War Posts

Interview with Cypriot writer Hari Spanou

(C) EU

This interview is facilitated by EUPL and funded by the European Union. 

I am posting snippets of my correspondence with Hari as it would give readers an insight into how she crafts her writing.

It has taken me a while to respond as I kept having to return to them over and over again. You write from a point of being deeply immersed in Cypriot history. But it is much more than that. It is almost as if writing The Outpost was essential to address some internal questions that you had. Or perhaps conversations and experiences that you had had and needed to get them out into the open. While doing so, get a sense of the shape and form these long suppressed memories, conversations heard, whispers in families etc. It is almost as if it borders on your fundamental duty and responsibility to leave some kind of documentation of those years.

After reading your words, I realised how little I knew about the history of Cyprus. So, I spent a while reading about your country on the Internet. And every time I gathered some information, I went back to your text from the start. It was only after I had learned a fair bit or at least understood the broad markers of modern history, that I finally began to understand the contours of The Outpost. Till then, it was bewildering. I could not understand the perspectives or where was one to begin reading. Was it at the very beginning or could I start from the middle and then return to the beginning of the document.

Dear Jaya,

I thank you warmly for going into so much trouble to learn enough about the historical context and background of Cyprus in order to make sense of The Outpost!  My mind is full of thoughts, an almost unavoidable consequence of studying your interesting questions!

****

Born in Cyprus, in 1964, Hari Spanou graduated from the Pancyprian Gymnasium and studied Medicine in Thessaloniki. She works as a physician in Nicosia. From early on her vivid imagination was coupled with writing — she published poems, articles and short stories in literary magazines and newspapers in Cyprus and Greece – she lives in her mind equally as in “reality”. She contemplates that laborious observation, exploring, even imagination is common both in Medicine and Literature; an attempt to comprehend the human condition. She published her first book of fiction Session I – The Dwelling – The Stranger in 2015. It was shortlisted for the Shorts stories and Novella State award. This was followed by a novella Territorial Conditions in 2018 and a novel The Outpost in 2022.  The Outpost was chosen by the Cyprus PEN to represent the country at the EUPL in 2023, where it won a special mention. Her novel is currently being translated into Serbian by the Treći Trg.

**** 

Q1. How do you choose your topics to write upon?

I think that the topics choose me, in the sense that I don’t have an outline of a story and start to write. Whenever I tried to do that, and I have tried it three or four times, once I start to write, the story takes its own course, which is totally different from what I had planned or sketched on a big cardboard using different coloured pens. What seems to happen is I start off with something which persistently nags my mind: a scene or a move or a person, which or whom I cannot see clearly. And then, it’s as if writing creates some motion, like the movement of a semitransparent curtain, gradually the forms become more visible, I can imagine a waiter moving towards a young lady sitting outside in a café watching the pigeons feed off a plate left on a nearby table. Thus, the story starts to unfold and then I can try to fit in a dialogue about something that interests me. Sometimes it doesn’t fit at all, like a piece of a puzzle which looks right but isn’t right. I have learned that forcing a piece to fit is not wise. For example, trying to force a fictional character to do what I have in mind, doesn’t always work, sometimes it does but not always. That “resistance” forces me to move in another direction, perhaps bring in another character or make an earthquake happen. Of course, this semi dark cave, that is my mind or any writer’s mind contains some known ideas and many more potential seeds and some deeper cavities which seem completely off bounds. It’s like a game of hide and seek with one’s self. Until now, every time I start off to write a story it becomes an adventure.

Q2. Do you write to be read or do you write to read what you wish to read? 

Actually, I think neither of these two suppositions describes the motive behind my writing. Writing is like an attempt to learn or to approach a particular “unknown” dark box and find out what is hidden in it or what you can invent to hide in it. It feels like a quest or a journey. I publish what I write if I can imagine someone else becoming interested in this journal of the journey.

Q3. How do you write about a war that is in the past when our present times are engulfed in continual conflicts? How do you hear yourself think? 

Let me start with the second part of your question because I think it addresses a very core issue, and by this, I mean the poetics of writing. The analogy that comes to mind is childish, in the literary sense: I imagine the writer like a toddler who has acquired some skills – has formed a “self” but at the same time is overwhelmed by all kinds of stimuli; he perceives impulses from the self (mind and body), the outside world and the world of dreams – the writer like the toddler tries to “weave” all these, to make some sense, to overcome the chaos and create a structure. I presume this is the way that I hear myself think. Consequently, having all this in mind, I would address the first part of your question: this complex dialogue that takes place inside my writer’s mind, between the past and the present gives birth to a “structure”, a “story”.

Q4. How do you speak to individuals who are living in this “post-modernist world”, each one living in his/her own bubble? How do you create that bridge of communication with the younger generation? Has technology impacted the creation of modern literature?

I find myself having different attitudes, which are most probably affected by various factors. Breaking one’s bubble seems to me to be an innate human need. And by that, I mean interact with the environment: people, sentiments, animals, trees, the sky, the universe, ideas, Art. Break free. At the same time, I realize the human need to isolate to search and concentrate on oneself, heal from the trauma of being exposed in the world or focus on a particular matter. What bothers me is doing nothing or being in a state of inertia or being uninterested in anything. I wonder, sometimes, when I fail to communicate with younger people even on a basic level, what goes on in their mind. Sometimes I try to shock or amaze them by showing the unknown, the beauty or the complexity of the world outside. What we, elders, mostly fail to do though, is dare to remove their headphones and their phones for a few days; it seems as if we are, in a way, convinced that it is a deprivation of something vital, like food and water, or shelter or freedom. And that says something about us, the generation, which created the technology which our children and youngsters use.

Creating bridges presupposes that the both sides want to meet, in some way or another. I mean historically bridges were built to be able to move easily from one side of a river or a mountain to another, or because the left bank people were curious to find out, what they saw or imagined would be on the right bank of a river or a mountain.

If we have reached a point in human history at which we have managed to kill the need for human connection, the motive to learn, to create, or the move towards Freedom, which drives towards Rebellion against the Force which enslaves us, then I think what we consider Human history has ended. Whatever follows, will be something else. And I’m not getting signs that it will be better…

Your question about the creation of Modern Literature is interesting but I’m afraid I don’t have anything original to say because I have not read or thought enough on the topic.

Q5. What is the importance of literature? The conversations in The Outpost regarding conflict resolution and separation vs occupation and much else indicate the sensitivity that one needs to employ while using words. Has the English translation been able to accommodate the vocabulary and the sentiments that you wanted to convey in the original language, Greek? What is the significance of creating Art? 

Literature is (alongside Philosophy), I have come to think, one of the best means to learn what humanity thinks, what it imagines and what questions it poses to its self. I think manages to do that more inclusively than Science can.

The question about the words one employs to convey meanings is extremely important. I suppose we can agree that every language is not the same, not in the sense that there are richer and poorer languages but because at each historical phase, language carries the burden of the particular role of the people who use it. This becomes more evident in the language Government agencies and newspapers and the media use in different areas of the world. But it also permeates other forms of language like Literature. I think that the English translation of certain passages could be improved, but it was done for the use by the EUPL jury, so there was not any communication between writer and translator.

Hm, the significance of Art! I think that the best way to find the answer to this question is walk through a museum or a prehistoric site and study the artifacts which humans have created at the dawn of civilization.

Q6. In India, there are writers who may know more than one language, but will choose to write in English. Mostly because they think it gives them access to a larger market of readers. You speak English fluently, at least in the interviews that I have heard, so why do you choose to write only in Greek? 

This particular question has generated multiple thoughts in my mind on various different levels, political and historical not excluded. I feel that I have a long way to go, but let me be candid and share my thoughts as they are at present. Besides sharing a colonial past, India and Cyprus are in many ways completely different; India is vast and rich in resources, a subcontinent, Cyprus is a miniature semi-occupied island one can barely find on the map. However, it’s an ongoing enigma to me that English, besides being today’s lingua Franca, is still in practice an “official” language in India, its everyday use is extensive and so many newspapers and books are printed in English. This makes sense because of the myriad of languages and dialects present in India and the political issues that can stem from this.

My English I good but I have never thought of writing prose in English; to be exact, not up until recently!

The first reason, I guess, is ideological. In Cyprus there is a long and complicated history which originates in the 19th century’s beginning of British colonization – the Greek population’s identity was systemically attacked and disputed, the same happened with its language. The last 63 years of stormy Independence have complicated things even more; language level included. The Greek language and its use in Literature remains a form of resistance to various systemic attempts of corroding our identity… I can understand that this can seem hilarious for foreigners.

The second reason, I guess will make much more sense.

Literature in Greek is Λογοτεχνία from [Λόγος] = speech, discourse, saying, reason and [Τέχνη]= Art, so it is The Art of Writing. I consider Language a fundamental component of Literature. I think that language is not just a means of communication; it is a force which intrinsically carries meanings, memory and history. These factors, I consider crucial in Literature. The word “sea” is “θάλασσα” in Greek, but θάλασσα (thalassa) feels, sounds, smells, tastes different than sea; it’s salty water, I know.

