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I chose one novel from an author I already liked (Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, One Night, Markovitch<\/em><\/a>), one debut novel (Preti Taneja, We That Are Young<\/em><\/a>), one recommendation (Hamid Ismailov, The Dead Lake<\/em><\/a>) and one that came as part of a subscription (Christine Schutt, Pure Hollywood<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2018\/09\/getimage-518-600x917-1-196x300.jpeg\")
Image from pushkinpress.com<\/p><\/div>\n
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, One Night, Markovitch <\/em>(Pushkin Press, 2015), translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston<\/strong><\/p>\n Earlier this year I read and loved Gundar-Goshen\u2019s Waking Lions<\/em><\/a>, so was fairly certain I\u2019d enjoy her first novel, One Night, Markovitch<\/em>, and chose it to kick off my holiday reading. One Night, Markovitch<\/em> is the tale of two friends \u2013 the eponymous and \u201cgloriously average\u201d anti-hero Yaacov Markovitch, a man no-one looks at twice, and his larger-than-life best friend Zeev Feinberg, lover of women, teller of tales, owner of a magnificent moustache. Whereas no-one remembers Markovitch, Zeev Feinberg leaves legends in his wake: he is a man \u201cwhose mustache filled the valley and whose laughter reverberated throughout the entire country.\u201d The two men have to flee their village in Eretz Israel when the butcher discovers that Zeev has been sleeping with his wife, and so Zeev\u2019s friend, the deputy director of the Irgun, secures them places on a boat bound for Europe, where they and eighteen other men will marry Israeli women fleeing a world on the brink of catastrophe. Once safely in Israel, the new couples are to divorce; Yaacov Marcovitch, however, falls in love with his new wife, Bella, a beauty who belongs to \u201cthe Olympus of goddess-like women which would never admit Yaacov Markovitch, even as a servant.\u201d He refuses to go through with the divorce, and this decision sets in motion a chain of events that unfold over decades, weaving together the destiny of all the characters and the choices they make. Lovers and foes are entangled and underestimated, and tragedy is never far away: \u201cBella Zeigerman\u2019s mistake was more terrible than Yaacov Markovitch\u2019s. For she was like someone who wants to cross a river she knows, saying, \u2018I know it flows slowly\u2019 and, taking no care, walks into it and drowns because it is winter and the water has risen.\u201d Gundar-Goshen deftly blends humour and pathos \u2013 I laughed out loud at some points, but was choking up at others \u2013 and the storytelling is a thing of beauty, as is Sondra Silverston\u2019s translation. I can see why it\u2019s described as a fable; there is a lot about it which is a little fantastical, and on a bad day I might have found it slightly twee in places. There were no bad days on holiday, though, and so I found it utterly charming. I shall be keeping a close eye on what Gundar-Goshen publishes next.<\/p>\n Image from galleybeggar.co.uk<\/p><\/div>\n Preti Taneja, We That Are Young<\/em> (Galley Beggar Press, 2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n Next up was the debut novel from Preti Taneja, who won the 2018 Desmond Elliott prize for this modern-day re-telling of King Lear, set in the palaces and slums of India. I can only speak about We That Are Young <\/em>in hyperbole: it\u2019s epic, turbulent, majestic, furious… Jivan Singh returns to India after more than a decade spent in America. He is the illegitimate son of the right-hand man of Devraj Bapuji, the head of \u201cthe Company\u201d, a powerful corporation at the core of Indian life; on the night of Jivan\u2019s return, Bapuji announces his shock retirement, dividing his company up between his daughters. The two eldest are the power-hungry Gargi (\u201cSuch a shame she\u2019s getting so plump these days\u201d) and PR-savvy Radha, \u201dpolished to a Delhi-girl shine\u201d, and Jivan watches on security monitors as the family is brought together to celebrate the arranged engagement of the youngest daughter, Sita, \u201ca barefoot girl in loose, rolled-up jeans\u201d, the most beautiful of the three daughters, and Bapuji\u2019s favourite. But Sita absconds, for her heart lies with environmental issues and women\u2019s education, not with the corrupt Company that pollutes India both literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n Taneja has grappled with every aspect of Shakespeare\u2019s King Lear<\/em>: nothing seems forced, despite the centuries and cultures that separate the two stories. In fact, the attention to detail is so meticulous that if you thought you might be spared the scene of eyes being gouged out, think again \u2013 even that gets worked in. We That Are Young <\/em>will sweep you away into another world, but there is one small thing that gnawed at me: there are a number of typos and editing errors, and these dragged me back into the everyday, taking away from that glorious feeling of being transported elsewhere while the book is open. Nonetheless, this is an ambitious and urgent novel, and an incredible debut: We That Are Young<\/em> is dark, frenetic, chilling, and it swept me along like the floods in the Napurthala basti, where Jeet (the legitimate son; Edgar to Jivan\u2019s Edmund) is reborn. Taneja is one to watch.