Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud. Holmes has developed a cocaine addiction and is tricked into visiting Vienna to get treatment. While there, he and Freud work to solve a mystery around a catatonic woman and the ruling elite in the Hapsburg Empire.
An entertaining read, woven into the fabric of the times.
Monday 31 October 2016
Sunday 30 October 2016
The Question of Bruno - Aleksandar Hemon
An author, born and raised in Sarajevo, now living in the U.S. and writing in English.
A collection of short stories with a wide variety of styles and tones - neurotic, absurd, pedantic, ironic, sarcastic. Looks at different issues - life in Sarajevo under siege, watching the siege from outside Bosnia while knowing your family is still there, living under totalitarian regimes, a dark humour around americans and american life from an immigrants perspective, living on the margin as an immigrant in the U.S.
He writes well. Worth finding more.
A collection of short stories with a wide variety of styles and tones - neurotic, absurd, pedantic, ironic, sarcastic. Looks at different issues - life in Sarajevo under siege, watching the siege from outside Bosnia while knowing your family is still there, living under totalitarian regimes, a dark humour around americans and american life from an immigrants perspective, living on the margin as an immigrant in the U.S.
He writes well. Worth finding more.
Wednesday 26 October 2016
The Return of History - Jennifer Welsh
This book and author is causing a stir right now, which seems a bit strange to me. Her arguments only make sense if you were naive enough to buy into Fukuyama's idea of the triumph of liberal capitalism and the western social model after the fall of the Communist bloc.
Welsh's book basically points out that things haven't worked out this way - the barbaric wars, pirate capitalism, and social equality that were always there under the liberal capitalist propaganda / daydream / theoretical ramblings are all still there. Perhaps the western liberal capitalist worldview was more fantasy than realized - in much of the world with oppressive dictators, grinding poverty, stolen economic resources and slave-like exploitative work conditions (usually supported by some agglomeration of Western powers), the capitalist dream looked pretty much like what Welsh describes for the whole time period. There is no question of return; it is pretty much a continuation. The only place these type of conflict points might seem like a return is in western societies themselves, which were relatively protected to maintain public support for the ruling elites. Now that we have globalization, a happy home public is not really necessary anymore, so things may return to being a little harsher at home...
The one thing that annoyed me is, in her discussion of Putin's new "model of government", she is not blunt enough or harsh enough. She seems to argue that it is simply a different model of economic and political rules, expectations, pathways. This is too kind, and I think, a bit naive. Putin's model is a pirate capitalism model. His concept of managing the public is to enforce rule of law so he and his cronies can go on pocketing everything they can without being disturbed by the courts, demonstrations, alternate political parties and various other social "disorders".
Perhaps and eyeopener for some, but only those lost in a liberal capitalist dream...
Welsh's book basically points out that things haven't worked out this way - the barbaric wars, pirate capitalism, and social equality that were always there under the liberal capitalist propaganda / daydream / theoretical ramblings are all still there. Perhaps the western liberal capitalist worldview was more fantasy than realized - in much of the world with oppressive dictators, grinding poverty, stolen economic resources and slave-like exploitative work conditions (usually supported by some agglomeration of Western powers), the capitalist dream looked pretty much like what Welsh describes for the whole time period. There is no question of return; it is pretty much a continuation. The only place these type of conflict points might seem like a return is in western societies themselves, which were relatively protected to maintain public support for the ruling elites. Now that we have globalization, a happy home public is not really necessary anymore, so things may return to being a little harsher at home...
The one thing that annoyed me is, in her discussion of Putin's new "model of government", she is not blunt enough or harsh enough. She seems to argue that it is simply a different model of economic and political rules, expectations, pathways. This is too kind, and I think, a bit naive. Putin's model is a pirate capitalism model. His concept of managing the public is to enforce rule of law so he and his cronies can go on pocketing everything they can without being disturbed by the courts, demonstrations, alternate political parties and various other social "disorders".
