the physics of sorrow [georgi gospodinov, tr. angela rodel]

It struck me, whilst reading Gospodinov’s novel, how much of the Eastern European literature I’ve read has a blog-like quality. Where the line between fact and fiction appears to be elided. Tokarczuk’s Flights, Andrzej Stasiuk, now Gospodinov. I realise it’s hardly a comprehensive list, but all the same it felt like there was a kind of pattern emerging, even if that pattern is one shaped by the whims of translators and publishers. There’s a restlessness to the format of shorter sequences, coupled with an apparent bid to create a new taxonomy of the world, one that allows for factors which previous taxonomies had not.

Gospodinov makes no bones regarding the relationship of his thoughts to the past. There’s a generational investigation into the narrator’s second world war ancestry, thereby helping to show how the war and the Soviet invasion shaped Bulgaria. But this investigation is located within a wider investigation into the human condition, where he takes the misunderstood Minatour as a central metaphor, a monster that isn’t actually a monster, just a deviant version of a lost boy. The narrator himself, a writer hidden away in a cellar, identifies with this lost boy who is also a minatour, weaving a written thread to find his way out of the labyrinth.

In truth The Physics of Sorrow is a fragmentary read, a book you can dip in and out of, following the discursive nature of the writer’s thoughts. There are Barthesian hints of other books contained within the text. An investigation into the relationship between physics and metaphysics; a history of the Soviet bloc; an autobiography. These threads are stitched together to create a baggy, quasi-novel which perhaps is at its strongest in the way it reveals the formation and spectrum of the post-communist psyche. 

mumbai to mecca [ilija trojanow]

Ilija Trojanow offers a rare insight into the hajj. The hajj is the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Only Muslims are allowed into Mecca, so an experience that is protean to the lives of millions of the world’s population remains scarcely documented in “western” literature. Trojanow offers a pared down account. There are no literary frills. It’s almost as though the writer is aware of an obligation to recount as plainly as possible an experience which he knows much of his readerhood will never be able to share. The emphasis is on a disciplined, sober detailing of the process. There are moments of near-hysteria: an account of being nearly crushed underfoot by the mass of pilgrims suddenly lends the text a more threatening edge. However, for understandable reasons, the book resists any instinct towards hyperbole. Instead it recounts the stages of the hajj, offering vivid accounts of some of his fellow pilgrims who have arrived from all corners of the world. Trojanow helps to demystify Islam. His voice is a valuable, measured bridge between cultures which sometimes seem like they are worlds apart.

the lamentations of zeno [ilija trojanow]

When’s it all going to end? Sooner than we might expect if you take note of some of the more recent data concerning the fate of the planet. Trojanow’s South Atlantic novel is a breezy, enjoyable read despite the fact it happens to be addressing the minor issue of the end of the world. The narrator is Zeno, an expert on glacial scientist. Zeno is devastated by the demise of his Alpine glaciers, a process which appears to have gone hand in hand with the demise of his marriage. He takes refuge in becoming a lecturer-expert on one of those expensive cruises which takes rich people to look at icebergs, penguins and the effects of global warming at the South Pole. Trojanow captures the beauty and cruelty of the South, as the ship visits The Falklands before heading towards Antarctica. The novel blends surrealism with science, as it seeks to convey the gravity of the world’s fate through the voice of its disillusioned narrator. Zeno’s frustration with the world’s idiocy and his burning desire to keep Antarctica as the last pristine place on earth boils over when he gets into a scuffle with a smoking Chilean soldier. In spite of his misanthropy, Zeno is an engaging host; if anything the book’s jovial tone sometimes seems to work against the seriousness of its content.