№ 33 reading list: Keegan and COVID symptoms

I have been holding off sharing this reading list because, instead of using Instagram pics, I wanted to use my camera to photograph the books with a cup of coffee and fresh flowers, perhaps. But I haven't been in the mood. Five weeks ago, I caught a mild version of COVID. I mainly slept due to exhaustion. The worst part is that I lost my sense of taste - 5 weeks without the taste of coffee! - and all books seemed boring. Should I take back the mild-version part? Let’s look at the books on the list, as I have yet to finish only one.

№ 33 reading list:

1  Pain  · Zeruya Shalev
2  Small Things Like These  · Claire Keegan
3  Night  · Elie Wiesel
4  Nemesis  · Philip Roth
5  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind  · Yuval Noah Harari

Translated by: 1) Pain: Sondra Silverston; 3) Night: Marion Wiesel

Claire Keegan's book, nominated this year for the Booker Prize, is a little gem set in an Irish town in 1985. It deals with a delicate subject: how the Irish Catholic Church got away with using young, pregnant girls as labour in convents and taking away their newborns after birth. Keegan says all that needs to be said, making the content of her 116 pages richer than many longer works of fiction. (I can recommend the film The Magdalene Sisters (2002; Peter Mullan), which deals with the same subject.) Another short but rich book on the list is the one by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He shares his experience in the concentration camps, Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the reading is often painful. For years I have avoided reading the book; until now, I lacked the courage to pick it up.

In Nemesis, Philip Roth imagines a polio epidemic in his home town Newark in 1944, threatening the lives of children. Given that we are still dealing with the COVID pandemic, I wasn’t sure this was the right time to read about an epidemic breaking out. But it was fine. The book is well written (it won the 2011 Booker International) but perhaps a little too short for my taste. In the third part, we have reached 1971, and the narrator gives only a brief account of events since the outbreak. In this part, something was missing, and the sudden ending left me needing more.

I am wary of hyped books and tend to avoid books everyone seems to be reading at a given time and referring to as must-reads. Sapiens by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, translated into many languages, falls into that category. Yet, something kept pulling me, so I bought it for my son, thinking I could borrow it one day. I have now leisurely read the first part of four, and the book is promising. Harari’s approach is multidisciplinary; his writing flows easily.

Pain is a novel by the Israeli writer Zeruya Shalev

I have a strange relationship with contemporary fiction. I keep up with news from the publishing world but rarely get excited about new novels. When I’m excited, it could be the book cover enticing me. The reading often leaves me disappointed, even frustrated or impatient. I decided to read Pain by Zeruya Shalev after reading a short interview with the French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, in which she praised Shalev's writing. Pain is about an Israeli woman who survived a terrorist attack ten years prior but still is dealing with the consequences. It starts well but soon becomes one of those novels that I finish only to be able to express my opinion. Shalev’s writing has plenty of decent strokes, no doubt, but let's just say that I won't be rushing to the nearest bookshop for more. That is entirely on me.

I mentioned boring books above. One of those was supposed to be on the list, In Patagonia, a travelogue classic by Bruce Chatwin, but I gave up after a few chapters. At first, I thought my all-books-seem-boring COVID symptom was why I found the book uninteresting. But as I continued the reading when no longer bedridden, the writing style did nothing for me and its short chapters, more like anecdotes than chapters, felt too disjointed for my taste. I have said before that life is too short and precious for books that don't make the reading heart beat faster.

images mine, appeared on Instagram 31/08/22 and 14/09/22

Playwright Thomas Bernhard and white Austria

If you follow me on Instagram you know that I usually don't write long captions, nor do I copy nor share them on the blog. Sometimes I use the same pics. Yesterday, however, I wrote about my experience in Austria and would like to keep these reflections on the blog. You can look at this as a peek into my next reading list, which includes the play Heldenplatz by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. I will probably write about it later, in a Reading journal entry. That said, here is yesterday's caption with added links:

Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is an Austrian novelist and playwright that I still haven't read. For my next reading list, I bought a Suhrkamp edition of his play Heldenplatz, which he wrote on the 50th anniversary of the 'Anschluss', the annexation of Austria by Hitler's Germany [the Anschluss took place on 12 March 1938]. Anti-Semitism is the play's major theme.

