Luke and Charlotte have been married no more than six hours when an act of violence comes between them that is symptomatic of much larger problems in their relationship. It forces Luke to consider just what led to this chain of events, and indeed, how he came to be in an abusive relationship. As the past between Luke and Charlotte unfolds, we see a relationship between two people that should never have been placed in the same room together, let alone get married.

I’ve always been fascinated by the reversal of gender roles in popular culture. Try watching a sitcom on television, and imagine what the jokes would be like if each character’s sex was reversed. Would we still laugh at a nerdy girl unlucky in love? Would middle-aged men feel the same attachment to a male version of Sex and the City as so many middle-aged women have for the current edition? Would Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s relationship be different if she were the web-slinging superhero, and he were the damsel in distress? Would people demand a young, attractive male companion if we had a female Doctor?

I don’t do this to make some kind of point about gender roles as a whole, but it is an interesting exercise nonetheless. And I’m also not saying gender roles are inherently bad – just that we should be careful in our consideration of them, and think about them more critically. As such, a novel that deals with male domestic violence fascinates me, because I’m curious to see how a male author treats the problem.

In many ways, Condon is tricky in his treatment of the issue. So much of what Luke says and thinks is what we expect the stereotypical battered wife to say or think. He thinks everything will get better, as long as he remains patient and lets Charlotte blow off her anger, it will all get better. Of course, once he wakes up to the fact that this is not at all how the relationship is going to pan out, he doesn’t waste time in calling reinforcements. Their visit to a marriage counsellor is both awkward and a relief, because you’re sitting there thinking, well, of course no one’s going to believe Luke, he’s the man in the relationship. Had Condon wanted to ramp up the tension, or make his point more lucid, he could have pushed this angle. Mercifully, though, he puts Luke out of his misery, and Charlotte’s confrontation with the counsellor is terrifying.

Chapters alternate between present and past, and the flashbacks to the beginnings of Luke and Charlotte’s relationship attempt to provide some kind of reason as to why the two are even together in the first place. Most important in these flashes is Charlotte’s overwhelming personality. It is clear she is in charge here, and Luke is initially willing to go with the flow. The sex is good, Charlotte is hot – it seems like an adventure, particularly since his relationship with Charlotte is conducted behind the back of his long-term girlfriend. As time progresses, and when Luke finally breaks it off with his real girlfriend, it seems inevitable that Charlotte should propose. Glimmers of her temper are present, even in the early stages of the relationship, but it is not until the present chapters that we finally understand just how horrible she truly is.

Without delving too much into pop psychology, Condon does provide us with a possible explanation for Charlotte’s temper, her violent tendencies, and her all-round two-facedness. Though they only feature in a few scenes, Charlotte’s parents are vital – her mother, too, is derisive of her husband, and he has become a door-mat in his own house. While this is initially played for comic effect – think back to what I said earlier about sitcom tropes; the overbearing wife/long-suffering husband is on full display here – it rapidly becomes apparent that here, too, is probably another violent relationship behind closed doors.

Unrelated to the main plot, this is also a novel unashamedly of Sydney, which is a pleasant change. As a Sydney boy, I do occasionally feel like my city is shown up by Melbourne, or indeed, the outback, in Australian literature, so it’s nice to see something so fully immersed in the localities of Sydney. From the hotel in Circular Quay, to Luke’s home at The Entrance, to the North Shore background of Charlotte’s family, they’re all presented so carefully and perfectly, you can’t help but imagine exactly where the action is taking place. Sydney stereotypes, too, flow from this, and when we meet Charlotte’s friends from the North Shore, images of snooty North Shore private-school girls float into your head with ease. Similarly, Luke’s Central Coast background shines through, and his simplicity and ease of movement are so typical of people from The Entrance.

I’ll finish by returning to something I said at the beginning – this is a relationship between two people who should never have met. They are not good for each other in any way. While there may be some semblance of love buried deep within, just like Archie and Clarence in The Circuit, Luke and Charlotte feed into each other’s insecurities, and push each other’s buttons in a way that is not healthy. The spill into violence from an unexpected corner is handled deftly by Condon, who makes his point clear to us – domestic violence is never funny, even if a woman hits a man.

In a time before terrorism, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, live various tribes of people, outside the mainstream. Their lives are dependent on good weather in the mountain landscape, on the goodwill of their neighbouring tribes, and of the governments in the cities below not trying to force them into a life they do not want to lead. Their lives are hard, and in this insight into a world rarely glimpsed, Ahmad provides snippets of these lives, spanning several decades.

