Josef Skvorecky: The Engineer of Human Souls

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Author: Josef Skvorecky

Title: The Engineer of Human Souls

ISBN: 0099386410

Pages: 592
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I love Czech literature. Writers from that region have a wonderful ability to talk about nothing and everything at the same time, all wrapped up in a warm dark humour that reveals a great love of life. Perhaps it’s a twentieth century tradition that stems from the writing of the humorist Jaraslav Hasek and his greatest gift to Czech literature, The Good Soldier Svejk? Perhaps the origin is earlier and beyond my knowledge? But the influence can be seen in the work of Ivan Klima, Karel Capek, Bohumal Hrabal, and probably countless more I’ve never even heard of. I’ve always got half an eye out looking for writers in a similar vein, a search that somehow led me to miss what was already under my nose.

The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky has been sitting in my to-be-read pile for some time, probably a couple of years. I’d bought it on recommendation, but the ominous sounding title (a reference to Stalin’s opinion of a writers function) plus a hefty 571 page count, well above my normal comfort zone, had seen me passing it by for newer purchases on a fairly regular basis. And what a glorious book I was ignoring.

The story revolves around Danny, a jazz loving writer from Czechoslovakia, living in exile in Canada and working as a university lecturer in literature. The parallels with Skvorecky’s own life are very strong, to the point where the book comes close to a Japanese I-novel in style. The narrative shifts between Danny’s current life amongst the Czech émigré in Canada and significant periods in his past, all neatly tied together with letters from those he knew from his homeland who have taken refuge in other parts of the world. As the story progresses, we learn the different paths chosen by Danny and his friends during wartime, and how their lives pan out. Much is revealed as the characters live through ever changing times: democracy, Nazi rule, communism and for the lucky ones who escape, exile.

The subtitle to The Engineer of Human Souls is: An entertainment on the old themes of life, women, fate, dreams, the working class, secret agents, love and death. But that reveals only the tip of this book’s iceberg. How a seemingly meandering tale, with a fairly basic plot can say so much is a testament to the skill of Skvorecky.

Familiar Czech literary obsessions of food, wine, women and song make regular appearances, and at times Danny’s laid back attitude to life is reminiscent of the ‘good soldier’ himself. But there is much more under the surface. Bravery, cowardice, motivation and duty are put under the microscope as we learn of Danny’s wartime experiences working in a Messerchmitt factory, and his flirtations with the resistance movement. Flirtations that are fed more by desires towards impressionable young girls than desire to do the right thing. This proves to be an enduring attraction to Danny, as his older self becomes ever closer to a young student in his class.

Life under Nazi rule, the communist regime, and abroad as an exile are subtly compared. Contrast skilfully made between the younger man living under oppression and fighting against it in his own way and the older wiser man amused by the attraction of totalitarian states to those who have no experience, or real understanding, of them.

This is a bibliophile’s book as well. The discussions Danny has with his students’ flow throughout the story, and literary references abound. The book is even divided into seven chapters named after famous authors. The result is a book that moves to the love of literature, as well as the love of life.

I’m still undecided if this book has crossed the line to becoming a masterpiece or not, I need a little longer to mull that over. But it is a fantastic read: warm but cynical, naïve but knowing, straightforward but complex, a book full of contradictions, but one that never stops being a joy.

Leonid Tsypkin: Summer in Baden-Baden

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Author: Leonid Tsypkin

Title: Summer in Baden-Baden

ISBN: 0141020199

Pages: 320
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Of all literary techniques, stream of consciousness is the one I have the most problem with. Unless the subject matter and author combine and try damn hard to catch my imagination, it’s all just going to wash over me, however critically acclaimed the work may be. Leaving writers like Joyce, Woolf and Sebald all firmly labelled in my mind as worthy but dull.
Thankfully, experimentation in some of his books by one of my favourite authors, Bohumil Hrabal, persuaded me that my aversion might be down to content rather than style, and lead me to take a risk on Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin. This is a joy of a book and one where the technique is used not as a means to an end, or a flamboyant literary example of the Emperor’s new clothes, but as an integral part of the story.

