Papillon by Henri Charrière – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘An immediate sensation upon its publication in 1969, Papillon is a vivid memoir of brutal penal colonies, daring prison breaks and heroic adventure on shark-infested seas.Condemned for a murder he did not commit, Henri Charriere, nicknamed Papillon, was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break for freedom, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat. He was recaptured and put into solitary confinement but his spirit remained untamed: over thirteen years he made nine incredible escapes, including from the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island.’

Note: I read this book in French

Afin de lire mon avis en français, cliquez ici

Papillon is an autobiographical book from Henri Charrière, who was accused of a murder and was eventually sent to French Guiana, which was then a penal colony. This book recounts his incredible story, where he took up the name ‘Papillon’ (Butterfly in French) and tried to escape the colony, several times and how he reconstructed his life.

The story starts with his conviction in France during the inter-war period. He was first sent to the prison in Caen, Normandy, before being sent to French Guiana. He recounts the tough conditions under which he lived, the friendships that he had made in the prison during these times, and the steps he took to get reprieve from the miscarriage of justice. During this story, he did succeed initially to escape the colony, set up a new life with the indigenous people in an island in the Caribbean before deciding to go back to French Guiana to get his justice.

This was an incredible story that almost felt like reading a thriller novel. I am using the word ‘novel’ deliberately over here as I am not sure if the retelling by the author is entirely honest; which included me not being sure on where he was exaggerating or simply making things up. However, it was still interesting to know what was going on in French Guiana during this time and how it was used as a prison which had harsh living conditions. The political aspect was also interesting, given the French Guyanese administration backed the Vichy regime and the impact that had on his potential acquittal was interesting. The most interesting character in this whole book is for sure, that of Papillon, maybe a tad too glorified, as someone who had solutions at any given situation. The conversations he had with the priests at the church was very something I enjoyed, given that Papillon was an atheist.

The only problem I found with this book is the character of Papillon himself – even though he was unjustly condemned in France, the actions he took while in the colony were hardly honourable, which included betraying his peers, and even abandoning his wives from the indigenous islands after having impregnated them. Thus, it was difficult for me to believe that he was someone completely clean and was certainly capable of doing very bad things.

To conclude, whether we believe this book to be the whole truth or not, I still found it to be an interesting read which gave a good insight into the historic situation in French Guiana. On that note, I award the book a rating of seven on ten.

Rating – 7/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Strangers to Ourselves is a compassionate, courageous and deeply researched look at the ways we talk about and understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on conversations as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, it follows people who have found that psychiatric language has limitations when it comes to explaining who they are, or that a diagnosis, while giving their experience a name, creates a sense of a future life they wish to question or resist.

Rachel Aviv is known for her radical empathy: she excels at seeing the world through the eyes of her fellow human beings. Writing first about her own experience of being institutionalized at the age of six, she introduces, among others, a mother recovering from psychosis and rebuilding her relationship with her children; a woman who lives in healing temples in Kerala, where she is celebrated as a saint; and a young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to stop her medication because she doesn't know who she is without it.

Through startling connections, intimate testimonies and diverse cultural perspectives, Aviv opens up fresh ways of thinking about illness and the mind, in a book which is curious, transformative, and above all, profoundly human.’

Strangers to Ourselves is a book written by writer and author Rachel Aviv. The book comprises accounts of five individuals going through severe mental illnesses and there is also a personal touch from the author herself, given she herself was diagnosed with anorexia at a young age.

The book talks about the starts the book with her own story and her struggles over the years and then moves on to the story of Ray, a person who is unable to accept the failure of his business which leads him to an identity crisis and eventually, ends up suing his doctor and other mental health professionals. The next is the story of Bapu – a woman from an affluent family in India who frequently abandons her family to seek refuge in religious institutions, and has schizophrenic visions of interacting with god and the divine. The next is the story of Naomi – a woman of African descent in the US, and the impact the societal circumstances has on her, and the people around her (including the youngest of her family).

I appreciate the author trying to narrate these complex mental situations through stories of people in the real world than citing multiple research papers (I am not demeaning the latter, but it is difficult for someone to relate to them from outside the field). She also spoke of multiple approaches that were used in these situations, including taking into account cultural considerations when talking of treatment. However, there were also some very far-reaching claims, such as on the Zoroastrian community in India having ‘westernised’ too fast which led to impacts on their mental health.

On the whole, while the stories themselves were interesting, I was not sure what was the point that the author was trying to drive home. If it was that there are different mental health diagnoses which could have dire impacts on people and also their entourage, we are already aware of that. I did like the approach of the author of discussing these people as individuals than ‘medical cases’, especially the detailed interviews with people around these patients, such as the children of Bapu, the ex-partner of Naomi, etc.