Obviously we need to talk a little about the structure of the novel first. Ahmad has written what is essentially a collection of linked short stories – the one, mysterious common element is the boy (and later, man) Tor Baz, or the eponymous wandering falcon. I’m still not quite sure just how old he is supposed to be by the end, but there are several decades of history covered in these nine tales. In several – including the excellent opening chapter/story – Tor Baz features quite heavily. In others, he barely rates a mention – in fact, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t appear in one of them, though I can’t remember exactly which one that is.

Each story deals with a different aspect of tribal life in the vast wilderness between Pakistan and Afghanistan, though, as one may expect, there are several universal themes that make this collection of tales more cohesive than a simple short story collection. Arguably the overarching theme is the harsh and unforgiving nature of life away from big cities, in a land that is, quite frankly, close to uninhabitable. It is a testament to the human spirit that people have managed to eck out an existence here, and though Ahmad pulls no punches in highlighting the brutal and sometimes fatal lifestyle that is simply the norm for these people.

I’m glad, too, he wrote the last chapter, “Sale Completed”,  and in many ways leaving it until the end, as the final message, was clever. For a long time, I was wondering if he was going to talk in detail about the role women play in traditional bedouin tribes like the ones outlined in The Wandering Falcon, and was worried he was just going to skip it. But when he turns his hand to writing about the brutal treatment of women in the name of “tradition,” he brings up a whole new set of questions that leave you wondering after you’ve finished the novel. Because, let’s face it, a culture that views women as nothing more than objects to be traded and exchanged for money and sexual favours is one that needs to be examined closely.

In some ways, this constant onslaught of the worst of what it means to be human left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The cold, almost clinical style in which Ahmad writes leaves no room for any kind of hope, and ultimately, the whole thing left me cold. The fact that this has been sitting in his desk for thirty years, and the fact that he was unsure whether to publish it as fiction or non-fiction leaves me wondering whether it would have been better off to publish it as a kind of travelogue – maybe his style would have worked better there.

Reading The Wandering Falcon left me informed, but not inspired. This was a part of the world about which I knew almost nothing, so to see a different kind of existence portrayed so diligently was nice. But as a piece of fiction, as a work that should let me into people’s lives and make me feel something – I’m afraid it just didn’t work for me.

The Wandering Falcon – Jamil AHMAD
Rebirth – Jahnavi BARUA
The Sly Company of People Who Care – Rahul BHATTACHARYA
River of Smoke – Amitav GHOSH
Please Look After Mother – SHIN Kyung-sook
Dream of Ding Village – YAN Lianke
The Lake – YOSHIMOTO Banana

Click on the links above to go to my reviews for these titles. I’ve read both The Wandering Falcon and The Sly Company of People Who Care, and these reviews will be up as next week and the week after’s reviews. Rebirth is very difficult to acquire, and Penguin India are proving particularly elusive in trying to source a reading copy. However, Lisa is on it, and hopefully one will appear soon.

I picked the latter four on the shortlist in my own dream shortlist, so I’m quite pleased to see the actual judges and I think in similar ways. I’m very sad to see that The Valley of Masks didn’t make it, though I’m not entirely surprised. Please, if you can get a copy, read it. It truly is wonderful.

Reviews for the entire longlist from us at the Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize Jury can be found here.

It’s going to be a tough decision to pick just one novel from these seven strong contenders. Let the battle begin.

Coming in as someone who has not read Sea of Poppies, it was somewhat dismaying to read the opening sections, which appeared to deal with the events of that novel. Fortunately, that sense of displacement doesn’t last long, and Ghosh pushes us head first into what is the bulk of the novel: the degradation of the relationship between the British and Chinese Empires, the beginning of the First Opium War, and the eventual creation of Hong Kong as a British outpost in South East Asia. And once Ghosh gets the story proper going, though – wow. Perhaps the thing that struck me most about the entire endeavour was that is was clear he has done a vast amount of research into this time period, with even the most basic details of everyday life for this group of foreigners living in Canton clearly and vividly presented.

Ghosh provides an exhaustive list of references at the end, but it is his gift that, apart from one or two passages, you do not feel like you are reading a dry history textbook about the period. He really makes each and every character come alive, and in this instance, I am including Canton as a character. There is a real sense of place here, from the sights and sounds of the bustling boats moored to the docks, to the food consumed at every meal. It is clear Ghosh is something of a gourmand, because he really does go to great pains to make you want to eat the meals provided.

Canton, too, is a place to be celebrated. A truly international trading city, the melting pot of ethnicities who make their living in the shipping industry provide a huge cast of characters and caricatures from which Ghosh can draw. Here are the early signs of globalisation, or internationalisation at work – a combination of early free trade capitalists, bringing their business to an Asian nation that is still unwilling to make full concessions to the new ways they are being strongly encouraged to adopt. It could be anywhere in Asia in the 21st century, but here it is, a good 170 years early. The only mutually understood language by all of these people is a kind of Creole, formed out of the marriage between Cantonese and English, and it is a testament to Ghosh that he not only uses this for huge chunks of dialogue, but makes it easy for his audience to understand.