I have been reading translated literature since I was an adolescent. It’s essentially important to me to be able to read Icelandic, Czech, Romanian or Arabic literature. I realize that, on some level, this is a contradiction to what I previously wrote.

Sometimes I feel naïve; an outsider; or ridiculous – yeah, before the EUPL experience, I never thought of markets of readers. Literature crossing boundaries is important.

Q7. Why write in the stream of consciousness style of a man who has been executed? What is it that you hope to achieve by this kind of storytelling? 

Every conscious person who has experienced his death, violent or “peaceful” knows what happened to him. Those who remain ignorant are we, who are still living. Literature and Art in general naturally dwells and grows on the ground of existential exploration. There are two scenes in the Outpost where two dead people have a voice and tell their story. One of them has been executed, the other died of a heart attack. I suppose I’m not the only human, who thinks about death and dying.  So, I think that what I was trying to achieve, is in fact, to shed some light to something which is evident but eludes us. That there is a “missing” part which we attribute to “the missing person” which is “missing” from us, and that is knowledge.

Q8. As a physician, without breaking patient confidentiality, have you been privy to conversations, sharing of memories, anecdotes about missing loved ones or even of the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey and executions in 1974? The Outpost at times sounds like an amalgamation of voices, woven together to tell a story, in as linear a manner as is possible. 

The answer is yes, both as a person and as a physician living on the island for many years, one cannot avoid becoming “exposed” to whispered stories about victims suffering violent deaths and missing persons. Imagine the sotto voce fragments and the odd silence of the thousands of survivors as a sort of background noise… This subterranean issue of the 1510 missing persons, young men, soldiers and civilians, young women, middle-aged people, children, babies, elderlies surrounds and affects practically every extended family. Of course, everyone deals with this in a different way. Since 2006, nearly every Sunday one or more funeral takes place in a church – 743 missing persons have been identified.

Your perception of The Outpost, as an amalgamation of voices, is astonishingly precise… .

Q9. Who are the writers you admire? 

Oh, if you had asked me this question 30 years ago, I would have answered with more ease: I would say out loud: Milan Kundera, Amos Oz, Maro Douka and Günter Grass and definitely poets like George Seferis and Ezra Pound. At this point in my life, some of the classics have surfaced, but also, particular dissimilar books and not writers are most dear to my heart.

Short list:

Homer’s Iiad

Platos’ Phaedros (Φαίδρος)

Giorgos Seferis’ Poems and Essays

Odysseus Elytis’ Poems and Essays

Albert Camus’ L’homme révolté and L’etranger

Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist

David Grossmann’s To the End of the Land

Amos Oz’ A Tale of Love and Darkness and Judas

Dan DeLillo’s The Silence and The Names

Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium and Man in the dark

Maurice Attia’s Trilogy

Kamel Daoud’s Meursault contre etiquette

Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob

Q10. Do you have any Cypriot author/book/literary website recommendations for readers?

The only website I found is Pen Cyprus.  

Disclaimer: This paper was written under the European Union Policy & Outreach Partnerships Initiative with the view to promote European Union Prize for Literature awardees. The publication was funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Interview with Ukranian writer Eugenia Kuznetsova

(C) EU

This interview is facilitated by EUPL and funded by the European Union. 

I am posting snippets of my correspondence with Eugenia.

Dear Eugenia, 

Your writing is extraordinarily powerful. I have only been sent snippets but it is enough to gauge your writing prowess. 

I grew up in an India when political ties between the Soviet Union and India were strong. As a result, we received a lot of books in translation, inevitably published by Raduga publishers or Peoples Publishing House (PPH). One of the books that I have from my childhood is a beautiful edition of Ukrainian folktales. So I am very pleased to be able to interview you, even if it is at a time of very sad circumstances for your country. Conflict at the best of times is nasty but such relentless use of firepower and other military measures to intimidate Ukraine are terrifying. I sincerely hope that you and your young daughter and extended clan are safe and truly pray and hope that peace returns soon. 

Since I have only snippets of your books to read and alas, not the book My Micheka which is discussed widely, I have based my questions on limited access to your creations. Nevertheless, I found your writing to be strong, clear, and sharp. Your reliance on memory for details as evident in the stories is quite extraordinary. Sometimes reading short stories by one author can begin to wane especially if the differences do not stand out. But in the few examples that I read, your preoccupied with domestic drama and the various permutations and combinations it results in human relationships is quite something. 

Dear Jaya,

Thank you for your kind words and deep questions.

Eugenia.

****

Eugenia Kuznetsova is a Ukrainian author, translator, and researcher. She was born and spent her childhood in the village of Khomutyntsi in central Ukraine. After graduating Kyiv National University, she received her PhD in literary analysis in Spain. Now, Eugenia works in media research, focusing on conflict-sensitive reporting and countering disinformation, and translates fiction and non-fiction. Eugenia has published two bestselling novels in Ukraine and a non-fiction book on soviet linguistic policies.

Q1. How and why did you opt to write fiction? 

I’ve always seen myself as a writer. It has never been a decision or a turning point when I decided to write. Writing is my way of living; it is my way to understand reality.

Q2. “Literature and fiction can explain to us better about certain places and certain people or countries than, for example, integration courses. The world is becoming smaller and smaller. If people learned new languages and read writers of different countries for fun, then it would be good. Most important about translated literature is that we are all much, much similar than we thought. At the human level we share similarities.” In 2022, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, you made these perceptive comments. Do you think now, in this world that is constantly in conflict mode, there is a crying need to create more Art and literature?

I am sure art and literature has potential to enhance understanding between different people and different cultures. Yet, there are things that cannot be “fixed” by art. As a person who is closely watching the tragedy of war and extreme cruelty of the unjust invasion of Russia in Ukraine, I want justice in the first place. Justice may be brought only by power, unfortunately.

Q3. Has your writing style been modified in any manner, especially after the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in Feb 2022? Has your determination to include more political content in your fiction strengthened after the Ukraine-Russian conflict?  

Politics is a part of daily life. The war has obviously changed the lives of the people I know and therefore it has changed somehow my writing. But I do not work according to an agenda – I just write about people under different circumstances. For now, I can’t afford the privilege to write as if there is no war. But I am seriously considering writing a text with no war in it even in the background just to give my Ukrainian readers leisure time without the war. I am not sure I will be able to do this, but I’ll try.

Q4. Countering disinformation and conflict sensitivity reporting are key focus areas of your profession. How challenging is it to keep your work aside and return to writing fiction? Or do you incorporate elements of it in your fiction? 

I work as an analyst for different organisations, but still try prioritizing writing, since I think that’s what I do best. At the same time if I have an idea, it is very hard to put it aside – I must write it down. Otherwise, I feel bad: unwritten things keep bothering me until I write them. Interestingly, sometimes I don’t like what I wrote and easily discard the texts, but I have to write them first to discard afterwards.

Q5. How does your professional expertise as a linguist and as someone who is interested in media speech analysis find writing sentences and their rhythms? Do you convey the cultural particularities or do you focus on rhythm? Does this change from language to language? Or do you adopt the same methodology while writing in Ukrainian or English? 

Unfortunately, I am not able to write fiction in any language other than Ukrainian, my first language. I feel the rhythm of Ukrainian, I know how to do wordplay and how to make my characters talk easily. I know how to build flowing dialogues. My Ukrainian writing is easy to read. Usually, I say to my readers that I do not guarantee anything to them but one thing: my texts are well written. I write op-eds or articles in English, but fiction is something else. I don’t even try writing in another language than my first one.

Q6. The samples of your writing that I have read are full of colour and after reading them I am left with the feeling of being enveloped in bright colours and the descriptions of the landscape are such. Yet, your interviews that I heard on the internet are bleak and understandably very worried about Ukraine. How do you manage to keep these two selves apart? Is there no internal turmoil? Or is that you seek some form of peace and hope while writing? 

I am an introverted person, and, as I said before, writing is my way of existence. So, I suppose I am just not a great speaker. Also, when interviewed by foreign media I feel the need to talk more about the war in Ukraine, as we need all the international support we can get. For us, as a nation, it’s not a “political armed conflict” as some media put it – it is an existential question.

Q7. The impression that I get from your writing is that you are preoccupied with domestic scenes, interpersonal and intergenerational relationships, and sketching minute characters. Almost as if each individual that you create offers an insight from their moment of time and based upon their experiences. But it also helps clarify for the reader (and perhaps for the author too) some sense of our own time and circumstances. Why do you prefer to write about the family? 

I think writing about family is writing about universal human experience. It is something we all share – difficult relations with the loved ones. It’s a universal human language.

Q8. Being in conflict and being an observer could not be easy, irrespective of where you may be based in the world. How do you maintain your perspective?

Modern technology like social media gives us the possibility to live wherever you want. I am sure lots of Ukrainian refugees, despite having fled to various countries, still “live” in Ukraine, are preoccupied by Ukrainian issues. I spend quite a lot of time in Ukraine and have never been able to integrate in any other country, even though I love traveling and enjoy new experiences.

Q9. You are bilingual. Do you read and create new versions of your texts in translation? Or are they the same?

