2008 Orbis Terrarum Challenge Wrap-Up

Dear Readers:

My book-blogging amiga Bethany has asked all participants in her 2008 Orbis Terrarum Challenge to write a wrap-up post about the challenge with links to books read for it and answers to some survey questions about our participation in the challenge. Since I really enjoyed this challenge (my first completed and still the most interesting one I've seen offered to date) and read some of my favorite books of the year during the course of it (the top two from the list itself are starred in red below), I encourage you to check out a preview of the 2009 Orbis Terrarum Challenge on Bethany's blog here. Meanwhile, read on--or don't--for the info that was requested about the 2008 challenge.

Books Read (title/author/author's country of birth)

• El invierno en Lisboa [Winter in Lisbon], Antonio Muñoz Molina, Spain
• Là-Bas [The Damned or Down There], J.-K. Huysmans, France
• Gomorra* [Gomorrah], Roberto Saviano, Italy
• She, H. Rider Haggard, U.K.
• All She Was Worth, Miyuki Miyabe, Japan
• Cicatrices, Juan José Saer, Argentina
• Estrella distante* [Distant Star], Roberto Bolaño, Chile
• Los de abajo [The Underdogs], Mariano Azuela, Mexico
• Maqamat [The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Fifty Encounters with the Shaykh Abu Zayd of Seruj], Al-Hariri of Basra, Iraq

Orbis Terrarum 2008 Challenge Survey (Bethany's questions in bold red)

• 1.) What did you like about the challenge? I liked that the challenge was international in focus and that the countries were represented by their authors' birthplaces rather than just the settings where the works took place. I don't understand many U.S. book bloggers' obsession with American and U.K. authors to the exclusion of almost everyone else, so this was a nice way to see what people thought about writers from some other places in the world.
  
• 2.) What would you like to see change for next year? I like the challenge just the way it is/was. The only change I'd root for in the future is making it 12 books in 12 months rather than 9 books in 9 months. However, I'm glad it was shorter this year since I discovered it so late in the game!


• 3.) About the rules, or the non-existent rules...did you like that? Yes, I did. It's kind of a turnoff seeing some of these challenges where they start with a nice idea and then ruin it by attaching 50 rules at the end. Challenges should be fun--not exercises in observing somebody else's obsessive-compulsive ways.


• 4.) Are you going to join us next year? Definitely. I'm looking forward to it--unless the rules change too much. See #3 above!


• 5.) Pretty please give me any suggestions for changes, the betterment of the challenge, or just anything that you would like to see changed for next year. OT is fine as is. Don't mess with success! Don't fix it if it's not broken!!


• 6.) Would you like the challenge to be more involved? What if we read books together sometimes? Would that interest you? I wouldn't mind reading one novel or a bonus book together as part of a group as long as I reserved the right to maintain my other choices intact. Might be fun. However, I'd hate to have to give up somebody like Roberto Bolaño to read some hack like Stephen King instead!


• 7.) Would you be interested in helping somehow next year? How would you like to help? I'd be happy to help. I have a few books in mind that I could see offering as giveaways, but feel free to shoot me an e-mail, Bethany, if you have anything else in mind. By the way, thanks again for hosting the challenge--it was a lot of fun, and I appreciated your enthusiasm!

The Assemblies of Al-Hariri

The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Fifty Encounters with the Shaykh Abu Zayd of Seruj (The Octagon Press, 1980)
by Al-Hariri of Basra
Iraq, c. 1100
ISBN 900860-86-3

