Tag-Archive for ◊ collar. ◊

Author:
• Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Hisham Matar was born in New York in 1970 to Libyan parents. His father worked for the Libyan mission to the United Nations. But in 1979 being against the regime, he left Libya and went into exile in Egypt with his family. After living in Cairo for eleven years, his father was kidnapped and sent back to Libya where he was sent to prison and since 1995 Hisham Matar has no news of his father’s whereabouts. His mother and elder brother still live in Egypt.

Hisham Matar spent his young years in Tripoli and Cairo. He lived in Cairo for four years, and at fifteen went to boarding school in England. Then he studied architecture at Goldsmith college London University and still lives in London, married to American photographer, Diana Matar. He is working on a new novel set in Cairo and London.

In his twenties Hisham Matar worked as an architect and also wrote articles for the London based Arabic daily newspaper, Al Shark Al Awsat. His essays have been published in The Independent, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Times. In 2002 he was a finalist in East Anglia’s Best New Talent Awards for his poems, before preferring prose to poetry.

Hisham Matar’s first novel In the Country of Menwas first published in 2006 and was nominated for The Guardian First Book Award. It was on the short list of The Booker Prize of 2006 and won The Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2007. “In The Country of Men” was a big success and has been translated into 22 languages. Despite its short length it took five years to write.

The novel is narrated by a bewildered nine year-old Suleiman who is trying to decode the adult world that takes place inside his own family and in Tripoli, ten years after the 1969 Libyan revolution. The book starts in 1979, the year before he left Tripoli to go and live in Cairo.

Little Suleiman is confused as would be a nine year old who lives with a depressed, domineering, alcoholic and emotionally unpredictable mother (Mama), a nearly non-existent figure-head of a businessman father (Baba), and suspicious men (the secret police) moving around Tripoli and his neighbourhood.

Apart from Suleiman’s mother, the main character in the story who plays an important part in Suleimen’s life, the story is mainly about men, as the title of the novel suggests. The novel is not only about politics, it’s also about strong emotions, compassions and relationships between people sharing almost the same fate.

The story is poignant. Suleiman who at his age should be living a carefree life, is burdened by the cruel events surrounding him. Like nine year old Michele in “I’m Not Scared” by Niccolo Ammaniti and twelve year old Amir in “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, he is ejected too soon into adulthood due to circumstances and without any mercy.

Throughout the novel there is a sense of danger, fear, betrayal, and a very heavy atmosphere of oppression, that the nine-year old child caught in this claustrophobic world would rather not even attempt to decipher but instead escape to a freer place.

Nevertheless, the story is evoked with great subtlety and compassion. “In The Country of Men” is an interesting novel because it’s about Libya, a country which has encountered many world-wide controversies in recent years and yet remains completely unknown to the outsider.

Very rarely would one come across a book about Libya, its every day life and its regime. In one of his interviews Hisham Matar says : “I would have liked to write a book that had nothing to do with politics… I’m not really interested in politics, but politics was part of the canvas. I had to say something about it, otherwise all the different forces that are shaping these characters would be abstract.”

The characters in the novel are not fully developed but rather sketched apart from the character of Suleimen’s mother who stands out vividly among the other hazy characters, emphasising the endearing love binding the little boy to his mother, love that will remain just as strong even when the little boy becomes a young man in exile in Egypt.

“I look down at my legs, my grown-up legs in their grown-up trousers…. You’re a man, I tell myself. And she (his mother) is coming to see you, to see what has become of her darling boy, her only son. How will she be? …What will she think of me… Then I see her. She is standing next to her suitcase like a girl in the city for the first time… Mama, I say and say it again and again until she sees me. Mama! Mama! When I reach her she kisses my hands, my forehead, my cheeks, combs my hair with her fingers, straightens my collar.”

The style, in its unpretentious appealing simplicity, speaks to the heart on an emotionally realistic level. In one of his interviews, Hisham Matar denies that his novel In the Country of Menis autobiographical. He said it’s pure fiction and that he chose to fictionalise events of his childhood:

“The book is a product of my imagination: a human faculty that many, I am learning these days, are suspect of. This book took me five years to write; I am not yet interested enough in my own autobiography to spend that long writing it down. Besides, knowing what will happen next bores me… I enjoy the pleasure of inventing characters and their circumstances on the page. They remain mysterious even after the work is complete; in some ways even more mysterious. It’s magic.”

