6. “Burnt Shadows” by Kamila Shamsie

Year of first publication: 2009
Genre: novel
Country: the author is Pakistani, but the novel is set in many countries (Japan, India, Pakistan, USA and Afghanistan)

In italiano il libro è stato tradotto con il titolo Ombre Bruciate ed è edito da Ponte delle Grazie.La mia recensione è uscita, in italiano, sulla rivista culturale Paper Street ed è disponibile a questo link. Come al solito, vi offro ulteriori riflessioni sul libro, in lingua inglese.

Hiroko is a young woman from Nagasaki whose dreams for the future are swept away when the atomic bomb is dropped in her town. She loses virtually everything: her relatives, her fiancé and her home country. What she gets in exchange for that is a burning on her back shaped like the three-crane pattern of her kimono. She asks for shelter in Delhi, where the English relatives of her departed German fiancé live. Here she meets Elizabeth Burton née Weiss with whom she’ll become life-long friends and Sajjad Ashraf, a Muslim employee of the Burtons whom she will later marry, defying all conventions. Partition catches them while they’re on honeymoon abroad and, unable to go back to Delhi, they set off for Karachi, then the capital of the newly-born state of Pakistan. The story goes on with the children of the two families. Raza, Hiroko’s son, finds out that he’s a stranger in the town where he grew up. His peculiar features (he’s half Japanese and half Indian) and gift for learning languages allow him to pass for a Hazara and cross the border to Afghanistan, where the mujahideen are fighting their endless war. The novel starts with a detonation, that of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, and towards the end comes to another detonation, that of 9/11. Harry is Elizabeth’s son, who grew up first in Delhi and then in New York. He still has strong links to that part of the world and in fact he goes back there several times a year, without letting his mother know that he is in a war area. In the meantime, his own country, has become a place where Muslim people are considered a possible threat.
What I’d like to point out here is that I think that Kamila Shamsie re-elaborates the work of different authors. The episode where Sajjad is accused of having molested Hiroko and is sent away by the Burtons is reminiscent of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, where Dr. Aziz, also a Muslim acquainted with English people and also quite a charming man, is accused of having molested Miss Quested. That Sajjad and Hiroko end up having a very happy marriage demonstrates that, had Miss Quested overcome her prejudice for Indian men, she could have loved Dr. Aziz (in my opinion she did like him, albeit unconsciously). That Hiroko is a Japanese woman and not an English one, though, hints at the fact that only a woman coming from a completely different background, not Westerner and not Indian, could have done that.
This book is about fluid identities, loss and the feeling of being a stranger in a place that you considered your home. The latter is a theme that many Indian writers have tackled before: the first who comes to mind is Anita Desai. Kamila Shamsie, though, develops her own style and shows her own skills as a tremendous story teller. Burnt Shadows, ambitious and epic in scope, has wonderful characters and beautiful descriptions. A minor flaw could be that there is too much difference between a first part peppered with lyrical writing and insights into the characters and a second part, set on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, that suspiciously resembles a lightweight thriller.

About the author: Kamila Shamsie was born in Pakistan in 1973 into a family of writers and journalists. Her first book was In the City by the Sea (1998), followed by Salt and Saffron (2000). Her third novel, Kartography (2002), was published to widespread critical acclaim. Burnt Shadows, her fifth novel to date, was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Kamila Shamsie is also a columnist, primarily for The Guardian.

48. “Guida all’Impero per la Gente Comune” di Arundhati Roy [Italian version]

Anno di prima pubblicazione: 2002-2003
Genere: saggistica
Paese: l’autrice è indiana, ma gli articoli hanno anche a che fare con altri paesi, come l’Iraq, l’Afghanistan e il Pakistan

La mia recensione di Guida all’Impero per la Gente Comune è uscita in italiano sulla rivista culturale Paper Street ed è disponibile a questo link. Per non ripetermi, scriverò un po’ più in generale dell’autrice e di un recente risvolto del suo attivismo politico.