 Even though I speak Russian quite well, I can’t say I am bilingual – I never write fiction in Russian and don’t speak it daily. I do translate books written by other authors into Ukrainian, but never translate my own texts into other languages. I speak quite a few languages, like Spanish or German, but writing fiction is much more than being able to express yourself.

Q11. Do you have any Ukrainian author/book/literary website recommendations for readers?

I could recommend a funny book on Ukrainian history A cool history of Ukraine: from dinosaurs till now. It is written for kids, but any adult would enjoy it and understand better the region. If you are a more serious history reader, check out The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhiy Plokhiy, Harvard University professor, who explains why Russia invaded Ukraine. Another project I would recommend checking out is Ukraïner: it is a team of young people who organize expeditions across Ukraine and prepare amazing videos about various regions of my country. Unfortunately, in the last two years they had to film dramatic events as well. Explore Ukraine and hopefully someday anyone would feel safe to come to visit my country.

Disclaimer: This paper was written under the European Union Policy & Outreach Partnerships Initiative with the view to promote European Union Prize for Literature awardees. The publication was funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Interview with Bulgarian writer Georgi Bardarov

(C) EU

This interview is facilitated by EUPL and funded by the European Union. 

I am posting snippets of my correspondence with Georgi as it would give readers an insight into how powerful his writing is.

Thank you for writing the books that you have written. It has not been an easy task reading your writing. I made many false starts. Extraordinarily, I would read the words on the page and none of it would make sense. Then I began reading around it and kept trying at different parts of the day to read your work, hoping I would begin to understand it. Finally, the breakthrough happened. I do not know what it was or was it that simply I had to zone in as a reader into the mind space that you were demanding as a writer. It has been so hard. More so, because you are writing about conflict. Despite your sentences being short and crisp. Descriptions being precise. It is incredibly hard to read the texts at first. It is obvious from the little that I have read of your work in translation that your contribution to contemporary European literature is extremely crucial. It is almost as if it is a sobering reminder that the horrors of conflict wrought upon societies are cyclical, history tends to repeat itself. And with that, the impact on mankind, local societies, triggering migrations, and the spin-off effect upon other communities and nations is a situation that is constantly in flux. Your writing does make the reader pause and reflect. Is any of this conflict worth this suffering and distress? Nevertheless, thank you for what you have written so far. I sincerely wish that there were more of your interviews and conversations available in English on the Internet. I barely found any information except for a quote or two.

Let’s hope we can rectify it. 

***

Thank you very much for your frank words about my book and for your interest. Your questions were very meaningful and it was a pleasure to answer them. I am sending them to you as an attachment. I understand that you had a hard time with my books and thank you for being patient and reading them, when I wrote them it was also very hard for me, I have painfully experienced every one of them. I have visited each of the places I write about and talked to people who have experienced or been affected by the conflicts. I heard stories so shocking that some of them I can’t even repeat to my closest person, these stories changed me forever and will stay with me like a wound that will never heal. Yes, there is little information about me in English, but keep in mind that it is almost impossible for a writer from a small country like Bulgaria to be noticed outside his country, that’s why Georgi Gospodinov’s success is spectacular and I am very happy for him.

Warm greetings from cold, winter Bulgaria!

Georgi

***

Georgi Bardarov is a Bulgarian scientist and writer. He is an Associate Professor of Ethno-Religious Conflicts and Demography, a Vice-Dean of the Geology & Geography Department in University of Sofia. He founded and co-hosts the most successful course for the art of public speaking and oratory skills in Bulgaria. A member of the board of the Bulgarian Petanque Federation. He is part of the creative team of the publishing and production company Musagena, which aims to find talented contemporary writers and artists. In 2015, Georgi Bardarov won the first intellectual reality TV show for writers called The Manuscript which awarded him with the publication of his debut novel – I am still counting the days. The book is based on a true story about the love between a Bosnian Muslim and Christian Serb amidst the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.

Georgi Bardarov is the winner of the Pen Club award for his debut novel. The book has also been nominated for novel of the year in Bulgaria. In 2020, his second novel Absolvo Te was published. The novel, inspired by two true stories, explores the abyss between two nations with common origins but have been waging a daily fratricidal war for decades. Georgi Bаrdarov is the winner of the European Prize for Literature for 2021 and the biggest literary prize in Bulgaria – the National Vazova Award for 2022.

Q1 What is the focus area of your work as an academic of Ethno-Religious Conflicts and Demography? 

As a specialist in ethno-religious conflict, my main concern is to expose the folly of military conflict. I think there is no cause that is above human life, every war is hidden under the mask of some cause, national, religious, etc., but in fact every war is just a business, a very profitable business for some, while others die thinking they are doing it for the cause. The main thing I want to convey to my students is that all humans are essentially the same and every division, ethnic, religious, even racial, is made for the sole purpose of being manipulated and used. Regarding Demography, I want to break the clichés about the demographic situation in the world because demography follows its logical and natural course and there should be no fear of demographic processes.

Q2 It has been extremely hard, under today’s circumstances of the ongoing conflicts around the world, to read your latest novel Absolve Te (I absolve thee). As far as I have been able to gather, it is based on two true stories – one about World War II and the Holocaust, and the other about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The main characters are a Palestinian, a Jewish man and a Nazi officer. Each of them must forgive and look past each other’s sins. How do you find the mental bandwidth to write about war while there are so many ongoing conflicts around the world? Do you test samples of your work with a trusted circle of readers before publishing the manuscript?

This is a cause for me, well beyond books and novels. But after two novels about wars, I feel infinitely exhausted and don’t want to write about war anymore. I am often asked in Europe if I will write a book about the war now in Ukraine? I answer no, everything I had to say about wars I have said everything in my two books, nothing new to add, everything is painfully repetitive, the protagonists change, the territory of the conflict changes, but the violence is essentially the same and it doesn’t matter when or where the war is! Yes, there are some very close people I discuss my manuscripts with, and I have a wonderful editor, Hristo Karastoyanov.

Q3 How do you find your entry point in writing these narratives about the war? How do you fix a text in time so as to be able to write it?  

First there has to be a true story that has touched me emotionally and I want to tell it to people. Second I do a lot of serious research with books, archival documents, people’s stories and third I absolutely go to the places I write about, do fieldwork so I can feel the energy of the place and then convey it authentically in the novel!

Q4 In some senses, your expertise as an ethno-religious conflict comes to the fore while writing these books. How much of this is historical fiction and how much of it is based on reality and empirical evidence? What is the purpose of writing conflict-based fiction? Does it give you the space to ask questions as well?

All my books are based on true stories, there is of course a lot of fiction, it’s hard to judge which is more, maybe 50/50. And my goal is for people to start asking themselves questions and not accept the easy answers and stay vigilant against manipulation.

Q5 What triggered your interest in conflict studies? What have you discovered over the years about mankind, conflict, and survival? Or am I missing something critical altogether?

I have a favorite thought, “Only the wisest and the stupidest never change.” Unfortunately, humanity is not one of the first. All the mistakes we’ve made as a human race we repeat them again, and again, and again.

Q6 You are a part of the creative team at Musagena when your mss was submitted for consideration. There is an imprint in your name on the website. Why did you feel the need to self-publish (if you can call it that) your debut novel?  Is the topic too sensitive and controversial? 

Yes, I am part of Musagenа. Our idea to create this publishing house was to be able to promote my books outside Bulgaria, because the traditional Bulgarian publishers work almost exclusively for the small Bulgarian market. Otherwise the subjects of my books are popular, albeit sensitive, both in Bulgaria and elsewhere in Europe.

Q7 What has been the response to your books? Do readers understand or are they as bewildered as the children in your stories are about what they are shown? Are readers receptive to books that are ostensibly set in the past but in reality, are about geographies that are currently in the news?

At the same time, my books are very well received, but readers are also shocked when they read them, because our idea is that such atrocities cannot happen today, that they have been left in the past. That is why I present war in all its ugliness and cruelty, so that people can feel that there is nothing more terrible than war, I believe that a war cannot be presented lightly or even “heroized”.

Q8 Is the experience of writing in any way cathartic for you? How do your academic pursuits influence your fictional writing and vice versa? 

Yes, I experience my own personal catharsis when I write my novels and develop my characters, I experience it with them. I wrote Absolvo Te because there are things I can’t forgive myself for in my own life, and with the catharsis of my three main characters, I experienced my own personal one. My academic career helps me do a lot of serious research for my stories; I do it more as a scholar than as a writer.

Q9 Who are the writers you admire?

Of course, except Georgi Gospodinov, who is already world famous, I like very much Ivo Ivanov, who lives in the USA and writes very strong stories about the strength of the human spirit, Radko Penev, who is a naval officer, but his books are charged with a lot of humanism and beauty, the incredible poet Petya Dubarova and my editor Hristo Karastoyanov, who is also a wonderful writer.

Disclaimer: This paper was written under the European Union Policy & Outreach Partnerships Initiative with the view to promote European Union Prize for Literature awardees. The publication was funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Farah Bashir’s “Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir”

Farah Bashir’s memoir Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir ( Harper Collins India) is an extraordinary book. While keeping vigil by her grandmother’s body, the older Farah Bashir recounts her childhood memories of living under siege in Kashmir. These events are interspersed with stories that her grandmother told the young Farah.

