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I received this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. The book was published in February and I, of course, shelved the book until long after the publication data. I am apparently not that great at reading advanced review copies.
There’s something almost magical about this book. With Hitler’s army barring down on them, the residents of a remote Jewish village in Romania decide to reset the world and start over from the beginning. Relationships are reset; our narrator, an eleven-year-old girl, is reassign to another family to be their daughter, to be their baby. Genesis begins anew. For a while the dream manages to sustain them. The young girl grows up and becomes a wife and mother. Yet like all good dreams, the residents are forced to wake up and face the new world, and the younger mother must flee to save herself, her children, and her husband.
The same magic surrounding this book is what keeps the reader so distant. This new world is built for the eleven-year-old girl, for her aunt and uncle, for her parents and neighbors. It is not for the reader and while I always felt that sense of magic surrounding me, I never could catch hold of these characters.
This is especially true after Lena and the others go one the run. I lost track of them, lost my footing along the way. The psychological damage inflicted on Lena, our narrator, even before the war warps her perception of reality. An eleven-year-old forced to be a baby? A twelve-year-old who marries and becomes a mother? She’s wrapped up in her own naivety because she’s still a child.
Yet all the characters have a warped perception, all of them are naive, and it’s hard to keep track of people who are referred to by their occupation rather than names or personalities. The book is foggy. The end is bittersweet.
Book Mentioned:
- Ausubel, Ramona. No One is Here Except All of Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012. Print. 336 pgs. ISBN: 9781594487941. Source: Advanced review copy.
Eggers’ novel is actually the biography of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee and member of the Lost Boys of Sudan program. Due to his young age at some of the story’s more pivotal moments, Deng and Eggers had to pronounce his story a novel. However, as Deng explains in his preface to the book, the book is historically accurate and the events detailed are as he remembers them to be. I wasn’t expecting this novel to be a biography when I picked up the book; I actually thought this “preface” was a part of the narrative until I reached the end of the book and learned more about the Valentine Achak Deng Foundation.
The novel begins with Deng being robbed and assaulted in his own home in the United States. The events and the presence of one of his attackers in his home over a period of time causes Deng to recount the carnage of his life in Sundan, a country where between May 16, 1983 and January 9, 2005 over two and a half million people died of war and war-related causes, over four million were internally displaced in southern Sudan, and two million southern Sudanese took refuge in foreign countries (pg. xiv). The region at the center of this book became an independent state on July 9, 2011 known as the Republic of South Sudan, and the rebel political movement that dominated so much of his life, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) became the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, a political party in South Sudan.
The book continues with Valentino narrating his journey to Ethiopia and Kenya, where he was attacked by armies and wild animals and stricken by hunger, and his life after he is settled in United States through flashbacks. There were moments when I wasn’t sure how much longer I would continue with this chunkster of a book, but I would turn the page and be thrown back – mouth agape – at Deng recounts his life.
“Before nightfall, the camp was dedicated to education and nutrition, with us attending classes and eating healthfully and in all ways seeming to the UN observers a mass of unaccompanied minors. But at night, the camp belonged to the SPLA. It was then that the SPLA took their share of the food delivered to us and the other refugees, and it was then that operations were undertaken and justice meted out.” (pg. 326)
Next week, my class on trafficking will be discussing the militarization of refugee camps. I was particularly intrigued by Deng’s time in a refugee camp administered by the United Nations. The divergence of materials to support the SPLA, the script the boys were taught to say and all the insights into the workings of the camp were masterfully explained and I’m excited to discuss this issue in my class next Friday. The politics of the Lost Boys “escape” to America, viewed largely as a “failed experiment” is also a fascinating topic that I hope we will be able to discuss.
At over 500 pages, this book took me awhile to read and there were many moments were I was bogged down by so much information. It’s easy to get lost, and I’m still not completely sure I have the timeline down correctly. Still, there are moments of absolute fascination and I do feel like Eggers and Deng managed to communicate more deeply about the realities of life in Sudan.
Book Mentioned:
- Eggers, Dave. What is the What. New York: Vintage Books, 2007. Originally published 2006. Print. 538 pgs. ISBN: 9780307385901. Source: Purchased.
