Tag Archives: Death
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley
At 91, Ptolemy Grey is “waiting to finally be a man.” as he writes in his last letter, addressed to his young charge and heir Robyn. The novel begins backwards with an “Afterward” that summarizes the whole of Ptolemy’s nine-decades-plus, but to understand why he’s sitting there “with a pistol under the cushion and a gold doubloon on the kitchen table,” you’ll have to unravel the almost-300 pages (or eight hours if you’re listening) that follow.
Ptolemy has dementia. He lives alone in an apartment in Los Angeles so cluttered (filthy and bug-infested, too) that he can’t use his own bedroom, and even worse his own bathroom. His only regular human contact has been with his grandnephew Reggie who used to come take care of him. Now Reggie’s dead, gunned down on a friend’s front steps.
At Reggie’s funeral, Ptolemy meets 17-year-old Robyn, an orphan living with his niece, who shows up at his front door and offers her company and help. Suspicious at first, Ptolemy allows Robyn to clear the detritus from his apartment (not to mention his heart and soul). They quickly become inseparable, their unlikely relationship settling somewhere between parent and child, and impossible lovers.
When Ptolemy is offered a chance to take an experimental drug that will give him temporary clarity, he grabs the opportunity to finally make sense – and peace – with the ghosts of his frightened past: his mentor Coydog who was brutally murdered, his beloved wife Sensia who continually broke his heart, the neighborhood addict Melinda who demands his money, and finally, to find out what happened to his grandnephew Reggie. Ptolemy’s memories can’t be separated from almost a century of destructive, racially-charged history brought so sharply into focus so you can’t look away. Ptolemy’s reprieve is brief, but ignorance is no longer an option for the reader …
Confession: This is the first book by the prolific Walter Mosley that I’ve ever finished; I didn’t actually read it myself – narrator Dominic Hoffman conjured the story in his smooth, inviting voice. I admit to the possibility I might not have reached the end this time, either – Ptolemy’s sudden backroom access to the experimental drugs is not particularly convincing, Ptolemy’s hazy insistence he’s made a deal with the Devil seems tiresomely derivative, Reggie’s murderer is so obvious you really wonder why Ptolemy needs fatal hallucinogens to figure that out, and the just-on-the-edge-of-skeezy reminders of the relationship between Ptolemy and a teenager young enough to be his great-great(!!)-granddaughter gets to be a bit much.
But, finish I had to because Ptolemy Grey turned out to be part of a tremendously insightful look into Alzheimer’s. And getting on in years, I needed the education. [Thanks again to my poet friend, who is famous for her writings on her own mother’s battle with the debilitating illness, most notably her Dementia Blog.]
If you choose to partake (and well you should if the topic is of interest – or a necessity? – to you), here’s the recommended path: Start with Alice LaPlante’s unforgettable Turn of Mind, then get yourself to a screening of the spectacular film A Separation, then check out the NPR report about a skin cancer drug that is working wonders on mice with Alzheimer’s. Then, and only then, pick up The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey … sometimes, timing really is everything.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, African American
Voice of a Dream by Glaydah Namukasa
Nanfuka wants nothing more than to finish her education and become a nurse – the first in her village. While still a child herself, the teenager is suddenly forced to leave school and thrust into adult responsibilities when she is called home as her father dies from AIDS. With her mother missing, Nanfuka is now in charge of her four younger siblings, including a baby sister with AIDS who is clearly wasting away.
Her paternal Aunt Naka is only too ready to marry Nanfuka off to the highest bidder, send the other children away, and sell the family’s land. Her neighbors, too, seem to want to see Nanfuka fail, taunting her with her own dreams of accomplishment. Thankfully, Nanfuka has other allies, including Nurse Kina from school who offers encouraging solutions, and even the school lothario Sendi who changes his cowboy swagger and proves himself worthy of Nanfuka’s friendship.
With resilience, Nanfuka manages to maintain her independence while keeping her family together. The deus ex machina ending gives the story an almost fairytale unreality, although Nanfuka will surely continue to face future challenges in achieving her determined dream.
Ugandan writer Glaydah Namukasa won the Senior Award in the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa in 2006 for Dream. Just 25 when her slim novel was chosen, Namukasa’s youth is clearly evident in her plain and blunt writing, although it also exhibits a naïve freshness. Her literary journey is certainly one to watch.