Our two main characters – Bahram and Neel – are Indians caught up in the opium trade. Bhram is the master of a company that ships opium into China, and Neel is his newly acquired assistant. Between the two of them, we are allowed a glimpse into the ways in which foreigners (by which I mean, the British Empire and the Americans) were conducting the opium trade. On the one hand, they were fully aware of the fact that opium was not a Good Thing, having banned the stuff in their own lands, but they were more than willing to exploit the Chinese market, and sell it there, despite the trade restrictions. I love the indignation of everyone – including Bahram – when the Chinese do an about face, and tell them that, actually, those restrictions will be enforced, and if you don’t comply, heads will roll. Literally. There’s a nice poetic justice to it, though as it turns out, it is not perhaps the best news for Bahram, who is already deep in debt with his investors in India.

I don’t know if Paulette features heavily in the first novel, but in River of Smoke, she seems little more than an excuse for Ghosh to write the letters of Robin Chinnery. I am not really complaining, because these letters are absolutely brilliant, but it does mean Paulette does get sidelined fairly early on in the action. From her promising start as a cross-dressing botanist, to her burgeoning friendship with Fitcher Penrose, a charmingly gruff Scottish botanist, she very quickly disappears off the page, and her name is reduced to nothing more than a destination for Robin’s letters.

But those letters – oh, what a gift they are. There is nowhere else in the novel that highlights the kind of mastery Ghosh has over the English language. Through language alone, he manages to conjur up a (hilariously) camp artist from the 1830s, whose love of men is at once flamboyant and tragic. His quest to find Paulette’s golden camellia sends him on a wild adventure around Canton, meeting a wide variety of people outside of the merchant houses that form the somewhat claustrophobic setting of the other two narrative strands. It also provides him with several potential “Friends”, as he so coyly calls them, and his retellings of his attempts to woo them actually made me laugh out loud on several occasions.

There’s no point in me banging on about how wonderful this novel is any more. Suffice it to say, I’m sold on the Ibis trilogy. I’m sad that I didn’t read them in order, but I will now go out and find Sea of Poppies (once John Murray have given it a better cover), and devour that, too. And I have now joined the long list of people eagerly anticipating the final volume of the trilogy, whenever that may arrive. Needless to say, I hope (and suspect) River of Smoke will make its way onto this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist.

The Man Asian Literary Award is awarded each year to “the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English,” and is loosely based upon the Man Booker Prize, which is awarded to the best novel published in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth countries (and Ireland) in the previous year. This is enough of a beast in itself – the modern English literary tradition now encompasses a wide variety of countries, and I think we can probably all agree that Nigeria and New Zealand have little in common outside of their shared modern linguistic heritage. But for the purposes of awarding a literary prize, that’s enough.

“Asia” as a concept is, at best, a simply geographic term used to describe an ever changing collection of nation-states that happen to be in the same part of the world. At worst, and no doubt Edward Said would agree with me here, it is the ultimate signifier of the Other for the Western tradition – a land of mysterious women, of inscrutable men, and of bizarre rituals. There is, of course, no one thing that defines what it means to be “Asian” – indeed, depending on who you ask, the very image of “Asia” will be completely different. British people, for example, tend to refer to people from the subcontinent – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. – as Asian, while those of us in Australia conjure up a far more Chinese and Japanese image.

How, then, can one judge the best “Asian” novel of the past year? Most countries in the Asian region speak unique languages. If we’re taking Asia to include the Middle East, there’s certainly no shared cultural history in the region; there is no way to easily reconcile the traditions of, say Iran and Japan, or South Korea and Bangladesh. Depending on whether or not you include Turkey as a part of Europe (there’s a good question, why aren’t Turks eligible for this Prize?), you can look broadly at the history of Europe in parallel with the history of the Church, and understand the shared traditions of the entire landmass. That is, of course, slightly reductionist, but for the purposes of this essay, let’s go with it.What criteria can possibly be used to try and select 12 – let alone one – great novel from a part of the world which can barely even be defined?

Do we look to stories of what it means to be Asian, stories of the “Asian” experience? Murakami may be the most well-known name on this year’s list, but as Rebecca Suter argues, he is hardly the most representative figure of the Japanese literary tradition, let alone the Asian literary tradition. Here is a man who lives in one of the most developed countries in the world, a country that bares the full brunt of the connected, globalised world in which we live. Murakami translates a lot of English literature into Japanese, and he freely admits that his own influences tend towards the great American writers as opposed to people like Yukio Mishima. Does his experience make him more or less “Asian”? Should we be looking instead to, say, Anam’s The Good Muslim, which deals with a fully internalised national struggle for both identity and power, free from outside influences? Is the latter a more “Asian” novel by virtue of the fact that there are fewer connections to the Western world?