Austria is my adopted country and I believe literature is one of the best ways to learn about the history and culture of a nation. By that, I'm referring to the things the history books usually leave out. Most of my time in Austria has been spent in this pandemic, which has limited my chances to be out and about; to meet people.

The Austrians I have met are all very friendly. However, what I cannot help noticing is that in magazines this country is depicted as White. Whether it's done intentionally, I cannot say. As I'm white, I have no experience of racism, but I have sat in waiting rooms and leafed through Austrian magazines, which present an idyllic view of a rich country with beautiful landscapes and white people. Lots of white people. I have searched and counted: In one magazine I found a group photo with one Asian woman and in another a small one with a black man. I wonder if the Austrians themselves even notice this.

Anyway, Bernhard's play, which some Austrians found hard to swallow, is one way for me to practise my German during the pandemic.

(Bloomsbury has published an English translation of the play Heldenplatz by Meredith Oakes.)

Adding to yesterday's reflections, I do realise that Austrians are in the majority, about 80%, but in light of history and increased immigration, I would have expected growing awareness. I have lived in several European countries and perhaps there I didn't notice this white image in magazines. Yet, I don't think so. I don't remember this kind of evident whiteness. By the way, I found an interesting article from 2018 on the website of The Irish Times, called Vienna is ranked world’s ‘most liveable city’, but for whom? (with the subtitle: For some of my immigrant friends here, the welcome has been far from warm). It focuses on the situation in Vienna and its author paints a completely different picture than a white one, of a multinational community to which the magazines I have leafed through do not seem to make an attempt to appeal.

Well, spring has sprung with sun and seventeen degrees so there is no reason to complain about the Austrian weather.

image by me, appeared on Instagram 25/03/21

New books | Happy New Year

On this last day of the year I'm sitting at the computer with a patterned turban on my head, a glass of Christmas beer, and tortilla chips in a bowl; the steak is slow-roasting in the oven, my gang is watching The Hobbit, and I have nothing better to do than blogging about new books. I wanted to share this entry earlier in December but I never found the time to finish it. At Christmas it kept popping up in my mind and since most of these works, fiction and coffee tables books, were published in 2017, I thought it best to share the list before the new year. To save time I skip commenting on each book because all the links, apart from one, lead to the website of Book Depository, where you will find a short intro. I would like to read all the books that appear on the list above the thumbnails, so chances are high that you will one day find them on a reading list on the blog. I wish you a peaceful New Year.

New books:
· Spy of the First Person  by Sam Shepard (Knopf). The final work before his death in July this year.
· Debriefing: Collected Stories  by Susan Sontag (FSG). Edited by Benjamin Taylor.
· Sing, Unburied, Sing  by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury). Winner of The National Book Award 2017.
· The Origin of Others  by Toni Morrison (Harvard UP).
· In Search of Ancient North Africa: A History in Six Lives  by Barnaby Rogerson (Haus Publishing).
· The Rub of Time  by Martin Amis (Random House).
· Philip Roth: Why Write? Collected Nonfiction 1960-2013  by Philip Roth (Library of America).

· Persian Art: Collecting the Arts of Iran for the V&A  by Moya Carey (V&A).
· Modern Art in Detail: 75 Masterpieces  by Susie Hodge (Thames & Hudson).
· Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment  by Henri Cartier-Bresson (Steidl). Originally published in 1952, embellished with a collage cover by Henri Matisse.
The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits  by Mihaela Noroc (Penguin).
· Morris  by Charlotte and Peter Fiell (Taschen). Richly illustrated book about the life and work of the designer William Morris (1834-1896).
· Map Cities: Histoires de cartes  by Francisca Mattéoli (Chêne). Currently available in French only but here is hoping for an English translation. I have already featured Map Stories by Mattéoli on the blog.
· Haute Bohemians  by Miguel Flores-Vianna (Vendome Press).

