Evaristo, Bernhardine "Girl, Woman, Other"

Evaristo, Bernhardine "Girl, Woman, Other" - 2019

This was recommended by a member of our book club but it wasn't chosen.

I must admit, the novel wasn't what I thought it would be. I probably didn't read the description well enough but somehow I thought this was mainly about immigrants and racism in the UK. And it was, partly. But that was not the main topic, at least it didn't look like it. The first couple of women that the author talks about, are all lesbians, later we also have non-binary people. But there are so many people. Every chapter brings new characters that might or might not turn up again in later chapters. So it feels like a collection of short stories (which I don't really like). Only toward the end you get a feeling who belongs to who, where the links are between the chapters. It was all a tad confusing.

I've said this before and will say it again, I'm not a fan of Booker Prize winners, there's always something that doesn't go well with me. And often I can't even say what it is. I definitely would have liked more about the racism topic.

From the back cover:

"This is Britain as you've never read it.

This is Britain as it has never been told.

From the top of the country to the bottom, across more than a century of change and growth and struggle and life, Girl, Woman, Other follows twelve very different characters on an entwined journey of discovery.

It is future, it is past. It is fiction, it is history.

It is a novel about who we are now."

Handke, Peter "Storm Still"

Handke, Peter "Storm Still" (German: Immer noch Sturm) - 2010

A book about the Slovenian minority in Carinthia. We all know that there are areas everywhere with immigrants from all kinds of other countries, but my knowledge of Austria and its foreigners is quite limited. This novel is described as a play, which I can not quite understand. Admittedly, the story is told by different family members, but there is hardly any exchange.

Either way, this is not an easy book to just follow and then get the hang of. You have to strain your gray brain cells to be able to follow the author at all. Handke is a very controversial author, and not everyone welcomed his award of the Nobel Prize for Literature. But he has a certain something. You just want to keep reading. And in the decade that has passed since the book was published, not much has changed, in Austria or elsewhere, it rather got rather worse.

From the back cover:

"Peter Handke, a giant of Austrian literature, has produced decades of fiction, poetry, and drama informed by some of the most tumultuous events in modern history. But even as these events shaped his work, the presence of his mother - a woman whose life spanned the Weimar Republic, both world wars, and the postwar consumer economy - loomed even larger.

In Storm Still, Handke’s most recent work, he returns to the land of his birth, the Austrian province of Carinthia. There on the Jaunfeld, the plain at the center of Austria’s Slovenian settlement, the dead and the living of a family meet and talk. Composed as a series of monologues, Storm Still chronicles both the battle of the Slovene minority against Nazism and their love of the land. Presenting a panorama that extends back to the author’s bitter roots in the region, Storm Still blends penetrating prose and poetic drama to explore Handke’s personal history, taking up themes from his earlier books and revisiting some of their characters. In this book, the times of conflict and peace, war and prewar, and even the seasons themselves shift and overlap. And the fate of an orchard comes to stand for the fate of a people."

Peter Handke received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019 "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Taha, Karosh "In the Belly of the Queen"

 

Taha, Karosh "In the Belly of the Queen" (German: Im Bauch der Königin) - 2020

An interesting book, not easy to digest, but worth reading. The author is a German-born Kurd and she tells us about life as a foreigner in Germany but also as a Kurd in the international community.

The unique thing about this book is that you can read it from two sides, no, you have to read it from two sides. Somewhere it is described as a "Wenderoman" which should be translated as a "changing/turning novel" but is really the German description for novels dealing with the political turning point after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I decided to start at the top as the bookseller hands me the volumes and so I started with the part of Raffiq. We don't find out what part of Kurdistan he is from or if he is from Kurdistan at all but I assumed so. First and foremost, he talks about his friends Younes and Amal, teenagers like him who are about to graduate from school and are thinking about what they want to do afterwards. Raffiq also tells about their childhood and their everyday life, where Youne's mother Shahira plays a big role. She does not follow the general rules of the Kurds, and the young people's parents are not exactly enthusiastic about her.