Arundhati Roy la cannibale, Arundhati Roy la hooligan. Alcuni la odiano e altri la amano. Io sono tra quelli che l’amano, sebbene non sia sempre d’accordo con lei. Per esempio quando, in un recente articolo pubblicato su Outlook India (pubblicato anche con il titolo “La guerra nel cuore dell’India” su Internazionale n.821, 13/19 Novembre 2009) , giustifica i ribelli maoisti, un gruppo di guerriglieri che sta dando numerosi problemi al governo indiano. Secondo me, il problema non è se queste persone abbiano ragione o no (naturalmente hanno ragione a non volere che le loro terre vengano sfruttate ed espropriate), il problema è che usano la violenza e il terrorismo per farlo. Roy ha per caso dimenticato il “metodo non-violento gandhiano” che ha portato il suo paese all’indipendenza? E’ arrivata alla conclusione che è fuori moda ed inutile digiunare e scioperare per i propri diritti di questi tempi? La violenza porta solo ad altra violenza: “occhio per occhio e tutto il mondo diventa cieco” diceva Gandhi. Per di più, tutti i gruppi di guerriglia che mi vengono in mente (le FARC colombiane o gli Shan in Birmania) hanno cominciato come idealiste e poi hanno finito per usare metodi illegali come il traffico di droga per finanziarsi, curandosi sempre meno dei loro scopi originali.

A parte i miei disaccordi personali con alcune delle sue opinioni, quello che ti fa ammirare questa quarantottenne indiana magrolina che vuole cambiare il mondo è che usa la scrittura come un’arma. E’ la passione che ci mette in quello per cui lotta e per cui crede che ti fa leggere con trepidazione ogni articolo che scrive, anche si tratti di qualcosa di distante dalla nostra vita di tutti i giorni come i gruppi tribali indiani. E la mia ammirazione per lei non è stata scalfita da questo esito inaspettato del suo attivismo.
Guida all’Impero per la Gente Comune è una collezione di saggi di Arundhati Roy scritti tra il 2002 e il 2003, nel periodo successivo all’11 settembre. Lungi da sembrare datati, gli articoli riguardano la relazione tra i potenti e le persone comuni, impotenti e sfruttate da quelli che detengono il potere. Che siano talebani, un gruppo tribale indiano o cittadini americani poco importa, ad Arundhati Roy importa delle persone comuni, ed è evidente nel suo difendere i ribelli maoisti, che sono persone comuni privare della loro terra.

Ora i ribelli maoisti hanno chiesto ad Arundhati Roy di mediare con il governo. Roy ha rifiutato naturalmente, dicendo che lei è una scrittrice e non ha le capacità di un mediatore. Invece spera in un cessate il fuoco di entrambe le parti. Perciò mi chiedo se Arundhati Roy di fatto approvi i mezzi usati dai maoisti per ottenere quello che vogliono, in assenza di alternative, oppure è d’accordo soltanto con la loro causa? Perché mi sembrava che, almeno dall’articolo sopraccitato, non stesse solo sostenendo la loro causa, ma stesse anche giustificando i loro atti di violenza nel nome di “un bene più grande”.

Sull'autrice: segui questo link, che contiene anche la mia recensione (in inglese) dell'unico romanzo scritto da Arundhati Roy, Il Dio delle Piccole Cose.

48. “The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire” by Arundhati Roy [English version]

Year of first publication: 2002-2003
Genre: non-fiction
Country: the author is Indian, but the essays also deal with other countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

My review of The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire has appeared in Italian on the cultural magazine Paper Street and it’s available at this link. In order not to repeat myself, even if in another language, I will write more in general about the author and about a recent outcome of her political activism.