I read Rumours of Spring a long time ago but there are some books that make it impossible to write about immediately. This is one of them. This book brought back memories of my trips to Kashmir. I was able to travel to the state with my father as he was a Customs & Central Excise officer and his beat included Jammu & Kashmir when he was posted as Chief Commissioner, Customs, Amritsar. We visited places in the state that were mostly inaccessible. Those trips were unforgettable. The stunning beauty of Kashmir are of course talked about but what really struck me in those trips were to see signs of conflict everywhere. For instance, the empty bottles and tin cans that were strung at regular intervals on barbed wire fencing. These could be around fields or properties or simply rolled up wire being used as barricades. The idea being that if anyone tried crossing these wires, there would be a clatter and a bang and the security forces on patrol would be alerted. The normalisation of this constant state of alert was unsettling. We would only visit the state for a few days at a time but I could never get over the fact that this was the way the locals lived 24×7. There have been many firsthand accounts of living under siege in Kashmir. It never fails to disturb. Farah Bashir’s book is a fine addition to the list. It is particularly unnerving to read it as she recounts much of what is in our living memory. At the same time, it brings back memories of other similar situations. For me, for example, it is witnessing the riots of 1984 in Delhi, after the assassination of the prime minister Indira Gandhi. Recalling the anxiety of my grandparents who had lived through Independence and the subsequent riots. So the moment, news broke, my grandmother sent my brother and me to buy provisions and stock up. My grandfather, N.K. Mukarji, who was a young ( and the last) ICS officer of the Punjab cadre in 1947, helping government teams manage the division of Punjab, was suddenly remembering incidents of 1947 that were eerily similar to 1984. Later, we were staying with our father in Shillong and we witnessed the flag marches the Army carried out and how society was brought to a standstill. Buying basic provisions became a feat to achieve. Much later, I recall watching the demolition of Babri Masjid on television on 6 Dec 1992, followed by the maha artis in Maharashtra and the rising communal tension in Delhi. Then of course, we have had many more incidents of violence that are too horrific to recount. Reading Farah Bashir’s book during the pandemic brought it all back in flurry. But it also made apparent the parallels between our pandemic way of living with that of life in a conflict zone. Without sounding callous, the difficulties in trying to manage daily life while constantly living with uncertainty and never too sure when systems will be brought to a grinding halt, makes the individual anxious. Yet, there are even more chilling parallels between what Farah Bashir witnessed as a child in Kashmir with Nazi Germany. For instance, security forces pulling out men from their home and making them assemble in large fields in an attempt to identify “militants”.

It was during one winter morning in 1990. Ramzan Kaak had gone out to buy bread but was sent back by the troops even before the announcement was made. The announcement, usually made twice, in Urdu and in sometimes Kashmiri, sounded more like a threat: ‘Apne gharoon se baahar niklaliyey. Koi aadmi ghar pe na paaya jaaye.’

Mother, Bobeh and I huddled in our living room, while Ramzan Kaak and Father left the house to be assembled in a large ground of a public school nearby, alongside all the other men from the neighbourhood. The morning passed in a daze, punctuated with the abrupt thuds of doors being slammed and the sound of steel utensils being flung about. Later, of course, these would become the all too familiar ‘crackdown noises’.

That morning we felt completely numb, unable to move around; we didn’t get any work done, nor speak to each other. ‘The trepidation of our turn being next induced a sickness. I felt completely nauseous. Towards afternoon, the troops walked into our courtyard. Mother and Bobeh turned paler upon seeing them. I too must have looked like them. I do remember feeling dizzy and light-headed.

Suddenly, the appearance of our frail neighbour, Ghaffur, added some confusion to the already tense situation. Why was he with them? Both Mother and Bobeh wore a quizzical expression upon seeing him.I too was thoroughly puzzled to see Ghaffur with the troops. But I didn’t dare to ask anyone anything. The expression on his face was unforgettable. He looked almost dead, like a body that was breathing. His face had ashedned, and his lips were taut and white.

After the troops walked nitou our kitchen wearing muddy boots, soiling everything, they flung open the cabinets. Upon discovering the trapdoor on the floor –the voggeh — they went berserk! They ran amok with suspicion, as if they’d unearthed a tunner to the other side of Kashmir, in Pakistan. Quickly, they broke into two batches: one group cordoned off the house from the outside in the courtyard and the other lot disappeared into the voggeh, into what they seemed to assume to be an imaginary escape tunnel. They did not expect it to be an ordinary floor of an ordinary home with ordinary things. They ventured into the ground floor vehemently, and because they couldn’t find anything there, they ransacked the gaan. Suspecting militants to be in hiding behind the gunny sacks, they poked the bayonets of their rifles into them. They slashed upon the large rice bags, callously unleashing rivers of grains on to the part-stone, part-mud storeroom floor. They scattered chunks of coal that were hoarded in large tin drums by overturning them. Perhaps it was the adrenaline from discovering the mysterious door that led them nowhere, or their hurt pride and disappointment for not having recovered any arms, ammunition or even militants from our home. When they left, they left behind nothing but misery that was pasted on to the floors and walls of our house. A misery that couldn’t be wiped away.

Since that first time, Mother remained stoic when the troops searched our house. Soon after they’d leave, she’d take stock of the destruction and then, break down. That afternoon, however, seeing our storage room turned upside-down, we succumbed to a deep despair after. To clean up after the crackdown wasn’t easy. While the scattered wooden logs could be picked up and stacked back into tall columns, the task of separing bits of coal from rice grains brought me to tears of helplessness and frustration.

….

That day in 1990, when Father and Ramzan Kaak returned in the evening, we heaved a sigh of relief. Father didn’t speak much. Ramzan Kaak told us how the men were paraded in front of a Gypsy that had an informer sitting inside, whose job was to identify militants and militant suspects. The latter could be anybody. All of this would be routine in a few month. That day, as Father locked the house, he remarked onthe uselessness of bolts and doors. Even I had understood by then that their safety was by no means guaranteed and that just because the men had been assembled, there was no assurance that they’d return together or return at all.

Each time a house was searched and found ‘clean’ — that is, no arms or ammunition was recovered — a date was inscribed on the facade of the house, usually near the main gate. Our house, being in the heart of downtown, had accumulated nine such dates in less than four months.
(p.96-99)

There are many more passages that I can quote but this long extract is sufficient. It gives a sense of the violence that Farah Bashir and rest of Kashmir faced on a daily basis. The disruption to normal life. Living in constant fear. Living in constant anxiety. Living with uncertainy; not knowing what will come next. Feeling nauseous. This is a neverending cycle that has not as yet come to an end. Decades later, on 29 Jan 2022, Farah Bashir said in a conversation organised by the Hyderabad Literature Festival that for the first time, the various aches and pains she had been experiencing were greatly reduced. The trauma of constantly living in fear had had its physical impact on the child and later adult but writing this book was therapeutic. It had literally helped ease some of her pain. Small mercies in otherwise bleak times.

Read Farah Bashir’s Rumours of Spring. It is unforgettable.

20 Jan 2022

In conversation with 2021 International Booker Prize winners David Diop and Anna Moschovakis, 3 Sept 2021

On 3 Sept 2021, I moderated a conversation with the 2021 International Booker winners David Diop and his translator from French to English, Anna Moschovakis for the book At Night All Blood is Black. It was conducted in two languages — French and English. This was organised in collaboration with the French Embassy in India/ French Book Office and UPES University. It was the inaugural event for Espace France at UPES. It was also an exclusive as this was the first ( and so far the only) event that had been organised in India/South Asia with David Diop and Anna Moschovakis. This event assumed significance for another special reason: France is the Guest of Honour at the New Delhi World Book Fair, Jan 2022 and India at the Paris Book Fair, April 2022.

The International Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious and richest literary prizes in the world @ US$ 50,000. It is meant exclusively for literature in translation/world literature. The author and the translator share the prize equally.

David Diop is a French-Senegalese writer who spent most of his childhood in Senegal before returning to France for his studies. In 1998, he became a professor of literature at the Université de Pau et des pays de l’Adour. In 2018, he won the prestigious French literary award, Prix Goncourt des lycéens, for his first novel, Frère d’ame. It was published by the renowned French publishing firm, Éditions du Seuil. In 2021, he won the International Booker Prize. The English translation, At Night All Blood Is Black. has been published by the fabulous independent press Pushkin Press, UK.

Anna Moschovakis is a Greek American poet, author, and translator. She divides her time between the USA and Greece. Moschovakis is a founding member of Bushel Collective and the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse. She is a faculty member of Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, as well as an adjunct associate professor in the Writing MFA program at Pratt Institute. Her writing has appeared in eminent literary journals such as The Paris Review, The Believer and The Iowa Review. Moschovakis’ book of poetry, You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake, won the James Laughlin Award in 2011. Her first novel, Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love, was published in 2018.