The other half of the book is narrated by Amal. Her family comes from Iraq, her father left his wife many years ago and started a new family in his home country. Amal takes Shahira as an example and does not put up with everything that is not easy in her environment. Everyone finds it very shocking that she cuts her hair short.

You can see the book entirely as a story about growing up, the problems with parents who are larger because the parents grew up in a completely different culture. I hope my sons don't feel that way, our culture was more similar to that of our host countries.

A lot of the problems that the young people have are certainly exactly the same as those of other German and Western Europeans, and so some may learn from this that people are the same everywhere.

The way the story is told gives us two perspectives that make it seem like two totally different novels. That's what I found most fascinating.

From the back cover:

"Amal shocks the whole neighbourhood by beating up her classmate Younes. Her father defends her behaviour and encourages her to assert herself. From then on everyone avoids Amal - and then her father leaves. Searching in vain for an explanation, Amal finds unexpected refuge with Younes and his mother Shahira, both outsiders like her. Years later, when the situation comes to a head and the conflict with Raffiq’s gang escalates, Amal flees to Kurdistan to look for her father."

I found this through Karen @ kaggsysbookishramblings who in turn found it on Ali's page @ HEAVENALI.

Gurnah, Abdulrazak "Pilgrims Way"

Gurnah, Abdulrazak "Pilgrims Way" - 1988

Daud is a Muslim from Tanzania who goes to England in the 70s. He works as an orderly in a hospital, does what thousands of immigrants do, cleans up after the white people. He meets prejudice and racism, the promised land is not what he expected it to be but a return into his home country is impossible.

In this situation he shares his thoughts, his fears, his hopes with us. And that of other immigrants but also the "hosts" which are not always that hospitable, so we better call them the natives.

The author describes an England shortly after the colonial period when they still had to get used to not being the "master race" anymore. I don't just speak about the British Isles, there are people all over the world who still don't understand that.

But, even more, he describes the problems of an immigrant. If you really want to know, read this books.

Oh, one thing he talks about a lot is cricket. I still don't understand it any better.

Book description:

"By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature An extraordinary depiction of the life of an immigrant, as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his pilgrimage to England. Dear Catherine, he began. Here I sit, making a meal out of asking you to dinner. I don't really know how to do it. To have cultural integrity, I would have to send my aunt to speak, discreetly, to your aunt, who would then speak to your mother, who would speak to my mother, who would speak to my father, who would speak to me and then approach your mother, who would then approach you. Demoralised by small persecutions and the squalor and poverty of his life, Daud takes refuge in his imagination. He composes wry, sardonic letters hectoring friends and enemies, and invents a lurid colonial past for every old man he encounters. His greatest solace is cricket and the symbolic defeat of the empire at the hands of the mighty West Indies.Although subject to attacks of bitterness and remorse, his captivating sense of humour never deserts him as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his pilgrimage to England."

Abdulrazak Gurnah received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Cather, Willa "Shadows on the Rock"

Cather, Willa "Shadows on the Rock" - 1931

A couple of years ago, I read "My Ántonia" with my book club and loved it. It was a great description about new settlers in America. So, when I came across "Shadows on the Rock" which was about Quebec in the 17th century, I thought this will certainly be a great book to add to my list, something like her former book, just about Canada.

I suppose the author must not have had as much experience with Canada, not known as many settlers from there or whatever but this book didn't ring as true as her other one. It was an alright read but it didn't catch my interest in the story as did her other one.

What it did, though, it made me want to know more about the real-life people she mentions and I found a lot of information about them on the internet, so that was something.

I usually love historical fiction but this one was not for me.

From the back cover:

"Willa Cather wrote Shadows on the Rock immediately after her historical masterpiece, Death Comes for the Archbishop. Like its predecessor, this novel of seventeenth-century Quebec is a luminous evocation of North American origins, and of the men and women who struggled to adapt to that new world even as they clung to the artifacts and manners of one they left behind.

