One of the things I missed the most during my blogging hiatus was Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge. Whenever I participated in the past, I discovered books that made my end of year list. Obviously, I could read Japanese literature, of which I’m very fond, all year long, but we all know how it goes, when you’re a mood reader or “magpie reader”, as I call myself, you pick what speaks to you at a certain time and forget everything else. Unfortunately, as the last two years have shown me, it’s not a successful approach to reading. At least not for me. I need to have a few loose plans.

Ogai Mori’s novel is a recent acquisition and since I was keen on reading older Japanese literature, I felt it was a fitting choice for the challenge.

Ogai Mori (1862 – 1922) was an Army Surgeon, novelist, and translator. From 1884 to 1888 he studied medicine in Leipzig, Münich, and Berlin. In Germany he discovered the literature of many European countries and later translated classics like Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Kleist, Rilke, Daudet, Tolstoy and many more into Japanese.

The Wild Geese, (or Wild Goose) is considered his masterpiece. It was serialized between 1911 and 1913 in the Japanese newspaper Subaru and finally published as a book in 1915.

The story is told by an unnamed narrator who is friends with the main protagonist, Okada, a medical student at the university in Tokyo. They both live in a boarding house for medical students. The story is set in 1880, during the Meiji era, a time, when Tokyo was no longer called Edo but wasn’t yet the Tokyo we know now.

Otama is a young woman who is very beautiful but also very poor. She and her father who raised her as a single parent are very close. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for him. When her marriage to an influential man is annulled, she accepts the position as concubine of a rich usurer. This deal allows her father to live comfortably in a very beautiful house, surrounded by nature. Otama herself lives in a side street in Tokyo with a young maid. She has no contact to people as they all avoid and ostracize her. One day she sees Okada from her window and they both feel a strong attraction. Will Otama be able to break free? If you’d like to find out, you’ll have to read the novel.

The Wild Goose is as subtle as it is beautiful. I liked it very much. It’s rich in detailed descriptions of the culture and customs of the time. Flora and fauna play important, often symbolic roles in this story. Throughout the novel we find descriptions of nature that reinforce the mood and the themes of the novel. One of the most powerful examples of nature descriptions was the episode of the wild geese which takes place towards the end of the novel. I was wondering from the beginning why Ogai Mori chose this title as it didn’t seem to make sense. When it was finally revealed, it was quite shattering.

While Mori Ogai is excellent at describing nature, he is also a very fine psychologist and a keen observer of relationships. The friendship between the narrator and Okada, and the relationship between Otama and her father a beautifully rendered.

This book is set during a time when the Japanese society was undergoing profound changes. It doesn’t look like things were changing for women though. To read about Otama is quite upsetting. She has the misfortune of being poor but beautiful which attracts powerful men who don’t have any intention of getting married to her and don’t care that this pushes her to the fringes of society. She might be the mistress in her own home, but as soon as she leaves the house, she’s an outcast.

What impressed me the most, is how immersive this story was. Reading it felt like making a trip to a distant place and time. The imagery, themes, and story are so haunting, I don’t think I’ll forget them any day soon.

I didn’t read the English, but the German translation of this book, which seemed well done. It was published by Manesse in their Bibliothek der Weltliteratur series. If you know the series, you know how beautiful and luxurious these small books are.

This post is a contribution to Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge 6

In 2015, Peter Graf, the German editor of The Passenger, read Boschwitz’s manuscript for the first time. The Passenger was written in 1939, right after the November pogroms described in the novel; its English translation came out the same year in the UK. The US edition followed in 1940. Given the status of the writer, a German Jew who fled Nazi Germany in 1935, and the nature of the story, it never stood a chance of being published in Germany at the time. But post-war Germany was equally reluctant to publish the novel, even though Heinrich Böll was one of its most enthusiastic supporters. It took many decades more until Peter Graf decided to edit and publish the book. The English retranslation followed and finally The Passenger became a publishing success. During his lifetime, Boschwitz published another novel. In a Swedish translation, if I’m not mistaken. His third and final manuscript was lost together with the author. In 1942, then only aged 27, Boschwitz was on a ship back from Australia to the UK when they were hit by a German U-Boot. 