Does this mean, then, that novels such as Tarun J Tejpal’s The Valley of Masks should be discounted, because its tendency towards imagined dystopian religious cults? Certainly Tejpal’s world-view and cultural background has been informed by his being raised in India, but his tale is far more universal, and cuts to the core of what it means to have unquestioning faith. Hardly a uniquely “Asian” concept, is it?

Or should we simply look to authors who, by virtue of simply being born in a particular place, have had “Asian” citizenship bestowed upon them, have become eligible for this award? Tahmima Anam was born in Shaka, but now lives in London. Does that make her less “Asian” than the others on the list? In today’s globalised world, citizenship is such an arbitrary identifier anyway, should it also be used to judge eligibility for a literary award? Had Kazuo Ishiguro written a novel this year, why should he not be considered, simply because he now holds British citizenship? Do his experiences as a Japanese-Englishman count for something less? Why not someone like Nam Le, whose stories about being Vietnamese in Australia cut right to the heart of what it means to be “Asian” in the 21st century? Heck, if we’re going to go the whole way, why not have a novel like The Slap in for consideration, which also deals with Asian identity in a multicultural socety? Kavita Bhanot talks about why these kinds of stories – the stories of the diaspora – are important in this rather fascinating article here.

Then, of course, we have my favourite “genre” of writing – stories that show us how different cultures and societies get along with one another in a small space. Chang-rae Lee, a judge on this year’s panel, also seems interested in situations like this (clearly, he is an intelligent man) – he says he is “fascinated by people who find themselves in positions of alienation or some kind of cultural dissonance” (this comes from Fay’s post here, and the original quote is from here.) We have to look no further than Amitav Ghosh’s beautifully drawn window into the ports of Canton and Hong Kong in the 1830s in his novel River of Smoke, for an Asia in which one can hear a multiplicity of voices from an endless number of cultures and races. Rahul Bhattacharya’s debut novel, The Sly Company of People Who Care, set in Guyana – not even close to Asia – explores the Indian diaspora in a multicultural context. In many ways, I’m disappointed there aren’t more diaspora novels on the list, but the current citizenship restrictions on entry mean it is unlikely this will change any time soon.

There is, on top of all of these confusing identity questions, the fact that, for this Prize, you don’t even have to have written your novel at the same time as everyone else, removing another levelling factor. Banana Yoshimoto’s novel, The Lake, was first published in 2005, a full four years before Murakami’s 1Q84 – though they share some similar themes. Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village was also first published in 2005. In the grand scheme of things, six years is not a long time, but it’s enough. These novels aren’t even reacting to the same world around them.

I hope this does not sound like a diatribe against the Prize – that is not at all my intention. I certainly do not envy the actual judges of the Prize, because it is clear this a complicated and demanding process. But there are important questions at stake here, which have ramifications not just for the small, slightly inbred world of literature, but for the wider community. As we head into the “Asian century,” whatever the hell that might mean, the way this region of the world is perceived by the rest of us is of paramount importance. I certainly cannot provide answers to any of the questions I’ve put forth here. If five years of study for a Bachelor of Asian Studies has taught me nothing else (thanks, ANU), it is that there are no answers to big questions like this. The only question I can answer is the one I asked in the title of this post: why?

My answer is this: why not? Any award that encourages people to pick up something they never have before, something that might be a little bit different to what they might be used to, something that encourages and stimulates their mind – any award that can make me write a 1500 word essay during my summer holidays can only be a good thing. And it’s not just good for readers – hopefully it will encourage other “Asian” writers, hopefully, to explore all of these questions I’ve touched upon here in their own writings, and provide a larger base from which entrants to this prize can be chosen.

And it would seem, from the evidence, that this is slowly happening. While none of the longlisted authors are from particularly obscure, remote countries, countries such as Iran, India, and Bangladesh still face real world problems, stemming arguably from a lack of literacy, and other education. Bangladesh’s literacy rate is only 55.9%; India, 74.0%; Pakistan, 58.2%. Miguel Syjuco’s win of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize prompted something of a resurgence in the Filipino publishing industry -prompting an upswing in publishers and writers being encouraged to do what they love.

I think a lot of people tend to discount the literary world, and indeed, the publishing industry, as something only for rich people, an indulgence afforded to those who don’t want to deal with the real world. But there are real world implications in reading. Encouraging people to read – kids, in particular – can only be a good thing. David Parker, the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Man Asian Literary Prize talks about what he believes to be the aims of the prize here – you should check it out; it’s a really interesting interview.

If this prize generates as much interest around literacy, fiction, and literature as other prizes do, and it does so with an Asian focus – you’ve got your answer to the question I asked at the beginning. Why?