Abu Mohammed Al Kasmir Ibn Ali Al-Hariri of Basra penned these maqamat, or "assemblies," c. 1100 in an ornate Arabic freely mixing rhymed prose and verse, and they are here "retold by Amina Shah" in the closest thing I could find to a contemporary English translation. Although I first read this work some four or five years ago as one of the many unexpected side benefits of taking a medieval Spanish course of all things, I wanted to reread the maqamat to revisit "the jewels of its protagonist's phraseology" to paraphrase a dusty translation of one of its many memorable lines. The title character is one Abu Zayd of Seruj, an eloquent trickster who spends almost all of the fifty tales swindling people out of goods and money through the power of his rhetoric alone--although he isn't above disguising himself as a poor, old woman to receive alms ("The Encounter at Baghdad"), putting a wedding party to sleep with hashish to make off with the spoils ("The Encounter at Wasit"), or posing as a mufti on the road to Medina ("The Encounter Called 'Of the Portion'") in between bouts of poetic excess.

While a conversation- and learning-loving narrator (Harith, son of Haram) who's both an ardent admirer and a frequent victim of Abu Zayd's peerless con games helps lend the Assemblies a certain conceptual structure, the storytelling action takes place in various cities and caravan routes throughout the Middle East in an anything goes atmosphere designed to highlight Abu Zayd's vast linguistic bag of tricks. While sometimes only moderately interesting in translation, Al-Hariri's maqamat are absolutely mind-boggling in terms of the verbal gymnastics on display. There are multiple chapters devoted to obscure riddles and/or double meanings, for example, and the Arabic original supposedly showcases entire passages devoted to resolving grammatical questions, unveiling palindromes, and writing verses with and without accent marks and pointed letters--all within the contexts of the picaresque narrative.

Although even Abu Zayd is willing to freely admit that "nights spent in tale-telling are among the greatest of harms!" (p. 69), readers who appreciate characters that demonstrate "prowess in the strife of eloquence" (26) owe it to themselves to make the acquaintance of this boastful rogue and his literary creator, Al-Hariri. You can Google both of those names for more information than you'll ever find here, of course, but one of the funniest anecdotes associated with this collection of stories concerns the fan of the author who paid a visit to the famous Al-Hariri and was distressed to find out that his literary hero was less handsome than creative: "I am a man to be heard, and not to be seen," Al-Hariri is alleged to have wryly told him.

Bibliothèque Nationale copy of a 13th-century Maqamat manuscript

Los de abajo

Los de abajo (Colleción Archivos, 1996)
por Mariano Azuela
México, 1915
ISBN 84-89666-04-0

"Yo soy de Limón, allí, muy cerca de Moyahua, del puro cañon de Juchipila. Tenía mi casa, mis vacas y un pedazo de tierra para sembrar; es decir, que nada me faltaba..." (Los de abajo, p. 40).

Otra lectura absorbente para el reto Orbis Terrarum de Bethany. No tengo nada nuevo decir acerca de esta novela clásica escrita a la sombra de la revolución mexicana, pero me gustó mucho el estilo sencillo de Azuela. Carlos Fuentes se refiere a Los de abajo como "La Ilíada descalza" en su introducción al libro, un comentario acertado que llama la atención a la medida de "poesía épica" escondida dentro de sus páginas humildes. Pero ¿quiénes son los héroes aquí? Demetrio Macías, el protagonista y lo más valiente de todos, sólo se convierte en un guerrillero villista después de ver su casa incendiada por los federales. Luis Cervantes, el ideólogo de la resistencia nacionalista, eventualmente saldrá de la lucha en busca de una vida petita burguesa al otro lado de la frontera. Los demás personajes, sean soldados o soldaderas, parecen seguir luchando porque la violencia es la única vida que la sepan. Azuela no fue lo único percibir la evolución de la revolución mexicana como un abuso de confianza, pero sí fue uno de los primeros ponerlo por escrito con convicción. Un librazo.

*****

"I'm from Limón, over there, real close to Moyahua, right from the Juchipila canyon. I had my house, my cows and a piece of earth to sow; that is to say, nothing at all was lacking to me..." (Los de abajo, p. 40).

