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"Origin, resume - all nonsense! We all come from some small town Jüterbog or Königsberg and in some Black Forest we will all end" (Gottfried Benn) Therefore just a stenogram: Thomas Huebner, born in Germany, studied Economics, Political Science, Sociology, German literature, European Law. Consulting firm in Bulgaria. Lived in Germany, Bulgaria, Albania, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Indonesia and Jordan. Now residing in Prishtina/Kosovo. Interested in books and all other aspects of human culture. Traveler. Main feature: intellectual curiosity

The Little Book of Honey

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This is a small and nice book for all who love honey – and who doesn’t?

The Little Book of Honey consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, the reader learns about different honeys from different flowers and from different origins (including such interesting varieties as coriander honey, carob flower honey, thistle honey, or asphodel honey, to name just a few).

The second part is a collection of different recipes for all kind of breads and biscuits and for teatime. If you always wanted to know how to make your own challah, or Yemeni honey bread, or baklava, or tiessennau mel (welsh honey muffins), or if you are just curious to know what you can do with honey, you will indulge in this chapter for sure.

The third chapter, ingeniously named miscell-honey, explains some additional uses of honey: as an ersatz for sugar, as an ingredient of a face cream, as a basis for mead, and others.

The small compact format and the beautiful illustrations by Su Jones and Paddy McEntaggart make it a pleasure to touch the book or to look at it. Elizabeth Gowing, the author of a book on bee keeping in Kosovo (Travels in Blood and Honey) and of a book about the British traveler Edith Durham (Edith and I), has written this delightful book.

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Elizabeth Gowing: The Little Book of Honey, design and illustrations by Su Jones and Paddy McEntaggart, Elbow Publishing 2012

http://www.thelittlebookofhoney.co.uk/

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


The Story of a Simple Man

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It begins like a legend and it ends like a fairy tale: Joseph Roth’s novel Job, the Story of a Simple Man, as the subtitle says.

Mendel Singer is a “pious, God-fearing and ordinary . . . everyday Jew,” who lives the life of a poor school teacher in Zuchnow, a shtetl in the then Russian part of Galicia. It’s the early 20th century and the lives of the Jews were not only threatened by poverty but also by the frequent pogroms. Emigration or involvement in one of the revolutionary political groups were the only real way out of this misery; for all the others the only relief from their difficult situation lay in the imagination. It’s the world that is described in the novels and stories of Scholem Alejchem, Isaac Bashevis Singer or Isaac Babel, or in the paintings of Marc Chagall.

Mendel Singer’s life is not different from many others: he is married, has two sons and a daughter and his life is rather uneventful. Things change when his fourth child, his son Menuchim is born. Menuchim turns out to be not able to speak (except for the only word “Mama” he is mumbling again and again) and he cannot walk properly either. Menuchim’s presence changes the whole dynamics of interaction within the family. His father gives him much more attention than to the other children, in the hope that this will enhance his development, his mother Deborah is visiting a famous rabbi in the next town to ask his advice, while in the meantime even the usual household routine suffers:

She neglected her duty at the stove, the soup boiled over, the clay pots cracked, the pans rusted, the greenish shimmering glasses shattered with a harsh crash, the chimney of the petroleum lamp was darkened with soot, the wick was charred to a miserable stub, the dirt of many soles and many weeks coated the floorboards, the lard melted away in the pot, the withered buttons fell from the children’s shirts like leaves before the winter.

Menuchim’s siblings don’t really like their brother who is such a burden to them and in one specific moment even make a half-hearted attempt to kill him, fortunately without success.

When the children grow up, things go worse and worse for Mendel Singer. While his son Jonas joins the army (usually most Jews in Russia dreaded the moment when their sons had to go to the army where they were exposed frequently to the rudest forms of anti-semitism) and even likes it there, his second son Schemarjah is deserting and emigrating to America where he soon changes his name to Sam.

