Microviews Vol. 55: Clash of Classics

The Mersault Investigation by Kamel Daoud
You don't know Harun, but you probably know his brother Musa. Well, maybe not by name but, if you love modern literature, you've definitely met him. Remember? On a beach? In Algiers? With five bullets in his chest? Surely this is sounding familiar. In what has to be one of the most audacious experiments I've encountered in recent times, Kamel Daoud has sought to reclaim the unnamed Arab murdered by Mersault in Albert Camus's classic L'Etranger (I'm not going to offer a translation - they all fail) and, in giving him a name and life story, not only engage directly with the original novel but also explore issues of identity, colonialism and the ownership of narrative. At first it reads as eulogy - Harun laments a brother invented simply to be destroyed, a mere prop in some great masterwork. He revisits many of Camus's lines, analysing them, spitting them back in the author's (and reader's) face. He is as impassioned as Mersault is dispassionate. Then, just as you feel the 'game' might get stale, Daoud shifts gears and reveals Harun's big secret. He too has killed someone - a Frenchman - during the 1962 unrest in Algiers. It is an act of defiance but also an act of revenge. It might also be an act of cold blooded murder. Yes, the loyal brother is caught up in an existential crisis of his own. He just might be Mersault's mirror. It took considerable guts for Daoud to engage so directly with one of literature's sacred cows. That the result should turn out so wonderfully satisfying, that it should be so much more than a mere companion piece to a classic, is both a relief and a thrill.
4.5 Out Of 5 Dead Mothers

These Are The Names by Tommy Wieringa
A ragged group of travellers trudges across an unforgiving wilderness. They are the hungry, the tired, the poor, thrown together by circumstance, forced to flee their homeland in search of safe harbour while a war rages on behind them. Only the the thinnest thread holds them together - they are untrusting and afraid, their tempers set to flare. Meanwhile, in the town of Michailopol, somewhere in an unnamed country, Police Commissioner Beg is on a journey of his own. His sense of identity, formerly secure in a warm shroud of familiarity, has been torn asunder. He is, or so it seems, Jewish in a town where only one other Jew remains, a cantankerous rabbi who has just buried the other Jew whom he despised. Beg wants answers to his past, his culture, the life that has been hidden from him. As he begins to immerse himself in the texts and traditions of his newfound faith, word gets out that a group of emaciated strangers has entered the town. And one of them is carrying a severed head. So unfolds Tommy Wieringa's powerful novel, a multi-layered detective story where the mystery is, in essence, how we seek to define ourselves and our sense of belonging. It is a prescient work in these troubled times, where entire populations are displaced and seek refuge. That the group have been the victims of unscrupulous people smugglers comes as little surprise, but that hardly lessens the rage you will feel as a reader towards those who profit from desperation. In some ways I was reminded of Jim Crace's masterful book, The Harvest, in its portrayal of a quiet community coming undone by its fear of 'the other'. Wieringa takes it a step further, not seeking to wrap the issues up in historical analogy. These Are The Names is a thoroughly contemporary book despite its non-situation in an easily identified time and place. In what it has to say about identity, sacrifice, the ethics of escape and our collective moral responsibility for those who seek refuge in our lands it is also a thoroughly urgent and welcome one.
4 Out Of 5 Dusty Trails

The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera has never shied away from the playfully absurd. There are moments in many of his novels where the reader will sit back with a wry smile, shake their head and appreciate the rope Kundera has thrown them in what is otherwise an ocean of deep philosophising. The Festival of Insignificance, Kundera's slim new offering, reverses the pattern. Moments of philosophy dot an otherwise humorous story of friends learning to find meaning in the general meaninglessness of everyday life. A chance meeting between D'Ardelo and Ramon sparks a descent into the ridiculous (and sublime) - for no particular reason the former claims to have been diagnosed with incurable cancer. He's throwing a cocktail party, you know, just to say goodbye to everyone. Which means he'll have to actually throw the party... and keep up the cancer charade. It's funny and silly in a very macabre European sense; the 'diagnosis' causes D'Ardelo and his friends to take stock leading to the realisation that life is (you guessed it) a festival of insignificance. Only when you enjoy the nothingness of it all can you cast away the monotony and dread. Wise words from a very wise old man but, in a career that has spanned six decades and countless philosophical eureka moments, it will not go down as an important book in the Kundera canon. Read it for the beauty of the writing and the knowledge that we may not hear from Kundera again. Then go read Immortality.
3.5 Out Of 5 False Teeth