<\/p>\n Image from peirenepress.com<\/p><\/div>\n Hamid Ismailov, The Dead Lake<\/em> (Peirene, 2014), translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield<\/strong><\/p>\n I discovered Hamid Ismailov\u2019s work earlier this year, when I read\u00a0The Devil\u2019s Dance<\/em><\/a>: when I was talking to my husband about it, he mentioned Ismailov’s\u00a0The Dead Lake<\/em>, which he had\u00a0read and greatly enjoyed while judging the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2015<\/a>\u00a0(The Dead Lake<\/em>\u00a0was longlisted). <\/i>He\u00a0recommended that I read it, and I pass on that recommendation unreservedly:\u00a0The Dead Lake <\/em>is haunting and understated, and pulled me in right from the\u00a0opening line (\u201cThis story began in the most prosaic fashion possible\u201d). Yet there is nothing remotely prosaic about\u00a0the story of Yerzhan, a young boy growing up in a small village on a bleak steppe in Kazakhstan, right at the heart of Soviet nuclear testing sites. Yerzhan is in love with his neighbour, Aisulu, and one day, on a school trip, to impress Aisulu he undresses and walks into the forbidden Dead Lake \u2013 a pool of radioactive water. Although nothing happens immediately, Yerzhan has cursed himself by entering it: he will never grow, and will remain trapped in his twelve-year-old body forever. We meet Yerzhan at the age of twenty-seven, a man in a child\u2019s body, playing violin on a passenger train making its way across the steppe. The unnamed narrator is travelling on the train for reasons unknown, and Yerzhan tells the narrator his story; the narrator then re-tells the first-person story in the third person (from the two novels I\u2019ve read, Ismailov\u2019s original use of narrators seems to be a feature of his writing). The short introductory section ends on this reflection: \u201c\u2018Does anything make any sense?\u2019 he retorted, suddenly prickly again, and his question seemed to be addressed, not to me, but to this train galloping across the steppe, to this blazing steppe spread out across the earth, to this earth, adrift between light and darkness, to this darkness, which\u2026\u201d One individual\u2019s experiences are set against the immensity of a majestic yet rapacious earth, and from this introduction Yerzhan\u2019s story is set out in three parts: \u201cBefore\u201d, \u201cThe Destiny\u201d, and \u201cThe Salt of the Myth\u201d \u2013 each with an alternative title composed of musical notes that echo both Yerzhan\u2019s prodigious skills with a violin and dombra <\/em>and his onward march to the final act of his story. It\u2019s impossible not to admire Ismailov: The Dead Lake <\/em>is tragic, yet never descends into melodrama, it\u2019s a horror story without the hamming up, a star-crossed romance that has nothing trite about it. Andrew Bromfield\u2019s translation is sensitive and stark, and Ismailov a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n Image from andotherstories.org<\/p><\/div>\n Christine Schutt, Pure Hollywood <\/em>(And Other Stories, 2018)<\/strong><\/p>\n There had to be a Year of Publishing Women<\/a> book in my suitcase!\u00a0Pure Hollywood <\/em>is a collection of short stories by American author Christine Schutt. I confess that the short story genre isn\u2019t generally my favourite (though Fish Soup <\/em>may have converted me<\/a>): I invest in the characters and then the page is turned on them; I start a new story still filled with thoughts about the last one; there\u2019s always a disappointing one that I like less than the others.\u00a0 I\u2019m full of excuses for avoiding them, but I\u2019m glad this one found me: Pure Hollywood <\/em>is the antidote to vapid, happy-ever-after tales. It introduces, among others, a young widow left penniless after her (much older) comedian husband dies and leaves his wealth to his children, a fractious child whose desperate parents resort to a babysitter with tragic consequences, a snooty woman whose rudeness to a younger woman on a horse ride has (wait for it) tragic consequences, two ageing men coming to terms with the past and imminent loss of their respective wives, and a newly-wed couple who befriend a misanthropic painter with (you guessed it) tragic consequences. But though I may joke about Schutt\u2019s penchant for eschewing a happy ending, the stories are refreshing and invigorating: they are not neat, at least not in the sense of being tied up with a pretty bow. They leave you to think and to wonder, they are written in a brutally poetic style (\u201cHe fell over the railing and cracked his skull and many other bones that gave him shape\u201d), sharply observed (a white stucco wall, corsaged in bougainvillea\u201d) and all too believable (\u201cMrs Pall-Meyer, the name suggesting a hyphenated importance, merely snorted and rode ahead\u201d). But despite the bleak undertones of Schutt\u2019s stories, they are far from depressing; rather, they showcase a pithy candour:<\/p>\n \u201cOh.\u201d Without a subscription, I probably wouldn\u2019t have chosen this book, and so it highlights the valuable ways in which independent presses can influence reading choices.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s my holiday reading rounded up for 2018. If you have any recommendations for summer 2019, I\u2019m all ears!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I took four books on holiday with me this year; though only one was a woman writer in translation, I wanted to showcase the diverse stories that accompanied me through the glorious heatwave of 2018\u2026 I chose one novel from an author I already liked (Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, One Night, Markovitch), one debut novel (Preti Taneja, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[81,127,217,369,395,607,705,735,761,763,765,923,999,1043,1063],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2018\/09\/GBP_AltCov_TANEJA_WeThatAreYoung_Cover_FBcopy-215x300.jpg\")
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\nThe little oh<\/em> was all that was left of Dan\u2019s story, the one that played out in his head about a husband with a ponytail and his purposeful, dying wife. As far as Dan was concerned, Nancy Cork was a woman needful and deserving of more love than her self-absorbed husband could give, whereas he could give\u2026 oh<\/em>.
\nHe could not put a name to it or perhaps ever find it again.<\/p>\n