The Passenger is one of the earliest German books about pre-war Germany and the November pogroms. Boschwitz who was Jewish lived in the UK at the time. He’d fled Germany in 1935 and first went to Paris. Elements of his story and the story of his family are described in the book. The pogroms were a huge shock for him. The Jews who were still in Germany in 1938 were sent to concentration camps, their property was confiscated. Within a few days they lost everything. Many tried to flee but the surrounding European countries were less than welcoming.

Otto Silbermann, the main protagonist of The Passenger, is one of those Jews who lose their company and wealth, and almost get arrested. Panicked, he flees to the train station and boards a train. The first chapters show him chasing an associate who conducts a last transaction for him. The man who isn’t Jewish, cheats him out of most of his fortune, but Silbermann is still left with 40,000 mark, an equivalent of 170,000 Euro. Decidedly enough to start a new life somewhere else. So, purely based on the circumstances, things do not look catastrophic for Silbermann. He saved his life and a small fortune. Moreover, his Arian wife can stay with her brother and his son is safely in Paris. All Silbermann must do is cross the border into Switzerland or Belgium. But while the circumstances aren’t totally against him, Silbermann is his own worst enemy. He waited too long, thinking he wouldn’t have to share the fate of all the other Jews. One gets the impression he doesn’t really see himself as Jewish because he doesn’t look Jewish and isn’t religious. To assume there’s some kind of rationality, albeit a warped one, behind the persecutions, is his biggest error. Like most totalitarian regimes, Nazi Germany has no real reason for its actions; they are purely based on irrational pretexts and scapegoating. Silbermann lived with a false sense of security for too long and once it becomes apparent that he is in danger too, the shock is so immense that he isn’t capable of clear thinking. What the reader witnesses from that moment on, is one failure and one wrong decision after the other. 

I’ve read a whole series of WWII books for this GLM (due to personal reasons I couldn’t review them) and this was by far the toughest of them all. It’s so claustrophobic. The atmosphere of rising fanaticism, the way everything closes in on Silbermann is depressing. And the role ordinary people played to support this madness is mindboggling. Silbermann meets a few good Germans, but the vast majority is either actively persecuting Jews, supporting the persecutors, or cowardly looking the other way. 

One of the most crucial moments in the book is an encounter between Silbermann and another Jew who is easily recognizable as Jewish. He asks Silbermann for help, and just like some of the Germans Silbermann asked himself, he denies it because he’s scared. This act of cowardice robs him of his last precious belonging – his self-esteem. Until that moment he thought of himself as very different, now, suddenly, he knows he’s not. 

The Passenger is an amazing document of a specific moment in Germany’s history. And it’s an amazing portrait of a very flawed man. I was wondering, why Boschwitz chose Silbermann as his protagonist and couldn’t help but wonder whether he wanted to say, that especially the atypical, irreligious Jews who stayed in Germany, unconsciously supported the rising madness in thinking they would be exempt. Or maybe he just wanted to say that it is human nature to go the way of least resistance.

I know that I didn’t do this book justice and so I’m glad several other people who participated in the readalong wrote more eloquent reviews. 

I’ll be collecting them here:

Kaggs’y Bookish Ramblings

 

I’m taking this opportunity to apologize if I haven’t been very active this year and not visited and commented on your blog posts. Personal circumstances sadly made it impossible.

German Literature Month is back, this year rolling into its second decade with a new style badge, featuring the glories of Stuttgart City Library. (Link to:  https://unsplash.com/s/photos/stuttgart-library ) I think you’ll agree, it is an aspirational building, with bookshelves and reading sofas to die for!   It serves as a reminder to start seeking out the literary treasures, originally written in German, on your shelves, prepare your comfortable reading nook and discover some great reads during the month of November.

What are we planning this year?  Like last year, there will be two parallel programs.