From Haute Bohemians by Miguel Flores-Vianna, pp. 80-81, Vendome Press

Astrid Lindgren's war diaries: A World Gone Mad

One of the books on a reading list I shared in March was A World Gone Mad: The Diaries of Astrid Lindgren, 1939-45, published last autumn in English by Pushkin Press (translated by Sarah Death). Astrid Lindgren was a Swedish author who wrote fantastic books for children. When we lived in the UK it seemed as if people only knew Pippi Longstocking and not the other wonderful characters she created. I still remember moments in primary school when the teacher read Seacrow Island during breaks; one of the books from childhood that I have read countless times and hold dear is The Brothers Lionheart. I doubt children think much about the personal life of an author, they simply forget themselves in the world he or she has created, thus the war diaries showed me a side to the author I knew nothing about: Lindgren as a young mother trying to grasp the horrors of the war, not without the feeling of guilt in a neutral Sweden.

Do Lindgren's war diaries have anything to add to what already has been written about the Second World War? What I found interesting is that she is barely 32 years old when the war breaks out and clearly feels the need to record its progress. She collects press cuttings and writes entries of various lengths in leather-bound journals, a total of seventeen which were found in her home in Dalagatan in Stockholm after her death in 2002 (published in Sweden in 2015). The book only contains the entries, and some illustrations, and it surprised me how thorough she was in her accounts. I thought I was about to read Lindgren's personal thoughts but soon realised that this was a book about the war in layman's terms.

Lindgren comes straight to the point without overdramatising, although she naturally experiences fear and anger. The first entry is written on the 1st of September 1939 when the Germans invade Poland. With a constant voice she compares the peaceful life in wartime Sweden - where there was no conflict, only the effects of rationing - to the horror elsewhere in Europe, especially in the neighbouring countries Finland and Norway. When she starts working for the Swedish Intelligence Agency, in its postal control division reading overseas mail, the war gets closer; she mentions this one 'profoundly sad Jewish letter' from the Continent to a friend in Sweden.

By Christmas 1944 the reader realises that something serious has taken place, she has experienced a breakdown which many who don't know her story could interpret as a consequence of the war and her work: 'I've had a hell of a six months this second half of 1944 and the ground beneath me has been shaken to its very foundation; I'm disconsolate, down, disappointed, often melancholy - but I'm not really unhappy.' She never writes in the diary what exactly is the cause but those who have read about her life know of troubles in her marriage. Her husband had met someone else and had asked for a divorce, which he then didn't go through with.

The diaries predate Lindgren's fiction writing but on its pages we witness the birth of an author; during the war she is writing her first children's books: 'I'm the happiest when I write.' However, the book is not a diary of an author, as I have heard people say, that is, hers is not a diary with entries about fiction writing and style. Her first book, about a girl called Britt-Mari, was published in 1944 and for that one she received an award. In March 1944, when her daughter is bedridden with measles, Lindgren is working on the first book about Pippi Longstocking: The last pages include an illustration of the rejection letter she received after submitting the manuscript in April 1944. A year later she talks about Pippi again, about rewriting - 'to see if I can make anything of that bad child.' We all know how that turned out.

I can recommend the book, which is very readable and, as stated above, showed me a new side to my favourite author from childhood. My quibbles have to do with the book not containing more illustrations. It has photos of Lindgren and her family but I would have liked to see more photos of the diary entries and press cuttings, particularly those relating to some key battles that Lindgren writes about in her entries. It would have helped to connect more visually with her experience of the war.