The biggest problem beside Menuchim who doesn’t show any sign of development is Mendel’s daughter Mirjam, who has several affairs with soldiers and even cossacks, who had frequently a prominent role in the anti-semitic pogroms. The only way to save his daughter from the path on which she was embarking seems for Mendel Singer the emigration to America. An invitation from Sam, who sends also the money for the ship tickets through his new American friend Mac, will make it possible.

But there is a problem: the sick Menuchim cannot travel (the immigration officers at Ellis Island would send whole families back in such cases). Mendel and Deborah make for themselves all kind of excuses. If Menuchim will be healthy one day, he will join the family. In the meantime, he will stay with a good and caring family who will live in the house of the Singer’s. Deborah remembers the words of the famous rabbi: “Don’t ever leave him!” And also on Mendel, who is by then estranged from his whole family except for Menuchim to whom he feels particularly close, the moment to say goodbye is heartbreaking.

The second part of the book describes Mendel Singer’s and his family’s life in New York. Sam, together with his reliable business partner Mac is successful and able to provide a comparatively good life to his family. Jonas is writing a letter from Russia with some good news about Menuchim who surprisingly started to speak. Sam and his wife have their first child. Mirjam is having a regular job in Sam’s company. For the first time in his life, the sorrow seems to disappear from Mendel Singer’s existence. But only for a short while.

WWI breaks out and again everything changes for Mendel Singer. After some time he loses contact with Jonas, who went missing and is maybe dead. And also from Menuchim there are no more news anymore. Mendel fears the worst. After America enters the war, Sam also enlists for the army. Only a short time after he was shipped to Europe, he gets killed in combat. When Mac brings the bad news, Deborah has a breakdown and dies. Mirjam has to be admitted to a mental hospital after the outbreak of an unexplicable mental illness, probably schizophrenia.

Mendel Singer is withdrawing more and more from life. The most remarkable thing is that he stops praying. He is angry with God. What has he done to deserve such a fate? The parallel with the biblical Job is obvious.

Still, even after the complete collapse of his existence, life has a few surprises left for Mendel Singer. When a grammophone record plays a beautiful melody from his home region, Mendel finds out that this touching record is called Menuchim’s Song. And one day the composer of this song is by a strange coincidence giving a concert with his orchestra in town and is investigating about an old man, Mendel Singer. He wants to bring him some news from his son Menuchim…

Job is a great novel. It is very touching, without being sentimental. It is written in a very beautiful prose. It is well-composed. It has very interesting parallels not only with the biblical Job, but also with Joseph, Jacob’s youngest son. And it is asking interesting questions regarding belief and moral. It is a story that will stay with you for a very long time when you read it.

Joseph Roth knew about what he was writing. He was born himself into the world he is describing in Job, but he had the chance to grow up in Vienna. In the 1920s and early 1930s he worked as a journalist for the best European newspapers. His salary when he was working for the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung is said to have been the highest of any journalist. Beside from that Roth was an extremely productive author of novels and stories.

For those who don’t know him Job is (beside Radetzky March) probably the best starting point to discover his work. Since Roth objected Austro-Fascism as well as Nazism, he was forced into exile, where he drank himself slowly to death. His catholic funeral in Paris 1939 was attended by his friends, by Otto von Habsburg, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by representatives of the Jewish community, and by a delegation of the Austrian Communist Party. His grave is at the Cimetière parisien de Thiais, where also Paul Celan and Yevgeni Zamyatin, Leon Sedov and the Albanian king Zog are buried.

 

Job

Joseph Roth: Job, transl. by Ross Benjamin, Archipelago Books, New York 2010

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Is Javier Marias a Snob?

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Javier Marias, the eminent Spanish novelist, has recently published a text “Seven Reasons Not to Write Novels and Only One Reason to Write Them” in the Threepenny Review (and reprinted by the Independent). You can read Marias’ text here:

http://threepennyreview.com/samples/marias_su14.html or here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/javier-marias-there-are-seven-reasons-not-to-write-novels-and-one-to-write-them-9610725.html

I was dumbfounded by this article and like to comment on it.