Summer in Baden-Baden is a bibliophiles book, and one in particular that should be read by every fan of Dostoyevski. Tsypkin was himself a dedicated admirer of the Russian master and the narrative of the story encompasses and links them both.
The book is framed by a train journey Tsypkin took in the late 1970’s to St Petersburg. A trip to visit and photograph various locations from Dostoyevski’s life and books, in particular Crime and Punishment, and one that he hoped would bring him closer to understanding the author. As Tsypkin travels he reads from a gift his Aunt has given him: the diary of Dostoyevski’s second wife Anna, covering the period in 1867 when they lived in Baden-Baden.
It is here that the book takes off, as the text flows from first to third person narratives and from the point of view of Tsypkin, Dostoyevski and Anna. The switching of POV and narrative style allows the characters of the married couple to be explored from inside and out in a way that Dostoyevski himself would have been proud of. The changes are made seamlessly, often mid sentence, but you quickly get into stride with the tempo of the writing, to the point were the style of prose seems the most natural way of telling the story. It’s effortless and breathtaking at the same time, and full credit needs to be given to Roger and Angela Keys for their wonderful translation.

Dostoyevski’s battle with his addiction to gambling takes centre stage for much of the time. It reveals many of his flaws: his weakness, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, and mood swings that lead him to push away those closest to him. So whilst at times you can hear echoes of a number of Dostoyevski’s works in the text, it is ‘The Gambler’ you are most reminded of, to the point where Summer in Baden-Baden seems like a shadowy ‘Double’ of that book.

The relationship between the ever-faithful Anna and her husband is used as a mirror for one of the major themes of the book. How can Tsypkin, a Jew, reconcile his admiration for Dostoyevski with Dostoyevski’s attitude towards his faith? It’s a question that is touched upon throughout the book, often obliquely referenced, until Tsypkin finally reaches St Petersburg where he directly and honestly addresses it.

As I mentioned before, this is a book for fans of Dostoyevski, and some knowledge of his work, life and times are needed to get the most from it. Some of the nuance of meaning from his meetings with various other Russian writers and the historical accuracy of the events described were a bit beyond my knowledge. But that didn’t effect my enjoyment.
Special mention also to the 2001 edition which included an excellent introduction by Susan Sontag and reproduction of Tsypkin’s photographs from his trip to St Petersburg. Want to see the building where the moneylender in Crime and Punishment lived? It’s in here. Although to be honest it looks like it could be from any of the modern day Eastern European cities I’ve visited.

But whether you regard this book as a fantasy, a fictionalised documentary or an extended piece of fan mail is ultimately unimportant. Summer in Baden-Baden stands alone as an exquisite masterpiece, and Tsypkin an author worthy of sitting on the shelf next to Dostoyevsky without fear of being out of place.

Erich Maria Remarque: The Night in Lisbon

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Author: Erich Maria Remarque

Title: The Night in Lisbon

ISBN: 0449912434

Pages: 244
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There are any number of writers whose entire cannon is overlooked save for a single ‘classic’ work. Burgess with A Clockwork Orange and Heller with Catch-22 being notable examples. Even more unfortunate, are those writers whose most famous novel eclipses their other output, yet fails to lodge their name in our collective cultural conscience. Erich Maria Remarque is one such writer. Who wrote, All Quiet on the Western Front is a far more difficult quiz question than it deserves to be.

So, having seen a number of his other books on amazon with glowing reviews I decided to take the plunge with The Night in Lisbon, one of his later novels.

The story starts, as you might expect, in Lisbon, Portugal. It is 1942 and a desperate refugee is trying to get the right papers to leave war-torn Europe, escape the Gestapo who are on his trail, and make it by boat to America, and safety. It is on the docks that he meets Schwarz, another refugee, one with all the paperwork needed, but one who is willing to give them all up in exchange for the chance to tell his story. As they move from one café to another during the night, Schwarz unburdens himself, and it is his story that forms the bulk of the book.