A Brief History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matas
In some parallel universe there is a kingdom of literary wonders, in which an unrecognisable monarch plants his or her sizeable bum on the throne while being entertained by the greatest court jester of all time. I doubt anyone could name the monarch (indeed, I suspect that, depending on your angle, you might see a different one to me) but I think we can all agree on the identity of the jester: Enrique Vila-Matas. Since stumbling across his hilarious carnival of a novel, Montano's Malady, in which a slew of my favourite authors pop their heads up to clash philosophical swords, I've hungrily devoured any scraps the man has seen fit to throw we lesser beings of the English speaking world. They've all been great fun but, apart from the brilliant riff on Melville's Bartelby the Scrivener, nothing has quite lived up to my first taste. That is, until now. If I could have sat down with Vila-Matas and asked him to write a book especially for me, it probably would have turned out something like A Brief History of Portable Literature. Secret societies, obscure authors, Prague... yep. This is my book. A Brief History... tells of the (appropriately) short existence of The Shandies, a group of writers and artists committed to distilling literature to its smallest possible form while living out fantastical, disgustingly decadent, lives. Walser, Gombrowicz, Duchamp, Cendras, Man Ray and Aleister Crowley all play their part. Meyrink and Kafka get a nod once they hit Prague. The meetings become ever more farcical - for a while they convene on a requisitioned submarine - and the various characters put their very individual stamp on proceedings. A Brief History of Portable Literature is a juggling act by a jester who skirts the fine line between high culture and flat out lunacy. That the book itself is an example of distilled narrative just adds to the joke.
4 Out of 5 Bonzai Books

The Case of Kafka's Case: The Final Decision (And This Time They Mean It)

It was the kind of drawn out bureaucratic nightmare that would have made the great man himself proud.

Seven years after it first hit the courts, a final decision has been made in the case of Franz Kafka's piss-stained suitcase and the evil hoarder (well, surviving twin daughter of Max Brod's secretary Esther Hoffe). No doubt you remember how it went: Brod carked it, his secretary kept his stuff (admittedly in accordance with his direction) and then sold bits of it the highest bidder (very much not in accordance with his wishes). Fast forward a short while. Hoffe kicked the bucket and her daughters kept up the family tradition of profiting from what was not rightfully theirs. The authorities started to grumble so the wily ladies (who, it seems, were out-Collyering the Collyers) instituted proceedings to have the Kafka works declared theirs. Bad move. They lost. Then one died. So Eva Hoffe appealed. And lost. Which brings us to now. The court, in a moment of clarity, dismissed the appeal and said that the National Library of Israel was the rightful beneficiary of Brod's last wish that all his possessions should be entrusted in their entirety to the public archives. Of course, we are still none the wiser as to what might actually be inside the case. Other than dried cat piss and fur balls, I'm hazarding a guess at the following:

Kafka's stamp collection/shopping list/pros and cons list re: Dora Diamant/jar of nail clippings/summer comedy routine
The first draft of another Harper Lee novel
A blotted facsimile of Bruno Schulz's Messiah
The Holy Grail
Amelia Earhart
A novel that I'm going to actually have a coronary over when I hear of its existence.

Whatever it is, we should know in the next few months. There are no more appeals to be had. What's more, the National Library of Israel has already committed to scanning and posting all the manuscripts to the net. Anyone able to recommend a good crash course in German?

2015: The Mid-Year Report

Six months. Seventy books. Not a single one of them bought online.

After a thrilling start with SM Hulse's immensely powerful debut, Black River, and John Williams's classic, Stoner, my reading year took a quick and disappointing turn for the uninteresting. Book after book failed to impress. Sure, there were some halfway decent ones in there, but nothing that had me licking my chops in delight. What's worse there were some terrible let downs. Kazuo Ishiguro came a cropper with his Game of Thrones meets Camelot (or is that Spamalot?) meets I-can't-remember-I-just-nodded-off, The Sleeping Giant. Andrew O'Hagan had me excited for The Illuminations but it turned out to be a fair-to-middling war pastoral with not a great deal of... well... illumination. Ditto David Vann, whose latest offering, Aquarium, was pretty good but lacked the delicious malice of his previous works. Even Milan Kundera failed to fire me up, with The Festival of Insignificance very much living up to its name. Sure, the premise was smart and the execution somewhat playful but, at best, the book might have made a good essay or short story.