Tidbit: When U.K.-based international publishing mega-giant Macmillan closed its African operations in 2011 after paying £11.2M in fines over fraud, the annual Writer’s Prize for Africa, as well as other programs supporting African education and literature in East and West Africa, disappeared. With diminishing access and opportunities for African writers to connect with international audiences, organizations such as FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers’ Association to which writers like Namukasa belong, and honors such as The Caine Prize for African Writing, will hopefully continue to grow in prominence and reach.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2006 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, African
The Gemma Doyle Trilogy: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
Here’s a dilemma: If you knew how much a book series might deteriorate by its final title, would you read all the way through to the bitter end? As contrary as I am, I probably would … but I have to admit that in the case of this Gemma Doyle three-parter by mega-bestselling author Libba Bray, had I known that the first installment’s title ironically proves to be a fitting warning – A Great and Terrible Beauty, as in the series goes from great to downright terrible – I would definitely have moved on to better pages. And yet, almost 2000 pages (or 46 hours if you’ve gone audible), here I am …
Let’s start with ‘great.’ On her 16th birthday, Gemma Doyle, the daughter of an English family based in India, has a fight with her mother. She runs off into a Bombay market, then has a violent vision of her mother’s death – by her own hand – which proves to be true. The family abandons India, and Gemma is shipped off to Spence Academy outside London, where Gemma will learn “the necessary skills to become [one of] England’s future wives and mothers, hostesses and bearers of the Empire’s feminine traditions.” This is 1895 Victorian England, after all …
Initially an outcast, Gemma bonds soon enough with her mousy roommate Ann, alpha girl Felicity, and the ever-gorgeous Pippa. She discovers a quarter-century old diary of a former Spence girl which eventually lead the girls into other-world adventures in “the realms,” where they learn about the ancient Order and feel the looming threat of the evil – but missing – Circe. More often than not, Gemma finds herself fantasizing about handsome Kartik, who somehow shadowed her all the way from India, who’s part of a venerable all-male secret society charged with protecting the Order. Beauty turns out to be a big mystery, with lots of fantasy adventure, a bit of romance, enough literary allusions to make English teachers pat themselves on the back, and, of course, plenty of coming-of-age angst in a rather corseted society – think Victorian mean girls with a vengeance.
Then comes Rebel Angels, and the excitement of the new begins to tarnish. The girls’ otherworld adventures continue as they struggle with the responsibility of their new knowledge, although their biggest challenge seems to be curb their own shallow demands: Gemma wavers between strength and stupidity with an alarming regularity, Ann really needs to get a backbone, Felicity’s obsession with power fuels too many tantrums, and Pippa – who got stuck in the realms in Book 1 trying to escape a bad marriage – worries even more about her beauty now that she’s dead. Right. In between their catty fights, their family dysfunctions, and too many forays into self-indulgence, they do eventually manage to come face-to-face with Circe and finish her off. They hope.
Now brace yourself for ‘terrible’: Far Thing is over 800 pages of convoluted plotting – think insane asylum patients and debutantes, caped marauders, factory girls burnt to death, American Jews on and off the stage, talking trees, too many undead to count (including a certain Circe all washed up!), and so much more, whooo hoooo! The self-absorbed whining hits a fervent droning pitch; Ann’s self-pity, Felicity’s powerlust, Pippa’s histrionics are cringe-inducing enough, but Gemma’s sudden talent for making one moronic mistake after another renders her utterly unbelievable.
How such a memorable start can devolve to such simpering dribble is disappointment indeed. Most appalling throughout is realizing that these girls are either too stupid – or worse, that unfeeling– to bestow a moment of their selfish magic to save a little girl who is being incestuously abused by the monster guardian who did the same to his now teenage daughter.
Dwindling entertainment value aside, Bray wastes countless opportunities to explore issues of gender, sexuality, and rigid social class with any semblance of depth. She introduces such subjects as if showing off, but neglects responsible follow-through: quoting an abusive father’s dismissal of Oscar Wilde, for example, is a clever way to comment on the social mores of the time on homosexuality, but hardly enough when she finally reveals a tortured lesbian relationship.
Final word of advice: If you feel you must read the full series (sometimes we need to know what’s being peddled to our children), choose at least the audible version, expertly read by British ex-pat Josephine Bailey with just enough control and dignity to reign in her over-excitable Victorian charges … even as they turn into caricatures on the page, Bailey’s nuanced voice imbues them with a semblance of saving grace. Great and terrible indeed!