While I got to know some interesting case studies, I was unsure of the title or the purpose of this book and they often had very dire conclusions given their premise. On that note, I would aware this book a rating of four on ten.

Have a nice day,
Andy

The Dissident Club by Taha Siddiqui and Hubert Maury – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up (translated from French by me):

‘In 2018, Pakistani investigative journalist Taha Siddiqui is the victim of a kidnapping and an assassination attempt. He managed to flee and take the first flight to France… What happened? What could have driven the Pakistani government, if it is indeed the Pakistani government, to do this?

Accompanied by cartoonist and scriptwriter Hubert Maury, 2014 Albert-London Prize winner Taha Siddiqui looks back on his life, from his early childhood 35 years ago, which saw him evolve from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan in a culture where comics were forbidden, practicing fundamentalist Islam and raised by a radicalised father.

Taha dreams of studying art and journalism, of independence in the midst of a rigorist family and a society of prohibitions that young people do their best to circumvent. After the shock of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and his admission to university, between Quranic school and censorship, Taha sought to emancipate himself and, with courage and determination, became an investigative journalist. But being a journalist also makes him a target.

A chronicle of childhood and adolescence, Dissident Club traces, with liberating humor, the daily life of a young man grappling with the most severe religious fundamentalisms. As uplifting as it is edifying, this book offers an indiscreet vision of Pakistan over the last thirty years, a reflection on the excesses of religious thought, and above all, one man's fight for freedom.’

Note: The English version of the book has not been released yet – to be available in 2024

Afin de lire mon avis en français,cliquez ici

The Dissident Club is an autobiographical graphic novel from the Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui, a winner of the Albert Londres prize for journalism in 2014 (a Francophone equivalent of the Pulitzer). The graphic novel has been designed by the cartoonist Hubert Maury and in this story, there are several places around the world to showcase, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and France.

Taha Siddiqui lives in exile today in France, and this graphic novel starts with his kidnapping by the gangs allegedly engaged by the Pakistani Army. From here, it goes back in time starting with his childhood in Saudi Arabia, born to a family of Pakistani immigrants to the gulf kingdom. He describes he challenges growing up in a highly conservative society like that of Saudi Arabia and even his relationship family, where his father practiced a fundamentalist version of Islam – where for example, the children of the family were not even allowed to celebrate birthdays as it was against Islam according to him. It is a story Taha growing up and through his point of view, we also see the evolution of the situation in Pakistan, including the hanging of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the successful nuclear tests performed by the country in the 90s and eventual return to dictatorship after the coup by Pervez Musharaff.

To those who are not very familiar with the situation in South Asia, but are still interested to know about it, this book could be an ideal place start, as with the story of Taha, you also have a brief summary of Pakistani politics from 80s to present, its relations with its neighbours, etc. In the western world, we have a tendency to group countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, etc. as ‘Muslim countries’ with a homogeneous identity even though the situation in those countries are totally different – like for example, how Taha felt a lot more independent in the book upon his move to Pakistan, given at the end of the day, Pakistani society is less conservative than that of Saudi Arabia.

With that said, I enjoyed it further since I grew in a neighbouring country and also someone, who has been interested in politics since I was young. To start with, to understand the personal situation of the author, one needs to understand that the Pakistani military establishment is very powerful, and for a journalist or any individual to question their actions is done at a great personal risk – like what was done by the author of the book. One more aspect, which I learnt and was rather shocked by, was the pervasive nature of radical terrorist organisation in the Pakistani society like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (recognised as a terrorist organisation by the governments of Pakistan, India, EU, US, etc.) even in privileged families like that of the author.

Even though these different names like that of Pakistani politicians and organisations are evident for someone like me given I am from that region, I am not in a position to judge how easy it is to grasp all of these for a reader who is not familiar with this region (if you have read it, please leave your comment explaining how it was for you).

I also liked the part where the relationship of the author with his family was explored – particularly his father and also his two brothers and mother. In fact, I could not help but compare the similarities with another famous French graphic novel – L’Arabe du futur by Riad Sattouf, who also grew up in Arab countries with his two brothers and a radical extremist father – where in Sattouf’s book, his father liked dictators such as Saddam Hussein and here, the authors father admired dictators of Pakistan like General Zia Ul-Haq).

The penultimate part of my review would focus on the artwork of Hubert Maury. I liked the different colours he had used to distinguish the different countries where the story was taking place – for Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and France. I also found the drawings of Karachi and Islamabad very realistic and relatable. The only factor that bothered me a little was that drawings of the younger women around Taha – there were at least three important people and they looked quite similar that at times, I had to struggle to distinguish between them.