Oh, and in case anyone’s interested, here’s my ideal shortlist. I suspect it’s not even close to what will be released tonight, but there you go.

River of Smoke – Amitav GHOSH
The Folded Earth – Anuradha ROY
Please Look After Mother – SHIN Kyung-sook
The Valley of Masks – Tarun J. TEJPAL
Dream of Ding Village – YAN Lianke
The Lake – YOSHIMOTO Banana

Our narrator – a man with many names – is living in hiding in an unnamed Indian city. He fears for his life – the terrifying Wafaders are coming for him. His previous life – born into a cult hiding in a valley in the Himalayan mountains – is catching up with him, and his last act is to tell his tale. This is the story of a child born into love, a boy educated with religious fervour, a young man taught to kill, and an old man who must make a terrible choice.

This is the third book on the longlist to deal with cults, but while Murakami and Yoshimoto did so indirectly, Tejpal gives us the whole kit and kaboodle. In sheer terms of world-building, he has given us an entirely alien society – in an attempt to ensure a lack of selfish, personal attachment, children are raised by a group of women – they never know who their true parents are. They are given one of six names as a child, but in order to become an adult, they must give it up and receive a collection of letters and numbers. In the ultimate sacrifice of personhood and individuality, each member of the society wears the same mask, perfectly moulded to one’s face.

Just as the framing device is our narrator explaining to us his way of life, we get snippets and suggestions about the history of the cult. At the core of every religion, of every system of belief, are myths and legends from history that shape values and world views, and there is no difference here. Its figurehead – Aum, or the first sound in the universe – is he chosen one, and his uprising against the heathens, and his ability to bring clarity and salvation to people is exulted in these tales. His two sidekicks, Ali and Alaiya, also feature heavily. Stories and rumours, too, of people who did not do the right thing, people who broke the rules, are taught to our narrator, who laps them up in his fervour. Attempting to unravel these stories is half the fun – Karna himself admits that his own story has holes in it, because it’s easier for him to tell it this way.

The path of our main character, however, is that of the Wafader – a group of elite warriors, trained to protect the valley from outsiders, from non-believers, and ultimately, from the menace within. These cult symbols are taught to be living killing machines, and their education in the ways of death are exquisitely detailed by Tejpal. Their use of wooden needles to make their victims bleed slowly, but not to death, is covered extensively. There is a definite physicality and masculinity that pervades this novel, and there is only one scene in which this is more apparent than in these training sequences.

As with all good religious orders, the Aum supporting nutjobs here are not what we would describe as enlightened when it comes to the rights of women. They tend to fall into two main categories: the ever present Madonna/whore dichotomy. Madonna in the sense that many of them are given over to raising children in a commune environment, no one ever knowing who is biologically whose; and whore, in the sense that many nubile young girls are sent off to what are essentially brothels (the Serai of Fleeting Happiness, and the Kiln of Inevitable Impulses, for those playing at home) to service the young, and old, men of the community. Rather than reject sexuality as base and degrading, Aum recognises that this is necessary, and so allows men to simply have their way with women in these rooms. Charming.

There is a definite gear shift in the last third of the novel, as things in paradise begin to take a turn for the worse. It’s not until it’s too late that you realise just how truly brainwashed everyone here is. It’s perhaps a long bow to pull, but there are echoes of North Korea here – a personality cult taken to extreme levels, with people willing to do anything for their Gentle Father. I hesitate to use the word brainwashed, but in both situations, the ability of those in charge to manipulate their followers into thinking they are doing the right thing is terrifying.

I’m not going to spoil it for you – it would rather ruin the entire thing – but Tejpal pushes his already disturbing tale into almost horrific territory. Actually – and I’m worried this is going to make me sound like a monster – I thought he was going to push the envolope even further, and was slightly disappointed he didn’t. After a litany of events and decisions that would leave any sane and rational person quivering at the knees, Karna is sent . And at the final hurdle, he fails. Of course he fails – and perhaps this is Tejpal’s point. There is a line in all of us where some kind of inherent morality or sensibility takes over from any kind of religious indoctrination, even if said indoctrination has the weight of 45 years behind it.

There’s so much more I want to talk about, but I’m going to leave it there, because I rather think I’m beginning to ramble. I loved The Valley of Masks. Purely as a world-building exercise, Tejpal proves himself a master – his cult is perfectly formed, and while perhaps pushes the boundaries of believability, it does it in a recognisable setting, making you forget your questions. But his insights into belief, into faith, and the boundaries of those things that make us who we are, probe deep into an uncomfortable question we must constantly ask ourselves.