Another engrossing read for Bethany's Orbis Terrarum Challenge. I don't really have anything new to add to the conversation about this classic novel written in the shadow of the Mexican Revolution, but I very much enjoyed Azuela's unadorned style of writing. Carlos Fuentes refers to Los de abajo [The Underdogs] as "the barefoot Iliad" in his introduction to the work, an astute comment that draws attention to the amount of "epic poetry" hidden within the novel's humbles pages. But who are the heroes here? Demetrio Macías, the protagonist and the bravest man of all, only becomes a fighter for Pancho Villa's forces after seeing his house burned to the ground by the federales. Luis Cervantes, the ideologue of nationalist resistance, will eventually leave the struggle in search of a petit bourgeois lifestyle on the other side of the border with the U.S. The rest of the characters, whether soldiers or camp followers, seem to keep on fighting because violence is the only life they know. Azuela wasn't the only one to view the evolution of the Mexican Revolution as a betrayal of trust, but he was one of the first to put it on paper with feeling. A great book.

Don Mariano Azuela (1873-1952)

Estrella distante

Estrella distante (2008 libro de bolsillo)
por Roberto Bolaño
España, 1996
ISBN 978-84-339-6673-5

Estrella distante abre con una cita enigmática de Faulkner ("Qué estrella cae sin que nadie la mire?") antes de involucrarnos en una breve pero impactante meditación sobre el destino de algunos poetas chilenos después del golpe militar en 1973. Aunque la imagen de la estrella distante claramente evoca memorias de la bandera del país, esta visión de la inocencia perdida también llama la atención a la victoria del mal en la época. "Me parece que estamos entrando en el campeonato mundial de la fealdad y la brutalidad", dice el protagonista (p. 27); poco después, éste se cae preso y sus amigos empiezan desaparecer. Supuestamente narrado por un tal Arturo Belano (el alter-ego ficticio de Bolaño y un personaje que también aparece en Los detectives salvajes) a los mediados de los noventa al exilio en Cataluña, el argumento o, mejor dicho, el testimonio traumatizado de esta obra tiene que ver con la búsqueda de un hombre conocido como Alberto Ruiz-Tagle o Carlos Wieder. Sin querer revelar demasiado acerca de la intriga, resulta que el misterioso Ruiz-Tagle era un derechista infiltrado en los talleres literarios en la presidencia de Allende, vigilando a los izquierdistas y a los otros "sospechosos" entre los grupos intelectuales de aquel entonces. Después del golpe, Wieder se reveleba ser un oficial en la Fuerza Aéra Chilena, un piloto/poeta que dejara poemas escritos en humo en el cielo, un asesino en serie patrocinado por el estado, y un fotógrafo de sus víctimas. De un lado, el símbolo por excelencia de "la nueva poesía chilena" escrita en sangre. De otro lado, un prófugo de la justicia a causa de su estética del genocidio como arte. Mientras que sigo leyendo el grueso 2666 de Bolaño con gran placer, estoy contento decirles que Estrella distante es el tercer libro suyo que me parece una obra maestra total. Nota: 5 estrellas (distantes) a escala de 5 estrellas (distantes).

*****

Distant Star opens with a cryptic Faulkner quote ("What star falls unseen?") before involving us in a brief but devastating reflection on the fate of a handful of Chilean poets after the military coup there in 1973. Although the image of the distant star clearly evokes memories of the star in the country's flag, this vision of innocence lost also calls attention to the victory of evil in that specific time and place. "It seems to me that we are entering into the world championship of ugliness and brutality," says the protagonist (p. 27); shortly afterward, he becomes a political prisoner and his friends begin to disappear. Supposedly narrated by one Arturo Belano (Bolaño's fictional alter ego and a character who also appears in The Savage Detectives) in the middle of the '90s while in exile in Catalonia, the plot--or better yet--the traumatized testimony offered by this work has to do with the search for a man variously known as Alberto Ruiz-Tagle or Carlos Wieder. Without wanting to reveal too much about the intrigue, it turns out that the mysterious Ruiz-Tagle was a right-wing infiltrator in the literary workshops of Allende's presidency during the democracy, spying on the leftists and the other "suspicious people" among the intellectual groups of the time. After the coup, Wieder was revealed to be an officer in the Chilean Air Force, a pilot/poet who would leave poems written in smoke in the air, a serial killer sponsored by the state, and a photographer of his victims. On the one hand, the symbol par excellence of "the New Chilean Poetry" written in blood. On the other, a fugitive from justice on account of his genocide-as-art aesthetic. While I continue reading Bolaño's thick 2666 with great pleasure, I'm happy to note that Distant Star is the third book of his that seems like a complete masterpiece to me. Rating: 5 out of 5 (distant) stars.