Readers: Young Adult
Published: 2003, 2006, 2007 Continue reading
Filed under ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, British, Nonethnic-specific
Waiting: A Novel of Uganda at War by Goretti Kyomuhendo, afterword by M.J. Daymond
Still a young teenager, Alinda knows only too well the potential horrors of war … and yet her immediate family has, thus far, managed to miraculously remain intact and relatively safe. In 1979, the reign of Idi Amin – the internationally infamous Ugandan despot responsible for the extermination of some half a million people – is nearly ended, and yet citizens are not safe from the continuing violence brought by terrorizing soldiers and wandering “Liberators.”
Even in their remote village, the gunshots are never far enough; every night, Alinda’s extended family and neighbors gather to sleep away from their homes, on the edge of the banana plantation. Everything of value has been buried in pits, hopefully a safe distance from their houses. In spite of the looming danger, Kaaka, the grandmotherly family servant, claims herself too old to bother to seek nightly safety. Then Alinda’s mother, heavily pregnant and about to give birth, refuses to go to the sleeping place, as well.
Day after day, night after night, the villagers wait. Bullets, then a landmine, too soon shatter the village peace. When the “Liberators” – relatively peaceful, yet very hungry – arrive in droves, Alinda’s brother becomes fascinated with the peripatetic heroes, while her best friend and younger sister can’t seem to stay away from their makeshift tents. Meanwhile the adults worry about their depleted granaries … and the growing uncertainty of all their futures.
Goretti Kyomuhendo is a multi-award winning novelist in her native Uganda. Waiting, her first title to be published in the U.S. (from the lauded academic indie publisher Feminist Press), is not so much a story well-told as it is a sensitive meditation particularly focused on the effects of conflict and war on women. As the oldest daughter, Alinda must think first about her caregiver duties over her desire to return to school. The single mother Nyinabarongo and her young daughter are throwaway cast-offs from her husband and his family. The never-named “Lendu woman,” whose husband often travels, is shunned as a foreigner and labelled a witch for her healing herbs. The many wives of Alinda’s Uncle Kembo – depending on his interchangeable religious affiliation – seem to be little more than equally interchangeable bedmates for convenience and comfort.
Kyomuhendo is unblinking in her characterizations of Ugandan women in crisis … and yet what is steadfastly imprinted by book’s end is the women’s determination to survive and even flourish in circumstances dire, tragic, and often unimaginable.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2007 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, African
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
As Janie weeps over her first-ever separation from her mother, who is about to give birth, her grandmother admonishes her with the grave responsibility Janie must bear for her new sibling. “In our family … a sister always dies,” her grandmother warns, sharing the horrific tale of her own infant sister’s death during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
Two decades later, living Stateside, Janie’s family is in crisis: sister Hannah has severed family ties, while their father faces terminal cancer. Seeking the latest treatments, her parents return to Korea, charging Janie with bringing Hannah back. The sisters’ devastating confrontation sends Janie alone to rejoin her parents and extended family, each scarred by the terrifying legacy of colonial occupation, war, dangerous politics, and a fractured country.
Verdict: No argument that the prize-winning Chung writes elegiac, exquisite, multilayered prose, yet her debut ultimately falters between too much (self-absorption overload, cousin Gabe’s death, sleazy adviser) and not enough (Hannah’s disappearance, her uncle’s silence). For greater satisfaction, readers might try Sonya Chung‘s Long for This World or Chang-rae Lee‘s The Surrendered.
Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, February 1, 2012
Readers: Adult
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Korean American
Genkaku Picasso (vols. 2-3) by Usamaru Furuya, translated by John Werry
Doh! For some reason, I had no idea the other-worldly adventures of the Picasso/Chiaki dynamic duo [pocket-angel Chiaki directs the surviving Picasso towards doing good deeds for his fellow students] was a trilogy. I figured on a few more years of diving into secret sketches since high school lasts at least that long. Alas, we’re lucky to get even three installments because, according to creator Usamaru Furuya in his “Afterword” at series end, “This story was planned to end after eight issues [in serialized format], or two volumes, but I wouldn’t have been able to pull it all together that way, so I got to do three volumes.” He adds, “Each volume is thick, though, so it’s more like there are four! Each one’s a good value! Ha ha ha!”