A World Gone Mad: The Diaries of Astrid Lindgren, 1939-45
By Astrid Lindgren
Pushkin Press
Hardcover, 240 pages, illustrated
Buy here

Summertime 2017: new books

The longest day of the year is upon us and on the west coast of Scotland we have clouds and some rain. The ideal weather for mentioning new books, don't you agree, and for inhaling the scent of the peonies on my desk. I ordered two of these titles from the local library and hope I can add them to my next reading list:

· The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (Hamish Hamilton). After twenty years, finally, a new fiction from Roy! Her novel The God of Small Things, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 1997, is one of the most memorable books I have ever read.
· Theft by Finding: Diaries: Volume One by David Sedaris (Little, Brown). Quite recently he was a guest on The NYT Book Review podcast, talking about and reading from it, and there I was in the kitchen laughing out loud. He is simply hilarious.
· House of Names by Colm Tóibín (Viking). An author I still haven't read. On my to-read list is his novel Brooklyn, which I wanted to read before seeing the film (2015), starring Saoirse Ronan. Couldn't wait and am so glad I didn't. It's a beautiful film that I can watch over and over again.
· The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich (Penguin). She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. This is the long-awaited English translation of her classic oral history of Soviet women's experiences during WWII. Published in July.
· Friend of My Youth by Amit Chaudhuri (Faber). About a man, interestingly named Amit Chaudhuri, who returns to Bombay, the city of his childhood. Published in August.

Textiles of the Islamic World by John Gillow

For Christmas I got the book Textiles of the Islamic World by John Gillow, who is a well-known author, lecturer and collector in the field of textiles. First I was browsing, going back and forth just a tad too eagerly, and mainly feasting on the illustrations - gorgeous motifs and patterns - but gradually I started taking in the wealth of information. For anyone interested in textile design this book is a treasure, especially if one is interested in Islamic culture and how Islam spread to various corners of the world. The text is rich in details, e.g. on embroidery and weaving techniques, but Gillow manages well to avoid an overload of information. For a non-scholar in textile design, like myself, the book was entertaining and I can only hope to do it justice in a single blog entry. The images I snapped show just a portion of the fabrics and patterns I kept coming back to during the reading. A small portion.

[Book cover: 17th-century Ottoman embroidered textile. Private collection. New York]

Right: Wedding blanket woven by the Fulani for the Tuareg, West Africa, p. 302

Textiles of the Islamic World, published by Thames & Hudson in 2013, has 638 illustrations and is divided into eight sections, or geographical regions: 1) The Ottoman World, 2) Islamic Spain and North Africa, 3) The Arab World, 4) The Persian World, 5) Central Asia, 6) The Mughal World, 7) East and Southeast Asia, and 8) Sub-Saharan Africa. The countries within each form chapters, which Gillow starts with a short introduction before discussing regions, costumes, techniques, etc. Each chapter ends with the state of textile production in the present day. It's both alarming and saddening to read how valuable knowledge in certain countries is on the brink of being lost. War-torn areas have especially been badly affected.

Embroidered leather pot-holder and bedding cloth, Kyrgyzstan, pp. 216-7

Apart from the historic details in Gillow's book, my main interest was viewing the motifs and learning about their meaning, a topic that fascinates me. Personally, I would have welcomed much more information in the book on the symbolic meaning of motifs.

In the Muslim world, the post-Islamic textiles are richly decorated and the designs are often abstract. The patterns are geometric, floral and vegetal, and some textiles have beautiful calligraphic inscriptions, especially in Egypt. The post-Islamic textile industry avoided the use of human and god-like forms. Also animal forms, with exceptions. In Iraq, for example, there are camel, cock and lion motifs, where the camel symbolises riches and happiness, the lion, strength; the cock, victory and glory (p. 120). Then there are the hunting cloths from Herat in Afghanistan that depict animals and hunters.

Appliqué tent panel from Khiyammiya, the 'Street of the Tent Makers',
in the Old City of Cairo, Egypt, p. 93

In Saudi Arabia the two holy cities Mecca and Medina are of great importance to Muslims. Mecca was the Prophet Mohammed's (c. AD 570-622) birthplace, the founder of Islam who died in Medina. In the book, Gillow points out the significance of cloth related to the Ka'bah, the holiest spot in Mecca:

The Ka'bah, known as 'Bait Allah' ('The House of God'), is a great cube of black rock. Since historical times it has been given an annual cover, known as the 'Kiswa' (literally, 'robe'), of woven fabric adorned with calligraphic inscriptions in Arabic and embroidered in silver thread with the name of God. This was traditionally the gift of the Caliph, and in Ottoman times was made either in Cairo or Damascus and sent with great ceremony on the annual camel caravan that left both those places with a mass of pilgrims to cross the desert to Mecca and Medina. (p. 122)