Estrella Distante en español: (http://www.anagrama-ed.es/); Distant Star in English (http://www.ndpublishing.com/).

Roberto Bolaño

Juan José Saer, una vez más

Luego de leer Cicatrices de Juan José Saer, decidí informarme sobre el escritor santafesino. Si pueden recomendarme otro libro suyo que les haya gustado, lo tomaré en cuenta. Mientras tanto, aquí les comparto tres artículos relacionados de gran interés saeriano.

• "Juan José Saer (1937-2005): de la voz al recuerdo" (La Nación, Argentina)
• "Juan José Saer: Argentinian writer who lectured in literature in France" (The Guardian, Reino Unido)
• "Juan José Saer: argentino de mate y asado" (Tribuna Democrática, Costa Rica)

Cicatrices

Cicatrices (2007 libro de bolsillo)
por Juan José Saer
Argentina, 1969
ISBN 978-950-731-375-2

• "Hablan de vicios solitarios, y de vicios que no lo son. Todos los vicios son solitarios. Todos los vicios necesitan de la soledad para ser ejercidos. Asaltan en soledad. Y al mismo tiempo, son también un pretexto para la soledad. No digo que un vicio sea malo. Nunca puede ser tan malo como una virtud, trabajo, castidad, obediencia, etcétera. Digo sencillamente cómo es y de qué se trata". (Cicatrices, p. 138-139)

En este triunfo de la narrativa posboom, el argentino Juan José Saer ha logrado escribir una novela que es innovadora y entretenida a la vez. En el primer de mayo, un tal Luis Fiore asesina a su mujer con dos tiros de escopeta. ¿Qué motivo habrá tenido? El texto intenta explicarlo por medio de cuatro episodios relacionados, todos narrados en primera persona. El joven alcohólico Ángel, empleado de un diario y lector entusiasta de El largo adiós de Raymond Chandler, empieza las oraciones en un capítulo titulado "Febrero, marzo, abril, mayo, junio". El jugador Sergio ("Marzo, abril, mayo") y el juez Ernesto ("Abril, mayo") siguen, llamando la atención a sus propios problemas y fracasos con referencias literarias a Dostoievski y Oscar Wilde. Al final de la obra ("Mayo"), el asesino él mismo habla sin la menor señal de remordimiento o vergüenza: sólo cansancio. Aunque Cicatrices juega con la expectativa que el último relato va a poner en orden todas las preguntas y respuestas sobre el homicidio, Saer rechaza una solución sencilla a favor de un desenlace con más complejidad e incluso caos de lo que se esperaba. Genial. (http://www.editorialplaneta.com.ar/)

Juan José Saer

(Note to other Orbis Terrarum Challenge readers: Although there's a French translation of Cicatrices available, to my knowledge there's no English version of it as yet. Sorry. )

All She Was Worth

All She Was Worth (1999 paperback)
by Miyuki Miyabe [translated by Alfred Birnbaum]
Japan, 1992
ISBN 978-0-395-96658-7