Thankfully, a few books from years gone by kept me going. Agota Kristoff's staggering trilogy - The Notebook, The Proof and The Third Lie - left my jaw dragging painfully along the floor. All three are excellent books but I'd have to say that The Notebook has now taken its place in the upper echelons of my Favourite Books of All Time^TM. Max Blecher floated up from the Hungarian depths with his previously hard-to-find-in-English masterpiece Adventures in Immediate Irreality while two more recent works - both tragic, both excellent - took a dump on my whimpering soul. So thanks Miriam Toews (All My Puny Sorrows, 2014) and Aki Ollikainen (White Hunger, 2012).

Things picked up again in April with the release of AS Patrić's astonishing debut, Black Rock White City, a perfectly crafted, sometimes disturbing, sometimes heartwarming, always beautiful novel about the Australian immigrant experience. Surely it will go down as a classic of the genre. Daša Drndić didn't disappoint with her intellectual circus of a book, Leica Format. I still marvel at how her mind operates. Then there was Kent Haruf. Alas, it took me until the poor guy died to read him but what a gorgeous little gem of a novel Our Souls at Night turned out to be. I can't think of a more perfect parting gift from any author. In terms of excellent debuts, Hulse and Patrić were joined by Chigozi Obioma and his book The Fishermen, a forerunner not only in the new explosion of world-conquering African literature but, I'd have to guess, in the race for this year's Booker Prize. Then there was Kamel Daoud's interrogation of Albert Camus in The Mersault Investigation. Not only a complex conversation with the universally loved classic, it was also a brilliant existential work in its own right.

Come December I might find myself embroiled in some internal battle after all. Patrić and Drndić are leading the pack for sure but I'm also currently enjoying the latest Jesse Ball as well as two new novels from the Litnerd's Litnerd, Enrique Vila-Matas. A whole bunch of excellent writers have books slated for release over the coming months (Harper Lee, William T. Vollamnn, David Mitchell) and there are a fair few I just haven't had a chance to read (Hanya Yanagihara, Mark Z. Danielewski, Jim Shepard) so it may well be a tight race yet. May my heart be as full as my wallet will be empty!

Microviews Vol. 54: Laying Waste to the Wasteland

Ok, so I've had a few emails of late asking me whether I've given up blogging... or reading... or writing. Short answers: No, no and no. I just haven't read anything worth yammering on about. Indeed, I'd almost given up on 2015 as the year that had about three good books to slot into an otherwise desolate top ten. Then last week happened... Yep, I read a bunch of great stuff. I mean really great stuff. So, back on this wonky horse I get...

Leica Format by Daša Drndić
Forget everything you think you know about storytelling. It's all a big fat lie, whittled down by barbarians, reduced to its basic blocks for ease of narrative reconstruction. Same goes for life, I suppose, for reality as we experience it. Few writers can push aside the artifice - Thomas Bernhard springs to mind, as does László Krasznahorkai. Of the young guns there is Jesse Ball. Nobody, however, captures experiential actuality quite like Daša Drndić. When I first read her previous novel, Trieste, I was blown away. I'd not read anything like it and, looking back, it redefined my expectations of literary fiction. That a book could not only be propelled forwards but explode outwards, unfolding on multiple (often competing) planes, and yet still draw together as a cohesive whole was a revelation. I clearly wasn't the only one. Trieste was reviewed enthusiastically across the board, most notably in the New York Times, and was nominated for (and, in my mind robbed of) the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Now, two years on, we finally see a second of her novels appearing in English. In Drndić's native Croatia, Leica Format preceded Trieste by four years and yet, strangely enough, it serves as a fitting chaser for the English language reader. The book opens with a woman being stopped by a stranger in the street. Her entire identity, according to the stranger, is a lie. She is known by another name, has another past. Thus begins an entire unravelling of reality, with electric bolts shooting across the synaptic clefts to momentarily light glimpses of what might be going on. Photographic allusions run through the very soul of this book as Drndić lays bare the nature of our interactions with our surroundings; not only do we remember in static image but, to a certain extent, we live as a series of static images, captured in some kind of objective sense, but apt for "photoshopping" as we consciously or, more often, subconsciously see fit. To this end, Leica Format reminds me of Proust if he had been popping madeleines like they were candy. But this is not some Frenchman with verbal diarrhoea and a penchant for sentimental pap. Drndić pokes and prods at the darkest aspects of modern history until the boils pop and smear us with the pus of our own making. It is visceral and unsettling but entirely real; a kaleidoscope of disturbing mnemonics, each one a catalyst for the next unflinching interrogative foray. Like in Trieste, the Holocaust is a recurring motif - it is, after all, the locus of our collective inhumanity. But Leica Format is more panoramic in its vision. Human experimentation, devolution, sexual perversity, disease, 'miracle' cures - the list of human failings goes on in a fugue-like multi-logue that would do well to be read in a single sitting. If it all sounds too disparate then maybe it is. But Drndić skilfully contains it in what I can only describe as a Joycean effort - the strands seem to shoot out as a woman walks along the streets of her old hometown, streets she barely recognises. I suspect readers will have a harder time with Leica Format than they did with Trieste. It is, in form and substance, a rather more difficult book. But it is also a demented catherine wheel of imagination and historical interrogation. Truly superb.
5 Out Of 5 Corrections

Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf
Kent Haruf was very much a writers' writer, a craftsman with a gentle touch, able to chisel revelations from the plainest of stone. By no means prolific, his books garnered critical praise and won him numerous awards without ever really propelling him to the commercial heights of many of his contemporaries. Our Souls At Night, completed shortly before his death late last year, is a fitting swan song to a quietly dignified and distinguished career; a tender melancholic tale about getting old and finding meaning in our shared loneliness. Louis and Addie live in the same little Colorado town. They both lost their spouses long ago and are growing old alone, finding ways to pass the time in the slow march towards the inevitable. It is at night they feel it most, the crushing solitude, the curse of outliving those you love. In what seems like an oddly decent proposal, Addie suggests that Louis starts to sleep at her place; it is not a sexual arrangement (though later there is an hilarious scene involving an attempt at sexual intimacy), she just wants someone to talk to, to keep her warm. Louis is not sure at first but he soon relents. So begins a gorgeous friendship, nights spent talking about life, loss, love and, yes, the future. Tongues wag, judgements are passed - it is a small town after all - but Louis and Addie find a new lease on life. They are reinvigorated, excited. When Addie's grandson is dumped in her care it threatens to fracture their bond. The boy's father doesn't approve of the arrangement, finds it scandalous. Yet what the two have forged transcends simple coupling. They may well have found a new kind of love. In spare, unsentimental prose Haruf weaves a life-affirming tale that radiates with gentle warmth. That he wrote it in the face of his own mortality is clear; it is a wise, knowing book, at peace with what is to come but still able to find joy in the final moments.
5 Out Of 5 Hot Water Bottles

Inside the Head of Bruno Schulz by Maxim Biller
Literary ventriloquism is always a risky business. Some writers lend themselves to mimicry, allowing for a certain amount of clumsiness in execution without totally ruining the show. Then there are writers like Bruno Schulz, an artist so unique, a voice so distinct, that a single slip will see the proverbial hand burst through the dummy's mouth. Schulz, of course, has been the subject of considerable experimentation. Cynthia Ozick played with his famous 'lost' novel in The Messiah of Stockholm. China Mieville dedicated a whole novel, The City and The City, to riffing on Schulz's Cinnamon Shops. Roberto Bolano and David Grossman have both tipped their hats. And Jonathan Safran Foer did a literal hatchet job in his not-overly-successful Tree of Codes project. None, however, have had the audacity to become Bruno Schulz. Enter Maxim Biller. Something of a sensation in his native Germany, Inside The Head of Bruno Schulz is a short novella in which the eponymous author seeks to escape his hometown of Drohobych by convincing his hero, Thomas Mann, to help him find a foreign publisher. The clincher: a man has come to the town claiming to be the great German master and Schulz smells a rat. He needs to warn Mann. He needs to know he isn't going mad. He needs to get the hell out of Dodge(rohobych). Biller deftly weaves classic Schulzian imagery throughout the tale: the fantastic becomes real, mundane even. Claustrophobia and paranoia combine to crush the lonely writer as he doubts both his judgement and his sanity. Oh, and of course, he must keep up appearances in his day job as a school teacher. In this short work, Biller has achieved something quite wonderful. He has given us another Bruno Schulz story with the tragically-fated author as its protagonist.
4.5 Out of 5 Talking Pigeons