To conclude, I would strongly recommend the graphic novel when it is released, which gives us an interesting autobiographical account and at the same time, we could skim through the politics of South Asia (Pakistan in particular). I award the graphic novel a rating of eight on ten.

Rating – 8/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

The Pyre by Perumal Murugan – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Saroja and Kumaresan are in love. After a hasty wedding, they arrive in Kumaresan's village, harboring a dangerous secret: their marriage is an inter-caste one, likely to upset the village elders should they get to know of it. Kumaresan is naively confident that all will be well. But nothing is further from the truth. Despite the strident denials of the young couple, the villagers strongly suspect that Saroja must belong to a different caste. It is only a matter of time before their suspicions harden into certainty and, outraged, they set about exacting their revenge.’

Note : I read the novel in Tamil and its French translation

The Pyre is a novel of Perumal Murugan, known for is plots that are set in rural Tamil Nadu, in India. He often talks about the difference between the lifestyle in the cities as against the countryside, the social problems, particularly ones related to caste discrimination.

In The Pyre, we have a young couple, Kumaresan and Saroja. Kumaresan is from a village, working in a soda bottling factory in the city, and while delivering these sodas, he saw Saroja and immediately falls in love with her. After a few months, they elope and marry in a temple en route to Kumaresan’s village. Ever since they settled down at the house of Kumaresan’s mother, they face problems, the first being that Saroja being from a city, is not accustomed to a village life but the latter and more important problem is that the two are not from the same caste. Thus, nobody in Kumaresan’s family or the extended family in the village accept Saroja as their daughter-in-law. That is the principal theme of the novel – would Saroja get used to her new circumstances and be accepted by Kumaresan’s family?

There are elements of the Tamil countryside which was used well by the author. For those who have been in the countryside in South Asia, it is easy to visualize the descriptions given by the author. The conflicts between Saroja and Kumaresan’s family was described in detail, including the friendship and love between Kumaresan and Saroja, given that Kumaresan was the only source of support for Saroja in the whole village. Even though the author never specified when the story ws taking place, based n certain cultural references, it was evident that it was in one of the last decades of the 20^th century.

However, that was what was missing for those who would read the translation without being familiar with Tamil culture or customs, given that the translator gave very minimal footnotes, for instance, a word like ‘thali’, it is evident for someone like me from the Tamil culture that it is a wedding jewellery, but for anyone else, it would be difficult. The author also introduced several aspects to the story, such as the relationship  between Saroja and her brother, which the character describes in detail, but this was never relevant to the plot and I did not understand why the author chose to introduce it in the first place.

It also needs to be said that those who do not like the background melancholy and the excessive suffering that the main characters – Saroja and Kumaresan go through, it would be difficult to read the book.

To conclude, it is a well written novel where I felt very much immersed in a Tamil village while reading the book. I award the book a rating of eight on ten.

Rating – 8/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Powerful, provocative and personal, King Kong Theory is a candid account of how the author of Baise-moi came to be Virginie Despentes. Drawing from personal experience, Despentes shatters received ideas about rape and prostitution, and explodes common attitudes towards sex and gender. King Kong Theory is a manifesto for a new punk feminism, reissued here in a brilliant new translation by Frank Wynne.’

Note: I read the original of the book, in French. Translations are widely available.

King Kong theory is a collection of essays written by the writer, film director and feminist activist, Virginie Despentes. In this essay, she talks of her personal experiences, when she suffered a rape aged 17, and also the understanding of the current society on various issues of women, like rape, the position of women in the household, the workplace, and how the current system helps this patriarchy, which is detrimental to women and even several average men.

She presented her arguments very well in an easy to read format. The examples that she provided were very relatable, regardless of the gender identity of the reader. I liked her essays ‘Sleep with the enemy’ and ‘Witch pornography’, where in the first, she narrates her own experiences working as a sex worker in Paris and Lyon, and how she discovered that so long as the transaction was consensual, it was both empowering and liberating, and here it was the woman taking charge and gaining independence, owing to which the society does not like this aspect.

The essays are mostly the author’s personal opinions surrounding the rights of women. Thus, it is not an academic work nor a traditional non-fiction, as there are not several citations that could support the affirmations that she had made. Maybe, if she had added those, that would have rendered these essays a lot more powerful.

Based on my experience, I strongly recommend this book and I award it a rating of eight on ten.

Rating – 8/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

Me Grandad 'ad an Elephant by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘ME GRANDAD 'AD AN ELEPHANT is the translation of Ntuppuppakko- ranendarnnu. The original Malayalam book made great impact in reading and has been translated into all major languages of India. In this book Basheer has drawn here and there for character on people he has known.’