Moving on from a postmodern mystery about confused identity to a more traditional mystery about identity theft, we arrive at Miyuki Miyabe's fine All She Was Worth. I can't remember where I first read about this book (originally published under the title of Kasha), but its absorbing story and steady increase in suspense make it easy for me to understand why it was selected Best Mystery and Best Novel of the year in Japan for 1992. Ostensibly a missing persons story about the sudden disappearance of a beautiful fiancée named Shoko Sekine, the novel derives much of its interest from its peek at the way rampant credit card abuse and identity theft in Japan have made the professional business world and the criminal underworld true partners in crime. Miyabe's characters, from Tokyo police detective Shunsuke Honma's thoughtful family man/grieving widower to the enigmatic woman eventually suspected of usurping Shoko Sekine's identity by means of a horrific crime, are compellingly drawn, and Miyabe manages to tell a tale that touches on brutal credit card collectors, extreme poverty, and the sex slave trade without resorting to the sometimes sensationalistic excesses of her U.S. genre writer counterparts. Perhaps best of all, All She Was Worth concludes with an exquisitely open-ended finale way more subtle and profound than the norm in these types of things. A very nice discovery: 4/5 stars. (http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/)

Miyuki Miyabe and friends

She

She (2004 paperback)
by H. Rider Haggard
UK, 1887
ISBN 0-140-43763-0

Decent but far from mindblowing fantasy/adventure "classic" from King Solomon's Mines author H. Rider Haggard. While thankfully not as overtly racist as I'd been led to believe, there's still plenty of casual misogyny, class bias, and unrepentant colonialism sprinkled throughout the novel to lend She that true period seasoning. The far-fetched main events have to do with a trio of British adventurers' discovery of a 2200-year old but still youthful-looking femme fatale/sorceress named Ayesha (a/k/a She-who-must-be-obeyed), an ill-tempered and seemingly all-powerful white empress of a black cannibalistic tribe living amid the ruins of a spectacular lost civilization in central Africa. A pretty loopy premise to be sure, but Haggard attempts to tone things down somewhat with a couple of intertwined love stories, an affectionate account of friendship under extreme duress, and some Brit-friendly nods to antiquarianism and archaeology that probably fared better with the work's original pre-post colonialist readers. All the chauvinism and goofy supernatural elements aside, I did enjoy reading about She's complex hottie of a title character (even more fetching and mysterious on the black border Penguin paperbacks than on the slightly altered illustration above) and coming across unintentionally funny moments like the one where a digression on queens and monarchy leads to an unfavorable comparison between the despotic Ayesha and Britain's own Queen Victoria, "venerated and beloved by all-right thinking people in her vast realms" (p. 254). 3 out of 5 stars for an Orbis Terrarum Challenge alternate and a guilty semi-pleasure. (http://www.penguinclassics.com/)

Franz von Stuck, Die Suende [Sin], 1893

Gomorrah

Gomorrah (2007 hardback)
by Roberto Saviano
Italy, 2006
ISBN 978-0-374-16527-7

Questo libro è eccezionale. It's so exceptional, in fact, that I decided to replace the controversial but highly regarded Italian novel I had in mind for this leg of my Orbis Terrarum Challenge travels with this absolutely stunning non-fiction masterpiece aimed at exposing Naples' organized crime scene. Part diligent investigative reporting chronicle/part furious, outraged denunciation of the way business as usual is conducted in the increasingly interconnected global and mob economies, Gomorrah is a work that's almost impossible to put down even when Saviano's only setting up a scene. An example: "I used to go to the port to eat fish. Not that nearness to the sea means anything in terms of the quality of the restaurant. I'd find pumice stones, sand, even boiled seaweed in my food. The clams were fished up and tossed right into the pan. A guarantee of freshness, a Russian roulette of infection" (Saviano, 9).