It turned out to be a phenomenal success! We had over 500+ registerations on Zoom for the event. As happens with these events, ultimately only a smaller proportion sign in and attend the event. So approximately 150+ people logged in to watch the conversation in real time. Interestingly enough we discovered that except for about 5 or 6 people, everyone stayed glued to their screens for the entire duration of the discussion. This is unusual given that internet fatigue has set in during the pandemic. We had participants joining across time zones in real time —Canada, USA, UK, France, Germany, Nepal, India and Australia. For the next few days, the organisers were getting correspondence from a wide range of people lauding them. The impact factor was fantastic as the remarks were coming in from academics, institution heads, students, translators, journalists, readers, publishers etc. It was cutting across communities. In fact, while we were on air, the French Institute in India received a request to translate the novel into Hindi! This, after it was announced at the event that under the Publication Assistance Programme (PAP Tagore) of the IFI, the novel is already being translated into Malayalam ( DC Books) and Tamil ( Kalachuvadu)

Here are some comments:

Vidya Vencatesan à Conférenciers et participants (6:31 PM)
M. Diop vous êtes au programme de maîtrise depuis deux ans, succès inouï
Excellante initiative par IFI. FELICITATIONS!!
Sukrita Paul Kumar à Conférenciers (6:52 PM)
Very perceptive questions, Jaya
Jyotsna Paliwal à Conférenciers et participants (7:07 PM)
émerveillant, Merci bcp!
Carol Barreto Miranda à Conférenciers et participants (7:07 PM)
Superbe!!! Extraordinaire!!
Jayanti Pandey à Conférenciers (7:07 PM)
Merci beaucoup
Prof. Dipa Chakrabarti à Conférenciers et participants (7:07 PM)
Super David et Anna!!!
Preeti Bhutani à Conférenciers (7:07 PM)
très intense. Super!
Rohit Kumar à Conférenciers et participants (7:08 PM)

it’s the best catchy Title I ever encountered!!
HARSHALI Harshali à Conférenciers et participants (7:09 PM)
Bravo!! émerveillant
Dhritiman Das à Conférenciers (7:09 PM)
Thank you for this extraordinary opportunity to get introduced to the stream of consciousness method.
Gaurav Arya à Conférenciers (7:14 PM)
Fabulously put together panel, with so many varied perspectives are threading so seamlessly
Surely the experiences of men and women for WW I will be different, since women were not recruited as soldiers then. Women were left behind, caring for the sick and wounded, or grieving for loved ones lost.
Aslam Khan à Conférenciers et participants (7:23 PM)
what a wonderful discussion, thanks to the writer, translator and specially the organisers ❤
Shauna Singh Baldwin à Conférenciers (7:25 PM)
The senegalese soldiers were going into a battle for their colonial masters — this has not been documented before. Did you know the major differences between the Senegalese soldiers feelings in contrast to their French masters before or was that revealed by your research?
Mandira Sen à Conférenciers et participants (7:34 PM)
Fascinating, much to learn and think about
Thanks for organizing this. Mandira Sen
Anaheeta Irani à Conférenciers et participants (7:34 PM)
Merci.C’etait excellent
Chandan Kumar à Conférenciers et participants (7:34 PM)
Very informative session ..Merci de vous
Maitrayi Nag à Conférenciers (7:35 PM)
Oui, j’ai beaucoup aimé.
Nidhi Singh à Conférenciers (7:35 PM)
excellent session.. thankyou to organisers
Kamala Narasimhan à Conférenciers et participants (7:36 PM)
Thanks to David and Anna for their interaction and also to Jaya for moderating brilliantly. A special thanks to Uma for interpreting so wonderfully David! And thanks also to IFI for organising this!
Namrata Singhvi à Conférenciers et participants (7:37 PM)
Merci beaucoup ! Une discussion très intéressante !
Carol Barreto Miranda à Conférenciers et participants (7:37 PM)
Recit bouleversant! Grande impatience de lire le roman prochainement.
Chris Raja à Conférenciers et participants (7:38 PM)
Thank you very much David and Jaya. Best wishes from Melbourne
My Anglo Indian grandfather was involved in WW1
Elsa mathews à Conférenciers et participants (7:41 PM)
beautiful discussion!
lot to learn
Ena Panda à Conférenciers et participants (7:41 PM)
Very interesting discussion since we got to explore the book through the writer and the translator! Thank you Insititut Français
Prof. Dipa Chakrabarti à Conférenciers et participants (7:41 PM)
Merci Christine pour avoir organise cet evenement!!

Some messages that came in separately:

Very interesting discussion since we got to explore the book through the writer and the translator! Thank you Insititut Français!

Good morning. It was a wonderful conversation last evening. You steered it along very well. I really enjoyed it. ?

I enjoyed this conversation. I wish it could have gone on for another hour!

fantastic event it was. and was so accomodating for a naive like me. simple english. understandable; felt the connect wth author/ Translator and more with the audience. swift as breeze. i many time dont get converstaions but this was so easy and right from the heart. bulls eye it was.

More power to you and such wonderful lectures. God knows the poor students need such knowledge that frees them and gives them joy. I also liked Anna and her candid unaffected responses. So lovely! A five-star event overall, in my most humble opinion!! ??

***

Watch the conversation on Facebook. The panelists include David Diop, Anna Moschokovis, Uma Sridhar (translator), Dr. Christine Cornet, Attachée Livre et débat d’idées, Institut français India/Embassy of France and Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, co-founder, ACE Literary Consulting and Associate Professor, School of Modern Media Studies, UPES University.

The UPES University posted a fabulous blog post on the conversation by Ekta Kashyap, “David Diop’s guide to writing an award-winning novel” (15 September 2021). It is an account of the conversation with an edited version of the transcript. Well worth reading!

This was a tremendous event as we spoke in two languages, it moved seamlessly between the languages even though I do not speak French but we had Uma Sridhar translating for us brilliantly. It seemed as if we were having an excellent in-depth conversation about war literature, the canon of war literature, whether the gender of the writer makes a difference to the style of storytelling, translations, working with nonfiction material and converting it into fiction, use of folklore and magic realism etc. I am not listing the questions here but it is best that you hear the recording on Facebook. We covered a fair bit of ground and if time had permitted us, we would have spoken longer. Alas, it was not to be! Perhaps another time.

Many thanks to the French Institute in India, the French Embassy in India, UPES University, and Editions du Seuil for collaborating to organise this exclusive event in South Asia.

27 Sept 2021

Essay on Independence Day literature, 15 Aug 2021

15 Aug 2021 is the 74th Independence Day of India. In 1947, the subcontinent gained its independence from the British. On that day, two nations were created — India and Pakistan. So, while there is every reason to celebrate this joyous occasion, it is also remembered for the partitioning of British India and the terrible communal riots and mass migration of people that ensued.

The historic events of 1947 have never been forgotten by those living in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (in 1947, it was East Pakistan). Within two years of Independence, India got its constitution — the longest written constitution in the world. It is a magnificent document that gave the Indian citizens many rights. India was a fledgling democracy and yet there was much to celebrate this “new India” and the mantra of “self-reliance”. But as Suchitra Vijayan points out in her absolutely stunning book, Midnight’s Borders, that with the three significant pogroms of 1984, 1992 and 2002, much of India’s character changed. In Midnight’s Borders, she spent seven years travelling along India’s borders that had been hastily drawn in the 1940s by Radcliffe. The more she travelled, the clearer it became to her that local history and memory bear no resemblance to the political history of the nation that claims these lands and peoples. A barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. Yet, as her travels along India’s borders proved, that nothing really prepared her for what she encountered. Some of these stories are documented.

The collection of books showcased in the images are a tiny representation of the literature (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) that is about India’s Independence or as many now like to refer to it as Partition. Lesser and lesser people remember it as “independence” from colonial rule but prefer to commemorate the horrors of partition. While both narratives are true, the increasing emphasis on the division of the subcontinent along communal lines has resulted in many generations perpetuating the hatred and anger for the other. It is now playing out in our daily lives as many of these books bear testimony. It also wades into the exceedingly complicated terrain of the importance of memory, oral histories, subjective/objective perspectives, violence and preservation of stories for future generations — is it meant to be a reminder to not repeat these unforgettable mistakes of the past or do they serve the purpose of stoking more communal flames? No one will ever know the truth but three of the recently published novels — Savie Karnel’s The Nameless God, Chandan Pandey’s Legal Fiction (translated from Hindi into English by Bharatbhooshan Tiwari), and Siddharth Chowdhury’s The Time of the Peacock are sobering reminders of the fallout of our violent history.