Schwarz reveals that he has been on the run for many years, ever since he was denounced for his politic ideas by his brother in law Georg, a fanatical Nazi. As the war approaches, Schwarz risks going back to Germany to get his wife Helen. We follow them as they make their way through Switzerland, into France, then Spain, and finally to Portugal. The frustrations of a refugee are played out, as they are imprisoned on the way, and seem to spend every waking moment trying to get the right paperwork to enable them to move on. All the time stalked by Georg and an uncomfortable feeling as a reader that it’s all going to end in tears.

The Night in Lisbon has an excellent plot, and you could be forgiven from my description from thinking that it’s just a generic thriller with one eye on Casablanca. But it’s oh, oh, so much more than that.

The wind had risen again, and the swaying branches cast their restless shadows on the faces, on the howling machine, and the silent stone sculptures on the church wall behind them: Christ on the cross between the two thieves. The faces of the listeners were concentrated and transfigured. They believed what the automaton was screaming at them; in a strange state of hypnosis, they applauded this disembodied voice as if it was a human being. The scene struck me as typical of the sinister, demonic mob spirit of our times, of all the frightened, hysterical crowds who follow slogans. It makes no difference whether the slogans come from the right or the left, as long as they relieve the masses of the hard work of thinking and of the need to take responsibility.

After I’d read fifty or so pages, I knew I liked the story, and enjoyed the style of writing, but was unsure if it had that something extra that you look for that makes a book special. But the further I went, the more the story pulled me in and the greater my respect for Remarque’s skill. He eschews literary pyrotechnics of elaborate, dense prose, instead relying on quality characterisation and good old-fashioned storytelling. The result is a fast, easy read, as you almost feel propelled through the novel.
Only when you’ve finished and take time to go over the book in your mind do the real subtleties of Remarque’s writing start to come out. How the speed of the story line matches the journey Schwarz and Helen are taking. Relationships that at first seem disparate end up revealing striking similarities. The way the conversation between Schwarz and the refugee is repeatedly interrupted and they are forced to move on somewhere else, just as Schwarz and Helen are in their escape across Europe. The realisation that the conversation is more than just the frame for Schwarz’s story that you first believed it to be. How love and hate both have the ability to make us do what we think is beyond us. And how the passing of a passport from one refugee to another and then another feels like wartime is speeding up the passing of one generation to the next.
It’s much cleverer stuff then you first imagine, and I’d need a re-read to feel I was really starting to understand it all. But before that, I’m going to get hold of some of Remarque’s other books. If they are of this quality, he’s a writer who deserves full investigation.

Ryszard Kapuscinski: Emperor – Downfall of an Autocrat

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Author: Ryszard Kapuscinski

Title: Emperor – Downfall of an Autocrat

ISBN: 0141188030

Pages: 192
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The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat is the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski’s account of the last days of the court of Haile Selassie, told through the eyes of the courtiers who survived his reign. Whilst I’m sure Kapuscinski would have preferred to have had direct access to Selassie himself, he never the less brilliantly pieces together the strange world of the Ethiopian court from the accounts of those who did.

All the elements of corruption, incompetence, grandiloquence and social climbing we would expect from the inner circle of a third world monarchy are in place. The life lived inside a privileged world, whilst outside the country is left to rot. All outlined in a cultivated and laconic manner by courtiers for whom this kind of ridiculous insanity is the most natural thing in the world. Oh, how the other half live.

One question that hung over my head as I read, was how did this man come to be regarded as a deity by Rastafarians? A possible explanation begins to emerge as you get further into the book, as it turns out that Selassie was just about the most laid back person to have ever walked the earth. The rampant corruption and regular famines of his country are regarded as ‘just the way things are’. The jostling for position and in-fighting amongst courtiers observed with nothing more than mild amusement. Even his eventual overthrow is greeted with the observation that ‘if the revolution is good for the people, then I too, support the revolution and would not oppose my dethronement’. How more Rastafarian can you get?