While this terse, Tacitean prose and a flair for description are typical of Saviano's breathless but decidedly no-bullshit style, an equal reward for readers is that he's somehow at his most fearless and lucid precisely when he's most at risk from the information he's revealing. From stories about bootleg haute couture to the nightmarish details explaining how Italy's hazardous waste winds up in poor people's backyards, Saviano seems to have the inside scoop on practically everything that "the system" is involved with. Want to know what it feels like to be stuck in the middle of a clan war? Read the chapter on the Secondigliano War. Want to know what happens when a doctor tries to assist a victim of mob violence who's been left to die in the streets? Read the anecdote about Saviano's own father, beaten up so badly by associates of the suspected hitmen that he couldn't look anybody in the eye for months afterward. Want to know what it feels like to stay in the cesspool where you grew up when other hometown friends have either joined the camorristi or fled for safer lives far away from the Naples area? Read the sequence where Saviano describes vacationing friends returning home--those who "smile sarcastically at you, wondering whom you have become. They look at you from head to toe, try to size you up, figure out if you are a chiachiello or a bbuono. A failure or a Camorrista" (119).

A working journalist, Saviano is now under police protection because he chose not to become either a Camorrista or a failure. You can read a little more by him below and see the response to Gomorrah by an Italian blogger I like here. In the meantime, I give the book 5/5 stelle (*****) for delivering the writing and the reporting goods with conviction.

"On December 26, 2004, Dario Scherillo, a twenty-six-year-old, is riding his motorcycle when he's shot in the face and chest and left to die in a puddle of his blood, which soaks his shirt completely. An innocent man. But he was from Casavatore, a town that has been chewed up by the conflict. For him there is still silence and incomprehension. No epigraph, no plaque, no remembrance. 'When someone is killed by the Camorra, you never know,' an old man tells me as he crosses himself at the spot where Dario was killed. Not all blood is the same color. Dario's is reddish purple and seems to still be flowing. The piles of sawdust have a hard time absorbing it all. After a bit a car takes advantage of the space and parks on top of the stain. Everything comes to an end. Everything gets covered over. Dario was killed to send a message to the town, a message of flesh sealed in an envelope of blood. As in Bosnia, Algeria, Somalia, as in any confused internal war, when it's hard to understand which side you're on, it's enough to kill your neighbor, a dog, your friend, or your relative. The hint of kinship or physical resemblance is all it takes to become a target. It's enough to walk down a certain street to immediately acquire an identity of lead. What matters is to concentrate as much pain, tragedy, and terror as possible, and the only objective is to show absolute strength, uncontested control, and the impossibility of opposing the real and ruling power. To the point that you get used to thinking the way they do, like those who might take offense at a gesture or a phrase. To save your life, to avoid touching the high-voltage line of revenge, you have to be careful, wary, silent. As I was leaving, as they were taking away Attilio Romanò, I started to understand. To understand why there is not a moment in which my mother does not look at me with anxiety, unable to understand why I don't leave, run away, why I keep living in this hell. I tried to recall how many have fallen, how many have been killed since the day I was born" (118-119).

• Saviano, Roberto. Gomorrah (translated from the Italian by Virginia Jewiss). New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2007. http://www.fsgbooks.com/

Là-Bas

Là-Bas [a/k/a The Damned, a/k/a Down There] (2001 paperback)
by J.-K. Huysmans
France, 1891
ISBN 0-140-44767-9

"Whatever you say about Charles VII pales into insignificance when you see Foucquet's portrait of him in the Louvre. I have often paused in front of that bestial face, a face in which I can clearly distinguish the snout of a pig, the eyes of the provincial money-lender and the sanctimonious, bloated lips of a prelate. The figure in Foucquet's painting resembles a debauched priest with a bad cold sunk in wine-induced self-pity! Skim off the fat and reheat the dish through and you can also see the same personality type--less salacious perhaps, more prudent in his cruelty, more obstinate and cunning--as his son and successor, King Louis XI. Nonetheless, this was the man who had Jean Sans Peur assassinated and who abandoned Jeanne d'Arc. I rest my case." (Huysmans, 38-39)