The Wandering Falcon – Jamil AHMAD (Lisa; Stu; Sue; Mark)
The Good Muslim – Tahmina ANAM (Me; Fay; Lisa; Mark)
Rebirth – Jahnavi BARUA (Fay)
The Sly Company of People Who Care – Rahul BHATTACHARYA (Fay; Lisa; Mark)
The Colonel – Mahmoud DOWLATABADI (Lisa; Mark)
River of Smoke – Amitav GHOSH (Lisa; Mark)
1Q84 – Haruki MURAKAMI (Me; Lisa)
The Folded Earth – Anuradha ROY (Me; Fay; Sue; Mark)
Please Look After Mother – Kyung-Sook SHIN (Me; Lisa; Mark; Stu)
The Valley of Masks – Tarun J TEPJAL (Me; Fay; Lisa)
Dream of Ding Village – YAN Lianke (Me; Fay; Lisa; Mark)
The Lake – Banana YOSHIMOTO (Me; Lisa; Mark; Sue)

You’ll note, between the six of us, we’ve managed to have at least one person read everything on that longlist. I’d just like to say how exciting this is – well done to the rest of the team for all their tireless reading.

Only 10 days to go until the shortlist is revealed! I have a dream shortlist, but whether this will in any way align with the judges remains to be seen. No doubt I’ve picked the wrong ones. Which novels do you think will make the cut?

Hopefully by the time the shortlist is revealed, I’ll have posted all of the reviews for the rest of the longlist, except Rebirth, since I still haven’t managed to source a copy.

And finally, Mark has managed to get some of the longlisted authors to have a brief chat with him about their work. I am, of course, insanely jealous of this. Check out the interviews here:

Anuradha Roy (The Folded Earth)
Banana Yoshimoto (The Lake)
Rahul Bhattacharya (The Sly Company of People Who Care)

See you all in the New Year!

Alex Portnoy has a problem – his mother. The woman just won’t leave him alone, despite his having passed thirty, and having a rather swanky public service job crusading for human rights. As he tells his therapist about his life, and just how terrible his mother is, he detours and twists to explain just why he can’t seem to have a proper, fulfilling relationship with any woman, and why, maybe, he just doesn’t really care. Or does he?

Portnoy’s Complaint was written more than forty years ago, but I was constantly surprised at just how modern and alive it felt. Turn Portnoy into any of the other minority groups that are now living the American dream thanks to their enterprising parents, and you’ll probably end up with a similar tension and anger that permeates this novel. Portnoy is a very, very angry young man – there’s no doubt about that. He blames his overbearing, smothering mother for the problems he now has with women; he seems to hate white Americans because of their white privilege, while at the same time wanting desperately to be a part of the cool group; he hates being Jewish, because he doesn’t even believe in God. Replace any of these with, say, Muslim immigrants, or Asian immigrants, or African immigrants, and you can see how much of an influence authors like Roth have had on immigrant literature in America.

At the same time, though, there is something deeply, inherently Jewish about Roth’s writing. Alex’s mother issues – which are really family issues more than anything else – stem from this weird relationship he has with his parents and what they represent. They are first generation Jewish immigrants, complete with English studded with Yiddish. (Seriously, there’s a lot of Yiddish in this novel, though I understood about 90% of it, so it doesn’t make anything unreadable.) Despite him being in his early thirties, his parents are still on his back for not having settled down with a nice (Jewish) girl and having some grandchildren. They – his mother in particular – see it as an affront to all they have done for Alex that he doesn’t even have to common decency to provide them with grandchildren.

Of course, whether this is an accurate portrayal of his parents is the ultimate question. Told as a bizarre stream of consciousness to his therapist, there is no reason to trust Alex as a narrator. For all we know, he could be exaggerating everything – his parents may even be lovely people. But I think we can all identify with Alex, even just a little – we all of us have had moments in our lives when, even though we’ve grown up and moved out of the parental house, our parents still get on our nerves for the littlest of things.

Stylistically, too, Roth is masterful. Alex’s voice is carefully balanced between the literary and the conversational, the intelligent and the crude. I love a good bit of (appropriate) swearing in a novel, and Roth does not disappoint. If you are in any way offended by descriptions of masturbation, intense threesomes, or even raunchy descriptions of lady bits, you would be well advised to not read Portnoy’s Complaint. For those of us who do enjoy all of these things, though, there’s a lot to love here. I know some people are mortally offended by swearing, and think it vulgar and unintelligent, but a well timed expletive can be just as devastating and effective as anything else. On a similar note, I’ve never seen the word c**t in print quite so many times as I have in this novel.

I hesitate to compare Roth to a 21st century sitcom character, but if anyone’s seen The Big Bang Theory, there’s an excellent analogy to be made. Alex Portnoy is the precursor to Howard Wolowitz, and all of those slightly messed up, sexually frustrated, mother-issue-laden young Jewish men that are now so popular in, well, pop culture. Portnoy’s Complaint carries its age well – there’s a verve and energy throughout Roth’s writing that makes him fun to read. I’m eager to find more.