Those valuable life-saving exploits in volume 2 include relieving the school’s star pitcher’s competitive angst disguised as girl problems, getting over debilitating mean-girl trauma leftover from an early age, revealing one’s true self regardless of outward appearances, and holding on to dreams even when the Simon Cowell-wannabes try to shatter your soul.
In volume 3, Picasso comes to the rescue of a former classmate who dropped out because his’ loving’ Tiger Mother whittled him down to almost nothing (parents take note, ahem), then saves a friend feeling betrayed by unrequited love from making a dangerous mistake.
Then (finally) in the second half of volume 3, it’s Picasso’s turn for some revealing sketches. Picasso’s closer friends finally begin to wonder how he knows so much about their lives. Questions, then accusations fly, sending Picasso off on a soul-search of his own … and Chiaki must guide him through one more challenging adventure. Jaded old reader that I am, I confess to getting completely blurry over the last 20 pages …
Tidbit: Hopefully this post comes just in time to be part of the Usamaru Furuya Manga Moveable Feast which ends today. I didn’t know such a fabulous effort existed until I posted Furuya’s No Longer Human (vols. 1-2) [markedly different from his Genkaku trilogy, by the way], which serendipitously got included in said Feast’s Archive. The Furuya Feast, hosted by fellow manga addict Ash Brown of Experiments in Manga, is just the latest in the Manga Moveable Feast [MMF] series founded by Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic in February 2010. To learn more about MMF, click here. Luddite that I am, I’m joining in a little late, but the adage ‘better late than never’ sure applies here! What an inspiring manga community I’ve stumbled into … addicts unite!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2011 (United States)
GENKAKU PICASSO © Usamaru Furuya
Original Japanese edition published by Shueisha Inc. Continue reading
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Remember the title of Katherine Boo’s new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, because you will see it on upcoming nominee lists for the next round of Very Important Literary Prizes. That Boo won the Pulitzer in 2000, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2002, became a staff writer for The New Yorker in 2003 (contributor since 2001) after 10 years with The Washington Post, and is just now publishing her debut title, will guarantee media coverage. That Beautiful is an unforgettable true story, meticulously researched with unblinking honesty, will make Boo’s next awards well-deserved.
From November 2007 to March 2011, Boo became a regular fixture in Annawadi, “the sumpy plug of slum” next to the constantly-modernizing international Mumbai airport, and home to 3,000 inhabitants “packed into, or on top of 355 huts.” Settled in 1991 by Tamil Nadu laborers from southern India hired to repair an airport runway, 21st-century Annawadi sits “where New India collided with old India and made new India late.” Encircling Annawadi are “five extravagant hotels,” luxurious evidence of India’s growing global presence: “’Everything around us is roses,’” describes an Annawadian, “’And we’re the sh*t in between.’” In this fetid microcosm, everyday dramas range from petty jealousies to explosive violence fueled by religion, caste, and gender.
At the center of Boo’s story is garbage trafficker Abdul, the oldest son and prime earner of the 11-member Husain family who comprise almost one-third of Annawadi’s three-dozen Muslim population. Thoughtful, quiet Abdul, who is 16 or 19 – “his parents were hopeless with dates” – his ill father, and his older sister stand accused of beating their crippled neighbor One Leg and setting her on fire. For three years, the family is victimized by a labyrinthine legal system controlled by open palms constantly demanding payment.
Life continues in Annawadi: Asha, a lowly-paid kindergarten teacher, works her growing political connections toward escaping the slum, determined her daughter Manju will become Annawadi’s first college graduate. Manju’s best friend Meena wants something more than to be a trapped, arranged teenage bride: “Everything on television announced a new and better India for women,” but “marrying into a village family was like time-traveling backward.”
The toilet cleaner Mr. Kamble is literally dying to raise enough money for a new heart valve so he can continue to shovel sewage and feed his family. The tiny scavenger-turned-thief Sunil (first introduced to Western readers in Boo’s February 2009 New Yorker article) worries that he will remain forever stunted, but at least he’s not a “baldie” like his taller, younger sister whose rat bites have become “boils [that] erupted with worms.” Meanwhile, thieving Kalu recreates the latest Bollywood films with his talented impersonations, entertaining slum kids who will never witness such marvels themselves.
Mumbai, for its marvelous rebirth, remains the largest city in an India that, in spite of being “an increasingly affluent and powerful nation … still housed one-third of the poverty, and one-quarter of the hunger, on the planet.” With the wealth of India’s top 100-richest equaling almost a quarter of the country’s GDP, today’s gap between top and bottom is virtually unfathomable.
Having built her lauded career on capturing the experiences of those living in some of America’s poorest communities, Boo moves “beyond [her] so-called expertise” to her husband’s country of origin, ready to “compensate for my limitations the same way I do in unfamiliar American territory: by time spent, attention paid, documentation secured, accounts cross-checked.” Once the Annawadians accepted the novelty of her foreign presence, “they went more or less about their business as I chronicled their lives” on the page, on film, on audiotape, in photos.
Throughout such careful documentation, the one element missing – very much to her credit – is Boo herself. Beautiful is by no means a personal memoir; it is not a socioeconomic study on poverty, nor a political treatise on widespread corruption. Beautiful is pure, astonishing reportage with as unbiased a lens as possible about specific individuals who populate a clearly demarcated section of ever-changing Mumbai.
The details of Boo’s process – with a glimpse into her experiences – are added in the “Author’s Note” at book’s end. Further details about Boo follow in “A Conversation with Katherine Boo” conducted by Random House power editor Kate Medina. Before ever “meeting” Kate Boo, readers thoroughly experience Annawadi with Abdul, One Leg, Manju, Sunil, and so many memorable others. Boo’s presence as the silent reporter remains so discreet throughout that she virtually disappears as you journey deeper and deeper, unable to turn away.
Review: Christian Science Monitor, January 26, 2012
Readers: Adult
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Nonfiction, Indian, Nonethnic-specific
No Longer Human (vols. 1-2) by Usamaru Furuya, based on the novel by Osamu Dazai, translated by Allison Markin Powell
What does it take to update a 60+-year-old story? In the case of Usamaru Furuya’s 21st-century manga adaptation of the literary classic Ningen Shikkaku, a semi-autobiographical novel by Dazai Osamu (published in 1948 in Japan, translated into English as No Longer Human in 1958), an updated wardrobe and the requisite techno-gadgets seem to be all that was needed to create a thoroughly contemporary tale of hedonistic decadence and human disconnect.
From what I remember of reading Ningen in the original in grad school (no, I couldn’t do it now in my old age), Furuya closely follows Dazai’s narrative, even using original Japanese passages (with English translations on the facing page) to begin his chapters. In addition to the contemporary facelift, Furuya also ups the graphic factor – a whole lot of ‘show’ going on, so parents BEWARE: this is most definitely NOT a kiddie cartoon in content or execution.
Told as a story within a story, a manga artist named Usamaru Furuya (surprise!) stumbles on an online “‘ouch’ diary” written by a mysterious young man, Yozo Oba. Three photos show Oba at ages 6, 17, and 25. The transformation from young child to handsome teenager to decrepit old man in such a short time is so startling that Furuya must find out why.
“I’ve lived a life full of shame,” volume 1 begins. Oba, the privileged, handsome son of wealthy parents, gets through life playing the clown. Everyone seems to like him, and yet no one really knows him. In art school, he meets fellow student Horiki, who quickly introduces him to smoking, drinking, and women. He gets embroiled with an anti-American, anti-capitalist student group, misses too much school, and is cut off from further parental funding. His meaningless drifting leads him to a deserted beach with a young woman who sports a butterfly tattoo …
Volume 2 finds Oba in a hospital room, then jail. He’s released to live with one of his father’s former minions who controls his every move. Oba eventually escapes, and learns to prey on lonely women to support him – from a single mother to an older bar owner, he seems to have a magnetic effect on the opposite sex, even as he remains emotionally immune and desperately detached. Until, of course, he meets a sweet, innocent young woman …
The original Dazai novel is split into three manga volumes, with the final installment ironically scheduled for Valentine’s Day. In spite of how Volume 2 seems to end, these titles certainly should NOT be nestled in between the chocolate and roses. Hallmark sentiments aside, however, Dazai’s story in any genre is ultimately a sobering reminder to ‘reach out and touch someone’ – without a mask, without an agenda, without expectations, just an honest, heartfelt human touch.