I think I first read parts of this deliciously juicy, odd, and truly cynical narrative fifteen to twenty years ago in one of my earliest encounters with the French proto-surrealist canon, but the Orbis Terrarum Challenge provided me with the perfect pretext to revisit its late-19th century world. While the work begins with an attack on the modern novel's naturalism-obsessed aesthetics that's halfway between a debate and a lecture, it quickly evolves into a scornful condemnation of the modern age itself--so pleased with itself for advances in medical science and inventions like electricity and yet further and further removed from the religious ecstasies and theological certainties of the Middle Ages. As if to accentuate this generational chasm, Huysmans wickedly introduces an age-old metafictional ploy, the presentation of a book within a book, in the form of a biography that's being written by the protagonist Durtal about a real-life 15th century soldier and mystic. His subject? None other than the infamous child murderer and heretic and one-time Joan of Arc loyalist Gilles de Rais, research into whom leads our fictional biographer into a shadow world of 19th-century fin-de-siècle Parisians engaging in Satanism, spiritualism, and other such occult practices in their own quest for some sort of spiritual meaning in the here and now. If this sounds like unduly heavy reading, not to worry. Huysmans' prose is full of an adjectival fury that's frequently hysterical to behold, and his characters, prone to constant diatribes against this, that and the other target du jour of their pre-blogging day and age, are rarely dull. However, this might not be the ideal book for you if you're offended by the notion of a sex scene taking place on a mattress strewn with communion wafers or bothered by the people of southern France being described as a race of "dull-eyed, olive-skinned chocolate munchers and garlic crushers" (41). In other words, a controversial classic!

• Huysmans, J.-K. The Damned (Là-Bas) [translated by Terry Hale]. London and New York, 2001 [1891]. (http://www.penguinclassics.com/)

El invierno en Lisboa

El invierno en Lisboa (2006 libro de bolsillo)
por Antonio Muñoz Molina
España, 1987
ISBN 84-322-1722-0

"En la Gran Vía, junto al resplandor helado de los ventanales de la Telefónica, se apartó un poco de mí para comprar tabaco en un puesto callejero. Cuando lo vi volver, alto y oscilante, las manos hundidas en los bolsillos de su gran abrigo abierto y con las solapas levantadas, entendí que había en él esa intensa sugestión de carácter que tienen siempre los portadores de una historia, como los portadores de un revólver. Pero no estoy haciendo una vana comparación literaria: él tenía una historia y guardaba un revólver". (Muñoz Molina, 16)

Madrid, San Sebastián y Lisboa son los tres marcos geográficos en este interesantísimo thriller (galardonado con el Premio de la Crítica y el Premio Nacional de Literatura en 1988), una especie de film noir literario también influida por los rítmos y la mitología del jazz. Aunque un narrador sin nombre cuenta la mayor parte de la historia de Santiago Biralbo, el hilo argumental se revela con un estilo elíptico que riende homenaje a la estructura de las canciones de jazz y de recuerdos medio olvidados. Hay muchas escenas retrospectivas, confesiones de bar, etcétera, todas presentadas de manera interesante, pero el núcleo de "cine negro" de la trama tiene que ver con el amor prohibido entre el pianista Biralbo y la casada Lucrecia. Su romance y los círculos en los que se mueven lo llevan a una situación donde Lucrecia y luego Biralbo tienen que huir para salvar sus vidas. Es una historia atrapante.