In 1697, Quebec is an island of French civilization perched on a bare gray rock amid a wilderness of trackless forests. For many of its settlers, Quebec is a place of exile, so remote that an entire winter passes without a word from home. But to twelve-year-old Cécile Auclair, the rock is home, where even the formidable Governor Frontenac entertains children in his palace and beavers lie beside the lambs in a Christmas créche. As Cather follows this devout and resourceful child over the course of a year, she re-creates the continent as it must have appeared to its first European inhabitants. And she gives us a spellbinding work of historical fiction in which great events occur first as rumors and then as legends - and in which even the most intimate domestic scenes are suffused with a sense of wonder."

Hislop, Victoria "One August Night"

Hislop, Victoria "One August Night" - 2020

I absolutely love Victoria Hislop. My first book by her was "The Island" and I have read all her subsequent novels (see here). All of them were fantastic, great stories with a lot of information mainly about Greece but also some other Southern European countries (Cyprus, Spain, Turkey).

Fourteen years after her first novel, the sequel to it was published. It is the end of the leper colony in Greece since they found a cure. That is great news for some since their loved ones return, not so good news for others who fear their lives will change. And they do.

A drama that occurs on the return changes the life of everyone whom we got to know in the first book. It would have been nice to learn more about other inhabitants of Spinalonga but we learn more about Maria who spent a long time of her life there.

As in all her novels, Victoria Hislop tells us a lot about her beloved country Greece. She has been made an honorary citizen in the meantime, a well-deserved recognition. I always love her describing the Greek whom I got to know as a warm and loving people. And her stories always have a feeling of truth, you can believe the people really existed, they led this life. She always brings me back to Crete which I really love.

I am already looking forward to her next book which she will hopefully write soon.

From the back cover:

"25th August 1957. The island of Spinalonga closes its leper colony. And a moment of violence has devastating consequences.

When time stops dead for Maria Petrakis and her sister, Anna, two families splinter apart and, for the people of Plaka, the closure of Spinalonga is forever coloured with tragedy.

In the aftermath, the question of how to resume life looms large. Stigma and scandal need to be confronted and somehow, for those impacted, a future built from the ruins of the past.

Number one bestselling author Victoria Hislop returns to the world and characters she created in The Island - the award-winning novel that remains one of the biggest selling reading group novels of the century. It is finally time to be reunited with Anna, Maria, Manolis and Andreas in the weeks leading up to the evacuation of the island... and beyond."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

Lahiri, Jhumpa "The Lowland"

Lahiri, Jhumpa "The Lowland" - 2013

I've read a few books by Jhumpa Lahiri and I've had this on my TBR pile for a while. I have no idea why it took me so long to start it. Oh, wait a minute, must be those hundreds of other books on that shelf. LOL

Whilst I have read many books about India, and quite a few about the independence (e.g. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie) and the fight for it, I didn't know much about the Naxalites, just a general knowledge that they existed. In this book, we get acquainted with the organisation and its followers. And the story also touches the reason why Indians would leave their country plus the role of women in society back then, both in India as well as in the USA.

I knew it was a violent time but it's different when you hear about individuals and how they fared under certain circumstances, even if they are fictitious. Since I always like to research the background of my books, especially if they are historical ones, I learned that the group still exists and there are still many conflicts with them and numerous people are killed every year. We hardly ever hear about that in the rest of the world. What a shame!

And then there is also a "next generation" in the book and all the implications that arise from growing up in a country where your parents weren't born.

I found this novel extremely interesting and well written.

From the back cover:

"The Lowland is an engrossing family saga steeped in history: the story of two very different brothers bound by tragedy; a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past; a country torn by revolution. A powerful new novel - set in both India and America - that explores the price of idealism and a love that can last long past death.

Growing up in Calcutta, born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead of them.

From Subhash's earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother's sight. So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass - as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India - their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives.

Udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him: his newly married, pregnant wife, his brother and their parents. For all of them, the repercussions of his actions will reverberate across continents and seep through the generations that follow.

Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are. With all the hallmarks of Jhumpa Lahiri's achingly poignant, exquisitely empathetic story-telling, this is her most devastating work of fiction to date."