First, it is very superficial to give the impression that the reasons not to write and publish novels outweigh the reasons to write and publish them by 7:1 – this is not a football match Germany-Brazil, Mr. Marias, but a question that is decided on an individual basis by each (potential) novelist and by each reader of novels based on qualitative and not on quantitative criteria. I suppose that any “real” novelist (you use the term without defining it) doesn’t make a list first with reasons “Why I shouldn’t write this novel” and another one with reasons “Why I should write this novel”. This is not how the mind of a genuine storyteller works – and I am sure you know that.

You claim, Mr. Marias, that there are already too many novels and too many people that write them – too many according to what criteria? If it is the quality of the books and novels we read – and I see no reason why we should waste our time to read badly written, boring or uninspiring novels – then there can be never enough novels and enough novelists that write them. And no, Mr. Marias, the existing novels are not “demanding to be eternally read” (at least they never raised their voice with such a demand when I am standing in front of my book shelves). Many of the novels that were published up to now will fall into oblivion in the future because the readers will decide not to read them anymore and maybe because they will prefer to read some of the novels that will be published in the future and which they will consider as more interesting, entertaining, relevant to them.

And, Mr. Marias, with all due respect, but why are you such a snob? Because novel writing doesn’t require (in theory) a higher education or special training, you seriously assume that any potential novelists will not write or publish a novel? Because it is, as you say (and I strongly disagree), an activity that “lacks merit and mystery” and because (potentially) everyone could do it, any novelist will in all seriousness decide not to write his novel? I rarely came across a more snobbish and conceited statement by an intelligent person and writer I otherwise admire for his published novels.

My strong guess, Mr. Marias, is that neither Goethe, nor Flaubert, nor Tolstoy, nor Kafka wrote or published novels in order to become rich – and that is true for probably 99.99% of all novelists. (The bunch of Dan Brown, Paulo Coelho, and the like I consider as hacks, not as serious writers)

The same goes for your argument that a novel is not a guarantee of fame. Maybe I am naïve here, but isn’t the main driving force for all storytellers and writers the wish to tell and share a story that is meaningful to them, in the hope it might be entertaining and even captivating to others as well? An author that starts his writing process with the thought of possible immortality is in my opinion a case for a therapy. So why exactly do you picture your colleagues as being driven by the strong wish to make busloads of money and to become immortal and world famous?

And no, Mr. Marias, also your sixth reason not to write a novel is ridiculously wrong. Writing novels (or any other kind of prose) indeed flatters the ego – maybe in another way as you seem to imagine, but it does. To be able to tell a story that is gripping readers or listeners can be an extremely rewarding activity, as you should know better than me.

And, Mr. Marias, please stop whining about the “abnormal life” of writers and the “great sufferings” they have to experience. They are not suffering more than any human being, and not all of them are alcoholics either.

But when you are trying to tell us, Mr. Marias, that only brilliant people like yourself should publish novels in the future, I will gladly forgive you. For I will trade with the greatest pleasure one hundred shallow articles like this one of yours for one page of your next novel. 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

When Pera Trees Whisper

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He had many enemies, and so it seems not surprising that mobster Engin got stabbed on New Year’s Eve on the streets of Istanbul’s dodgy Tarlabaşı neighbourhood in the Beyoğlu (formerly known as Pera) district.

A street war seems to be going on between two local gangsters, ‘Dice’ Ihsan and Black Nizam, whose right-hand man Engin was. But it is not only a fight about the predominance in the (illegal) gambling business – to which some corrupt local policemen turn a blind eye for reasons we can easily guess – there is a much wider area of possible motives and suspects, as Chief Inspector Nevzat and his two assistants Ali and Zeynep find out soon.

