The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale

#275
Title: The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Doubleday Anchor
Year: 1907/1953
253 pages

The cover of my edition appears to illustrate Verlac outside the observatory.

A wry and sly narrative from Conrad. It is easy to guess most of the plot fairly early on; characterization and the characters' ways of attempting to understand the situation are the more interesting reasons to keep reading. I did find myself attempting to diagnose Stevie, and comparisons and contrasts to Of Mice and Men's Lennie are inevitable.

The Fugitive

#274
Title: The Fugitive
Author: Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Translator: Willem Samuels
Publisher: Avon
Year: 1950/1990
Country: Indonesia
171 pages

Linked image is not the Avon cover.

Reportedly structured as a Balinese shadow play, though familiarity with that form is not necessary for enjoying the novel. It begins in medias res but the reader does not need the anxious and intrusive little introduction to orient to the plot. The narrative is simple and somewhat artificial, but engaging nonetheless. Read with Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory and Kim's Lost Names for a broader perspective on the Japanese occupation across countries.

The School of War

#273
Title: The School of War
Author: Alexandre Najjar
Translators: Laurie Wilson
Publisher: Telegram
Year: 1999/2006
Country: Lebanon
133 pages

The chapters present scenes or vignettes from the author's childhood, a sentimental and almost maudlin account of war. It provides a good picture of Lebanese life and inter-community violence within a country. It is refreshing in its lack of anti-Israeli sentiment.

Smile as They Bow

#272
Title: Smile as They Bow
Author: Nu Nu Yi
Translators: Thi Thi Aye and Alfred Birnbaum
Publisher:Hyperion
Year: 2008
Country: Burma/Myanmar
151 pages

Probably the only novel you'll read about Burmese religious transvestites. Some are gay; it is not clear whether they all are. At least one of the main characters is bisexual, or expedient in who he sleeps with. The novel easily evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of a popular religious festival, woven through which is the protagonist's narrative. His musings and the context provide ample information about Burmese customs and beliefs, as well as contemporary problems such as theft and misrepresentation. The primary focus of the novel is on a relationship that is both controlling and protective. It provides a glimpse in the kind of indentured servitude that is still acceptable in much of the world.

A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, as Well Public as Private, Which Happened in London During the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London. Never Made Public Before

#271
A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, as Well Public as Private, Which Happened in London During the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London. Never Made Public Before
Author: Daniel Defoe
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1722/1966
256 pages

Defoe was a young child in 1665. What's best about A Journal of the Plague Year is the lengths to which Defoe goes to cause the reader to believe that this is in fact a journal and not a novel. His narrator repeatedly reports sets of death statistics, analyzing them for evidence that cases of the plague are being hidden. He scrupulously avows that parts of the narrative are true and supports them with references and citations; other parts are equally scrupulously identified as unsubstantiated  or hearsay. The narrator admits that he is not publishing his religious reflections on the plague as these would be of no interest to the reader. The style is discursive and matter of fact. The overall effect is of reportage, not fiction.

The reader may indeed breathe a sigh of relief that the narrator keeps his theological musings from these pages, heavily interlarded as they already are with Defoe's usual moral philosophizing. Though not out of place for the time or the content of the novel, it is still wearing. This edition has an introduction by Anthony Burgess that puts these sermons into context and renders them tolerable.

As a bubonic plague aficionado, I appreciated Defoe's detailed descriptions of the signs of the plague and the practices associated with the government's efforts to contain it. Defoe makes a number of excellent observations about the futility and damaging effects of quarantine, and though the plague and HIV spread differently, the attribution of divine and social meanings to a disease resonate even today.

In the United States of Africa

#270
Title: In the United States of Africa
Author: Abdourahman A. Waberi
Translators: David and Nicole Ball
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Year: 2009
Country: Djibouti
131 pages

A lyrical odyssey that sacrifices plot and clarity for poetic flights, In the United States of Africa is enjoyable to read but ultimately unsatisfying. Written primarily in the second person, it details the coming of age of Maya, a white French refugee adopted from war-torn and barbaric Europe by an altruistic couple in prosperous Africa. Linguistic and political jokes abound and are fun to encounter. Dizzying linguistic tangents are tasty even in translation. The premise is a pleasure. The plot is negligible masquerading as erudite, though that's not a reason not to read it. Waberi is, finally, unduly coy; an example is the bundle that causes Maya to recoil. Perhaps others have figured it out, but if they have, the answer is not revealed in otherwise spoiler-laden reviews.  Though I have several guesses, none seems particularly supported by the narrative, unless the literal contents of the bundle don't matter and instead symbolize Maya's alternative fate. Maybe I'm missing something; if so, please help me out, but my master's in writing is not sufficient to the task.

The Dancer from Khiva: One Muslim Woman's Quest for Freedom

#269
Title: The Dancer from Khiva: One Muslim Woman's Quest for Freedom
Author: Bibish
Translator: Andrew Bromfield
Publisher: Black Cat
Year: 2008
Country: Uzbekistan
248 pages

This memoir works in some ways and not in others. Bibish begins her life story with some early brutalizations, moving chronologically through childhood, young adulthood, and to sometime near the present. What is effective is the description of village life in Uzbekistan. However, the narrative's trajectory seems fairly random. Why does Bibish no longer dance? Why does she cease to teach? What are her relationships like? What "quest for freedom"? The story, for all its action, is curiously flat and, in the absence of a guiding theme or obtained moral, seems strangely pointless.