Michell, Tom "The Penguin Lessons"

Michell, Tom "The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird" - 2015

I discussed this with my German book club in August 2025.

I'm not an animal person. I don't mean to say I'm totally against animals, but they don't particularly interest me.

The book was quite nicely written. I also found the accounts of the school where the author taught and his travels through South America very interesting. But the relationship with the penguin, well, okay. As I said, I'm probably the wrong person to describe this book. It just wasn't really my cup of tea.

The only thing that was interesting to me was the description of the people the author met, the anthropological aspect.

The other members, however, found the book very readable. Here are a few quotes:

• I learned a lot about a species of animal I didn't really know much about.
• I found the description of how he travels through the countries with youthful carefreeness and enthusiasm, and even saves the penguin, refreshing.
• The parts where he describes how the school outcast can show off his talent were touching.
• I particularly liked the scene in the swimming pool.
• Mir hat das Buch gut gefallen. Interessant und klug geschrieben und oft sehr berührend, aber ohne Pathos.
• I liked the book. It's interestingly and cleverly written, and often very touching, but without pathos.

From the back cover:

"'I was hoping against hope that the penguin would survive because as of that instant he had a name, and with his name came the beginning of a bond which would last a life-time.'

Set against Argentina's turbulent years following the collapse of the corrupt Peronist regime, this is the story of Juan Salvador the penguin, rescued by English schoolteacher Tom Michell from an oil slick in Uruguay just days before a new term. When the bird refuses to leave Tom's side, the young teacher has no choice but to take it with him and look after it. This is their story."

Voltaire "Candide"

Voltaire "Candide, or Optimism" (French: Candide, ou l'Optimisme) - 1759

For the Classics Spin #35, we received #2 and this was my novel.

An interesting take on the Age of Enlightenment.

Candide is a young guy who lives in Germany. He falls in love with a girl but is prevented from marrying her because of her parents. He learns the philosophy "All is for the Best" and travels around the world with this belief.

He probably encounters as many troubles as Homer's Odysseus in the "Odyssey" and solves them almost with the same vigour.

The novel promises to be funny and indeed it is. I have laughed quite a few times during the reading. How can a book be funny and philosophical at the same time? I'm not surprised Voltaire is still such a renowned author even more than two centuries later. I am really happy #2 was pulled for this challenge because I really enjoyed the story.

This novel reminded me a little of Eichendorff's "Life of a Good For Nothing", although it should be the other way around since this one was written earlier. Other than the German novel, I could see more philosophy in this book.

From the back cover:

"Candide tells of the hilarious adventures of the naïve Candide, who doggedly believes that 'all is for the best' even when faced with injustice, suffering, and despair. Controversial and entertaining, Candide is a book that is vitally relevant today in our world pervaded by - as Candide would say - 'the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well.'"

Domínguez, Carlos María "The House of Paper"

Domínguez, Carlos María "The House of Paper" (Spanish: La Casa del Papel) - 2007

An interesting book about a woman who dies reading, a man who builds a house out of books and another guy who tries to find the link between them. Too short for my liking (only 96 pages), one doesn't get to meet the characters very long, you just get started and the story is over.

But it was a pleasant enough read. And as a bonus, there's a lovely map in the front of the book showing the route of the protagonist to South America. It looks like those old maps that were printed on parchment, a detail every book lover must also love. A lovely little story about people who love books.

From the back cover:

"Bluma Lennon, distinguished professor of Latin American literature at Cambridge, is hit by a car while crossing the street, immersed in a volume of Emily Dickinson's poems. Several months after her untimely demise, a package arrives for her from Argentina-a copy of a Conrad novel, encrusted in cement and inscribed with a mysterious dedication. Bluma's successor in the department (and a former lover) travels to Buenos Aires to track down the sender, one Carlos Brauer, who turns out to have disappeared.

The last thing known is that he moved to a remote stretch of the Uruguayan coastline and built himself a house out of his enormous and valuable library. How he got there, and why, is the subject of this seductive novel-part mystery, part social comedy, and part examination of all the many forms of bibliomania.

Charmingly illustrated by Peter Sís, The House of Paper is a tribute to the strange and passionate relationship between people and their books."

There are a lot of books mentioned in this novel. The main one is
"The Shadow-Line" by Joseph Conrad.