Muñoz Molina es un gran estilista, y sabe apreciar los detalles. Sus clubes y bares huelen a cerveza y bourbon, por ejemplo, pero un comentario de su narrador sutilmente llama la atención al consumo de drogas de un batería: "Nunca bebía alcohol: al alcance de su mano había siempre un refresco de naranja. 'Buby es un puritano', me había dicho Biralbo, 'sólo toma heroína" (125). Irónicamente, esta mezcla de "realismo sucio" y el cinismo latente de sus personajes intensifica lo pensativo logrado por la historia de amor. Si les gustan el film noir clásico y/o el jazz de los tugurios, aquí se puede encontrar su equivalente en la narrativa española moderna. Fuertemente recomendado. (http://www.booket.com/)

*****

Winter in Lisbon (1999 paperback)
by Antonio Muñoz Molina (translated by Sonia Soto)
Spain, 1987
ISBN: 1-86207-166-7

"On the Gran Vía, by the cold gleaming windows of the Telefónica building, he went over to a kiosk to buy cigarettes. As I watched him walk back, tall, swaying, hands sunk in the pockets of his large open overcoat with the collar turned up, I realized that he had that strong air of character one always finds in people who carry a past, as in those who carry a gun. These aren't vague literary comparisons: he did have a past, and he kept a gun." (8, translation by Sonia Soto)

Madrid, San Sebastian and Lisbon are the three geographical loci in this super-interesting thriller (recipient of Spain's Critics' Prize and National Literature Award in 1988), a kind of literary film noir that's also influenced by the rhythms and mythology of jazz. Although an unnamed narrator tells the lion's share of Santiago Biralbo's story, the narrative thread as such is revealed in an elliptical style that pays homage to the structure of jazz compositions and of half-forgotten memories. There are many flashbacks, barroom confessions and the like presented in a very interesting way, but the noir nucleus of the story centers around pianist Biralbo's obsessive love affair with the married Lucrecia. Their affair and the circles they travel in lead to a situation where first Lucrecia and then Biralbo have to flee for their lives. It's a gripping story.

Muñoz Molina is a great stylist, and he has a wonderful eye for detail. His clubs and bars reek of bourbon and beer, for example, but one of his narrator's asides casually draws attention to a drummer's drug use: "He never drank alcohol and always had a glass of orange juice within reach. 'Buby's a puritan,' Biralbo told me once. 'He takes only heroin.' " (118-119). Ironically, this mix of dirty realism and blatant cynicism on the part of his characters only heightens the sense of wistfulness induced by the love story. If you like classic film noir and/or dive bar jazz, prepare to meet its Spanish fictional equivalent. Highly recommended. (http://www.granta.com/)

• Muñoz Molina, Antonio. El invierno en Lisboa. Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, 2006 [1987].
• _____. Winter in Lisbon. London: Granta Books, 1999 [1987].

Orbis Terrarum Challenge

It would be nice to find out about some of these reading challenges before they were halfway over, but this one's international focus is too difficult to resist! Hosted by Bethany of the B&b ex libris blog, the goal of this challenge is to read "9 different books, written by 9 different authors, from 9 different countries." You can check out the full scoop on the challenge here or hopscotch over here Cortázar style to see some of the linked book reviews from various challenge participants. In the meantime, the countries/books I plan on "visiting" as part of my 2008 world tour are as follows:

• ARGENTINA: Mantra (Rodrigo Fresán)
• CHILE: 2666 (Roberto Bolaño)
• FRANCE: Là-Bas [The Damned] (J.-K. Huysmans) (review)
• IRAQ: Maqamat (al-Hariri) (review)
• IRELAND: Melmoth the Wanderer (Charles Maturin)
• ITALY: Non ti muovere [Don't Move] (Margaret Mazzantini)
• JAPAN: All She Was Worth (Miyuki Miyabe) (review)
• MEXICO: Los de abajo [The Underdogs] (Mariano Azuela) (review)
• SPAIN: El invierno en Lisboa [Winter in Lisbon] (Antonio Muñoz Molina) (review)

EDIT (ALTERNATES ADDED AFTER ORIGINAL POST)

• ARGENTINA: Cicatrices (Juan José Saer) (review)
• CHILE: Estrella distante [Distant Star] (Roberto Bolaño) (review)
• ENGLAND: She (H. Rider Haggard) (review)
• ITALY: Gomorra [Gomorrah] (Roberto Saviano) (review)