Lee, Min Jin "Pachinko"

Lee, Min Jin "Pachinko" - 2017

I was drawn to this book because of its Asian appearance. These lovely drawings can only come from the Far East. The title didn't tell me anything. Pachinko? Who or what is Pachinko? I had to find out. The description convinced me further.

Now, if - like me - you don't know what Pachinko is, let me tell you. It's a Japanese mechanical game that is mainly situated in game arcades. I have never set foot in any of those slot machine places, so even if it is also known in Europe, this is not my world.

And there isn't much about the world inside those parlours, more about the life of Koreans in Japan. If you don't know anything about that, there is a lot to learn. I know there have been animosities toward foreigners no matter when and where. Always. I have lived abroad most of my life. Being German, I have experienced much the same hatred towards me and my family as the Koreans in this story had to endure in Japan.

Maybe that's why I liked this book so much, I could identify with their feelings. Unlucky for the family here, they couldn't go back to Korea since they came from the Northern part. And that is the case with many immigrants. Even if the first generation still would love to, the second and further generations are even less inclined to because for them, their new country is home, not the one where their ancestors come from.

The Koreans in this book are hard-working, honest people and, yet, they have no chance to ever get accepted. Sound familiar? This book could go onto any list of books about racism. The characters are loveable and unforgettable.

In any case, this is such a great tale about a family through several generations. If you like this kind of literature, you should read this book.

Min Jin Lee includes a a quote by Benedict Anderson, author of "Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism". I absolutely love this:

"I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion…

The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind…

It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which the Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm…

Finally, it is imagined as a community because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship.

Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly die for such limited imaginings."

Could anyone explain it better? I have to read that book!

From the back cover:

"Yeongdo, Korea 1911. A club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then a Christian minister offers a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.

Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story.

Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival."

Harris, Kamala "The Truths We Hold"

Harris, Kamala "The Truths We Hold. An American Journey" - 2019

I just finished this, on the day of her inauguration. I am so happy to have read it. I didn't really know much about the new US vice president and this was a great way to get to know her. What a woman!

If you've been following my blog for a while, you will have heard this already. When I first joined Facebook, I used to take part in some of their "games" and found that I am very liberal (not a surprise), "as far left as can be before heading into Stalin's backyard". That was a US American test, of course. (Compared to their Republicans, that is certainly true.)

Anyway, I believe in peace to this world, human rights and social justice for all, equal opportunity, a good healthcare, free education for everyone and anything that makes life easier for all of us, not just for the richest of the riches.

Kamala Harris represents all that. In her book, she tells us the story of her parents who came from India and Jamaica, how they started from scratch, how her mother brought up her daughters alone, how Kamala and her sister got through their education and into their jobs, how they keep fighting for the underprivileged, how she climbed the ladder in a system that seems to be very much inclined towards other goals. I'm not surprised, Joe Biden chose her as his VP. She believes in books and education and hard work, she believes in family values, loves her family and friends with all her heart and cares deeply for her "neighbour". I know many people believe that foreigners shouldn't care for who the US president is but the influence that country has on the world is still very big and, therefore, we should care. Kamala Harris gives us new hope.

I believe that we should trust in science. Yes, the world is round and climate change/global warming exists. And the earlier we do something against it, the better. It might already be too late.

She has taken something her mother always used to say as a guideline:
"You may be the first. Don't be the last."
She has tried to pass on the help she received from people before her to young people everywhere. We should all take her as an example.

One of my favourite lines:
"Freedom must be fought for and won by every generation. It is the very nature of this fight for civil rights and justice and equality that whatever gains we make, they will not be permanent. So we must be vigilant. Understanding that, do not despair. Do not be overwhelmed. Do not throw up our hands when it is time to roll up our sleeves and fight for who we are."

So, even if you don't trust the media and don't like the democrats, I think everyone would enjoy this book and maybe change their mind about the author a little bit. She truly is inspirational.

From the back cover:

"The extraordinary life story of one of America's most inspiring political leaders.