Ihsan and Nizam were in love with the same woman, Cilem, and there are rumors that also Engin, who had the reputation of a womanizer, had a relationship with Cilem. Jealousy might be a very strong motif for the murder, but it turns out that Engin also secretly bought some houses in Tarlabaşı with the aim to demolish them and turn the locations in profitable big housing projects (which would have interfered with the intentions of his employer).

The deeper the Chief Inspector and his constantly bickering assistants dig into the case, the more questions come up: what did the street kids that were present on the crime scene really see? Has the giant Suleyman, a once powerful pimp, something to do with the murder (since he has great skills when it comes to using a knife in a fight)? Is Swank Cemal, the inspector’s old friend (and a former mobster himself) trying to mislead the police intentionally? What exactly is the role of Nazli, a lady from a wealthy family who is running a cultural center in the area and who is very strongly opposed to the plans of the local mafia? Are some radical members of the Gezi Park Resistance groups that were fighting against the plans to turn the last remaining park in Beyoğlu into a shopping mall, behind the murder? And why is this rather annoying crime novelist turning up every time when the Chief Inspector is least expecting it? What about the Italian mafia that was also after Engin? And what about the Bulgarian connection that seems to become more important as the story advances? Things are heating up more and more, and Engin will not be the only victim…

Ahmet Ümit, the author of When Pera Trees Whisper, is one of the most successful contemporary Turkish writers. This crime novel is a good example for his skillful handling of this genre. An interesting story, fast dialogues, characters that are described in a way that seems to be taken directly from reality, plenty of local flair for Istanbul connaisseurs, and all is set against the backdrop of contemporary Turkey, with its fast development but also its social and political problems that from time to time explode, as the Gezi Park Resistance has reminded us recently.

When Pera Trees Whisper is a real page turner and especially recommended for all readers that know (or want to get to know) the fascinating city of Istanbul.

Pera

Ahmet Ümit: When Pera Trees Whisper, transl. Elke Dixon, Everest Publications, Istanbul 2014

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Istanbul’s Archipelago

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“Prinkipo is an island of peace and forgetfulness. The life of the world arrives here after great delays…It’s a good place to work with the pen, especially in autumn and winter, when the islands are almost completely deserted and the woodpeckers appear in the garden. There’s no theater here; there’s not even a cinema. Cars are forbidden. Are there many such places in the world? We have no telephone in our house. The cries of the donkeys calm the nerves. One cannot for one moment forget that Prinkipo is an island, because the sea lies under every window and there is no point on the island without a sea view. We catch fish a mere ten meters distance from the edge of the quay; at fifty meters, we catch lobster. The sea can be as calm as a lake for weeks at a time.”

Prinkipo is now called Büyükada and a popular destination for mainly Turkish weekend tourists who want to flee from the crowded city of Istanbul for a day or two. Cars are still forbidden, and the main means of transport are the bicycle or the horse carriages called peyton you can hire here for a tour around the island. But the atmosphere of peace and forgetfulness that Leon Trotsky refers to in his essay Farewell to Prinkipo, from which the above quote is taken, is still existing on Büyükada and the other smaller Princes’ Islands. (The name derives from the fact that many princes were exiled here in the time of Byzantium). Trotsky wrote his autobiography and the biggest part of his History of the Russian Revolution on the island. The house in which he lived with his wife, his son, two bodyguards and five Turkish policemen is in a quiet ruinous state, but still standing. Trotsky left the place in 1933 and moved finally to Mexico, where he was murdered by a group of NKWD henchmen (among them Pablo Neruda and the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros).

 

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The glorious times of the Princes Islands were the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Greek, Armenian, Jewish businessmen discovered these islands as a perfect summer retreat, established a ferry boat line and built beautiful summer houses and a few hotels. Several Greek monasteries, churches and abandoned fortresses add to the charm of these islands that offer incredible scenic views to the European and Asian coast. Istanbul seems so far away, but it is just a short journey by ferryboat.