I will be focusing on books set during the run-up to WWII, the war itself and its aftermath, including historical fiction set during that period. 

Lizzy offers a tour of German-speaking countries and more besides. All timescales, genres and destinations are valid choices  provided the work was originally written in German.

Week 1 November 1-7  From or set in Austria

Week 2 November 8-14 From or set in Germany

Week 3 November 15-21 From or set in Switzerland featuring Dürrenmatt Day on 18.11.2021 to commemorate his centenary

November 22-28 Elsewhere

November 29-30 Here, There, Anywhere

In addition, there are a couple of readalongs.

11.11.2021 Inventory of Losses – Judith Schalansky (hosted by Lizzy)

26.11.2021 The Passenger – Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (A Literature and War readalong hosted by Caroline)

As always you may take up some or all of our reading prompts or do you own thing entirely. Whatever you do, have fun. (That’s an order. )

I cannot think of a time when I haven’t taken reading and writing for granted. Of course, I was aware that not everyone could read but I don’t think I knew what that meant in numbers. One in six adults in the UK find it hard to read, and one in three do not read regularly. That’s such a shame as reading isn’t only educational, but can be so much fun and comfort. You can travel to new places, meet people you would never meet otherwise, learn new things, expand your knowledge.

Quick Reads, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, was developed by The Reading Agency. The programme which was launched in 2006, has helped many an emergent reader. The clever idea behind Quick Reads is to provide readers who aren’t as fluent, with engaging, enjoyable short texts that will not take too much time or effort to get through. And they are affordable. Each title only costs 1£. This year, for every book bought before 31 July 2021, a free book will be donated to a UK organisation helping those who aren’t as confident readers or lack access to books.

This year’s short books include:

OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE: The Baby is Mine (Atlantic)

–          Oyinkan Braithwaite’s follow-up to her Booker nominated debut sensation My Sister, the Serial Killer – a family drama set in lockdown Lagos (The Baby is Mine)

LOUISE CANDLISH: The Skylight (Simon & Schuster)

–          a dark domestic thriller from British Book Award winner Louise Candlish (The Skylight), who thanks reading for setting her on the right path when she was ‘young and adrift’ 

KATIE FFORDE: Saving the Day (Arrow)

–          an uplifting romance by the much-loved Katie Fforde (Saving the Day), who never thought she would be able to be an author because of her struggle with dyslexia

PETER JAMES: Wish You Were Dead (Macmillan)

–          the holiday from hell for Detective Roy Grace courtesy of long-time literacy campaigner and crime fiction maestro Peter James (Wish You Were Dead)

CAITLIN MORAN: How to Be a Woman, abridged (Ebury)

–          a specially abridged version of the feminist manifesto (How to Be a Woman) by Caitlin Moran: ‘everyone deserves to have the concept of female equality in a book they can turn to as a chatty friend.’ 

KHURRUM RAHMAN: The Motive (HQ

–          an introduction to Khurrum Rahman’s dope dealer Javid Qasim (The Motive), who previously found the idea of reading a book overwhelming and so started reading late in life, to find ‘joy, comfort and an escape’ )

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I’m very grateful to MIDAS PR for offering one of the titles for review. I chose Louise Candlish’s The Skylight because she’s an author I enjoyed previously.

The Skylight tells the story of Simone who watches her neighbour’s through their skylight from her bathroom window. They have no idea she can see them as from their flat it looks like the window is opaque. One day, standing at her window, spying, Simone sees something she didn’t really expect. It infuriates her so much that she decides to take revenge.

If you’d like to know what she’s seen and how the revenge goes, you have to read the novella for yourself. I thought it was very entertaining and offered a few unexpected twists and turns. I really enjoyed this short book. I might pick up a few other Quick Reads titles in the future as they are excellent introductions to an author’s work.

A book like this, short but entertaining, would have helped me during my reading slump at the beginning of the year. Now I know, where to look, should it happen again.

Thanks again to #QuickReads, @midaspr and @readingagency