The daughter of immigrants and civil rights activists, Vice President Elect Kamala Harris was raised in a California community that cared deeply about social justice. As she rose to prominence as a political leader, her experiences would become her guiding light as she grappled with an array of complex issues and learned to bring a voice to the voiceless.

Now, in The Truths We Hold, Harris reckons with the big challenges we face together. Drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values as we confront the great work of our day."

Khorsandi, Shappi "A Beginner's Guide to Acting English"

Khorsandi, Shappi "A Beginner's Guide to Acting English" - 2009

Since I don't live in England anymore, I can't go and see stand-up comedians live. But there are panel shows and quiz shows and other shows where they appear as hosts etc. So, this is how I got to know Shappi Khorsandi. She comes across as a lovely person, very funny, very comical. When I learned that she had written a book about coming to England as a three-year-old, I was very interested. I imagined it to be just as nice and funny as the author herself.

I was not disappointed. This book doesn't just tell us how it is to grow up in a strange country, it tells us a lot about Iran, as well. And not just about the politics but about the ordinary family life. How they lived under the Shah, how they lived after the revolution. And with her hints about how her parents were different from English parents, I also learned a lot about Iranian culture.

It's not a hilarious book but you can see where Shappi Khorsandi gets her sense of humour. It certainly is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. You get to know both the author and her entire family very well, you get to fear with them and mourn with them, laugh with them and love with them.

I also had the chance to compare how the Khorsandi family lived in England as foreigners and how we lived in England as foreigners. Two very different worlds. Granted, it was not exactly the same place and some twenty years later but we never really felt "foreign" or weren't treated as such. Someone told me that's because we spoke English and "fitted in" but I'm sure there are some more reasons behind that. In any case, I'm happy that the Khorsandis could make England their home and that their daughter became such a great comedian.

I loved this so much, I've already ordered her next book "Nina is not okay".

From the back cover:

"When you're young just growing up seems hard enough. But if you've been shipped to a news country, away from all your beloved aunts and uncles, where you can't understand anyone it's even harder. And if the Ayatollah wants you and your family dead, then that's when it gets really tricky …

This is a story of growing up a stranger in a strange land with fish fingers and kiss chase and milk and biscuits. But it's also a story about exile, survival, and families - wherever they are."

Vargas, Jose Antonio "Dear America"

Vargas, Jose Antonio "Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen" - 2018

This is such an interesting book that puts a face to all those "illegal immigrants". Even though the author is not your average undocumented citizen, he can express his problems and with that the problem of all the other immigrants who would love to be legal but just have no chance.

But it is also a story about all those who oppose immigration and it teaches us that the country could gain so much from making it easier to attain a citizenship. Many people live somewhere in countries where they weren't born and whose passport they don't carry. If you make it easier for those who really contribute to your country, or need your help, you might end up with an easier life for everyone.

The story is so honest and so well written, you realize that every single of those numbers is talking about a human being.

I think this should be read by many many people though I am sure those who need it most will not even look at it.

From the back cover:

"My name is Jose Antonio Vargas. I was born in the Philippines. When I was twelve, my mother sent me to the United States to live with her parents. While applying for a driver’s permit, I found out my papers were fake. More than two decades later, I am still here illegally, with no clear path to American citizenship. To some people, I am the ''most famous illegal' in America. In my mind, I am only one of an estimated 11 million human beings whose uncertain fate is under threat in a country I call my home.

This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book - at its core - is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but about the unsettled, unmoored psychological state in which undocumented immigrants like me find ourselves. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about what it means to not have a home."

Vargas authored or contributed to three Washington Post articles about the Virginia Tech shootings that were awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

NDiaye, Marie "Three strong women"

NDiaye, Marie "Three strong women" (French: Trois femmes puissantes) - 2009

As I already mentioned in my review about the author's book "Rosie Carpe", I like reading a French book from time to time in order to use and improve my French. Unfortunately, I rarely enjoy them because they are always so weird. Not any different with this one.

