Non-Fiction November - Week 3

Week 3: (Nov. 12 to 16) – Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (Julie @ JulzReads): Three ways to join in this week! You can either share three or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

This year I've been reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo one chapter at a time with Nick and his band of merry followers. The whole chapter a day thing hasn't always gone to plan - Les Mis in fits and starts would be a better description of my reading year!

I find myself constantly fascinated by this period of history - the various stages of the French Revolution, the wars with England and Spain, the art and writers from this time. I was one of the few readalong participants who enjoyed Hugo's two week diversion back in time to 'witness' Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo!

In the past I've read two of the four Max Gallo Napoleon books (but ran out of steam).

I have The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Miserables by David Bellos by my bed to start very soon (I've waited until this close to the end in case there were any spoilers in it, which I believe there are!) so I'm hoping it will flesh out some of the history for me.

But I still get the Second Empire, Second Republic and Third Republic stuff all mixed up. Reading my way through Zola is helping with this, but I'd like to know more.

This is where I ask for your help.

Have you read any really good (non-fiction or fiction) about the French Revolution through to the Third Republic era?

Or perhaps something more general that brings that time (the mid 1700's through to the late 1800's) in Europe to light?

Help me become a French Revolution/Republic expert in the future.

2017 Be the Expert - Man's inhumanity to man/Holocaust literature.

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree has been attracting my attention for several months now, however it took its recent longlisting for this year's Stella Prize to finally make me pick it up. I'm nothing but a Stella groupie!

The cover alone might have been enticement enough (a collage of three of Azar's art works), but the promise of a mystical, magical tour through the horrors of revolutionary Iran, 'using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling', was the final prompt I needed to make this my first book to read from this year's prize.

Magical realism can be a problem for many readers I know. I'm happy to embrace some forms of magic realism more than others. I especially like those that draw fairy tales, fables and myths into our modern real-world setting. (FYI: I'm not so keen on the type of magic realism that brings in a lot of deliberately disorientating layers and details. I like my magical realism to still make sense somehow!)

Azar's use of magic realism did that and more. It's quite a skill to weave a story that allows your somewhat sceptical reader to accept the existence of ghosts, jinns and mermaids. But Azar did it for me - I was with her from the start, on that level at least.

However, it did take me a while to get going. It may have been a translation thing or it may have been a slightly different approach to sentence structure. Many of the books I gravitate towards lately are ones with concise, short sentences. So maybe it was simply my lack of practice in reading longer, flowing, complex sentences. Whatever it was, I found the start of The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree choppy and erratic.

It wasn't until the special circumstances of our narrator were revealed at the beginning of chapter 5 that I was hooked. Suddenly the 'playful, poetic and deeply melancholy' Alice Pung quote on the back cover came to life.

I dropped into a dreamy, almost trance-like state every time I picked up the book. Jinns and groves of trees haunted my own dreams as fleeting childhood memories of news items about the 1979 Revolution were triggered by events in the story. It was angry, it was heart-rending, it was glorious, mesmerising and confronting.

Azar has given us a classic story of good and evil. Her words are fluid as is her approach to time and truth. Belonging, love and loss are the major themes while the search for solace is the main concern for her characters. Given the horrific events that occurred during the Iranian Revolution, it is easy to understand why and how an author would choose to wrap these unreal events up in mythology. When the real world you live in suddenly gets turned on it's head, sometimes the only response is imagination and the only hope is magic.

I, for one, hope with all my heart, that this story gets shortlisted for the Stella - it deserves to get as much attention as possible.

Translated from Farsi by Adrien Kijek#AustWomenWriters
#Stella2018

The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson

I found the The Vanishing Futurist to be a rather peculiar read.

I'm always fascinated by the Russian Revolution and this was a curious and different angle from which to view it. But it was rather weird reading a book that I wasn't completely sure if I was enjoying it or not. The cover by LaBoca, on the other hand, I adored every time I saw it!

I loved learning about Russian avant-garde art which I knew next to nothing about before. I also wasn't aware of the English governesses who travelled to Russia at the turn of the century and got caught up the revolutionary fervour of the times.

The disintegration of Russian society, the poverty, the hardships and how so many of them simply adapted to and accepted the massive changes was, as always, mind-boggling. And how quickly society, just with different faces in charge, reverted back to those who had stuff (including the power) and those who didn't. How idealism quickly turned to cynicism, hope became drudgery and freedom lost out to total control.

Less convincing was the love story between Gerty and Nikita, mostly because I wasn't sure that I liked either of them very much. It took me quite a while to work out all the people living in the IRT commune, I kept getting them mixed up - perhaps not enough character development to make them gel for me? The sudden jumps forward to modern day Gerty writing her memoirs for her daughter in England also felt a little contrived.

Alexander Rodchenko: Cpstume design for We, 1919-1920
© A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum

The Vanishing Futurist was shortlisted for this year's Walter Scott Prize. I had never heard about the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction before, which I thought was a terrible crime, given my love of historical fiction.

I quickly learnt that it is,

Sponsored by Sir Walter Scott’s distant kinsmen the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, the Prize celebrates quality, and innovation of writing in the English language, and is open to books published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. 

Reflecting the subtitle ‘Sixty Years Since’ of Scott’s most famous work Waverley, the majority of the storyline must have taken place at least 60 years ago.Honouring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world. With a total value of over £30,000, it is unique for rewarding writing of exceptional quality which is set in the past. 

The Prize was founded in 2010, and is awarded at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland, in June every year. The winner receives £25,000 and shortlisted authors each receive £1000.

and that this year's shortlist looked like this,

Jo Baker A Country Road, A Tree (Doubleday)

Sebastian Barry Days Without End (Faber)

Charlotte Hobson The Vanishing Futurist (Faber)

Hannah Kent The Good People (Picador Australia)

Francis Spufford Golden Hill (Faber)

Graham Swift Mothering Sunday (Scribner)

Rose Tremain The Gustav Sonata (Chatto & Windus)

What an amazing feast of historical fiction!
I have now created a page so that I can follow this award in the future (see pages tab on right hand side of this blog).

Vladimir Tatlin: Costume design for Life for the Tsaw, 1913-1915 © A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum

I'm glad I finished the book because I do love learning about new-to-me stuff.

The Russian avant-garde movement began around the 1890's under the Tsarist Empire and wound up by the 1930's (although these dates are often debated). It included Suprematism, Constructivism, Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Zaum and Neo-primitivism. 
The Russian avant-garde reached its 'creative and popular heights' during the 1917 Revolution, but eventually it clashed with the newly emerged ideals of Socialist Realism (which 'is characterized by the glorified depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, by means of realistic imagery') Wikipedia

Anna Aslanyan summed up her review on The Vanishing Futurist in The Spectator with,

The disappearing act at the centre of the plot serves as a powerful metaphor for the demise of revolutionary art. The fate of the idealist inventor anticipates that of the Russian avant-garde, best described by Bruce Chatwin in his 1973 essay: ‘The Party did squash it. But it also died of fatigue.’

If this era intrigues you as much as it does me, you might like to check out these Russian avant-garde articles:

NY Times piece about MoMA exhibition 2016

Russia Beyond article about the V&A exhibition 2015

I can feel a new obsession percolating!

Anton Lavinskii, Battleship Potemkin, 1926