[Edited with additions, 29 December)
I know that I have a bad track record where reading challenges or resolutions are concerned. Look at my bibliolutions from last year. I didn't read more non-fiction (although I didn't read more of anything, I suppose); I did read more Classics but stayed close to my favoured 19th century rather than branching into the 18th as I'd pledged; I didn't read more fiction in translation; I didn't read my Christmas gifts (or hardly any); and I absolutely did not read Joyce's Ulysses. I like to think this is not for want of enthusiasm, but for lack of time and, well, more time. Also, because I'm a fickle creature who likes to make lists, and pledges, and then forget about them. For example, the point of this post is to expound on my single bibliolution for 2009, which is:
I thought to myself: if I only have one resolution, and if I set myself a list of possible books to read, made to tempt me, perhaps I will endeavour to keep it more carefully. But then I found that I've already made that list, here. Ooops. And clearly it didn't make any difference, because I haven't read any of those books. But I'm ever a slave to the list, and times and tastes have changed. I've heard of lots of new books in translation since then; water under the bridge and all that. Thus, five new books in translation to aim at this year or just to, you know, dream about:
- Gentlemen by Klas Ostergren (translated from Swedish by Tiina Nunnally), Canongate
This book has padded cover, which is often an unforgivable crime I think, but it sounded really good when I read about it in Canongate's 2009 catalogue. It is described as a picaresque classic and has already found a popular audience in Europe. It tells the story of the charismatic Morgan brothers in the wake of WWII: Henry - a boxer, piano player, composer, bartender - with a Gatsby-like gift for a part; and Leo - poet, drunk and political provocateur. The brothers (and the narrator) end up involved in a scandal with weapons and gangster and the like... Apparently its the most important literary work to come out of Sweden in 30 years.
2. The Giants by JMG le Clezio (translated from French by Simon Watson-Taylor), Vintage
Le Clezio has just won the Nobel Prize and Vintage have responded by reissuing a number of his works in their Classics series, including this one. I chose it from the bunch because it has an SFnal sound to it:
Upon an immense stretch of flat ground at the mouth of a river bathed in sunlight rises Hyperpolis. It stands there, surrounded by its four asphalt car-parks, to condemn us – a huge enveloping supermarket. Each of us will see ourselves reflected in the characters who move mindlessly about Hyperpolis, but The Giants is a call to rebellion. This bold and inventive novel is the work of a tremendously talented writer and both an intoxicating and exhilarating read.
3. Greed by Elfriede Jelinek (translated from Austrian by Martin Chalmers), Serpent's Tail
This sounds like a thoroughly unpleasant book, about rape and murder and personal atrocity, but it sounds extraodinary too. I've read brilliant reviews in the Guardian and in the LRB. Lucy Ellman heralds it as a saviour of the novel form itself:
Jelinek's work is brave, adventurous, witty, antagonistic and devastatingly right about the sorriness of human existence, and her contempt is expressed with surprising chirpiness: it's a wild ride. She has also developed a form of cubism, whereby she can approach any subject from any angle, sometimes within the same sentence, homing in with sudden tenacity on some detail such as dirndls or murderers' female pen-pals. Recreating the way the brain lurches along, spreads out, reels itself in or goes on strike, her metaphors and puns run amok, beauteousness sacrificed to a kaleidoscopic inventiveness. Wrongly accused here of writing porn, in America she has been criticised, absurdly, for living with her mother, having a website, and not going along with the war in Iraq. They treat her like some kind of moral philosopher. You can't blame a novelist for being provocative and voicing dissent - that's her job! Without novelists, who's to guide us? Scientists? Priests? Politicians?
4. What Can I Do When Everything is On Fire? by A Lobo Atunes (translated from Portuguese)
Atunes has been described as an heir of Faulkner and Conrad, and this book caught my eye on Three Percent's longlist of translated novels, 2008. It is 'set in the steamy world of Lisbon's demimonde--a nightclub milieu of scorching intensity and kaleidoscopic beauty, a baleful planet populated by drag queens, clowns, and drug addicts--is narrated by Paolo, the son of Lisbon's most legendary transvestite, who searches for his own identity as he recalls the harrowing death of his father, Carlos; the life of Carlos's lover, Rui, a heroin addict and suicide; as well as the other denizens of this hallucinatory world.' This is one of those synopsis that attracts me for reasons beyond my comprehension, since it doesn't show any of my usual triggers, but you have to follow your instincts.
5. The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa (translated by Daniel Hahn)
I read a review of this in the Guardian a little while ago, and then spotted it in a few of the 'Best of 2008' reading lists online and in the papers. Oh, and it won the Independent's foreign fiction award this year. It sounds quirky and fascinating: the protoganist, Felix Ventura, is a fabricator of histories for clients who need a new life; the narrator is a gecko who lives on his front room wall. Kooky, yes? Then in walks a creepy foreigner, looking for a new history that may or may not be true. Nicholas Lezard thinks its all a literary game, which sounds fine with me, and its only short. And who can resist a novel narrated by a lizard? Not me.
[EDIT]
6. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (translated from French)
I just read about this in a 'fiction books to watch out for in 2009' article in the Guardian. Unfortunately, the article is very annoying. First, for suggesting that Sebastian Faulk's Bond novel was the highlight of 2008; second, for calling 2008 lack-lustre because there were no big names on the Booker Prize shortlist. I hate that. It smacks of the literary fashionista who can't bear to touch a novel unless it comes with a renowned appellation. But this massive translated novel coming out from Chatto and Windus in March caught my eye. The winner of the Prix Goncourt and the Academie Francaise's Prix de Litterature in 2006, it is the fictional memoir of Dr. Max Aue, a former SS intelligence officer who reinvents himself as a family man and manufacturer of lace in post-war France. He is both a cultured intellectual, and a cold-blooded murderer, whose story is 'intense, hallucinatory and compelling', and populated by the real historical figures of the Third Reich. At 992 pages long, it promises to be both epic and harrowing.
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Sooner or later I hope I'll read all of these books; hopefully sooner. And sooner or later (hopefully sooner) I'll write a review about a book I've read rather than making grandiose plans about what I will read... You never know
~~Victoria~~