Subtitled “Greed, Corruption, and War in the Global Diamond Trade”, Smilie’s book was assigned for my trafficking class’ unit on conflict minerals. The book details a dangerous pipeline leading from war-torn Africa to the glittering showrooms of Paris, London and New York. It describes the campaign that forced an industry and more than 50 governments to create a global control mechanism, and it provides a sobering prognosis on the impact and future of the Kimberley Certification Process.
The other book I read on this topic focused largely on the efforts of De Beers to monopolize the diamond trade. This book, however, delves into a series of case studies — Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — to show exactly how diamonds are funneled out to adorn engagement rings and funneled in to fund wars and human right violations. It’s the first book I’ve read that examines the solutions offered by De Beers, the United Nations, and other governments and then follows up its critiques with its own suggestions. How very helpful!
I did have a few times were I struggled to follow the narrative but, overall, this is an important read on blood diamonds/conflict diamonds for both the beginner and the expert. Now, if only I could find a book on other conflict minerals!
Book Mentioned:
- Smilie, Ian. Blood on the Stone: Greed, Corruption, and War in the Global Diamond Trade. New York: Anthem Press, 2010. Print. 252 pgs. ISBN: 9780857289636. Source: Purchased.
Don’t make the same mistake I did; this is not the graphic version of Frank’s diary. Rather the book is a graphic biography starting with her father, Otto, serving in World War II and ending with Otto’s death in Switzerland in 1980. When the book does follow along with the diary, it steps back to provide the broader historical context of what was occurring outside the annex.
The illustrations themselves are interesting as they change throughout the novel. Some are translated from pictures of the Frank family and their friends while others are drawn from text when available or the authors own imaginations. Those copied from pictures are grainier and fuzzier than those Jacobson and Colón thought up for themselves. The graphics illustrating the horrors of the Holocaust accurately reflected the differences in the camps and showed the progression of Anne and Margot’s deteriorating health.
Some of the paneling for this graphic biography did not flow properly. There were parts where the dialog straddled two panels but was interrupted by more dialog within the panels. And in other sections were the dialog was written over multiple boxes, I wasn’t sure what the correct order to read the book in was. Some of the dialog seemed misplaced and I would occasionally end up reading it out of order.
However, the book does not replace Frank’s diary and is simply a new way to experience the story of Anne Frank. Many of her poignant observations are not included in this graphic biography. But the historical context does add new depth to the Frank family’s story that people may not know when they start the original diary. The reader is able to understand how and why the Nazi party rose to power and why Frank and her family moved into the annex, which is something I find is lacking for those who use Frank’s diary as the basis of their knowledge on the Holocaust.
Book Mentioned:
- Jacobson, Sid and Ernie Colón. Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010. Print. 160 pgs. ISBN: 9780809026845. Source: Library.
I purchased Mustian’s novel at the annual library used book sale because of the hauntingly beautiful cover. I also knew the novel was about Turkey but leave it to me to unknowingly purchase a book about the Armenian Genocide.
Emmett Conn has long experienced memory loss due to injuries sustained during World War I. At ninety-two-years-old, however, dreams and seizures caused by a brain tumor have forced him to reexamine events he’s unsure if he actually experienced. Was he actually a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turkey? Did he actually know the woman with the haunting, mismatched eyes?
The reader is moved from present-day Florida and Anatolia around 1915, living Emmett’s dreams and attempting to piece together the story along with him. Having never read a book about the Armenian Genocide before, I appreciated the slow introduction to the experiences of Armenians at that time. If I had been thrown into a novel where I was expected to know more about the Armenian Genocide, I certainly would have floundered.
“The fact that we [the Turks] are allowing these groups [of Armenians] to leave the country seems more than fair. Would they have done the same for us? The Turkish people are united. Turkey is for Turks. The mixture of different peoples will lead only to strife, like a dog with two masters. Better to eliminate the issue now, avoid the inevitable subversion.” (pg. 47)
Although slow moving at parts, I still greatly enjoyed this novel. How interesting that to learn about this particular genocide, which is illegal to actually call a genocide in Turkey, from the point of view of a perpetrator. At the end of the novel Mustian explains how he decided to write this novel and provided a list of book about the genocide he found useful. I certainly will check those titles out.
Book Mentioned:
- Mustian, Mark T. The Gendarme. New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2010. Print. 294 pgs. ISBN: 9780399156342. Source: Purchased.