Partition has become such an important narrative in Indian / South Asian/ desi literature, especially after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 which for many recalled the events of 1947, that many new stories are continue to be published on the subject. Take for instance, the young adult novels of Swapna Haddow’s exquisite Torn Apart: The Partition of India and Veera Hirandani’s riveting The Night Diary. Torn Apart is a slim novel. It is focused upon the two young boys, Ibrahim and Amar. It is October 1947. The two young boys are thrown together, in the aftermath of India gaining Independence from the British. It resulted in the partition of the subcontinent into two nations – India and Pakistan. This resulted in terrible bloodshed and what has been considered to be one of the largest migrations of humans in living memory. Ibrahim, a wealthy young Muslim, has been separated from his family after an attack. Lost and alone in Delhi, Ibrahim meets Amar, a street child and a Hindu, and asks for his help to reach Pakistan safely. Swapna Haddow does not spend too much time fretting about families torn apart or relationships being fragile. She shows the violence and ways out of the violence. She does not in any way lighten any blows. The abrupt manner in which the friendship draws to a close at the refugee camp is so realistic. Astonishingly there is no sense of hope offered to the young readers. It is what it is. Even Michael Morpurgo who dishes out very sad books, with there always being one painful twist in the plot, ends his books on positivity. Always hope. But not Swapna. Yet, the lean writing, with not a word out of place is utterly stupendous. And here is my 2018 interview with Veera Hiranandani.  Supriya Kelkar’s second novel, Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame is not about 1947 but of 1857. The fact that it is listed here is because the novel is set at the time of the Uprising of 1857 when the colonial ruler’s policy of Divide and Rule was evident. Hindu and Muslim soldiers united to revolt against the British rulers. There were strong rumours circulating that the bullets that the soldiers had to bite with their mouths were wrapped in paper greased with cow and pig grease that affected the religious sensibilities of the Hindu and Muslim soldiers, respectively. It caused a massive furore and rapidly spreads from the epicentre in Meerut to towns and villages across India. Supriya Kelkar’s second novel is remarkable too for her insights into British India and creating historical fiction for middle grade readers. Her first novel Ahimsa was fabulous. Her strength is creating these strong adolescent girls as the protagonists and using them as the point of entry into the past. The heroine of this novel is thirteen-year-old Meera. The story opens with her being readied for her departure to her marital home. It was a fairly common practice at the time to encourage child marriage. Her husband Krishna lived in the same village. On the eve of her departure, riots break out and in the violence that ensued Krishna was killed. Meera is terrified that she will be made to commit Sati, the practice of widows burning on their husband’s funeral pyre. Terrified at the prospect, Meera runs away from home. By doing so, she gets involved in a series of events that are linked to the soldiers’ uprising against the colonial rulers.

Some of the stupendous literature published recently that either directly or indirectly focusses upon independence/communal repercussions on modern India include translations of poetry and short stories such as that of Kunwar Narain ( translated by his son, Apurva Narain in No Other World 2008, The Play of Dolls: Stories 2020 & Witnesses of Remembrance: Selected Newer Poems 2021); the anguish about contemporary events movingly expressed by poet  Tishani Doshi in her collection of poems A God at the Door; Farah Bashir‘s memoir about growing up in 1990s Kashmir in Rumours of Spring; and debut writer Sonal Kohli’s disquieting inter-linked short stories House Next to the Factory which are about the post-Partition immigrant experience between 1980-2020 in Delhi. The forthcoming Partition trilogy by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar is definitely something to look out for. The first volume, Lahore is to be released soon but it is a book that will be talked about for years to come. In all likelihood it will be turned into a TV series or a film. It is a triumphant example of historical fiction with a balanced account of historical events and fictional characters that provides insights into the events of 1947. The other two volumes in the trilogy are called Hyderabad and Kashmir. These books have been written after intensive research and it shows. Fortunately, the author wears her knowledge lightly and it is a gripping tale she has to tell. Debut novelist Melody Razak attempted to do something similar with Moth and has been recognised by The Observer as one of the promising novelists of 2021. It too is historical fiction set in and around August 1947.

Journalist M. Rajshekhar’s Despite the State has been included in this list of books as it is a brilliant example of reportage. Rajshekhar spent thirty-three months travelling through six states of India, investigating the deep crisis that affects Indian democracy. He records the distressing account of democratic failure. It is a sobering read given the enthusiasm with which the first government after Independence laid out the blueprint for a planned economy, construction of temples of modern India such as hydropower dams and setting up many schemes for the welfare of its citizens. Rajshekhar shows how much of those dreams have crumbled, the state in many instances has abdicated responsibility, leaving the citizens to fend for themselves. It is a cruel reality. It is precisely why a selection of Aleph Book Company titles have also been displayed. The publishing firm is doing a sterling job of creating relevant literature, looking at history, facts, evidence and preventing the corruption of historical narratives by a single discourse. The titles on display are a minute selection of what has been published in recent years by eminent academics, writers, and social activists.

Unfortunately, is a sad truth that much of the literature that is being published nowadays focusses more and more on the “partition” rather than the euphoria of becoming an independent nation. Literature at the best of times, especially for the young, when based upon historical events should be based on facts with of course the liberty to be creative rather than being biased in their perspective. The communal clashes that erupted after Independence were despicable and their ramifications are being felt more than seven decades later with the resurgence of hate politics and fundamentalism. It is the truth. But we should never forget and certainly not let the younger generations forget, as we move further in time away from 15 August 1947, that the euphoria of winning our Independence from the British was tremendous. We were free. Finally. Stories can be and should be created against the backdrop of Independence and of course the violence that followed thereafter. But the growing emphasis on remembering the violent past, erecting memorials to the victims, setting up Partition museums and war memorials, is one way of forever remembering the injustices of the past. Yet, it is also a clever way of ensuring that the wounds remain raw. Remember but with facts and not with selective memory – that is plain dangerous and perpetuates violence and hatred.

At such a time it is perhaps worth reading humanist and experimental poet and writer the late Kunwar Narain’s “Poetry of Dark Times”.

****

“Poetry of Dark Times”

Remembering Brecht

How should be
the poetry of dark times
like this?

Poets change, poems change,
but dark times
just don’t seem to change.

So much misery
keeps looking for words in artless languages,
keeps wishing that they arise
drop by drop
like vapour from abyssal oceans
collide with mountains
like nimbus clouds
girdle the earth and rain down on it
like tempest thunder lightning . . .

             

and so let the poetry of dark times inundate
and wash away the dark times.

              and wash away the dark times.

How can the poetry
of dark times
be . . .

Kunwar Narain (1927-2017), translated by Apurva Narain

Note: These are only a sample of books published on Independence/Partition. There are many, many more equally good books being published that have not been included in this post.

Tishani Doshi’s “A God at the Door”

Today, my eleven-year-old daughter woke up much earlier than her usual time. She had had a nightmare. She dreamt that she was in 1939 Nazi Germany. She was in a classroom and then opened a door to go elsewhere. Then, to her horror, she was packing her precious belongings and needed to run. She did not know where she was running but she was and she was terrified. While narrating the incident, she looked alarmed and began wringing her hands in nervous fear. She kept using the collective pronoun “we”, but when asked over and over again, who else was with you, she finally admitted to the singular “I”.

The trigger for this dream in all likelihood have been the books and documentaries about World War Two that she has immersed herself in. She recently read a YA novel, based on a true story, of a Catholic girl who saved a family of thirteen Polish Jews. And much else. Much of it is driven by interest and partially by her school curriculum.

The point of this anecdote is that Art is powerful. It serves multiple purposes. If employed correctly, it operates more than Art for Art’s Sake. Most importantly, it allows the artist to use their creative sensibilities to observe, record, comment and preserve events in collective memory, lest we as a race forget the horrors that have been perpetrated.

Poet Tishani Doshi’s latest collection A God at the Door ( HarperCollins India) serves this purpose admirably. The seething rage and at times, a sense of helplessness, that she feels as an individual witnessing the systematic violence, communalism and the boxing in of women into their homes, are noted in her poems. “The Stormtroopers of My Country” that is an ode to the decimation of a beautiful country is extremely powerful. It is a country that will vanish rapidly if we allow it to happen. The poem ends with a firm belief in our abilities to survive the most violent of assaults.

with the pogrom atrocity death march love
march no such thing as a clean termite to burn
is to purify oh our culture so ancient so good
we’re in the thick of the swastika now no brow
beating will divide us together we must stick

The importance of the artists and writers in turbulent times can never be under estimated. They have the immense ability to imprint searing words upon the reader’s mind that are hard to shirk. Such as:

History too has a hard time remembering
the black waters they crossed, …
…History tries not to be sentimental,
although letters give things away.

( “Many Good and Wonderful Things”)

Or

There comes a point in the battle
when the last international watchdog
is forced to leave the country. Reader,
I know you’re prone to anxiety. This
is when it happens. The lagoon, the ambush,
Bullets raining down in a no-fire zone.
Quick, into my echo chamber.

( “Instructions on Surviving a Genocide”)

Or

… I found a village, a republic,
the size of a small island country with a history

of autogenic massacre. In it were all our missing women.
They’d been sending proof of their existence —

copies of birth and not-quite-dead certificates
to offices of the registrar.

What they received in response was a rake
and a cobweb in a box.

(“I Found a Village and In It Were All Our Missing Women”)

Or

Forget where you came from, forget history.
It never happened, okay? We need soldiers on the front line.
Of course we can coexist. We say potato, they say potato.
We give them their own ghetto.