Arundhati Roy the cannibal, Arundhati Roy the hooligan. Some people hate her and some people love her. I’m among those who love her, even though I don’t always agree with her. For example when, in a recent article published in Outlook India, she justified the Maoist rebels, a guerrilla group that is giving a lot of troubles to the Indian government. In my opinion, the problem is not whether or not these people are right (of course they’re right in wanting their lands not to be exploited and expropriated), the problem is that they use violence and terrorism to do that. Has Roy forgotten the “Gandhian non-violent approach” that led her country to independence? Has she come to the conclusion that it’s old fashioned and useless to fast and strike for your rights in times like these? Violence only lead to more violence; “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” Gandhi used to say. Moreover, all the guerrilla groups I can think of (the Colombian FARC or the Shan in Burma) started off as idealistic and ended up using illegal activities like drug smuggling to finance themselves, caring less and less about their original aims.

Apart from my personal disagreements with some of her opinions, what makes you admire this 48-year-old skinny Indian woman who wants to change the world is that she uses writing as a weapon. It’s the passion that she puts in what she fights for and believes in that makes you read with trepidation every article that she writes, even if it’s about something very distant from your everyday life as the tribal groups of India. And my admiration for her has not been touched by this unexpected outcome of her activism.
The Ordinary Person’s Guide to the Empire is a collection of essays by Arundhati Roy written in 2002-2003 on the aftermath of 9/11. Far from sounding dated, the essays are about the relationship between the powerful and ordinary people, helpless and exploited by those who detain the power. Whether they are Talibans, a tribal group of India or American citizens, ordinary people are what matters for Roy and this is evident in her defence of the Maoist rebels, who are ordinary people deprived of their lands.

Now the Maoist rebels have asked Roy to mediate with the government. Roy has of course rejected the offer, on the grounds that she is a writer and she doesn’t have the skills of a mediator. She hopes for a ceasefire on both sides, instead. So does Arundhati Roy actually support the Maoist’s means to get what they want in absence of alternative ways or does she only agree with the cause? Because it seemed to me that, at least from the article aforementioned, she was not only advocating their cause, but also justifying their acts of violence in name of “a greater good”.

About the author: follow this link to my review of her only novel, The God of Small Things.

Raise Awareness #3: Afghanistan

I promised a post on Afghanistan, as I was trying to understand the background of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. I decided to make this a 'Raise Awareness' post. This is a brief history of the recent conflicts in Afghanistan or, better said, a history of recent invasions of Afghanistan.

For some reason, Afghanistan has always been conquered by other people, but not without resistance from the Afghans. Alexander The Great (IV century B.C.) and Jenghis Khan (XIII century) were some conquerors of the distant past, but there were many more.
Afghanistan was under British influence during the 19th century (remember that British India is just around the corner) and it gained full independence from the United Kingdom in 1919. After that, there was a period of relative stability (1933-1973) under the King Zahir Shah. When British India was partitioned in 1947, Afghanistan wanted the Pashtuns (the most important and powerful ethnicity of Afghan people) of the North-West Frontier Province of British India to be able to choose their fate. Britain only offered the choice of joining Pakistan or joining India, and they chose the former. In 1955, Afghanistan urged the creation of an autonomous Pashtunistan, but the issue was dropped (it was revived by Afghanistan in 1972 when Pakistan was weakened by the loss of East Pakistan - now Bangladesh - and the war with India). Tensions with Pakistan over the border and other issues are frequent since then.
1973 – coup led by Zahir Shah’s brother-in-law and then revolution led by the democratic party. Afghanistan becomes a republic and Taraki is president. Freedom of religion, land reform and women rights were introduced. Religiously conservative Afghans were against the reforms.
1979 – The USA saw the situation in Afghanistan as a possibility to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of a Cold War strategy, the US began to fund anti-government forces (mujaheddin) through the Pakistani intelligence. Hafizullah Amin took over as Prime Minister and Taraki was killed. Soviet occupation, which resulted in the killings of at least 600,000 to 2 millions Afghan civilians. Over 5 million fled the country to Pakistan, Iran and the rest of the world.
The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. The USA lost interest in Afghanistan and did little to help to rebuild the war-ravaged country. Warlords gained power and the Taliban (a militia of Pashtun Islamic fundamentalists students supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) developed as a politico-religious force, first seizing the capital Kabul in 1996 and eventually the rest of the country. Restrictions of freedom and violation of human rights occurred during the Taliban’s seven-year rule.
In 1998, as the Taliban appeared on the verge of taking over the whole country, U.S. missiles destroyed what was described by the Pentagon as an extensive terrorist training complex near Kabul run by Osama bin Laden, accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The US then imposed economic sanctions on Afghanistan allegedly because the country refused to turn over Bin Laden. In early 2001 the Taliban destroyed all statues in the nation, including two ancient Buddhas in Bamian, because they regarded them as idolatrous and un-Islamic.
In late 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, the USA invaded Afghanistan to destroy the Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps inside the country. Hamid Karzai was chosen as the interim president of Afghansitan and free elections were held in 2005. The Taliban where largely defeated, but the country itself reverted to the control of the regional warlords who held power before the Taliban. In 2006 NATO took command of all peacekeeping forces in the country. In May 2007 NATO forces killed the top Taliban field commander, Mullah Dadullah, but Taliban forces mounted some guerrilla attacks on the outskirts of the capital Kabul. Also, there has been fighting between rival factions in various parts of the country, for instance Uzbek and Tajik militia groups in the north.
The country continues to struggle with poverty, Taliban insurgency, threats from the Al-Qaeda, large concentration of land mines and a huge illegal poppy cultivation and opium trade. Reconstruction is proceeding slowly and the country is in urgent need of international aid. There's still much to do!

