---------------------------------
Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks
Mann portrays several generations of a merchant family who belong to the bourgeois aristocracy in Lübeck (North Germany), tracking them from high point to decline.
---------------------------
Brian Moore Black Robe
It was a time when the French laid claim to everything, but in truth the wilderness that was Canada belonged to the natives. The Jesuits saw the Savages (as they called them) as souls to be saved. The natives saw the Black Robes (as they called them) as destroyers, threatening the gods and sorceries by which their lives were ordered. Out of that conflict between two cultures, two worlds, Moore has fashioned an extraordinary novel.
----------------------------
Tessa de Loo The Twins
Historical and human perspectives clash in this cool, compassionate, psychological novel that unfolds around the chance meeting of two elderly women at a Belgian health resort. Each woman has come for the famously curative waters, but it is no coincidence that both suffer from debilitating arthritis—the women are twins, separated in childhood by the death of their parents. Anna stayed in their native Germany, while Lotte was taken in by relatives in the Netherlands. Consequently, they lost touch with each other and lived through the rise of Hitler, the second World War, and the postwar era from opposite sides of the war. The narrative unfurls through a series of often thorny conversations, as the sisters probe these and other points of contention. Artfully weaving two fully developed fictional personalities into an expertly realized historical background, this exploration addresses notions of guilt and responsibility in a sensitive, thought-provoking manner, without exonerating or condemning its central characters.
--------------------------------
Jean Rouaud Fields of Glory
This book represents a dialog between two generations seemingly far apart: three elderly veterans of the post-World War I era from the French lower Loire Valley and their grandchildren. Set in the 1950s, the novel is mainly a journey through the memories of grandfather, grandmother, and Aunt Marie, which reach as far back as battlefields near Ypres and Verdun--the "fields of glory." The memories are narrated from the perspectives of the grandchildren, whose initial boredom and impatience with the nostalgic stories from another era progressively become affection and understanding for the psychological urge to remember and be remembered.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manuel Scorza "Reboble Por Rancas" ("Drum Roll for Rancas," not available in English)
Redoble por Rancas is part of the pentalogy of novels written by Scorza, that constitutes along with La Danza Inmovil his immortal legacy to Latin American literature. Rancas, that humble village in the middle of Peru is just a metaphore for the underprivileged all over Latin America. The abuses of the dominant elite, the absurdity of this oppression are challenged against all hope by the indigenous peasants. Behind the inevitable humor is a fierce criticism of the landowners, the big corporations, and the complicity of corrupt local authorities. It is the brutality of the repression that brings the reader to think of the immense tenderness that Scorza uses to paint his characters. However, this book cannot be read alone. You must try to get the other four: El Cantar de Agapito Robles, Garabombo El Invisible (my favorite), El Jinete Insomne, y La Tumba del Relampago.
------------------------------------
Patrick White The Tree of Man
In the tradition of DH Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Halldor Laxness, Patrick White has written a story that teases out the secrets of a family's existence and, in so doing, explores, without ever mentioning them expressly, the issues and mysteries universal to humanity.
The plot could barely be simpler. In the early days of Australia's nationhood a young man and his wife set off into the bush to begin their lives together. They find some land, build a house, have a family, grow old and finally die. Around them the dramas of life unfold: friendships, disasters, disappointments and infidelities. The book is less about them, though, than about the unremarkable moments in between. These times of quietness are White's triumphs. His unhurried prose admits us to the intimacies of the characters, their griefs, their dreams and their successes. We share in the man's unarticulated affinity with the land, the woman's chronic loneliness. We notice how many words are never spoken, how many uncertainties never resolved.
Comments