It was a small dog, a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor’s great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor’s lap and pee on dignitaries’ shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet. I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth. This was my job for ten years.

If you find a paragraph like this, three pages into a book, you know it’s going to be a cracker. And yet, and yet. The something that held me back from finding Emperor an even more fulfilling read was a feeling that this was territory I had seen covered before. I suspect this is not the fault of Kapuscinski whose work was probably ground breaking in its day, but high quality reportage is much more easily found on the shelves of our bookstores than when Emperor was first published. Perhaps it’s better to read Emperor for what it is, a great story, told well, by someone who was an original.

Postscript: A year after completing this review I became aware of criticism made of the factual accuracy of Kapuściński’s writings. Follow this link to make up your own mind:

http://www.richardwebster.net/johnryle.html

Dan Fante: Corksucker

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Author: Dan Fante

Title: Corksucker

ISBN: 1903110262

Pages: 128
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It could be argued that good fiction contains an element of emotional tourism; an opportunity to empathise with the feelings and experiences of others, without having to actually spend your life living through their consequences. If so, the setting of Dan Fante’s collection of short stories, Corksucker*, in the seedy underbelly of L.A. could not be more appropriate. Fante has no more interest in the glamour of Hollywood than he does in the lives of those that society has protected and rewarded.
Instead he places his central character in a broken down cab that works the baking hot streets by day and accepts the dangers of picking up strangers in an unforgiving city by night. The setting is matched by the dark and oppressively harsh lives of the people whose stories he tells. For them, you feel there will be no Hollywood ending and for the emotional tourists of Fante’s readership, this really is a visit to the shabby end of the ‘City of Angels’.

Fante is a writer who has much to live up to, given that his father John is one of the great American authors of the last century. Added to that, any writer whose bio reads “went to a party aged twenty-one, came back twenty years later”, had better have some tales to tell. Fortunately, Fante has much to say, but whether his stories will ever reach the audience they deserve is debatable. As in terms of style, and to an extent subject matter, Fante’s most obvious comparison would be to his father’s great champion, Charles Bukowski – not a writer you’d describe as ‘Disney friendly’.

Corksucker contains eight short stories about a would-be writer forced by circumstance, and given a helping push by alcohol, into working the cabs of L.A. Like all his work, it’s suspiciously autobiographical, and deals in the world of booze, drugs, dysfunctional relationships and failed lives. It’s harsh stuff, but always edged with humour, and never, for me at least, hard going. Of the eight stories, Mae West is the stand out and Renewal perhaps the weakest. As I’d already read his three novels, I was on familiar territory, and enjoyed the verve of his story telling with my only real quibble being a price of £7.99 for a collection of just over 120 pages.

For those who have read Fante before, you know what you’ll being getting, more of the same, and all the better for that. For the uninitiated, I’d be reluctant to make a recommendation unless you already enjoy the work of Bukowski or perhaps Irvine Welsh. If you like them, then Fante is a treat, although I’d suggest you start with his first novel Chump Change.

*Corksucker is published in America under the title Short Dog.

Vladimir Voinovich: Monumental Propaganda

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Author: Vladimir Voinovich

Title: Monumental Propaganda

ISBN: 0375412352

Pages: 384
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Many people’s view of Soviet dissident fiction might be that it makes for an earnest but perhaps, rather depressing read. For them, the books of Vladimir Voinovich would come as a pleasant surprise, as he has always chosen to tackle Russia’s troubled journey through the twentieth century with the kind of wry humour and satirical edge that can be often found in Russian literature. Indeed, Voinovich fits into a tradition that runs from Gogol, through Milhail Zoshenko and on to modern exponents like Victor Pelevin.

In Monumental Propaganda, Voinovich has taken Aglaya Revkina, one of the minor characters from his most well know book The Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, and used her life as a foundation from which to examine Russia’s progress, or lack of, from the Death of Stalin to the explosion of capitalism following the end of communist rule.