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
Critics have been quick to slap lazy comparisons on Obioma's quite stunning debut. There's the biblical: Cain and Abel. Yep, it's a story about brothers. It's tragic, cataclysmic even. Next there are the classics: any number of Greek tragedies. Death foretold and played out. Some can't resist the easy African comparison: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Okay, so it's a Nigerian tale in which Obioma addresses the collision of modernity and traditional African life. Achebe's book even makes an appearance or two. But, c'mon... There are still others. Equally applicable but altogether inadequate. If I were to throw my hat into the ring, I might choose The Virgin Suicides; The Fishermen has the same blend of mystery and inevitability, you know where it's going, your heart aches in advance but you can't turn away. To reduce The Fisherman to what it's (kind of) like, however, is to do it a serious injustice. This is a bold and original debut, drawing beautifully upon an entire body of mythology to tell a very contemporary, universal story. The Fishermen of the title are four young brothers growing up in the rural Nigerian town of Akure in the politically turbulent 1990s. Their father has big dreams for them - they will be doctors, lawyers and such - and won't abide their parochial old world leanings. When they are spotted fishing by the town's tattletale, he is bitterly disappointed but is able to spin their dream of being actual fishermen into something more metaphorical. Poverty drives him out of town to find work, leaving the boys to skip school and resume their childish ways. They are, after all, only boys. One day, while returning home, they are confronted by the village madman who warns them of a dire prophecy: the oldest brother will be killed by one of the others. So begins a horrible downward spiral; paranoia compounds normal sibling tensions until the prophecy comes true. Those left behind have only one dream: revenge. Told by Ben, the youngest of the brothers, The Fisherman maintains a childlike wonder throughout. Like make of the best child narrators in literary history, his voice is knowingly assured but perhaps a small step away from full understanding. We, as readers, are left to fill in the blanks, to wade through the mythological imagery and find the real meaning in what he tells us. Ben forces us to bear witness to the collapse of a family that holds within it the hopes and dreams of a new Africa. Did someone say Booker Prize 2015?
4.5 Out Of 5 Marks of Cain

Death. Taxes. Krasznahorkai: The Man Booker International Prize Gets It Right

Listen carefully. Hear that faint whirring? Yes, that one. It is the sound of Benjamin Franklin spinning furiously in his grave. No doubt you are familiar with Ol' Ben's great saying about the only two certainties in life: death and taxes. Had he been alive today he might have added a few more: Meryl Streep Oscar nominations. Stephen King novels. Conspiracy theories. My complete inability to correctly pick the winner of a major literary prize. But wait! Could it be that the very essence of certainty has been turned on its head? Could we just have been tossed headlong into a stormy sea of doubt? Could the Man Booker International Prize have changed life as we know it? Cue existential crisis.

Today, one of my all time favourite writers, Laszlo Krasznahorkai - a man who is as dense and difficult to read as his name is to say three times fast - was named the 2015 recipient of what I have often said is the most pointless prize going these days. Time to reconsider, methinks. Sure, I like to moan about it as the Diet Dr. Pepper of literary prizes. And, yes, it comes with all the fanfare of a royal procession through Glasgow. But I can't help but feel it is the only one that consistently gets it right. Thus far it has been awarded to well-deserving writers who, for some godforsaken reason, the folk at Nobel overlook in favour of... well... Tomas Transtromer. Just look at the honour roll: Ismail Kadare. Chinua Achebe. Alice Munro. Philip Roth. Lydia Davis. And now, icing on the cake, the truly awesome Krasznahorkai.

To be honest, I'd totally forgotten about the shortlist. Back in March I picked him to win, assumed the worst and moved on with life. Now I get to see what I only thought a dream actually come true: "I just love the idea of sycophantic Booker types trying to make sense of Krasznahorkai's nightmare vision or even wading through the thick primal sludge of his prose. Oh the joy!". Come tomorrow, there will be a lot of very confused Booker loyalists sitting on the train scratching their heads. Soon thereafter the trains will be filled with goopy brain matter from said heads exploding. Moral of the story: Walk to work tomorrow.

For those who have yet to experience the near religious enlightenment that comes with picking up one of his books I recommend starting with Satantango. The Devil turns up in a remote village and systematically tears it to pieces. Happy dance (I just added that so you didn't think it too bleak). It's a damned hard read (see what I did there?) and, of course, deeply disturbing but it is about as good a debut as any author has ever written. Follow that up with the most dense, difficult nightmare of a book I've read, The Melancholy of Existence, and you are sure to reach a higher literary plain. You'll also never visit a circus again.

Hopefully I haven't turned you off reading him. The guy is actually quite delightful. I had the absolute pleasure/privilege of seeing him in conversation with Colm Toibin in New York last year and he was funny, charming and really quite cool. Indeed, he seemed the very picture of the thoughtful, classical European novelist. He also read a new short story which was one of the best things I've heard in a long time.