I liked the description of the novel, or what I thought was the novel about three women who knew each other. But while reading it, I had to find out that these are three different stories with no relation to each other (other than one of them is a distant cousin of the other but the stories don't overlap). As I'm not a huge fan of short stories, I was quite disappointed when the first story ended in the middle of the book, and also in the middle of the story. None of the stories really has an end, well, the last one, sort of. None of the characters was really likeable, they all had some weird traits that I couldn't agree with.

The stories were unpleasant and ended abruptly. The characters didn't seem to even want to do anything to change their lives for the better. That is always the worst part of these kind of stories.

Nope, not my kind of book. I will have to remember not to fall into that trap again and read another book by this author.

From the back cover:

"In this new novel, the first by a black woman ever to win the coveted Prix Goncourt, Marie NDiaye creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as it is beautiful.

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the aforementioned Fanta) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits us to an immigrant experience rarely if ever examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart."

Coetzee, J.M. "The Childhood of Jesus"

Coetzee, J.M. "The Childhood of Jesus" - 2013

I don't really know what to say about this book. It is so strange. A man and a boy arrive in a new country. We are supposed to believe, I think, that they are refugees abut we have no idea from where they come and where they went, only that they had to cross an ocean. They could have gone from Africa to South America, Asia to Australia, North America to Europe or any combination thereof. The only continent I wouldn't suspect is Antarctica though it could be after climate change has taken place and they start settling people there.

That doesn't really matter. I'm not even sure whether this is supposed to be a dystopian novel or not, though I will call it that. Everyone in this country starts with a clean slate, they are given a new name, their past is forgotten. Sounds more like a utopian tale at the beginning, however, it's not. Life couldn't be made more difficult for new arrivals.

I have come to really dislike the boy and that is something I don't really like. I remember a member of our book club mention that she hated books where the children are so awful that one can only dislike them. I doubt she would have liked this book.

As to the title, I have no idea what the title has to do with the novel. There are biblical allusions but without the name "Jesus", it might as well have been coincidences.

Somewhere on the internet I read someone recommending "Disgrace" and "Life of Times of Michael K." and avoid this one. I wish I had read that before starting this novel. I did enjoy "Disgrace" a lot more than this one.

From the back cover:

"After crossing oceans, a man and a boy arrive in a new land. Here they are each assigned a name and an age, and held in a camp in the desert while they learn Spanish, the language of their new country. As Simón and David they make their way to the relocation centre in the city of Novilla, where officialdom treats them politely but not necessarily helpfully.

Simón finds a job in a grain wharf. The work is unfamiliar and backbreaking, but he soon warms to his stevedore comrades, who during breaks conduct philosophical dialogues on the dignity of labour, and generally take him to their hearts.

Now he must set about his task of locating the boy’s mother. Though like everyone else who arrives in this new country he seems to be washed clean of all traces of memory, he is convinced he will know her when he sees her. And indeed, while walking with the boy in the countryside Simón catches sight of a woman he is certain is the mother, and persuades her to assume the role.

David's new mother comes to realise that he is an exceptional child, a bright, dreamy boy with highly unusual ideas about the world. But the school authorities detect a rebellious streak in him and insist he be sent to a special school far away. His mother refuses to yield him up, and it is Simón who must drive the car as the trio flees across the mountains.

THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS is a profound, beautiful and continually surprising novel from a very great writer."

J.M. Coetzee "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider" received the Nobel Prize in 2003.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

McKinley, Tamara "Lands Beyond the Sea"

McKinley, Tamara "Lands Beyond the Sea" - 2007

I would file this novel under "Catherine Cookson with a little Australiana thrown in". Too much "Lord loves poor girl, poor girl loves Lord but they can't get together" for me. The stories of the convicts have been described a lot better in other books (Capricornia, English Passengers, The Floating Brothel, For the Term of His Natural Life, The Secret River).

The story about the convicts might have been good if it hadn't all the chick lit paraphernalia thrown in. And I might have enjoyed the book if it hadn't been such an "easy read". Not my thing, I'm afraid.

I read this is the first of a series. I doubt I will read the following ones.