Perhaps and eyeopener for some, but only those lost in a liberal capitalist dream...
Friday 21 October 2016
The Wolf of Sarajevo - Matthew Palmer
A political thriller set in modern day Bosnia. Typical American style - some violence (no sex though), fast paced.
Worth reading for the insight into current conditions in the Balkans. Palmer also jumps around in history in small sections to give a palpable sense of some the historical grievances that are used by political figures to stir up nationalist sentiment, both as far back as Ottoman rule and up to events in the Sarajevo siege.
Worth reading for the insight into current conditions in the Balkans. Palmer also jumps around in history in small sections to give a palpable sense of some the historical grievances that are used by political figures to stir up nationalist sentiment, both as far back as Ottoman rule and up to events in the Sarajevo siege.
Austerlitz - W. G. Sebald
A strange novel, otherworldly somehow. It reminds me a bit of Sostiene Pereira in that it an account the story of the main character as recounted by someone to whom the story was told.
It also has an otherworldly mistiness or vagueness in that the instalments of the story are told in a variety of settings and countries around Europe through planned or chance encounters between the narrator and the main character, Austerlitz. The setting are described in minute detail, from train stations to seedy cafes.
At the core is the story of the young Jewish children who were sent by their parents to England from Germany in 1938 or 1939 to save them from the coming disaster. Obviously, many of these children were never able to be reunited with their families. Some, like Austerlitz, retained only the vaguest of memories of their origins and grew up not even knowing they were Jewish.
The story is Austerlitz's slow descent into a form of nervous collapse essentially due to a rootlessness and emotional disengagement, and then the slow discovery of something of his origins, his family's past and the source of some of the strange images and pictures he carried in his mind from his early childhood.
There is also the idea of moving through a world where so much of your own history and culture have been erased. (Funnily enough, Palestinians could say the same about their own homeland with the deliberate Israeli policy of destroying all remains of villages. Also Armenians as Turkey has pursued the same policy. And the Balkans where each group tries to write the other out of its territorial history. It is a form of public psychological disturbance or madness.)
A bit hard to get into at first as it is slow, but worth it.
It also has an otherworldly mistiness or vagueness in that the instalments of the story are told in a variety of settings and countries around Europe through planned or chance encounters between the narrator and the main character, Austerlitz. The setting are described in minute detail, from train stations to seedy cafes.
At the core is the story of the young Jewish children who were sent by their parents to England from Germany in 1938 or 1939 to save them from the coming disaster. Obviously, many of these children were never able to be reunited with their families. Some, like Austerlitz, retained only the vaguest of memories of their origins and grew up not even knowing they were Jewish.
The story is Austerlitz's slow descent into a form of nervous collapse essentially due to a rootlessness and emotional disengagement, and then the slow discovery of something of his origins, his family's past and the source of some of the strange images and pictures he carried in his mind from his early childhood.
There is also the idea of moving through a world where so much of your own history and culture have been erased. (Funnily enough, Palestinians could say the same about their own homeland with the deliberate Israeli policy of destroying all remains of villages. Also Armenians as Turkey has pursued the same policy. And the Balkans where each group tries to write the other out of its territorial history. It is a form of public psychological disturbance or madness.)
A bit hard to get into at first as it is slow, but worth it.
Thursday 13 October 2016
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016
Wide variety of styles. Wide variety of worlds. Some good ones, some not.
Notable:
Dismemberment - Wendell Berry
Train to Harbin - Asako Serizawa (Harbin was a Japanese camp for medical experimentation on
Chinese prisoners)
Notable:
Dismemberment - Wendell Berry
Train to Harbin - Asako Serizawa (Harbin was a Japanese camp for medical experimentation on
Chinese prisoners)
Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog - Boris Akunin
A new detective character from Akunin - an orthodox nun. Set in the same time period as his other series, 19th century Russia, but this time in the high society of the remote countryside. Reminds me of Agatha Christie. Good evocation of the milieu.
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