Others:
Burckhardt, Jacob "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (GE: Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien)
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote" (E: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha)
Dickinson, Emily "Poems"
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "The Brothers Karamazov" (RUS: Братья Карамазовы/Brat'ya Karamazovy)
Faulkner, William "Absalom! Absalom!"
Hesse, Hermann "Siddhartha: An Indian Poem" (GE: Siddhartha)
García Márquez, Gabriel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (E: Cien años de soledad)
Hemingway, Ernest "A Farewell to Arms"
Salgari, Emilio "The Tigers of Malaysia" (IT: Tigre della Malesia)

Karystiani, Ionna "The Jasmine Isle"

Karystiani, Ionna (Ιωάννα Καρυστιάνη) "The Jasmine Isle" (Greek: Μικρά Αγγλία/Mikra Anglia) - 1997 

This is one of the examples where you find several different titles for the same book and you wonder why. The original title "Μικρά Αγγλία" (Mikra Anglia) means "Little England" which is what they call the island in the story, the Spanish have translated that word by word "Pequeña Inglaterra", the German title "Die Frauen von Andros" means "The Women of Andros" which is the name of the island the women live on whereas the Italians and the British call it "The Jasmine Isle" or "L'isola dei gelsomini" respectively. Why? I doubt that even the people responsible for this know the real reason.

I liked the story about the seafaring Greek guys before and during World War II and the women they leave behind on their little island. It is definitely (as mentioned in the German title), the women's story. Ioanna Karystiani describes the protagonists so well, she has an interesting way of introducing both characters as well as incidents. I like her style even though it seems a little confusing at times. But I read somewhere that it is a good recollection of life on the islands at the time. I can imagine since the author herself was born on Crete, larger than Andros but still, a Greek island. When I visited it in the early 2000s, it still seemed stuck in the middle of the past century. Very alluring, very charming but still, life was not as modern as I know it from my part of Europe, so I can imagine that this story is close to reality.

Definitely a Stream of Consciousness novel, worth a read.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"A modern love story with the force of an ancient Greek tragedy. Set on the spectacular Cycladic island of Andros, The Jasmine Isle one of the finest literary achievements in contemporary Greek literature, recounts the story of the beautiful Orsa Saltaferos, sentenced to marry a man she doesn't love and to watch while the man she does love weds another."

Basti, Abel & van Helsing, Jan "Hitler in Argentina"

Basti, Abel & van Helsing, Jan "Hitler in Argentina" (German: Hitler überlebte in Argentinien) - 2011

A great and interesting book, whether you believe the authors or not. According to their research, Hitler survived the end of the far and fled to Argentina.

There is a lot to learn about World War II and about South America (and the connection between the two, no matter how much you read, there is always more. That is the impression I have. Even though I read a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction about this topic (look here), there is something new in every book I read about it. This one was probably the most different one from all the others, the authors try to prove the assumption that Hitler survived the war and lived in Argentina for many many years. I remember hearing the rumours when I was a little child, and they have never stopped.

If this subject interests you, try to find a copy. The research is highly interesting.

Even though I found the English title of this book, I have not been able to find it from one of the online booksellers. This is what I found in English in one of the descriptions. You can find more information about the publications here.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

About Abel Basti:

"Basti claims that Hitler has fled to Argentina after world war two.
 
He also was the coordinator of several expeditions near the Argentinean sea coast, with the goal of finding submarines that were used by the German Kriegsmarine."

Osorio, Elsa "My Name is Light"

Osorio, Elsa "My Name is Light" (Spanish: A veinte años, Luz) - 1998

A highly interesting novel about something that didn't happen that long ago, yet is not so widely published. Of course, everyone knows there were a lot of problems in Argentina but I have not read a novel where it was described this well. A deeply moving story that was awarded the Amnesty International literary prize. So worth reading.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"Twenty-year-old Luz, an Argentinean, is on holiday in Madrid with her husband and new-born son. But secretly she has a mission - to find her real father. Carlos was a 'desaparecido' - one of the many political activists in Argentina who literally 'disappeared' during the country's brutal military dictatorship in the seventies - while her mother, a political prisoner, was killed trying to flee the country. As a baby, Luz was secretly adopted by a wealthy couple, unaware of her true origins. My Name is Light is a gripping, emotionally charged book, a powerful story about a young girl's quest to find her identity and to uncover the deadly secrets of one of Argentina's darkest periods."

Montefiore, Santa "Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree"

Montefiore, Santa "Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree" - 2002

I thought this might be something like the other South American writers I read, something like an Isabel Allende book. It was not. The descriptions about life in South America, Argentina, in this case, are not bad but the whole story is mainly a cheesy love story. After researching the book and the author, I wasn't surprised to find out that she really is British and probably chose this name to sound more exotic. Not my kind of book, certainly the one and only I will read by this author.

From the back title:

"Spoilt, wilful, resourceful and proud, Sofia Solanas grows up on a magnificent ranch in the middle of the Argentine pampas, loved by all around her. All, that is, except her Irish mother, Anna, who punishes her daughter for her own sense of alienation and inadequacy while doting on her sons.

When a horrified Anna discovers that Sofia has embarked on a passionate love affair that can only bring shame upon the family, she sends Sofia away to Europe, inadvertently exiling her from her family and the man she loves for over twenty years. And then a family tragedy calls Sofia home.

Following the story of the Solanas family in Argentina during the tumultous years of political upheaval, and Sofia's life in exile, MEET ME UNDER THE OMBU TREE is a moving, evocative and unforgettable story of love and forgiveness from a brilliant new voice."