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A wonderful small book The Princes’ Islands, written by Joachim Sartorius, a German poet, translator and travel writer, can be the perfect companion when you visit these islands during your next trip to Istanbul. Sartorius, who grew up in Tunis and served as a diplomat in the US, Turkey and Cyprus before he became the director of the Goethe Institute, writes a stylistically elegant prose. He takes the reader by the hand and shares his knowledge and feelings, reports the history, explores all interesting places and evokes in the reader the atmosphere of these serene islands. He makes friends with locals who invite him to their homes or to the restaurant, he is rowing to smaller islands with friends, and – we can be thankful for that – he feels inspired by the islands. No wonder that many writers like Orhan Veli Kanik,  Sait Faik,  or Orhan Pamuk lived or live on one of the islands or had or have at least a summer house which they use(d) as a writers’ studio.

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During most of the year, there are ferries leaving from Kabatas ferry terminal almost every hour. The trip takes one hour and a half, with short stops on the Asian side and three of the bigger islands before reaching the final destination Büyükada. Don’t miss these islands. You won’t regret it.

Sartorius

Joachim Sartorius: The Princes’ Islands, Armchair Traveller, London 2011, transl. Stephen Brown

Leon Trotsky: Farewell to Prinkipo (1933), in: Writings of Leon Trotsky 1932-1933, Pathfinder Press 1972, pp. 361ff. 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. © Photos in this blog post Cornelia Awear. 
 

In Arabian Nights

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Some time ago I reviewed The Last Storytellers by Richard Hamilton, a book that collects some of the tales of the last storytellers of Marrakech. Also the book about which I am writing today dives deep into the world of Moroccan storytellers.

Tahir Shah, the author of In Arabian Nights, is well equipped to undertake this journey into the heart of Morocco through its stories and storytellers. He has roots in the Orient (his family comes originally from Afghanistan), but he lived most of his life in the West (he grew up in Britain). He comes from a dynasty of storytellers himself: his father Idries Shah collected and published many books with traditional oriental tales and stories that contain a lot of the wisdom of the Sufi dervishes. Also the author’s aunt, Amina Shah, to whom the book is dedicated, was a collector and master storyteller of Arabic and Oriental stories and tales.

The probably best-known book by Tahir Shah is The Caliph’s House in which he describes how he settled in Casablanca with his family and bought an old house there. In Arabian Nights describes what happened after this period covered by the previous book.

It starts with a deeply disturbing and traumatic experience. When the author is preparing a documentary film he wants to make in Afghanistan, he is arrested by Pakistani police as a terror suspect and has to endure a several week long ordeal in one of the many Pakistani torture prisons, before he is finally released. What sustained him during these weeks were the stories told to him by his father when he was a child in Morocco and that he tried to recollect and repeat to himself.

After his return, the author starts to search for “his” story – based on an old Berber belief that each person has his/her own story, a story that has a special meaning for this person, and that you are only a complete person after you found that story.

Tahir Shah takes us readers on this journey which is full of interesting, frequently funny encounters and events. We meet storytellers in the most improbable disguise: from the craftsmen and guardians of the Caliph’s House, to the regular guests of Cafe Mabrook, a men-only coffee shop and hideout for henpecked husbands who hide here from their Alpha females at home; from the cobbler who repairs the author’s shoes, to Monsieur Benito, an old Italian gentleman who owns a copy of the rare first edition of Richard Burton’s Arabian Nights; from Mohamed Mrabet, the famous Moroccan storyteller, to a guardian in a mental hospital; from a Tuareg guide to Sufi masters: we get to know a great richness of stories – stories that are never only meant to entertain people but that have usually many layers below the surface, and the deeper the layer we reach, the deeper the meaning of the story. The author is taking us to the Atlas mountain and to Chefchaouen, to the Sahara desert and of course to Marrakech, the capital of storytellers, and to Fès, the dark heart of Morocco.