All in all, Krasznahorkai continues to produce perfectly crafted, challenging and unique works that might alienate the lazy reader but will reward those who persist in a way many other writers simply cannot. More works are currently being translated and will published by New Directions in the not-too-distant future. With this win lifting his profile in the English-speaking world you have a few months at best to catch up.

Now if only this could mean Ben was wrong about the other certainties. I need a holiday. And to plan for my 300th birthday.

Rocking The Boat

Here's one to confound the haters. For all those who dismiss the literary potential of the graphic form. For all those who think the electronic screen detracts from the reading experience. For all those who think SBS is a waste of the Australian tax dollar.* Yes, haters one and all, you have been PWNED!** Australian multicultural broadcaster SBS has just launched an online graphic adaptation of one of the great Australian short stories of the modern era, Nam Le's The Boat, and it is probably the best thing you are likely to see this year. Check it out HERE. The Boat was already an extraordinary story. But to see it adapted in this way, to see the use of image, sound and movement, achieves what I would have thought impossible: It makes it even better. If you are already a fan I promise you will be delighted by Matt Huynh's astonishing (and stark) creation. If you don't know it, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? Massive kudos to all the team involved at SBS on this thrilling achievement. You might just have redefined what graphic e-reading can be.***

* And let's be honest. I have been known to fall into the first two categories from time to time.
** OK I tried to speak computer nerd there for a second and clearly made a schmuck of myself.
*** I'm still not buying a Kindlenook-thingamy though.

The Pulitzer Puddlemuck

No seriously... Is there some kind of cosmic literary prank being pulled here?

Hot on the heels of my Folio flip out, Team Pulitzer drop their announcement and, surprise surprise, give the fiction prize to another of the most overrated books of 2014. Yep, in case you haven't heard, this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Anthony Doerr for his WW2 brick of a novel, All The Light We Cannot See. Of course, this isn't the first major plaudit for the book - it sat atop a fair few end of year Best Ofs, most... um... notably the New York Times Notable Books.

As for me, well, I didn't get around to reading it until January so it never made any of my lists. But had I had the chance, no doubt I would have stuck it alongside Akhil Sharma, Haruki Murakami and Ali Smith as one of the most overrated novels of the year. Sure, it's lovely and readable. The chapters fly by in short, sharp succession. The dual plot lines are engaging enough. However, when all was said and done, it struck me as a pretty decent book to read on the plane or beach, not a work of deep substance.

Now, as for the win, I haven't read the other three finalists. There is every possibility that the Doerr is better than Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford, The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami or Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates. And this is hardly the calamity of 2012 when no award was given for fiction because the judges didn't feel anything was particularly worthy (despite having had three pretty excellent books on the shortlist). Still, I am really beginning to doubt my ability to gauge the literary landscape.

Oh well. At least I have still have this little corner of the interwebs to pontificate, whinge, call shenanigans and sing some apparently completely off kilter praises.

The End of The Folio Affair

Big breath. Big breath.

I realise that I'm a little late to the party here but I've been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now and, hard as it is for me to admit it, I'm just going to have to accept that The Folio Prize and I are never going to be friends. The excitement I felt, the anticipation of the David and Goliath battle with The Booker Prize, the deliriously happy marriage I rushed into. All over.

And... exhale.

You probably already know that the prize was recently awarded to Akhil Sharma for his twelve-year-in-the-making Family Life. William Fiennes, chair of judges, could not have been more laudatory if he tried:

"From a shortlist of which we are enormously proud, Akhil Sharma’s lucid, compassionate, quietly funny account of one family’s life across continents and cultures, emerged as our winner. Family Life is a masterful novel of distilled complexity: about catastrophe and survival; attachment and independence; the tension between selfishness and responsibility. We loved its deceptive simplicity and rare warmth. More than a decade in the writing, this is a work of art that expands with each re-reading and a novel that will endure."

I, on the other hand, bestowed a somewhat different honour upon it last year, when it came in alongside Murakami's latest offering as the equally most overrated book of 2014. You may perhaps recall my little spray:

"I was at a loss to understand the plaudits poured upon Akhil Sharma's slim offering, Family Life. It supposedly took him ten or twelve or twenty (or some other multiple of a ferret's average life span) years to complete and drew heavily from his personal experience of grief and dislocation. Stripped of its forest of laurels it is a fair to middling shrub of a novel about the immigrant experience. I can't help but feel that Sharma has a lot of friends in high places, none of whom could muster the guts to tell him that those umpteen years might have been better spent working on something else."