Aglaya is a renowned partisan leader from the ‘great patriotic war’ against the nazis, and a fervent follower and believer in Stalin. The story begins in early 1956; Stalin has died and the personality cult surrounding him and many of the excesses of his reign has been criticised by his successor Khrushchev, in a famous speech to the twentieth congress of the CPSU.

Aglaya becomes increasing bewildered and angry as her beloved Stalin is gradually denounced by the same national and local party officials who held his every word to be gospel during his lifetime. She sees his place in history being re-written, and the giant statue of him in her town square that she worked so hard to have erected, being torn down. Her determination to stand firm in her beliefs and to do her duty to keep his image intact, leads her to save the statue from being sent for melting down and have it placed in the living room of her apartment.

As the second part of the century moves on, she is witness to favourites within the party changing, political ideology subtlety ebbing and flowing, and eventually communist rule itself collapsing. In the vacuum that is left, nothing seems certain anymore as the safety nets of the Soviet welfare state are removed, and corruption and greed explode as if from Pandora’s box. Leaving some Russians to ponder whether they need to return to a stronger, Stalin like, leader once again.

There had been times when Aglaya, thinking about the revolution, has regretted being born just a bit too late and missing the romantic period of the Party’s struggle with the old Tsarist order – when young communists had turned out for meetings and demonstrations and walked along singing under the whips of the Cossacks and the bullets of the police. Of course, she had also lived in fascinating and eventful times, but she’d missed out on the revolutionary romanticism. But now…Even though, of course, many bad things had happened and the enemies of communism had seized power…Now she had been given the chance in her old age to experience the conditions under which the revolutionaries of former times had lived. She recalled the picture she had seen earlier that day; Stalin at the Demonstration in Baku. Soso Djugashvili walking at the head of a detachment of Bolsheviks in close ranks, wearing a Russian-style shirt with the collar unbuttoned, young and dark-haired, with his eyes open wide as they gazed into the future. History repeats itself. Now she, Aglaya Stepanova Revkina, was striding along in the ranks of her comrades, proudly carrying the portrait of their beloved leader.
Glancing back, she couldn’t she how far the column extended. In actual fact, it couldn’t extend very far because there wasn’t very much of it, but it seemed to Aglaya that she was striding along at the head of a procession of people. As she walked, she saw people on the sidewalks along the edges of the roadway watching the column go past and imagining them to be admiring onlookers. In fact, the were only casual passers-by who were so well used to spectacles like this that they didn’t even display any particular curiosity. Several of them actually felt uncomfortable and pitied these stupid, malicious, helpless and ridiculous old people. As people of the new generations, they thought they were quite different and could never be like them. But that is not the way things really are. The generations are no better or worse than each other; their beliefs, mistakes and behaviour depend on the historical and personal circumstances in which they grow up. It doesn’t take a prophet to predict that people will be blinded again, and more than once, by false teachings, will yield to the temptation of endowing certain individuals with superhuman qualities and glorify them, raise them up on a pedestal and then cast them back down again. Later generations will say that they were fools, and yet they will be exactly the same.

Whilst an important period of history is being addressed, and very serious issues raised, Voinovich does so with a cutting humour that makes his work a much easier read than might be imagined. The weakness of the book, and the thing that stops it from being his best work, is the meandering nature of the plot. Monumental Propaganda is written in the Russian style of narration that reads as if being told to you in person by the author, with the plot allowed to ramble a little as the author decides to flesh out interesting characters as we meet them on the way. It’s a style that dates back at least to Pushkin and Eugene Onegin, with Voinovich using it here to such an extent that you can start to lose the thread of who is who and where you are. Given the chance to read the book again I’d probably take the opportunity to make notes as I progressed.

The usual caveats for Soviet/Russian literature also apply. Use of patronymics can be confusing if you don’t make a mental or written note of them as you go. Knowledge of the time period covered is always helpful, to the point where a little research into post-war Russia may be advised before delving in. But as with much Soviet era literature, that little bit of work before hand is well worth the effort and with Monumental Propaganda the rewards can be rich indeed.