This book is not only a book about storytelling. It is also a travel book of course. But it is also a book about friendship and the high value it has in the traditional Moroccan society. When Dr Mehdi, a retired surgeon and one of the regulars in Cafe Mabrook with whom Shah makes friends, is asking the author for a favor, Shah agrees to do him this favor without asking (that’s a big difference to the Western world where everybody would first ask about what kind of favor it is – thus diminishing the friendship in the eyes of a Moroccan). Dr Mehdi is asking him to bring him some special salt from the Sahara desert that is needed for a wedding. It will be a journey that will have a deep impact on the author. And the journey has a surprising end that is also a lesson in friendship:

‘Is there enough salt for the wedding?’ – The surgeon took a deep breath. ‘There is no wedding,’ he said. – ‘What?’ – ‘The favor I asked you was less a favor to me and more a favor to yourself.’ – ‘I don’t understand.’ – ‘Think of the things you have seen, the people you have met and the stories you have heard,’ he said, emptying the bag of salt on to the path. ‘You are a different man than you were seven days ago.’

Another thing I really like about the book is the author’s attitude to Moroccans in general and to the poor people in particular. He is always truly respectful and willing to learn from them and to understand their way of thinking. The bidonville, the shantytown that borders the Caliph’s House, may be a mess. But good people are living there with their hearts in the right place.

This is one of the most delightful books I have been reading since a long time. But be careful, dear reader, this book might ignite a life-long passion for Morocco in you. After reading this book, you will almost for sure think about your (next) journey to this country that is so full of wonderful stories. Tahir Shah is opening our eyes, ears and hearts for these stories and for Morocco.

TahirArab 

Tahir Shah: In Arabian Nights, Doubleday 2008

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hell Hath No Fury

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When old barns burn…

Rosemarie Hirte is an average woman with an average life – so it seems. She never married, lives alone, is working in an insurance company. She is diligent but not openly ambitious, a very respected colleague. Her social contacts outside work are very few: Beate, an old friend (but not particularly close) and Frau Römer, an elderly colleague whose dog she is walking from time to time.

There is no man in Rosemarie’s life, and the very few occasions when a man had shown a serious interest in her during her younger years ended with deep disappointments for her: either she was deserted for a more attractive (or more interesting) woman, or the married man returned finally to his wife. Also the fact that she couldn’t finish her studies has had an impact on her. Rosemarie Hirte, who is also the narrator of the story, is an embittered spinster in her early fifties who has the feeling that her life was one of missed opportunities, there can be no doubt about it.

But then everything seems to change. Against her usual habit, she is giving in to Beate to visit a reading evening together. The author Rainer Witold Engstern is talking about German romanticism and its poets. Rosemarie is not a particular poetic person, but Witold, as she calls him soon secretly, is a handsome man, some years younger than Rosemarie and he has a voice for which she falls immediately. Unfortunately, he is married, but the good news (good for Rosemarie) is that something is wrong with the marriage and Witold’s wife left him some time ago.

Although it seems most unlikely – men in Witold’s age are rarely attracted to women like Rosemarie – Rosemarie is determined to use this last chance and all obstacles need to be set aside to be cleared, at no matter what costs. Witold will not escape her, that’s a promise she makes to herself. He is the man of her dreams, the man who has to make up for all the disappointments in her previous life.

I don’t want to give the story away, but we see a total transformation going on with Rosemarie. She develops an enormous and ruthless energy that is really remarkable. People that are in her way – well, they are just obstacles which need to get out of her way. If not…

One remark about the names of some of the protagonists. Engstern, the name of Rosemarie’s love interest means literally “narrow star”, but it is just one letter away from Engstirn (=narrow mind). I think this is called an aptronym (Thomas Mann was master in this art). As it turns out later, Witold is not exactly the bright star that Rosemarie saw in him first.