So what gives, Folio? Last year you gave it to George Saunders for Tenth of December and I bitched and moaned. That too had made my end of year list in 2013, also being named the most overrated book of the year. Am I that far off track? Have I become the accidental predictor of all future Folio Prizes? If so, might I suggest putting some early moolah on Ishiguro? Or maybe third time will be a charm. Just kidding, I'm sure I'll be wildly off mark again.

Microviews Vol. 54: War in Pieces

Black Rock White City by A.S. Patrić
For a country built on waves of immigration, Australian seems oddly lacking in great novels of the immigrant experience. Off hand, there's Pino Bossi's Australia Cane, Arnold Zable's Cafe Scheherezade and The Boat by Nam Le (admittedly not a novel but unquestionably brilliant). And The Arrival by Shaun Tan has to crack a mention, even if it is graphic fiction. Now elbowing its way into the milieu comes A.S. Patrić's debut long-former (he has published short story collections and a novella), Black Rock White City, a book that I am convinced will be held among the greats in years to come. With tight, carefully crafted prose Patrić gives us a story that transcends any particular ethnicity, one that delves deep into the existential conundrum of transplanted life. Jovan and Suzana are both cleaners; he mops the floor of a bayside hospital while she tidies the homes of the privileged. Back in Serbia, before their lives were destroyed, before their children died, they were part of the literary elite. Highly educated, celebrated. Having fled to Australia, they live out the quiet drudgery of subsistence while coming to terms - if that is even possible - with their shared trauma. Jovan wanders, he throws himself into an essentially meaningless affair. Suzana exists in a state of constant self-negation, of guilt and blame. And yet, through it all they seem to be navigating a way back to love. Behind the complexity of the relationships, both with each other and those around them, Patrić also weaves a sinister mystery. Someone is daubing the hospital walls with nasty, pointed graffiti. Every letter is an accusation, every phrase a dagger in Jovan's chest. It is easy to get caught up in the desire to discover the identity of this Dr. Graffito (as Jovan calls him) but Patrić is too savvy a writer to allow his book to descend to the level of cheap thriller. The graffiti serves a more poetic purpose: it juxtaposes with Jovan's own poetry in what seems to be a battle for meaning. Black Rock White City is a sparely written book of big ideas. Patrić lays bare the minutiae of the new immigrant's daily struggle with perfect pitch and amazing beauty; the constant mispronunciations, the cultural clashes, the daily sacrifices, the small pleasures. That he dares to do so from the side of a conflict often seen as 'the baddies' makes it all the more powerful. Indeed, Black Rock White City goes to show that simple dichotomies don't work when we talk about war. Everyone is a victim. Lives are ruined. Tragedy does not take sides. And therein lies the knockout blow of this truly wonderful novel: the scars endure, the poison continues to course through the vein, but simple humanity might still triumph.
5 Out of 5 Soapy Buckets

Down To The River by SJ Finn
Brave is the author willing to give considered thought to the great taboos of our times. In Down To The River, SJ Finn turns her insightful gaze to what is, to my mind, the greatest taboo right now: pedophilia. Never fear. This isn't some morally suspect Lolita-lite. Nor is it a heavy-handed piece of judgemental grandstanding. Finn seems more interested in the way the issue affects the various players around it. Rather cleverly, she situates the story in a country town, a perfect fishbowl in which to scratch at society's scabs. Dungower is a typical Victorian backwater. Everyone knows everyone else. Legacies loom large, friendships endure. Unfortunately, so too do grudges and petty rivalries. And that's before the dark secrets bubble to the surface. Enter Jordan Phelps, twice convicted child sex offender, his past kept quiet until he is accused of abusing two local boys. With the tinderbox lit and exploding, the townsfolk spin like a Catherine Wheel, scorching and fizzling in a multitude of colours. Down To The River is, above all, a thoughtful examination of a town in crisis. Phelps is more catalyst than character - he brings out both the best and worst in the townsfolk but otherwise exists on the periphery of the story. Of more concern to Finn is the failing relationship between local journo Joni Miller and her partner Tiff. To them, small town life proves toxic. That Joni is unwittingly tied to Dungower's own child sex scandal, herself a victim of sorts, widens the chasm between them. Down To The River is a sharp and impressively woven novel but there is one jarring caveat. The courtroom scene, when Phelps is finally hauled before a magistrate to face the charges, is strangely inauthentic. Procedurally - speaking as a lawyer - it just doesn't ring true, owing more to American courtroom dramas than actual Australian legal process. It is a peculiar stumble for a book that is otherwise so packed with perceptive truths.
4 Out Of 5 Pitchforks

Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner
In the sprawling fields of literature, legends sprout like unchecked weeds. Six months ago, very few people had heard of the inter-war German journalist and author Ernst Haffner. Then word began to leak about a lost classic, recently rediscovered and soon to be translated. That the book, banned and burned by the Nazis, had for so long been forgotten was itself worthy of note. But it is the fate of its author that really got tongues flapping. Sometime in the early 1940s, Ernst Haffer just vanished. What's more, all official records of him also disappeared. For all intents and purposes, Haffner did not exist. With a back story like that, it was hard not to be excited about the release of Blood Brothers. Unfortunately, it was equally hard for the book to live up to the hype. Blood Brothers is a gritty tale of dispossessed youth in Weimar Germany. Thugs, thieves, rent boys, scammers, they do what they can to get by, always striving to stay one step ahead of the authorities. The gang splinters and reconstitutes, some leave to pursue more legitimate paths, others spiral downwards into outright desperation and depravity. It is about as unflattering a portrait any author could paint of one society's seedy underbelly. And that is where Haffner really excelled. Blood Brothers is a tough book; it pulls no punches. It is also rather disjointed and episodic. As a novel I'm not quite sure it works. But as an indictment of a country in decline, a foretelling of horrors to come, it is almost without equal.
3.5 Out Of 5 Picked Pockets

White Hunger by Aki Ollikainen
Science has never been my thing. Still, I know enough to understand the basics of conditioning. Most monkeys administered a nasty shock will avoid doing whatever they were doing when the jolt hit. Many learn the first time. What gives? you may ask. Well, it turns out that when it comes to reading I rank somewhere below your average rhesus. Last time I tried a Peirene book, the staggeringly bleak heartbreaker By The Sea, I almost needed to be committed. It should have been enough to steer me away from anything else they published. Yet, sub-primate that I am, I picked up Aki Ollikainen's White Hunger despite having read that it was much like Cormac McCarthy's The Road minus the glimmers of hope. Set during a brutal Nordic winter, where crops have failed and people are succumbing to starvation, disease and hypothermia, it tells a tale not dissimilar to McCarthy's book albeit more grounded in historical reality. A young family sets off on foot towards Russia in the hope of finding food. That's about it. They trudge across the frozen wasteland, witnessing the horrible casualties in nature's war against humankind. Readers would do well not to get too attached to anyone - one by one they die sad, horrible deaths. Even the small mercies prove cruel and unforgiving. White Hunger is a harrowing book. It shows us for the insignificant creatures we really are while stripping away the facade of civility. It is, however, also quite brilliant. You will learn more about yourself than you might ever care to know. Just be sure to tuck some money away before you read it. You're going to need a therapist when you're done and Medicare only covers so much of the cost.
4 Out of 5 Frozen Mudcakes

The Drummer Falls Silent: Gunter Grass 1927 - 2015

And so another of the great old guard leaves us.

Much like the death last year of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, that of Gunter Grass has me a little torn. First up... The Tin Drum. A true modern classic, no doubt, with the most deliciously malicious dwarf ever to grace the page. I remember studying it in German Literature and being thoroughly enchanted by Oskar's singularly demented worldview. Probably one of the best German reflections on the Nazi scourge I've encountered. Then there are the others: Cat and Mouse and Dog Years (the second and third instalments of the Danzig Trilogy), The Flounder, The Rat. Even Crabwalk, though I suspect that I am one of the few readers who actually liked Grass's attempt at reconciling "classic" and "modern" bigotry.

But then there was Gunter Grass the man. The liar. The curmudgeon. The moral fraud. Sure, he wasn't a misogynist prick like Marquez or a surly arsehole like Saramago but, well, he was a member of the Waffen SS. And that's about as bad as you can get. Perhaps had he come clean early on in the piece, say... you know.. before he won the Nobel Prize, it might have been understandable. Own the shame I say. Indeed, his excuse for involvement, that most young men were conscripted and fought in the war without ideological zeal, makes perfect sense. It's not like he was that Nazi loving scumbag Knut Hamsen. But the underhandedness of his silence has done his legacy untold, everlasting damage.

Still, I will always be thankful to him for Oskar, for making me understand (at least in a tiny sense) the mindset of a people who could so easily be led into moral bankruptcy. Vale, sir. Though I can't rightfully salute you. I'm sure you'd understand.