For some recent dramatic events in Afghanistan see Clauds' s post answering to her good-for-nothing reporter based in the country.

PS: I coundn't resist uploading the picture of this Afghan refugee taken by Steve McCurry in 1985. The picture became one of the most famous covers of National Geographic and one of the most famous portraits in the world.

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

Year of publication: 2003
Genre: fiction
Setting and time: Afghanistan, then California and Pakistan, time spanning from the 1970s to the 2000s
Themes: childhood, friendship, betrayal, violence, war, emigration, father-son relationship, religion, ethnic tensions, neo-colonialism

About the author: Khaled Hosseini was born in in 1965 in Kabul, where his father worked for the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry. From 1970 to 1973 he lived in Teheran, Iran, where his father worked for the embassy of Afghanistan. In 1976 Hosseini’s father moved his family to Paris and he decided not to return to Afghanistan because communists had seized the country in a bloody coup. They sought political asylum in the United States and made their residence in California, where he still lives and works.

Plot: The 1970s, Kabul: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to an Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.

Some thoughts: This book gives great insights about life in Afghanistan and about their people: their habits, customs and sufferings. What I found dissatisfying, though, was the historical background behind the novel. It’s true that the novel was written in 2003, when Afghanistan was on television every day because of the ‘war on terror’, but my grasp of geopolitical issues is poor in this case. That’s why I am writing a post on Afghanistan, just to remember what’s happened and what’s still happening in the war-ravaged country. Afghanistan is not only Taliban and fundamentalism, as you learn while reading the book. I didn’t know, for instance, about Pashtun and Hazara people in Afghanistan and it was good to learn such a thing from a fiction book, if you know what I mean.
Nonetheless, I think that this book is a bit overrated. The story is certainly gripping and moving, but predictable at times. It was fairly obvious that Amir would loose his friend Hassan and feel guilty forever, if not from the relationship between the boys then at least from the way he used to treat him. The style could also be improved: Hosseini’s writing gives the impression that this was only a first draft of the story. It must be taken into account that The Kite Runner is Hosseini’s first novel, meaning that his skills will maybe improve. I can understand why this book was a huge best-seller: the story really breaks your heart… but couldn’t the author at least * SPOILER * spare us the horror of a child attempting suicide? I found that slightly cringing and disturbing. * SPOILER *