps authentic every day.

The memoir is relatively short and it goes back and forth alongside the past and present timelines. I related at large with the writing, simple and direct, with a story that I´ve actually finished in one sitting. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

Charité, a pandemic history

The ongoing pandemic challenged not only our way of living, loving and thinking, but introduced the medical vocabulary and references into our everyday lives. References to various medical aspects, as well as to medical institutions are so often nowadays that I felt the need to start to know more about the history of medical centers in the forefront of health research. Like, for instance, the Charité, Berlin´s top hospital.

There are many books and series dedicated to this hospital, covering various episodes of its development from its creation until nowadays, including covering some less meritorious episodes, like for instance during the Nazi times when horrendous human experiments were done here. 

The first part of Die Charité /Hoffnung und Schicksal - Hope and Destiny/ by Ulrike Schweikert, which I had access to in the original German language as audiobook is taking place during another pandemic time: during the 1853 cholera epidemic in Berlin. 

There is something special about German literature that I am pleased to discover lately: the good quality of historical novels, both in terms of research and reconstruction of the original facts, as well as from the point of view of the topics approached. This combination makes me always keen to read a German historical novel as it helps me to discover facts and characters that maybe don´t find it so attractive when set in another language and country. It may be an element of curiosity and eagerness to get more acquainted with a relatively new culture but right now, those books are my favorite in German (hopefully in the next weeks and months I will share many more German reviews of this kind). 

In this first installment of the series, we are witnessing not only the setting up of the Charité-family, by the creation of a specific work ambiance and personal connections - actually, some of the personnel used to live in buildings around the main hospital, situated within the nowadays headquarters of Berlin Mitte - but also the raise of the women working in the medical field. The research trying to cope with the cholera outburst is featured not only from the academic perspective, but also by featuring the social realities of the time - the classes separation within the city for instance; as cholera was mostly the result of the scarcity of clear water resources, this distinction is directly connected to the widespread of the pandemic in certain geographical areas and not others. 

In this complex context, there are individual stories created, of love, betrayal and loneliness, but at a certain extent I felt that the historical weight of the momentum is by far too powerful and on this background, the stories are lacking the intensity and the glamour requested by the historical drama unfolding. I suppose it is not easy to keep the right writing balance but overall, the audiobook experience was useful, although I am not sure that I would be interested in reading the rest of the series. But my interest in audiobooks and in German historical novels will continue and I can´t wait to share my bookish discoveries.

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

´The police don´t care about us because we´re poor´.

In the last month of 2020 I tried to read - or rather say, to start reading - a couple of books that were not necessarily my usual cup of tea, but given the book blogging and publishing exposure, I was curious to find out by myself more about. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara was one of them (another one is American Dirt that hopefully will be able to finish and review tomorrow). 

To be honest, the book is not very out of my literary lane as I have a kind of weakness for djinn stories, but mostly those from the 1001 Nights or from the children stories or folktales with a certain anthropological interest. But novels for adults with djinn in the title I´m afraid not (not afraid of the djinns, by the way).

But behind the cover of a story with children detectives trying to trace the mysterious disappearance of their friends, neighbours and colleague-children and a short introduction about Mental the ghost there is a deeper social reality revealed: those of the poor, unattended children from India going missing - apparently one every single minute. Thus, the need to believe in ghosts: ´We need ghosts more than anyone else maybe, because we are railway-station boys without parents at homw. If we are still here, it´s only because we know how to summon ghosts at will´.

Those little children growing up in a basti - local word for slum - have dreams: they want to become a dancer, to work in a call center, to outperform at sport. Some need to work after school to support themselves and their families. Families that are usually abusive. They are going to schools were teachers are abusive and aggressive. Their houses smell sadness, like in the case of Bahadur, the first to disappear: ´Inside that home sadness sticks to me like a shirt damn with sweat on a hot summer´s day´. The children may innocently play with each other and even plan to find out why the children disappear and eventually what happened to them, but the society around them is boiling ethnic and religious conflict, with Hindu vs. Muslim narrative easily and randomly enforced. Journalists are corrupt and politicians can buy any soul. 

The story is told by children and it´s a perspective which saves the book from becoming a depressive account of dramatic social realities in India. Thus, their innocence and stubborness to fight against evil, including by assuming that a djinn, or a djinn patrol maybe knows exactly what happened with the missing children that may be safe after all.

For the adult reader though, it´s hard to deny the facts and the local Indian realities. How can one ignore the malignancy that such childhoods bring to adulthood? The cruelty of a world where children disappearances - for various tragic reasons - is not properly addressed is beyond words and you don´t have to have children to figure it out. Being a human may be just enough. 

The writing has many ups and downs and the narrative is unbalanced sometimes. I was not always impressed by the dialogues either. However, I was in awe for the skillful way in which the local ambiance was reconstructed, through the use of local, slang, wording - a glossary is available at the end of the book - as well as through suggestive realistic descriptions. For me, this aspect was one of the most significant gains of reading this book.