The name Rosemarie is a bit old-fashioned and the reader might think of a woman doing crocheted blankets in her free time. A Hirte is a shepherd in German, but Rosemarie is quite the opposite of the good shepherd – so in this case the author is intentionally misleading the reader. The contrast between the name and the real character adds to the black humor that is present in many situations. The peaceful and almost Mediterranean Bergstrasse region where most of the story takes place (and where Noll is living), is another stark contrast that is remarkable. (Since I also lived for a long time in this region, this added even a bit more to my pleasure reading this book.)

Rosemarie’s crude energy and industriousness made me laugh on many occasions when I read the book. But sometimes I also shivered. The book gives us an opportunity to have a look into a truly dark soul. In my opinion an excellent crime novel – with an unexpected end.

This is a novel in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith and it was the first book of Ingrid Noll, now considered Germany’s leading female crime author. Noll, born in Shanghai in 1935, is the wife of a pharmacist. She started to write after her children had grown up and had left the house. Hell Hath No Fury was published in 1991 in Germany. Until today she has published twelve crime novels, several books with stories and a children’s book. The original title Der Hahn ist tot refers to the old French kanon Le coq est mort (The rooster is dead).

Noll Hell

Noll Hahn

Ingrid Noll: Hell Hath No Fury, HarperCollins 1997; Der Hahn ist tot, Diogenes 1991

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Drums of Rain

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Albania in the middle of the 15th century. Gjergj Kastrioti, called Skanderbeg, is resisting the advance of the Ottoman armies and is fighting a kind of hit-and-run guerrilla war from his fortresses in the Accursed Mountains. This is the historical backdrop of the novel The Siege by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare, a permanent candidate for the Novel Prize and Winner of the Man Booker International Prize.

A huge force of the Ottoman army is advancing to this remote and not yet completely subdued province with the task to conquer one of the biggest fortresses that is still resisting the at that time most powerful army in the world.

The Pasha that is leading the expedition force knows what is at stake for him: a failure to seize the fortress in summer would be considered as a complete failure of his by the Sultan. Not only would it be necessary to abort the siege at the begin of the rainy season, for the Pasha it would mean also personal disgrace and drastic consequences – in the best case early retirement, but more probably a death sentence after his return to the capital.

Kadare tells us the story from two different perspectives. The main narrator is a young chronicler whose task it is to write the official account of the expedition and siege. The chronicler, an intelligent but inexperienced person has therefore (almost) always access to any meetings of the war council, where the military leaders discuss with the Pasha the right strategy and next steps of the siege.

Important for the chronicler is especially his growing friendship with the Quartermaster, a kind of Chief Logistics Officer, who is very friendly and frank with him and is opening his eyes for the difficult task that such a mission including so many people is imposing on the logistics. Basic things about which we rarely read in the history books that tell only of the deeds of “great men”, are of crucial importance. Without a proper system of latrines, no triumph in any battle. We also understand, as the story advances, that the Quartermaster has an agenda too. He wants to be depicted in a positive light for posterity, and he is doubting also (like many others) the abilities of the Pasha as a leader, though he is voicing his reservations in the most indirect way.

A siege of a fortress on that scale was an extraordinary undertaking in the 15th century. It required already a very high level of organization, specialization and division of labor. We have the simple soldiers and the medics, experts for artillery, the janissaries, elite soldiers of the Sultan, the raiders (akinzhis), the infantry (azabs), the cavalry, and other specialized and rivaling groups, the “volunteers” (people who join in the hope to get a part of the booty), but also exorcists, soothsayers, spell casters, dream interpreters, and many other important crafts.

Each chapter that is written by the young Ottoman chronicler is mirrored by a short chapter that is told by an unnamed Albanian chronicler who is inside the fortress. The Albanians pray for an early begin of the rainy season, which seems to be the only possible rescue. (Or an attack of the myth Skanderbeg, who is hiding somewhere in the mountains.) So, “the drums of rain” – also the planned original title of the book, and also the name under which The Siege is published in French – are dreaded by the Pasha, but longed-for by the Albanians.