Akira Yoshimura: One Man’s Justice

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Author: Akira Yoshimura

Title: One Man’s Justice

ISBN: 1841954799

Pages: 217
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One of the joys of translated literature is its ability to give you insight into other cultures and, on occasion, to approach well known events from another viewpoint. To observe from the other side of the fence through the eyes of someone who truly understands and experienced the events, rather than a pieced together alternate view from a journalist or historian. One of the best examples of this I have encountered for some time is One Man’s Justice by Akira Yoshimura.

One Man’s Justice is the story of Takuya, a young junior officer in the Japanese Army towards the end of the Second World War, who, in almost his last act in uniform, takes part in the execution, by sword, of a group of captured American airmen. Branded, post occupation, as a wanted war criminal, Takuya changes identity and goes on the run; taking us with him on a voyage through post war Japan.
Given the subject matter, and actions carried out by Takuya, it would be easy to assume from the outset what your feelings will be reading this book, and where your sympathies will lie. Yoshimura however, is a gifted writer, and whilst this book may be printed in black and white, the story it tells is anything but.
Yoshimura places Takuya’s story into context, and without overly taking one side or another, allows the reader to make his own judgements about ‘One Man’s Justice’. In doing so, you are faced with some questions that are more complicated than at first glance. Who judges what is or isn’t a war crime? Is Yoshimura acting out of duty or desire? Are his actions any more or less of a crime than the bombing of civilians carried out by the airmen?
As the story progresses, attitudes to what happened changes in Japan, and amongst the Americans, in a way mirroring the way the readers’ opinions may alter. Has time mellowed? Have our viewpoints altered? Or are principles being compromised and history being re-written in the mind too ease our conscience?

From the rear entrance to the building, among the soldiers carrying bundles of paper, appeared the lieutenant from the legal affairs section, walking straight towards Takuya. His pursed lips were dry and his eyes glistened. Stopping in front of Takuya, he explained that the request he was about to make was an order from the major at High Command.
‘The prisoners are to be executed. You are to provide two sergeant majors to help. If we don’t deal with the last of them before the enemy lands, they’ll talk about what happened to the others. There are seventeen left. It’s to be done straightway. People from headquarters staff up near Yamae village are waiting.’
Takuya understood that, to those at headquarters, the prisoners’ execution was as important now as the burning of all the documents. They had already been sentenced to death, and the fact that hostilities had ceased had no bearing whatsoever on their execution.
Although his duties collecting data and issuing air-raid alerts had finished, Takuya once again sensed that his destiny was linked to that of the captured airmen. He had followed their actions for days and months on end, had busied himself to the very last collecting data about the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and had himself issued the air-raid alert and the order to evacuate the city. Takuya had been in the position to know the full extent of the damage caused by the bombing and strafing attacks carried out by these men. So far his duties had assigned him a passive role, but that was all over now, and the time had come, he thought, actively to show his mettle. Only then would his duties be finished.
At the time of the previous two executions, Takuya’s responsibilities as officer in charge of the tactical operations centre had kept him at his post, but the Emperor’s broadcast released him from all duties. I want to participate in the executions, he thought. Taking the life of one of the prisoners with his own hands would be his final duty. The lieutenant had said that the executions would be carried out in order to dispose of remaining evidence, but for Takuya it was something personal, something he had to do as the officer in charge of air defence intelligence.
‘Count me in, too,’ said Takuya.

This is the second novel I have read by Akira Yoshimura, having previously been highly impressed by the brilliant Shipwrecks. Whilst the phrasing of this translation is at times not as skilful as I would have liked, it remains a powerful and thought provoking read, very near the standard of his previous book. Unfortunately there is very little else of Yoshimura’s work translated into English, at least very little of his straightforward fiction cannon. I’ll try and hunt down a copy of Parole next, in the hope it matches the standard set by One Man’s Justice and Shipwrecks.

Andrei Platonov: Soul

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Author: Andrei Platanov

Title: Soul

ISBN: 184343038X

Pages: 208
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Since the publication of the majority of Andrei Platonov’s work following the Khrushchev Thaw, it having been previously suppressed due to its ‘subversive nature’, Platonov has enjoyed an every increasing reputation within his homeland, where he is regarded as arguably the greatest Soviet writer of the twentieth century, and is often bracketed with other giants of Russian literature such as Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy.