The author, Deepa Anappara, is a former journalist, whose social investigation brought here multiple awards. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line was written as part of her MA dissertation and last year was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature.   

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: The Widow Catcher by Jonette Blake

´Fine. You have been drawn into a deadly game of murder and blackmail. Does that satisfy you?´

In the Australian city of Batemans Bay, situated on the South coast of New South Wales, old ladies with a certain financial standing are dying unexpectedly. All of them happen to have the accounts managed by the same bank and are also members of a book club organised by a former celebrity. 

Delia Frost a head teller to the bank is invited by her curteous colleague Andrew to participate to one of the monthly sessions of the book club and although not the avid reader she would like to be, she accepts the invitation as she is trying to figure out her next personal and professional steps. Her husband, Richard, is slowly recovering from a heart attack, her grown-up children left the nest and are travelling far away from home, and she and her husband are planning a one-year road country trip while she is about to be promoted at work. Delia´s plate is getting full.

But take care what do you wish for! The distraction from her everyday challenges seems to be more than a distraction, but highly dangerous as she and her husband are the targets of the revengeful Andrew as they are about to embark on the family trip of their lives.

The Widow Catcher by Jonette Blake is a cosy mystery, with the guilty suspect known when 40% into the book, but one may still stay awake until the very end in order to figure out if he will be caught and what and whom else is top on his list. A criminal with a heavy family trauma, his profile is not necessarily complex, while his way of acting is. 

The story has some surprising twists, especially in the very end, and can count as an entertaining weekend afternoon read. 

Rating: 3 stars

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

Book Review: Intimations by Zadie Smith

Almost one year after Covid19 entered our precarious lives, more or less indirectly, I haven´t read more than articles and a couple of essays about it. The big literary stories taking place during pandemic times are still to be written probably and I am waiting to read them, hopefully soon. 

Zadie Smith´s Intimations was published in July, when the world was taking a deceptive break from the Covid19 before the new waves were stumbling over. I love her writing since spending one  weekend day many years ago reading in one sit White Teeth, a literary marathon that besides revealing a great writer, it reminded me after many years of denial that my love for fiction was not diminished by the years of exclusive focus on history and political science reading.

I kept reading almost everything that Zadie Smith wrote although the sparkle was not always there. 

This latest collection of 6 essays inspired by the outburst of the virus was though one of those occurences when the sparkle dissipated completely. The writings is easygoing - maybe too easy - and one can easily read them in less than two hours. The topics are simple yet with a dramatic impact in the everyday life. She touches upon subjects like loneliness, loneliness within loneliness, the inequalities widened and revealed by the virus during the pandemic, particularly in America, the condition of the creator. 

I wrote ´touches upon´ on purpose, because sadly, all those topics are mentioned like needed to eff them from a list of required topics expected to read in a book written during pandemic but sadly it does not go beyond the honorary mentions. There is no ´cri du coeur´. Those essays are less than a journalistic report and much less than a Marcus Aurelius-inspired kind of meditations. I would call them harshly sidenotes from a pandemic, but there are so drafty that I can hardly believe that they were turned into a collection of essays. 

Rating: 2 stars

Book Review: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

Here we are, fast forward into the first bookish day of 2021. My first review is of a book that I´ve actually started at the very end of 2020 but although very short - slightly over 100 pages - I wanted to read it as slowly as possible because of the topic and its approach.

Minor Detail is written by the Palestinian author Adania Shibli and was translated into English in 2020 by Elizabeth Jaquette. It´s a relatively short but very condensed book, made of two separate dramatically portrayed episodes.

First, let´s talk about the story: The first episode takes place between 12-13 August 1949 during the Israeli War of Independence. A Bedouin girl is raped and killed by an Israeli soldier. The second episode: Following an account of the murder in the Israeli media, more than 60 years after, a Palestinian woman born exactly 25 years after the incident is obsessively trying to trace the events. 

A mention before we proceed to the next paragraph: I am interested in Palestinian literary voices but I am sadly disappointed by the simplicity of the approaches, that sadly again is what exactly it is required on the literary market pertinent to the topic. I am convinced about the sensitivity of the issue and the narrowmindness of thinking in terms of black-and-white only but filling a victim vs. oppressor narrative without any nuances doesn´t not equate empowerment. The fine nuances and realistic details shared by the books of Sayed Kashua are a noteworthy exception until now for me. Unfortunately, Minor Detail does not go beyond the antagonistic narrative.

Second, the writing. It´s actually the only part that kept me interested. Adania Shibli pens dramatic landscapes breathing tragedy and creates ambiances that suggest more than any direct reference. I was the beneficiary of a work in translation but in my experience, a brilliant translation is based on a bright original text.

For the first day of 2021 it was an easy and unfortunately unsurprising read. I promised myself to not give up though and keep searching for powerful Middle Eastern literary voices. I can´t wait to share more of my discoveries hopefully soon.

Rating: 2.5 stars