Note: I read the French translation of the novel

Me Grandad 'ad an Elephant is one of the most well known novels of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, one of the most important figures of Malayalam literature and was also a freedom fighter against British colonialism.

The plot takes place in a village in Kerala, around a young Muslim girl named Kounnioupattoumma. Even though her family is rich, her family are also very conservative and they are illiterate. Her mother is already worried that Kounnioupattoumma is notmarried yet and she is already in her twenties. She herself is in the dark, when it comes to either knowledge, nor when it comes to knowing people, even though she was a very curious woman and used the principles of Islam to show compassion towards animals, to the point of becoming vegetarian, much to the ire of her mother. Her love for animals started when the only piece of information she ever had, was the fact that her grandfather had an elephant, which was a great source of pride for her mother. Their lives were going to change given their legal problems, and also, when they had new neighbours, who were also Muslims but progressive and educated, a great contrast compared to that of Kounnioupattoumma’s family.

The development of the character of Kounnioupattoumma was done well, how little by little, she starts to defy her domineering mother. The landscape and scenery of Kerala was also well described, the name of the village or the district where they lived was never specified but it was evident from the description of the places, the names of characters, the staple food that they cooked and consumed that it was somewhere in Kerala. The author also evoked the feeling of false pride, which kept the family and even the society at large in ignorance. With the wealth of her family, Kounnioupattoumma could have surely had better opportunities that she did. The relationship between Aïcha and Kounnioupattoumma, the first friend whom she had ever made, was also described well.

I would have liked it though, if the author had written a little more on the legal dispute that had changed the destiny of the family of Kounnioupattoumma, and equally a little on the history of the family – we knew only as much as Kounnioupattoumma, that her grandfather had an elephant, but not why they became so conservative or the choice to not be literate. At times, I felt there were issues with the translation, as when Kounnioupattoumma starts to learn to read, she learns that the first letter of the alphabet is ‘ba’ like in Arabic, but considering she was learning Malayalam, it should have been ‘a’ for vowels or ‘ka’ for consonants, but certainly not ‘ba’.

To conclude, the is a well written novel and it would interest those who are interested in reading novels that take place in other parts of the world. I award the book a rating of seven on ten.

Rating – 7/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up (from Goodreads):

‘On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a master well-digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck metre by metre, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before--not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other, and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world. But in the nearby town, where they buy provisions and take their evening break, the boy will find an irresistible diversion. The Red-Haired Woman, an alluring member of a travelling theatre company, catches his eye and seems as fascinated by him as he is by her. The young man's wildest dream will be realized, but, when in his distraction a horrible accident befalls the well-digger, the boy will flee, returning to Istanbul. Only years later will he discover whether he was in fact responsible for his master's death and who the red-headed enchantress was.’

Note: I read the French translation of this book

The Red-Haired woman is a novel of the Turkish author, the Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk. He is known for is literary works and plots that show the Turkish culture to the world. This is not like his typical novels, and has only 330 pages (in my pocket edition from Gallimard), and was also written in simple language and was thus easy to read.

The main character of the novel is Cem, a young boy in his teens from a suburb of Istanbul. His family depends on his income as his father died and he works as an apprentice to a well-digger – Mahmud, before his studies at the university. It is during this apprenticeship that he sees the red-haired woman, and he is immediately impressed by her and falls in love, despite the fact that she was as old his own mother. After several years, Cem is a very successful businessman in Istanbul in the present day, but his past was going to return to haunt him.

Orhan Pamuk used several allusions – and the two I enjoyed in particular were, one from Greek mythology, the story of Oedipus, who killed his father and the other, is from a Persian tale – the story of Rostam and Sohrab, here, a case where the father kills his son. The relationship between Cem and his master, Mahmud, was well described where even though Mahmud is very strict, he is also very caring towards Cem. As always, Pamuk described his country well, especially the poorer areas and suburbs. For a third of the novel, he kept the mystery around the red-haired woman, to the extent that as a reader, I was desperate to read her first dialogue. And it should also be noted that this was a novel easy to read and I read almost the whole novel during my journey from Paris to Brussels (which takes around 3 hours).

I did not have any major issues with the novel, maybe the narration of the final third was a bit like that of a film, and I felt that the tone was very different from the rest of the novel. Maybe, if he had written a longer novel as is usually the case Pamuk, we could have had a better written ending.

To conclude, it was a very interesting novel, one of the best that I have read this year. I read a lot of translated novels to understand other cultures and here, my favourite was the reference to the Persian tale of Rostam and Sohrab. On that note, I would award the novel a rating of eight on ten.

Rating – 8/10

Have a nice day,
Andy