From the back cover:

"Discovery
By the 1700s, the Aborigine people have lived in harmony with the land in Australia for sixty thousand years. But now, ghost-ships are arriving, their very existence is threatened by a terrifying white invasion.

Love
When Jonathan Cadwallader leaves Cornwall to sail on the Endeavour, he leaves behind his sweetheart, Susan Penhalligan ... But an act of brutality will reunite them in the raw and unforgiving penal colony of New South Wales.

Hardship
Billy Penhalligan has survived transportation and clings to the promise of a new beginning. But there will be more suffering before he or his fellow convicts can regard Australia as home ...

A powerful, romantic epic weaving the lives of the Cadwalladers, the Penhalliagnas, the Aborigine and the convict settlers into the untamed tapestry of newly discovered Australia."

Kaminer, Wladimir "Russian Disco"

Kaminer, Wladimir "Russian Disco" (German: Russendisko) - 2000

I read another book by Wladimir Kaminer recently (Ausgerechnet Deutschland. Geschichten unserer neuen Nachbarn) [Germany of all. Stories of our new neighbours]) but since that hasn't been translated, I couldn't review it here.

However, it reminded me that I read another book by this wonderful author that I haven't reviewed, yet. Well, here we go.

The author is one of the many Russian-Germans that came to Germany shortly after the wall came down. This is a book about all of his compatriots who - like him - ended up in Berlin. His short stories tell us how he got to know his new country by exploring Berlin and finding his way into the discos that were often led by Russians.

It's a funny way of trying to understand our new fellow citizens. While his stories often exceed our imagination - he is a master of sarcasm - they all make us laugh.

I have read this book again in 2021, at least a decade after I read it first. It was still as hilarious. His stories about his beginnings in Germany, life of many Russians in Germany and particularly in Berlin, are both delightful and superb. I love the author's quirky sense of humour and how he takes the micky both out of his former and new compatriots. Nobody has such a power of observation as he does. One could call him the "German" Bill Bryson.

From the back cover:

"Born in Moscow, Wladimir Kaminer emigrated to Berlin in the early '90s when he was 22. Russian Disco is a series of short and comic autobiographical vignettes about life among the émigrés in the explosive and extraordinary multi-cultural atmosphere of '90s Berlin. It's an exotic, vodka-fuelled millennial Goodbye to Berlin. The stories show a wonderful, innocent, deadpan economy of style reminiscent of the great humorists. [Several of his European editors make a comparison with current bestseller David Sedaris.*] Kaminer manages to say a great deal without seeming to say much at all. He speaks about the offbeat personal events of his own life but captures something universal about our disjointed times."

* I'm not really a fan of David Sedaris, as you can see in my review about "Me Talk Pretty One Day", so I don't see a connection.

Backman, Fredrik "A Man Called Ove"

Backman, Fredrik "A Man Called Ove" (Swedish: En Man som heter Ove) - 2012

If you are looking for a hilarious book, this is the one for you. A friend recommended it to me - thank you very much!

There is not too much to tell without spoiling it for anyone. Only this. Ove is a man in his early sixties but he behaves like a hundred-year-old. He is grumpy, he makes his neighbours' lives difficult if not unbearable - depending on how much he dislikes them.

Or is he? He certainly is in his sixties, he certainly is grumpy but if you look behind the façade, you see the reason for his behaviour and start liking him …

In any case, whether you like Ove or not, you will definitely love the book.

From the back cover:

"Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots-joggers, neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly and shop assistants who talk in code. But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible..."

Benali, Abdelkader "Wedding by the Sea"

Benali, Abdelkader "Wedding by the Sea" (Dutch: Bruiloft aan zee) - 1996

A weird book. I chose it because it's written by a Dutch author with Moroccan origin and I thought it might be interesting. He received the Best Literary Debut Prize in the Netherlands for this and was shortlisted for the Libris Literatuur Prijs which is like the Booker Prize.

Anyway, the story itself is interesting but the author swerves from one topic to another without any lines that you can follow. I thought it might be more a story of Moroccans in the Netherlands rather than what it was, someone growing up in the Netherlands seeing life in Morocco from the outside. Again, not a bad subject but the author didn't manage to capture me. A confusing story with an even more confusing end.