Yet he remains relatively unknown in the west. Perhaps due to the dense symbolism he used to criticise the nature of the ‘socialist utopia’ he lived in, as well as his idiosyncratic prose rendering him a very difficult writer to translate accurately. An indication of that difficulty is given by the need for a translating team of half a dozen to render Soul, a book that falls short of a hundred and fifty pages, into English.
However, the time and patience they must have spent over this translation is to be applauded. In particular the lead translator Robert Chandler, who over the last few years has been responsible for bringing some of the best works of the Soviet era to a wider audience, and in many instances such as this, for the first time in their full uncensored glory.
Praise is also needed for the excellent notes that are included in this edition, which include many insights into the symbolism and references that Platonov worked into Soul. Whilst I was able to work out the meaning of children lost in the desert being lead to safety by shepherds, and a Soviet official raping an under-age girl, without too much trouble, the rebellious nature of Platonov describing local folk music and the influences of Sufism and Central Asian culture on his text would have passed me by if I hadn’t been forewarned.

“Many pale eyes were straining to look at Chagataev, trying not to close from weakness and indifference. Chagataev felt the pain of his sorrow: his nation did not need communism. His nation needed oblivion – until the wind chilled its body and slowly squandered it in space. Chagataev turned away from everyone: all his actions, all his hopes had proved senseless…Did there remain in his nation even a small soul, something he could work with in order to bring about general happiness? Or had everything there been so worn away by suffering that even imagination, the intelligence of the poor, had entirely died? Chagataev knew from childhood memory, and from his education in Moscow, that any exploitation of a human being begins with the distortion of their soul, with getting a soul so used to death that it can be subjugated; without this subjugation, a slave is not a slave. And this forced mutilation of the soul continues, growing more and more violent, until reason in the slave turns to mad and empty mindlessness. The class struggle begins with the victory of the oppressors over the “holy sprit” confined within the slave: blasphemy against the master’s beliefs – against the master’s soul, the master’s god – goes unpardoned, while the slave’s own soul is ground down in falsehood and destructive labour.”

Soul is set in the deserts of Turkmenistan, an area Platonov knew well and had a great fondness for. As with many of his books, the plot is disarmingly simple. Chagataev, a recent graduate from the Moscow Institute of Economics, is sent back by the authorities to the land of his birth to collect together the ‘Dzhan’, a destitute and lost nation of people, and bring them back into the communist fold.

As he undertakes this task, we learn of Chagataev’s childhood, how he came to Moscow, and how his good intentions are not always met with success. His leadership is surpassed by others within the nation who, after they are led to safety and provided with housing and food, choose to leave that life for one of their own creation.
Whilst Soul deals with the ideology of the time, there is also a more personal desire being played out, for a restless soul to find happiness. Chagataev comes to realise that the Dzhan are not in fact the poorest of the poor, because they have soul, a happiness born from belonging to each other, a happiness he lacks. We also see that you can help people but you can not save them. They can only save themselves. What you want in their best interests is not always what they want, and can not be imposed. A lesson for present times perhaps.

Soul is a novel rich in meaning, only some of which it is possible to access from a western viewpoint. But it’s also a book I shall return to again and again, in the knowledge that each time there will be more I can take away. This is the best book I’ve read for a long time, and thanks to the work of Robert Chandler and his team of translators, an opportunity to see a truly great writer at the height of his powers.

Victor Pelevin: The Helmet of Horror

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Author: Victor Pelevin

Title: The Helmet of Horror

ISBN: 1841957054

Pages: 274
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Since his emergence in the early 1990’s, Victor Pelevin has remained a controversial and contradictorily presence on the modern Russian literary scene. As a powerful, profound and immensely popular writer, Pelevin was hailed by many as the voice of Russia’s generation X and the new wunderkind of Russian letters. The literary establishment however, were slower to acknowledge his craft; coming as it did in books that had elements of science fiction and which tackled the perilous and surreal nature of the consumer society that exploded in the former Soviet Union following the collapse of communism.