“Tell no one” is the three word motto Ushimatsu lives by, having been taught by his father to never reveal his secret. His secret being, of course that his family are eta (burakumin, as they are now called), or the lowest caste of Japanese society, the untouchables. With the modernisation of Japan, though, he has become a teacher, and the fear of being found out by the establishment is his greatest fear. This fear is what drives the narrative – in the beginning, the lodge in which Ushimatsu is staying discovers that another of their lodgers is a burakumin, and summarily expels him. Rather than have this same humiliation happen to himself, Ushimatsu leaves. Of course, the fact that he had no real reason to leave brings his own identity into question, and when your own boss is trying to kick you out of the school because you are too modern-thinking, this is not necessarily a good idea.

Also problematic for Ushimatsu is his fanatic following of Inoki-sensei, a prominent scholar, who also happens to be a burakumin. Some of the crap the other character’s come out with about the fact that any burakumin could be this intelligent and well-spoken can only be a miracle is something one must take in one’s stride, but it really drives home the point that Shimazaki is trying to make. Despite seeing someone like Inoki making his way in the world having “come out” as a burakumin does not make is any easier for Ushimatsu, who cannot even bring himself to reveal his secret when he meets finally gets a chance to meet Inoki. There’s clearly some deep repression going on, but from the attitudes of the other characters, it’s easy to understand.

Kenneth Strong, the translator of my edition (though I’m not sure anyone else has bothered to translate this, anyway) highlights in his introduction that Shimazaki is considered to be one of Japan’s first naturalist writers, and there’s a lot to take from this. The Broken Commandment finds its setting in the hills of Nagano, the alps outside of Tokyo, and there are some spectacular descriptions of the countryside, complete with falling snow covering pines, and the rather quaint mountain villages where the action takes place. He also spends a lot of time describing to us the slaughter of a bull (for reasons which I will let you discover on your own), and the rather graphic nature of this scene may be shocking – but it’s important to remember that the burakumin were outcasts because they worked with animals – dead animals, in particular – so something like this makes perfect sense in context.

Of course, one could just as easily read this as a gay novel. I’m not sure that was ever Shimazaki’s intention, but for a modern Western reader, it’s not hard to see the parallels between Ushimatsu’s struggle to maintain this secret for fear of persecution and ostracisation as a burakumin with the struggles many people around the world face today coming out. And by making that link, Ushimatsu’s desire to simultaneously tell everyone he knows and to take his secret to the grave becomes clearly understandable. His inner struggle is immense, and Shimazaki does a good job of highlighting this.

The ending’s a bit rubbish – the whole thing seems rather contrived – but of course, this was not Shimazaki’s point. His intention to highlight the problems faced by the “new commoners” of post-Meiji Japan seems to far outweigh any concern he might have for writing a well-structured, reader-satisfying novel, particularly when the modern novel was still so young in Japan.

This is not a novel that should be locked away in my university’s library. There’s a lot to love here, and as an example of early modern Japanese literature, it must surely stand among some of the very best. Leaving cultural and historical significance aside, though, it easily resonates with a modern audience – this is the story of a man struggling with a secret identity, the revelation of which could ruin his very way of life. This is an age-old story, and one that you should all go and seek out.

Just as a final aside, I’ve used the word burakumin in this review when referring to the new commoners – Kenneth Strong’s translation uses the older word eta, which is no longer considered politically correct in Japanese…

I’ve never completely understood the reason for Murakami’s popularity in the West, or indeed, in Japan. Rebecca Suter, an academic at Sydney Uni, offers an interesting thesis that makes a lot of sense in my head. You’ll have to read the whole thing here, but the thrust is that Murakami manages to blend both Western and Japanese cultural backgrounds into his novels, and this appeals to both sides. For Japanese readers, to Western pop culture references are other-worldly enough to be fascinating, while still being grounded in Japanese sensibility. This is reversed for Western readers, who enjoy the glimpses of an exotic other in his work, while still being comfortable with understandable references.

This is helped, no doubt, by the two translators of 1Q84 – Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, both of whom have translated Murakami’s work before. Before we get to the issue of having two translators for one novel (I think it’s a terrible idea), there’s the fact that there seems to be a concerted effort by these translators to make Murakami more palatable to Western tastes – a simple comparison of passages in the Japanese original, and then the English translation, highlight missing words – sometimes sentences – chopped up phrases, and generally weird stuff going on. I’ve always been taught to keep as close to the original text s possible, preserving sentences and words, even if they sound a little funny, but clearly Rubin and Gabriel think differently. If I were a better person, I would have read this in Japanese, but you probably wouldn’t have the translation for a few more months…

This is all, of course, only tangentially related to this novel, but these are the questions I was thinking about as I read 1Q84. And you should all, too. As a widely publicised “magnus opus,” it has become something of a lightning rod for people’s views of Murakami’s work – everything you expect from a “Murakami novel” is here, so if you’re expecting something different, be prepared to be disappointed.