Since the fortress is well-protected by a sophisticated system of walls, and since there is also enough food and water inside the fortress, it proves more difficult as anticipated by the invaders to take it. Several attempts to storm the fortress in a frontal assault, supported by the newly cast cannon, fail and cause many casualties. A success at all costs must be achieved, and so the Pasha decides to follow a cunning plan: secretly he lets his soldiers build a tunnel that should lead directly to the middle of the fortress and that should enable a surprise attack and the opening of the gates from the inside for a huge wave of attackers…

Regarding the technical details of the siege, Kadare has made extensive use of Marin Barleti’s chronicle about the siege of Shkodra. But The Siege is more than a historical novel: it was written shortly after the invasion of Prague 1968 by the Warsaw Pact states. It is therefore obvious that the book contains also some very interesting comments on the situation after the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

One message that Kadare wanted to send out is possibly: Albania will resist any attempt to invade the country (the paranoid dictator Enver Hoxha built therefore hundreds of thousands of small bunkers – fortresses en miniature).

On the other hand, and this is also fairly obvious, the victory of the besieged (the invaders have to withdraw at the beginning of the rainy season and after the death of the Pasha) in the novel is only a temporary one. We can easily assume that a new, bigger army with even more frightful weapons will come back again next year – and from the history books we know the outcome of this process. Therefore Kadare’s message in this novel is – like in most of his books – very ambiguous.

What is additionally interesting about the novel are the countless calculated and intentional anachronisms it contains. To name just a few: There are show trials, the victims are sentenced to slave labor in the tunnel. And the only possible friend and ally in the outside world (in the book it is the Republic of Venice) plays a double game, because it is trading with and equipping the enemy of their (Christian) brothers, just for the profit.

“Great massacres always give birth to great books”,

says the Quartermaster to the chronicler quite at the beginning of The Siege. That may indeed be true. The Siege is a brilliant historical novel.

Siege

Ismail Kadare: The Siege, transl. David Bellos, Canongate, Edinburgh London New York Melbourne 2008 

Marin Barleti: The Siege of Shkodra, transl. David Hosaflook, Onufri Publishing House, Tirana, Albania, 2012 (first English edition; the original was published in Latin in 1504) 

Other reviews: 
1st reading’s Blog

see also:  http://edifyingdiscourse.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/notes-on-ismail-kadares-the-siege/

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 


An incongruent thought

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When Gregor Samsa wakes up as a “monstrous vermin” in The Metamorphosis he is wondering about what?

Right: How will I ever get to work in time?

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

How should we act?

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What is the worst crime? Are we always obliged to help others? Why is punishment sometimes necessary? What is the sense of life?

These and some other questions are the subject of a small book on ethics, written by the philosopher Ernst Tugendhat and the two experienced teachers and writers Celso López, and Ana Maria Vicuña. The book was originally written in 1995 for an ethics course in Chile, and it has a similar target as the books of Matthew Lipman for school children of thirteen to fifteen years.

Manuel, Camila and some of their friends go to school like almost all their peers all over the world. And they come along many situations, either personally in school, family or in the circle of friends, or by reports in the media, that touch ethical questions and lead to discussions among them, but also with their parents, teachers, or the trusted kind school librarian Senor Ibarra. The form of the dialogue, embedded in a small story, makes it an easy and entertaining read and makes it also more easy to follow the lines of argumentation. This open form also encourages the reader not to be content with the presented arguments, but to rethink the discussed question and find her/his own opinion and answers on it.

One of the best introductions to ethics for young people that I know of. Highly recommended for translation into English (the book is available in Spanish and German).  

Tugendhat2

Ernst Tugendhat, Celso López, Ana María Vicuña: El libro de Manuel y Camila, Editorial Gedisa 2001; Wie sollen wir handeln?, Philipp Reclam, 2000 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.