Given his career path to date, Pelevin must have been fairly high up Canongate’s wish list of authors to take part in their ambitious Myths series. Fortunately for them, he not only accepted, but has delivered a marvellous, contemporary re-telling of the ancient Greek tale of Theseus and the Minotaur.

Pelevin’s version begins with a group of people waking to find themselves in what appear to be identical locked hotel rooms, each with a computer terminal linked to the same internet chat room. As they start to communicate, they quickly realise that certain physical aspects of their environment can be controlled by making requests on-line – compartments with food can be made to open, and the door to their room unlocked to reveal they are trapped in different parts of the same giant maze.
As they start to work together they begin to understand that each of them has information that can be used to work out where they are and how they can escape. In particular the mysterious Adriana, who has started the thread, discloses detailed dreams she has had about the maze and it’s Minotaur, who wears the Helmet of Horror. As we are dragged further into the story, we are faced with every increasing questions of which direction takes us to the truth. Who is wearing the Helmet of Horror? The Minotaur, Adriana, or are we all? Does the maze exist in reality, in our minds or are we trapped in the helmet itself?

The Helmet of Horror is written as a single internet chat thread, spread over several days. Whilst there is the occasional emoticon and text speak abbreviation used, presumably to piss of his beard stroking critics, the text actually reads more like a play, and a damn good one at that. Pelevin weaves myth with modern culture and neatly stitches it together with elements of Christian belief & cyber-age Descartesian philosophy. As with most of Pelevin’s work, he poses many questions, but prefers to allow us to make our own conclusions.

I don’t read much contemporary fiction, so I’m not really in a position to judge where Pelevin stands amongst modern authors; but if there are writers out there more inventive and intelligent than this modern Russian master, they must belong to a very select group indeed.

Knut Hamsun: Dreamers

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Author: Knut Hamsun

Title: Dreamers

ISBN: 0285632418

Pages: 122
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Knut Hamsun is one of the hidden gems of world literature, and an author whose writing changed in style and outlook gradually over time. For those familiar with his work, Dreamers is closer to his later, more light-hearted stories like The Women at the Pump, than to his earlier, darker and more introspective novels like Hunger.

Dreamers is a charming and humorous story which centres on a familiar Hamsun leading man, Ove Rolandsen, an outsider and a dreamer. With an eye for the ladies, love of the bottle, and a tongue and fists always ready for a fight, Rolandsen is seemingly drifting through life, and you are happy to drift with him. In between flirting with every woman he encounters and drunken brawls with passing fishing crews, Rolandsen finds time to invent a means to make his fortune and simultaneously undermine and possibly usurp the local business tycoon. As is often the case, you need money to make money, and without financial backing his invention cannot be exploited, and he has to remain in his lowly job as telegraph operator. When fate intervenes Rolandsen grabs his opportunity and we discover if his dreams will indeed come true.
Hamsun creates a set of well drawn out characters, and the surroundings of a small, isolated, Norwegian fishing village are agreeably self-contained, allowing the neatly plotted interaction between his protagonists to be entirely plausible, and create a highly enjoyable story.

Souvenir Press have reprinted a number of works by Knut Hamsun; and for attempting to bring this important writer to a wider audience they are to be applauded. However, in this instance I would question the value for money they are providing. Regardless of the back page’s description of Dreamers as a ‘delightful novel’ it is in fact a 122 page novella, and 122 pages of larger than usual font at that. It would have made far more sense to include Dreamers with the short stories that form the Tales of Love and Loss collection that Souvenir also publishes. To leave it as a stand alone story, with no introduction, no notes on textual translation, and not even a one page author biography, all for £7.99, smacks of lazy profiteering.

Dreamers remains a wonderful little book, but unless you are a dedicated Knut Hamsun fan you may want to wait until this volume is available from either the library or a second-hand shop.