(“Nation’)

Or

Say the words ‘Bay of Bengal’
and ‘Buchenwald’ one after
the other, and they sound
beautiful, just as ‘landfills
does. And then imagine it:

(“Do Not Go Out in the Storm”)

The poems in this collection are crying to be performed by multitudes of people. There is no other way to describe this but there seems to be a strong force at the core of these poems that is urging the reader to read these out aloud and share them with more and more people. It is as if when read out aloud, the truth these words enshrine will hit home hard and perhaps embolden us to push back. It is an incredible experience to read poetry that much of the time is a wail of pain and anger intermingled and yet gets transferred seamlessly to the reader and co-opt them into this collective grief. The desire to act can only happen if the personal will is strong enough to turn it into a political act. Perhaps by immemorialising contemporary events, the poet urges a mass awakening to fight against the ills.

My head hurts. And yet I find myself going over and over and over these poems. Soon, my daughter will be able to read and understand these poems. I hope she does. I hope she will convey them to her peers and in time, future generations. These poems/stories/ moments-in-history should not be forgotten.

Read A God at the Door.

I urge you.

8 August 2021

“Still Life” by Sarah Winman

Sarah Winman’s Still Life begins during the Second World War and then the story develops over the next few decades. The cast of characters, more or less, remain the same. It includes a parrot that went dumb during the bombing of London.

Still Life is a large, expansive, slow moving historical fiction. It has the languid pace that one associates with all things Italian. And rightly so as a substantial portion of the novel is set in Italy. Even the sections that are set in England have a very slow pace that is mostly written in the third person. It is an odd literary technique to employ in a novel that could quite easily move crisply if the protagonist Ulysses Temper had had more of a voice. Instead, it’s almost as if he has a very dispassionate connect with the locals. This despite his wife, Peg, and her child, Alys, being part of the community. He is far too accommodating of everyone’s wishes and always does his best to please them. Until, he learns of his Italian inheritance. He has been bequeathed a property by “Arturo” whom he met briefly while stationed as a Private during the war. It is a life changing moment and he moves countries, taking Alys, whom he loves very much.

But Still Life is also about women, women painters, painting, and aspiring to be artists. Their impact upon others lives as Evelyn Skinner, a sexagenerian art historian, has upon Ulysses and later, Alys. Evelyn’s fine talk about aesthetics, artists, beauty ultimately impacts Ulysses life in many ways. This book is about their extraordinary relationship, being kindred spirits who discovered each other during the war and a spark was lit that transcended many social barriers.

Still Life also works as a metaphor in this novel. For its ability to capture a vignette of life as paintings with a “Still Life” theme attempt. Usually still life painting compositions are of the very ordinary elements found in daily life. The intense focus upon these objects by the artist transforms them from the mundane to something exquisite, a precious piece of artwork. This novel is much like this. It is to Sarah Winman’s credit that she takes the very ordinary lives of very common, nondescript folks and through her way with words, turns the novel into a piece of art.

To appreciate this story, the reader needs to zone into that mindset and engage with it; much in the way a painting is appreciated– you stand and gaze upon it, to discover more than the veneer.

At nearly 500 pages, this novel is meant for diehard fans of Sarah Winman. But those who like historical fiction may like it too. Winman has a way of getting the reader hooked from the first page. It works as long as the novel can be read without too many interruptions. Otherwise the large cast of characters can get quite tough to recall.

The book was released on 10 June 2021.

12 June 2021

“The Last Queen” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakarurni’s latest novel The Last Queen is a wonderfully mesmerising account of the last queen of Punjab, Rani Jindan. She was Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s youngest wife and mother of Maharajah Dalip Singh, who was later close to Queen Victoria. She was also grandmother to Sophia Dalip Singh, a prominent suffragette. Given who she was and the power that she held, surprisingly little is known about the queen, except in stray references and of course the magnificently regal portrait of hers by George Richmond (1863). In fact, Chitra Divakaruni loved the painting so much that it has been used as the cover image to her novel. So, it is remarkable how much research and effort she had to put in to create this literary portrait of Rani Jindan and make her come alive. In terms of her oeuvre, I find that the author gets better and better with every passing book especially in creating women’s conversations. It could range from the conversations between the maids, hurling of insults, jealousies, love and affection etc. Chitra Divakaruni is astonishingly skilled at rescuing women from history and creating their point of view.

While reading this novel, my head kept buzzing with umpteen questions. So, I zipped off an email to her. She replied, “I value your opinions greatly, so I am truly pleased that you enjoyed it. These are great questions. Thank you!”

“Thank you, Chitra!”

Here is a slightly edited version of the interview:

  1. Why did you choose to write this story? Isn’t this your first novel that is truly historical fiction as it is based in well-documented facts?

I had ventured into the historical novel field earlier with a short children’s novel set around the Independence Movement, titled Freedom Song, but The Last Queen is my first historical novel for adults.  I was drawn to Rani Jindan’s story when I came across her famous painting, commissioned by her son Maharaja Dalip Singh, while she was in London, during her last years. (It is this painting that is on the cover of the novel.) I was immediately drawn to it. She has such a strong personality. I could feel her power and stoicism as well as her tragic life. I could feel her indomitable will. Searching, I discovered that she had been almost forgotten by history, although her husband and her son are well known – a not uncommon problem with women. I felt a deep desire to bring her story to present-day readers as there is much for us to learn from it, on both the personal and the political arenas. 

2. How much research did it entail? And how did you manage to do it during the lockdown? 

The novel required a lot of research, and lockdown made researching very difficult. Fortunately, I had already gathered all the books I was going to use. But I was unable to visit the places that were significant to Rani Jindan’s life, especially Chunar Fort where she was so cruelly imprisoned by the British, and Spence’s Hotel in Kolkata, where she was finally reunited with her son, whom the British had wrested away from her many years ago. I was unable to visit her residence in London, or her samadhi in India.Lahore Qila, in Pakistan, where she had spent the most formative years of for life, was obviously out of my reach. So, I had to rely on photographs, both modern and historical, paintings and maps. this turned out to be a great boon, actually, as it gave me great visual cues to create my scenes. I was also fortunate that many of my primary sources were available online, such as the diaries of Lady Login where she writes in detail about the British opinion of Rani Jindan as a troublemaker, as well as her years in England, including a visit that Rani Jindan made to the Login home.

3. How did you manage to keep track of the timelines — the wars and the plots? Or for that matter the details about the warring factions? 

I have several notebooks filled with detailed notes! At a certain point I started using notebooks for each year in Rani Jindan’s life. I also had to create many diagrams of family trees, etc. to keep all the characters and their dates straight in my mind. What made it particularly challenging was that almost every male character in the Lahore court had the last name Singh, even if they were not Sikh!

4. How did you figure out the Punjabi words in the text? 

I bothered all my Punjabi friends with incessant questions! They were most patient with me. Also, my editor, Diya Kar at HarperCollins India, was very helpful. She got me a qualified Punjabi reader for the manuscript, who helped me correct any vocabulary or cultural details that I had got wrong.  For instance, she made sure that the Sikh names that I had come up with for the minor characters were historically appropriate, because many of the Sikh names that we come across today were not there in Jindan’s time. 

5. Post-9/11, a lot of things changed for you. I remember your telling me that the sudden realisation in how Asians were looked upon in the USA was disturbing especially in how Sikhs were targeted. The Ranjit Singh-Kohinoor diamond story is very much an integral part of Sikh history/British India. Did you subconsciously make the connections between present day 9/11 events and a fascinating slice of history? Or am I reading too much into your intentions? 

The common theme of prejudice and targeted violence that appear in my post 9/11 novels, such as Vine of Desire and One Amazing Thing, are central to Rani Jindan’s story, too. Prejudice and the resultant violence occur when one group sees another one as “less human” than themselves. This was the case after 9/11, and it was the case in British-occupied India. Over and over, I was struck, by reading British correspondence of the times, as to what a low opinion they had of Indians. Even the amazing warrior, statesman and king, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was referred to, in British letters, as a one-eyed grey mouse! The violence and hatred with which the British dealt with the vanquished Indian soldiers of the 1857 independence war was shocking – they fired them, alive, from cannons. It was as though they did not consider Indians to have any rights at all. I wanted readers to understand this. 

6. Your stories written after 9/11 are getting more and more sharper in your explorations of masculinity and femininity. In this book, there is equal weightage between the genders. In fact, there is less of the inner mind exploration of women that you are famous for as you did in your trademark story, Palace of Illusions. Is this a conscious decision?

There were many men that were important and influential in Rani Jindan’s life. I needed to develop them so that readers could understand her life, her world and her feelings, which often impelled her into action at once dramatic and perhaps unwise. That is why characters such as her husband Maharaja Ranjit Singh who at once her hero and her teacher; her brother Jawahar who is her saviour throughout her childhood; her lover the handsome and charismatic Raja Lal Singh; and of course, her son, Maharaja Dalip Singh, to whom she dedicated her life, play an important part in the novel. I hope I have managed to bring out Rani Jindan’s feelings and dilemmas, her passion and her pain, in spite of this new balance between men and women in The Last Queen. For me, Jindan-the-lioness (as her son calls her) is still the heart of the novel!