From the back cover:

"Twenty-year-old Lamarat Minar returns home from Holland to a deserted seaside village in Morocco for his sister Rebekka's wedding. During the festivities, he discovers that the groom has made his escape - to the local brothel, 'Lolita'.

Lamarat is given the task of retrieving Mosa, the reluctant husband-to-be, and returning him to his waiting bride. With the help of know-all taxi driver Chalid, and after many U-turns, detours and hairpin bends, Lamarat finds Mosa, and drags hm back to the village by the sea where Rebekka is waiting to administer a sweet and gruesome revenge …"

Smith, Betty "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"

Smith, Betty "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" - 1943

Many of my friends have told me about this book and it has been on my wishlist for ages. I finally made it. And I am glad I did. A young girl growing up in poverty loves reading. That might have been my story though we were never as poor as the Nolan family. Probably because my father didn't drink and brought the money home he earned through his regular job. But I can totally relate to Francie. How she came to love books and how they became her only friends sometimes. Books are always there for you.

I could also understand Francie's mother Katie, how she tried to save some pennies in order to get food onto the table. It must have been so hard for her.

Francie lived a hundred years ago but her message lives on and is still as valid now as it was back then. With an education, we can get out of the deepest holes.

This book is well written, from the point of view of a girl growing up but with a very adult understanding. It makes you think about life and its meaning.

In any case, I could relate to Francie so well that I just had to love this book. I would have loved to read this when I was young.

From the back cover:

"A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life ... If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience...  It is a poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships. The Nolans lived in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn from 1902 until 1919... Their daughter Francie and their son Neely knew more than their fair share of the privations and sufferings that are the lot of a great city's poor. Primarily this is Francie's book. She is a superb feat of characterization, an imaginative, alert, resourceful child. And Francie's growing up and beginnings of wisdom are the substance of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

Mbue, Imbolo "Behold the Dreamers"

Mbue, Imbolo "Behold the Dreamers" - 2016

Not as much a book about Cameroon but about immigrants in the States. There is some part that tells about Cameroon but the majority of the "action" takes place in New York City.

It is interesting to see the comparison with an immigrant family who had nothing back home and a US American who has everything and then everything falls to pieces as he loses his job, i.e. his company goes bankrupt. How they deal with the problems they are faced with.

This would be a great book club book. Does really everyone want to come to America? Are women treated that much differently in the two cultures? What about the children? Yes, great topics to discuss.

The characters were described very well, you got to like some of them a lot, others not so much. I don't think anyone is surprised to find that I preferred the Africans but I wonder how any of them would behave had they been born into the other culture …

This was a debut novel but I hope Imbole Mbue will write more.

From the back cover:

"Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself, his wife, Neni, and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark’s wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses’ summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America and imagine a brighter future.

However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers’ façades.

When the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Jongas are desperate to keep Jende’s job - even as their marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice."

Guo, Xiaolu (郭小橹) "Language"

Guo, Xiaolu (郭小橹) "Language" - 2017

The story of a Chinese girl who moves to England.

I found this little book at the till when paying for another book (or two or three ...) and it sounded interesting. It really is only an extract from another book, "A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" which certainly must be interesting, as well. Anyway, our Chinese girl has learned some English but she really doesn't know much when she first comes to England. It must be quite daunting living in another country and not knowing the language, especially if you are from a completely different culture. I have lived in several countries in my life but always knew the language and the cultures between some Western European countries are not all that different.

The book is written like a diary of the young girl who comes to England and at first, her English is rather limited. But you can tell by the time you get to the end that she gets better all the time. I quite liked that.

Anyway, I have learned more about the Chinese customs in this book than about the English language and that is exactly what I like. Nice short read.

From the back cover:

"Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first comes to London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. The city is disorientating, the people unfriendly, the language a muddle of dominant personal pronouns and moody verbs. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker…

Selected from the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo"