Tag: MacLehose Press

Let’s do the timewarp… Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes

The year is 2011. A disoriented Adolph Hitler awakes in an abandoned lot in Berlin. Yes, that Hitler. He doesn’t know how he got there, but in 66 years he has not aged a day. Taken in by a newsagent who marvels at his uncanny resemblance to you-know-who, right down to the authentic uniform, he has to accommodate himself to a world which is alien. But accommodation is not his strong suit. What follows is a biting commentary on our modern world and, as such, it is fitting that he finds an audience for his rehashed rhetoric through TV and You-Tube. An audience that does not always interpret his “performance” as satire. After all, in his mind he is dead serious.

2015-03-25 11.23.17As you might imagine, this premise affords Timur Vermes, the German author of Look Who’s Back, an opportunity for much humour. The newly revived Hitler faces a host of curiosities  and surprising sights. He marvels at plastic bags, satellite dishes, the computer with its “internetwork” and all the residents of “dubious Aryan heritage.”

His first encounter with a modern television set is quite funny.

“To begin with I assumed that the flat, dark plate in my room must be some bizarre work of art. Then, taking into consideration its shape, I speculated that it might serve as a means of storing my shirts overnight without them creasing.”

Once a hotel maid introduces him to the secrets of the TV and its remote, he is very dismayed to find one cooking show after another. Naturally it is a waste to have such an effective tool for propaganda dedicated to such bland mediocrity. No worries though. Before long Hitler will be making his way on to the televised airwaves.

Even after more than six decades, he has not mellowed. His naivety is amusing, but his single-minded commitment to the visions, ambitions, and speeches of his past is chilling. It creates an abiding discomfort in the reader. That is, of course, the purpose, but the satire does wear a little thin over the course of the novel.

Author Timur Vermes does manage to maintain a consistent and steady voice throughout this accomplished debut. He keeps his Hitler grounded in reality, at least as he perceives it. Translator Jamie Bulloch does an excellent job of incorporating words that are most effectively kept in the original German, and in creating a realistic English slang for the younger characters. Together this all works to produce a quick, entertaining, if somewhat disturbing, read.

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015: Look Who’s Back is well crafted and provides ample food for thought. It has a strong commercial appeal which may act in its favour for a spot on the short list.

Forged by suffering: Bloodlines by Marcello Fois

“All they have is their love: Obstinate, unyielding, banal and blind.”

I am not one for family trees. My parents met and married in New York City and moved to settle in western Canada almost 3000 kms from the rest of our extended family. I have changed my own name twice, and through my unique life history I have redefined my relationship with the tree from which I have fallen. In our modern era I suspect that is not an entirely uncommon experience for many. But in Sardinia at the turn of the twentieth century, family history – a bloodline – was a critical measure of a man’s place in his community and his corner of the world.

untitledAt the heart of Bloodlines, an epic tale told with charm and affection by Italian novelist Marcello Fois, lies a love story between two orphaned souls who endure a familial version of the Divine Comedy set in the author’s native Sardinia spanning the years from 1889 to 1943. Theirs is a tale of hard times, success, joys and unbearable losses – uniting their family and tearing it apart – as modernization, world wars and fascism mould and shape the world in which they live.

Michele Angelo Chironi and Mercede Lai are both orphans. He was rescued from an orphanage by a widowed blacksmith who saw in the boy someone who might provide companionship and an apprentice to his trade, while she had been taken into domestic employment at an early age. Their first encounter, in the chapel, is love at first sight. Their union, with no history behind it, holds the promise of building a new family line, a fresh start at the dawn of a new century.

“The Chironi family was the fruit of outcasts, of two negatives combining to make a positive, in itself enough to condemn their union as a rash one.”

They bring neither money nor prestige to the union but they have a certain advantage:

“…when they looked at each other, they had no inheritance to protect and not even a story to tell; they were at the beginning of everything: he an apprentice blacksmith and she already made of iron.”

Over the years, the family enjoys apparent successes; their business thrives as the town expands and the demand for wrought iron railings increase, their family grows and they have to expand their house. No small amount of envy is felt by townsfolk who resent their lack of claim to heritage in the area, while Michele Angelo fears that God is also expressing His displeasure at their worldly success as they suffer a series of cruel loses. He feels his efforts to build a strong family history continually threatened. Is it fate? Or is it simply that life is harsh?

The fledgling Chironi bloodline is granted a chivalrous element of glory through the “discovery” of an elaborate and exciting tale of a knight and a an Inquisitor which explains the origin of the family name from De Quiròn via Kirone to Chironi. This transmutation is facilitated though a story created, told and retold by the youngest son, Luigi Ippolito, the only educated member of the family. As he regales his parents and siblings with these heroic accounts, his father sees no need to admit that his last name is accidental, acquired from the Inspector General at the orphanage where he was raised.

“Though illiterate, he knew one fact that can never be taught: that it doesn’t matter if a story is true or false; the only thing that is really important is that someone should tell it.”

At just over 200 pages, the scope of this novel is epic. The spare, crystalline language is translated with poignant beauty by Silvester Mazarella. The landscape, the art of working metal, and the many measures of love – romantic, parental, filial and forbidden – shape the storytelling. There is much sadness and heartache here, but also an acknowledgement that the pleasures of life are many and essential, even if they tend to slip to the sidelines in the favour of the pains and horrors that dominate our histories. As such Bloodlines is a testament to memory, or rather, the act of remembering: choosing to remember or refusing to accept what has happened. The characters engage closely with their dreams, their ghosts, and their imagined selves as they attempt to forge a bloodline against all odds.

International Foreign Fiction Prize 2015: I knew nothing of this book until I saw the longlist. It is a seemingly simple tale that has worked its way into my affection the more I reflect on it. I am not certain whether it will make the short list but I am glad to have been introduced to this author and his novel.