7. I admit though that I am a little surprised at your handling of the sati episodes. I expected more from your story. So far, you have had the uncanny ability of going into a woman’s mind, thereby offering a modern perspective. In the sati episode, although well-documented that some of Ranjit Singh’s wives and concubines burnt themselves on his funeral pyre, I was intrigued as to why did you not offer an alternative opinion. Instead, it came across surprisingly as if you were in total acceptance of the incident. Why? To my mind it was so unlike you as you come across as someone who likes to gently, quietly and with grace like to question certain practices. It is what makes your stories endearing to so many people.

The sati episodes were difficult to handle, and I gave them much thought. I had to make sure that I presented them in the context of the times, and not how I see them right now–because that is how Rani Jindan would have seen them and judged them, especially the first time she is faced with them, with the death of her best friend, Rani Guddan. It would not have been historically accurate or appropriate to give her the sentiment of a 21st-century woman as regards this matter. I wanted people to feel the amount of pressure there was on Rani Jindan, too, to become a sati. The fact that she is even able to stand strong against all this pressure says something about the firmness of her character. Later, she is horrified when another dear friend, Rani Pathani, decides to become a sati — but she understands why, although she does not agree with her. The reality, as Rani Guddan points out to Jindan, is that life was very difficult for a widow, and often royal widows met a violent end after their powerful husbands (their protectors) passed away – as we see in the tragedy of Maharani Chand Kaur and her daughter-in-law Bibi. 

8. How many pages a day did you write of this novel? At times there is almost a feverish pace to this novel. 

The pages really depended on how the words flowed. Sometimes I was stuck for several days (which put me in a very bad mood and was difficult for my husband Murthy because he was in lockdown with me and couldn’t escape!) Overall, I tried to pace the novel the way the times would feel, psychologically, to Rani Jindan. For instance, when she is in hiding in Jammu with her baby son, after her husband dies, time passes excruciatingly slowly for her because she is impatient to get back to Lahore. When she falls in love with Lal Singh, there is a dreamy stillness to the prose, because that’s how she feels. When the battle against the British is going on (the First Anglo Sikh War), the pace grows feverish as Jindan, waiting in Lahore, gets one piece of bad news after another from the battlefield as her generals betray her and cause the massacre of the Khalsa Army.  I hope I managed to vary the pace of the novel accurately to bring out Rani Jindan’s many situations and states of mind.

22 April 2021

Digonta Bordoloi’s “Second World War Sandwich”

Elsewhere, the blacksmith of the village busied himself with a small glob of brass, shaping it into the form of a head. Each head a warrior claimed was rewarded with a small brass replica, worn as a pendent on a red beaded necklace.

Digonta Bordoloi’s second novel, Second World War Sandwich is set against the backdrop of the Kohima War. It took place in stages from 4 April to 22 June 1944 in and around Kohima in northeast India. Later, in independent India, Kohima became the capital city of Nagaland. The battle was fought between the British forces and the advancing Japanese troops. It was a fierce battle fought over the hilly terrain for Kohima’s strategic importance in the wider 1944 Japanese Chindwin offensive lay in that it was the summit of a pass that offered the Japanese the best route from Burma into India. During the Battle of Kohima, the British and Indian forces had lost 4,064 men, dead, missing and wounded. Against this the Japanese had lost 5,764 battle casualties in the Kohima area, and many of the 31st Division subsequently died of disease or starvation, or took their own lives. ( Source: Wikipedia)

Second World War Sandwich revolves around Captain Timothy Hastings, a former tea-estate manager; his wife, Sandra, a nurse, who too had grown up on a tea-estate in India; Raan, who is far happier being a cook, carrying pots and pans, rather than wielding a gun; Chetri, a Gorkha, brave as any legend about the Gorkhas is; and Mongseng, a Konyak, a prince, heir to his father’s throne, the ang of his village, Poilung. They are thrown headlong into battle with the Japanese and are a motley troop. Everyone is wary of Mongseng at first but after a certain turn of events, they discover that this naked, tattooed, “savage”, whose only weapon is an extremely lethal dao/machette, does not intend them any harm. Also, lo and behold, Mongseng speaks a smattering of English, taught to him by the Padre in their village.

Now therein lies the extremely fascinating history of the Christian missionaries who visited north east India from the nineteenth century onwards. In Nagaland, they were mostly American Baptists who would roam around, although in the novel, the Padre is an Italian. His denomination is never made clear even when constructing the church in the village. The description exists but no more. Mongseng is a Konyak — one of the many Naga tribes but they are unique as in they used to be headhunters. This was the only way of life that they knew. Their village was constructed and still exists like this — with wooden huts, thatched roofs, intricate carvings on their door posts, carcasses of kill drying in their “verandahs”, with the kitchen being the centre of their homes. The hearth or the embers upon which the food is cooked is in the centre of the room. Above it hangs these large metal plates upon which the meats are slow cooked. And tea remains a constant offering. Something that Mongseng compares too when offered a rather watered down version of tea by Raan. He yearns for his freshly roasted tea leaves, bitter morning brew. The ang, or tribal elder/king, presides over the village and rules in a just and fair manner. At the centre of the village is the morung, or the male dormitory, where the unmarried men congregate and spend their time. It is also the place in the novel where the village elders gather for a chit-chat and more often than not to drink the addictively bittersweet brew that the Padre plies them with. It turns out to be rum. In fact, if you visit any of the Konyak village cemetries as I did with my father ( Romesh Bhattacharji) in the late 1990s, the headstones very proudly bear the inscription that the recently deceased scalped so many individuals but also was a Christian. A dichotomy if there was ever one! In fact, the brass necklace in the picture was gifted to me by a minister in the state government when he discovered I had completed my post-graduation. He was so impressed that I had achieved so many degrees whereas he had only cleared his eighth grade that the following morning as we were departing he put a parcel wrapped in newspaper in my hands saying this is for you. In it were a bunch of necklaces that I treasure decades later. We were all staying in the same guest house as dad was an Election observer and the minister was on the campaign trail. The villages we covered on this tour were those of the Konyaks — Chenmoho, Chenwenyu and Chenwengtu. So when I came across the description of these brass heads being fashioned in the village when Mongseng made his first kill, I realised the signficance of this brass necklace that I have had for many years.

Second World War Sandwich begins incredibly grippingly with a fine description of the landscape and an introduction to Timothy and his team. Mongseng drops into their lives. The establishment of the relationship between the four men, the varying degrees of masculinity that shines through the text is absolutely fascinating to read. It is as if the author has spent hours working upon the details and trying to get the tenor right. The battle outside makes it presence felt often enough in the narrative with falling mortar, wounded crowding the makeshift hospitals, the dead piling up, the horrific mix of the raw and trained soldiers who are battling against a very sophisticated enemy etc. The immense knowledge and experience that Mongseng brings is dealt with respectfully and at par with the white man. It is interesting to see this equilibrium being set by Digonta Bordoloi even if it is a tad hard to believe that there would be so much trust between a white man and a native in British India. Nevertheless, it makes for an interesting read.

After a rollicking good start, the plot begins to drag. The extremely long backstories about every main character while interesting by themselves are so unnecessary beyond a point as they are distracting about the battle itself. The inter-personal relationships can easily flourish under the brutal conditions of warfare. These long-winded descriptions needed to be worked out elsewhere and then only significant portions used in the main narrative. Having said that if the backstories are read as short stories, they are lovely digressions. The particularly sensitively drawn one is that for Mongseng. It makes sense when the author acknowledges the wangra ( village chief) of Hamphui and his fellow village elder-men — Nagaland’s last surviving headhunters. The fine descriptions of the Konyak lifestyle are worth reading. But then the second half of the book dissolves into a chaotic mess where the frenzy of battle overtakes the characters but it also makes the author lose his grip on storytelling. It is as if he is getting pulled into the personalities of each character more and more while at the same time very eager to get his facts right about battle strategies. There are neat illustrations accompanying the story marking out the terrain and the peaks that were crucial in the real battle. But sadly, they do not help retrieve a potentially good novel. Maybe if the possibility of narrating the past by a dying Mongseng to his grandson, Angsen, had been pursued a little more aggressively, the structure of the plot would have fallen into place, much as it did for Art Spiegelman’s Maus. It allowed for the possibility of there being lapses into modern day and thereby offered a perspective on historical events.

Perhaps those with a greater in-depth understanding of the battle may appreciate the book. But for now, there is confusion between “Second World War Sandwich” being a literary fiction, commercial fiction, historical fiction, war novel or rescuing the history of the Konyaks. Having said that this is a book worth recommending as it puts the spotlight on a part of India’s history that is little known about. The last time a stupendous novel on this very same subject was written was by Siddhartha Sharma, “The Grasshopper’s Run”. It won the Crossword Prize 2009 and in 2011 was shortlisted for the Sahitya Bal Puraskar. Hopefully, Digonta Bordoloi will be recognised to a certain degree for his strong writing and he will be on some literary prize lists. This book deserves to have a long life. Meanwhile, it is crying to be optioned for a limited television series.

Read it.

19 April 2021

Web Analytics Made Easy -
StatCounter