Tengo Kawana has been given an unusual request by his editor – to rework a novella from a young girl called Fuka-Eri, and enter it into the new writers’ prize. He does, but in doing so, is pulled into a world he never knew existed. Meanwhile, Aomame works as an assassin, killing men who perpetrate domestic violence. But when she walks onto a highway exit from a taxi, she too is drawn into a strange world where not quite everything is as she remembers.

Murakami’s characters have fantastical adventures to escape their everyday, humdrum lives. This is, of course, the message he has been sending us right from the beginning – that modern Japanese society is so deeply unfulfilling, so boring, people turn to the magical to fill their days. Tengo is no different to this – his own frustrations as a writer allow him to be more open to the strange request that draws him into the parallel world of 1Q84, a parallel version of the 1984 in which this novel is set.

The world into which Tengo finds himself drawn is a world of strange cults in which supernatural events are an everyday occurrence, where strange creatures are born out of thin air, only to make their own chrysalis to create more people, and where the mother/daughter (maza/dohta in the translation, マザー/ドウタ) relationship is vitally important. Murakami is a frustrated science fiction writer stuck in the wrong literary mode. So many of these ideas would be fantastic, if only Murakami could channel them into a big, bold, proper literary sci-fi novel, and deal with them properly. Instead, they are relegated to quirky post-modern window dressings, in a world of very confused sexual politics.

Which brings me around to Aomame, a character that should be far more engaging than she actually is. I love the idea of a broken woman going on a rampage and carefully assassinating men who beat their wives. There’s an entire novel in that sentence alone. But once Aomame is drawn into the mysterious world of Sakigake (先駆け, or frontrunners, in Japanese) the cult which forms the main focus of the mystery at the centre of 1Q84, she seems to lose that drive, and instead become all consumed with finding Tengo, a boy she went to school with and had a strange, but significant ten second encounter with twenty years ago.

It seems desperately unfair that a big fat horrible man should be allowed to die in a manner of his choosing. In the real world, any middle aged man who has “ambiguous congress” with underage girls is rightly punished, particularly when he says he did it because of some supernatural being. But in Murakami’s world, because these beings are real, it seems somehow more justified. This man is simply doing his job. Which is an uncomfortable thought, to say the least. And for a novel that brings questions of domestic violence, and of poorly treated women, to the fore, I feel like Murakami should be making a better point. There’s also the awkwardly and deeply uncomfortable sex scene between Tengo and Fuka-Eri (which did make it onto the shortlist of this year’s bad sex award). For me, it’s not uncomfortable because it’s badly written, but because Murakami goes out of his way to describe Fuka-Eri as child-like in appearance, and indeed manner, so it reads like Tengo is sleeping with a child. I don’t think I need to explain any further why I found that uncomfortable.

Then, of course, we get to the third section, which feels like an unnecessary addition in so many ways. Written about a year after the first two sections, it introduces a third point of view character, Ushikawa, who in many ways, is completely unnecessary. In other ways, though, he’s quite useful, because he actually has some plot to be getting on with, and his chapters allow you to understand why it is that Tengo and Aomame are being (very poorly) chased by Sakigake.

There are some positives, though. I love the old woman for whom Aomame works – there’s something really cool in the idea of an old woman crusading against domestic violence from the comfort of her upper-class house, getting other people to do her dirty work for her. And some of Murakami’s post-modern tricks work out quite well – there’s a big discussion about Chekov’s gun when Aomame is given a pistol by Tamaru, and the idea that, now it’s been introduced into the story, it must be used. I won’t tell you what happens, but it’s quite cool. Bonus points, too, for making Tamaru a gay zainichi from Sakhalin, filling all of the minority tick boxes. Minus points, though, for making him poorly written, spouting weird dialogue that is comically unnatural and far too self-aware. Saying that he is gay, so naturally he loves interior design, for example.

1Q84 is messy and unwieldy. It’s far too long for its own good, partially because things repeat themselves again and again – perhaps a better editor was needed. But its ideas and politics are messy, too, and while there are some great concepts buried within these 900 pages, Murakami ultimately prefers to obfuscate them with unnecessary post-modern trickery that was old thirty years ago when he repeated it in his earlier novels. I wonder if the title “magnum opus” is being used because it’s so freaking long? Of course, it has everything one expects to find in a Murakami novel, but that’s about it. 1Q84 doesn’t bring anything new or fresh to the table, particularly in the Haruki Murakami canon.