Block-printed shawl from the 19th century, Deccan, India, p. 244

As someone who is fascinated with block prints (they are so perfectly imperfect), I found the chapters about India and Bangladesh quite interesting. Above I mentioned war-torn areas. Syria is one of those countries and I think the destruction of Palmyra hasn't escaped anyone who follows the news these days. What I didn't know, and found fascinating, is that in Syria the use of block-printed cloths dates back to ancient Rome. In Palmyra they have discovered block-printed cloth from India that dates from the time of Queen Zenobia. 'The patterns on these finds are exactly the same as patterns on contemporary block-printed cloth from Rajasthan' (p. 106). Think of it, the patterns used in the Roman colony of Palmyra in the 3rd century are still in use in India circa 1750 years later!

Left: Curtain made up of brocaded silk strips woven on draw-looms, Djerba, Tunisia, North Africa, p. 73.
Right: Mende strip-woven cloth, Sierra Leone and Hausa wrap, Nigeria, p. 295

For a long time East Africa has been on my list of future destinations (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda are on it) and, obviously, I read that chapter with great interest. I also enjoyed comparing the textiles of Sub-Saharan Africa with the designs in the countries of North Africa (the two images above should give you an idea). Oman, on the south-eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, is also on my list. The Omanis had a great influence on the culture and dress of East Africa. The spice island of Zanzibar was 'for centuries an outpost of Omani power' (p. 299), and 'a notable Muslim centre as early as the tenth century AD' (p. 296). The city of Mombasa in Kenya and the island of Pemba (Tanzania) were also part of the seaborne trading routes of the Omanis. (I didn't take photos of the textiles (mainly garments) featured in the East Africa chapter; I found the textiles shown in the West Africa chapter more appealing.)

Suzani with an embroidered pattern of floral repeats enclosed within multiple
cockerels' heads, Urgut, Uzbekistan, p. 185

Early 19th-century Lakhai suzani, southern Uzbekistan, Central Asia, p. 191

Gillow's chapter about Uzbekistan in Central Asia was another one that appealed to me, especially the illustrations of suzani hangings, which are embroidered with flowers and vines. I could have photographed the entire chapter. Let me add that photographing patterns can be very tricky; sometimes there is so much movement in the pattern that it's hard to find a focal point. One of the patterns that mesmerised me was the early 19th-century Lakhai suzani in the photo above (I have posted another angle of it on Instagram). The Lakhai people live in the Surxondaryo (Surkhandarya) region, in the south-east part of the country, and 'claim descent from Karamysh, the sole surviving brother of Ghenghis Khan' (p. 190). Lakhai was Karamysh's youngest son. (Please find another example of Lakhai suzani on my Tumblr page.)

White Tekke chyrpy for an old woman, Turkmenistan and painted 'hunting cloth',
Herat, Afghanistan, p. 183

I could have written a blog entry for each section of the book but opted for keeping everything in one place and not too long. The visual part of my review could give you the wrong idea of the book. As I'm more interested in the patterns and use of motifs on e.g. rugs and wall hangings, I didn't really take any photos of the garments. The book has a lot of illustrations of garments and accessories, both for men and women, which should satisfy those interested in Islamic fashion and style.

Next on my textile-books reading list are two by Gillow, African Textiles: Colour and Creativity Across a Continent (it's on my spring reading list) and Indian Textiles (co-author Nicholas Barnard), also published by Thames and Hudson. Given how much I enjoyed reading this book, I have the feeling I will feature both on the blog some other time.

Detail of a Molesalaam appliqué, Kathiawar, India, p. 242

images by me | credit: photos from the book shown here are by Luke Gillow and Tamsin Beedle, except: cover photo · Clive Loveless, London | suzani p. 191 · Longevity Studio , London | West Africa blanket p. 302 · James Austin