Readers: Young Adult (with caution), Adult
Published: 2011 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Translation, Japanese
Irena’s Jars of Secrets by Marcia Vaughan, illustrated by Ron Mazellan
On his deathbed, Irena Sendler‘s father taught her the lesson that would guide her life. At age 7, she internalized his dying words: “… if she ever saw someone drowning, she must jump in and try to save that person, even if she could not swim.” By 1940, Hitler had ravaged Poland and 400,000 Jews were corralled into the Warsaw Ghetto. Sendler, a Catholic social worker, realized “The Jewish people are drowning“; she donned a nurse’s uniform and talked her way into the “nightmare” ghetto, providing food, clothing, and medicine as best as she could.
In 1942 when the Nazis began the mass removal of Warsaw Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp, Sendler joined the underground resistance organization Zegota and became the head of the children’s section. She helped smuggle the youngest victims out of the ghetto, and provided each with false identity documents before sending them to orphanages, convents, and non-Jewish foster homes. In the havoc and panic – not to mention the extreme danger – Sendler had the foresight to keep careful records of each child’s true and false information so that each might be reunited with their families after the war. Those records she buried in jars under an apple tree in a friend’s garden.
Sendler miraculously survived the war, including being captured and tortured. She returned to the garden, and dug up the names of some 2,500 children she had helped to save …
In 2007 when Sendler was reported to have been nominated (a closed, secret process) for the Nobel Peace Prize (Al Gore won that year to the very public disappointment of the International Federation of Social Workers), people saw her photo in newspapers and began to call: “‘I remember your face … It was you who took me out of the ghetto.’” In her final years (she lived to be 98!), Sendler’s caretaker was a woman who had been a Warsaw Ghetto baby carried out in a carpenter’s box under a load of bricks.
Discovering new heroes is surely one of the very best gifts of the holiday season. Author Marcia Vaughan’s words presented just right for younger readers, together with Ron Mazellan‘s deeply textured illustrations, offer a gentle way to share this courageous story with your ready readers, to inspire and teach them how a single, determined person can indeed save the lives of thousands.
Readers: Children, Middle Grade
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, translated by Michael Hofmann
In early 1940s wartime Berlin, an official letter arrives for Otto and Anna Quangel with the unbearable news that their only son is dead. Anna immediately rejects “‘those common lies … [t]hat he died a hero’s death for Führer and Fatherland’” – and in that instant, the Quangels’ lives are changed forever. Their overwhelming grief will eventually manifest into brave acts of civil disobedience that will both provide the couple a reason to live, but also lead to violent death.
Otto, a quiet factory foreman bewildered by the growing inhumanity all around him, realizes he can’t overthrow the Nazi regime alone, but he can – and will – protest in his own small way. “Mother! The Führer has murdered my son,” his first postcard screams. And, as a petrified Anna bears witness and waits, Otto drops the traitorous card in the stairwell of a public building and walks away. His fervent hope – that his message will resonate, protests might multiply and, sooner than later, topple the evil Führer forever.
Over the two years that Otto and Anna secretly continue their postcard-protests, life devolves into terror. While some neighbors become brutally abusive Nazis, others hope to save the persecuted. Still others are willing to bargain, bribe, betray their friends and colleagues without a second thought. For far too many, survival during one of the worst periods of history comes at too high a price.
As stunningly epic as this novel is, the story surrounding its publication is equally striking, and is included in a 30 page-appendix at book’s end. Otto and Anna are based on the real lives of Otto and Elise Hampel, whose official Gestapo file – complete with police reports, signed statements, photos, and even some of the notorious postcards – was given to Hans Fallada, post-war, by a well-connected friend.
Hans Fallada was a pseudonym (taken from two Grimm’s Fairy Tales, “Hans in Luck” and “The Goose Girl” which features a horse named Falada) for prolific German writer Rudolf Ditzen. His troubled personal history included unintended murder, insane asylums, drug and alcohol addiction, and imprisonment. He wrote Every Man in just 24 days, but did not live to see the book published in 1947. It was then one of the first anti-Nazi titles ever. Another six decades-plus passed before it was translated into English, in 2009, when it became an unexpected international bestselling phenomenon thanks to the renegade indie publisher Melville House.
Yes, the novel is an agonizing record of the failure of humanity … but it also proves to be a necessary reminder that among the masses are always, always, the heroes who somehow have the unwavering strength to just say ‘no.’
Readers: Adult
Published: 1947 (Germany); 2009 (United States; in the United Kingdom as Alone in Berlin) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Translation, European
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