“Libya is a silent and silenced country. Somewhere between the covers of my book is a Libya that speaks. But most of all, I hope anyone who reads my novel is entertained and perhaps nudged a little.”

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Author:
• Saturday, March 03rd, 2007

Amélie Nothomb is the daughter of the Belgian writer and former ambassador to Japan, Patrick Nothomb. She was born in Kobe in 1967. By the time she was five years old, she was perfectly bilingual.

After leaving Japan, Amélie spends her childhood in China, Burma and New York. Living as an expatriate combined with the feeling of loneliness, made her withdraw into her own shell. Especially after returning to Belgium at the age of seventeen and having the shock of finding herself a foreigner amongst her own people. The shock was brutal and this triggered in her the need to write as an escapade.

“Hygiéne de l’assassin”, her first book was published in 1992 and was an immediate success, with a French literary prize. In 1993 she published “Le sabotage amoureux”, then in 1994 “Les combustibles”, in 1995 “Les catilinaires”, in 1996 “Péplum”, in 1997 “Attentat”, in 1998 “Mercure”, in 2000 “Métaphysique des tubes”, in 2001 “Cosmétique de l’ennemi” etc…

Amélie Nothomb writes about three books per year, but decides each time to publish only one per year and every time it’s a commercial success.

Her eighth book “Fear and Trembling” was published in 1999 and was a winner of the Grand Prix de l’Académie Française and Prix Internet du livre. The book was translated into 14 languages and sold half a million copies. A big success. Two of her books have been made into films: “Hygiéne de l’assassin” and “Fear and Trembling”.

The main theme of “Fear and Trembling” is the clash of cultures between East and West. It was told in the ancient Japanese tradition that if anyone wanted to address the Japanese emperor, it had to be with “Fear and Trembling”, the emperor being the highest figure of authority. This belief is followed on all levels in Japan, as the author reveals the very rigid hierarchy in the typical headquarters of a Japanese international conglomerate in Tokyo called Yumimoto.

Amélie-San is reprimanded for not taking the right steps by going through the correct channels, despite the fact that her deed was very useful to the company.

What the author wants the westerner to understand, is that in the oriental mentality, it’s not the successful results that count, since achieving them the ‘untraditional’ way can cause more harm than good.

Consequently one has to follow the system blindly and not be an ‘individualist’, which is the worst betrayal to the traditional system: “Mister Tenshi didn’t want to sabotage the company. I begged him to let me work on the report. I alone am responsible.”… “Mister Omochi stood open-mouthed for a moment before coming up to me and bellowing right into my face.” Do you dare defend yourself?” “No, I’m blaming myself. I’m claiming all the wrong for myself. I alone should be punished.” “You dare to defend this snake!”

Then follows the arguments with Miss Mori Fubuki: “I’m twenty-nine years old. You are twenty-two. I’ve been in this position since last year. I fought for it for years. Did you think that you were going to get a comparable job within a matter of weeks?”

Due to not following the ‘correct’ system, Amélie-san has to endure the most degrading retrogression. Starting as an interpreter and ending in the humiliating job of a toilet attendant.

Like most of Amélie Nothomb’s books, “Fear and Trembling” includes some personal, real life experiences. A kind of an autobiography. The style of her writing is indicative of her own character; subtle, humouristic and extravagant. I recall her telling Bernard Pivot in the French TV programme “Apostrophe”, that she takes delight in eating rotten fruit.

Amélie Nothomb’s style is uncomplicated which makes the book easy to read despite the issue involved, being the relationships and methods of Japanese white-collars, and their entrapment in their uncompromising system.

Amélie Nothomb shows us very clearly her compassion for those people, but at the same time expresses her frustration at being unable to change anything, or even to reason with them:
“Le plus insupportable, c’était de voir mon bienfaiteur humilié par ma faute. Monsieur Tenshi était un homme intelligent et cosciencieux: il avait pris un gros risque pour moi, en pleine connaissance de cause. Aucun intérêt personnel n’avait guidé sa démarche: il avait agi par simple altruisme. En récompense de sa bonté, on le traînait dans la boue.”
She makes us aware of her concern with human relationships throughout her book.

Amélie Nothomb’s humouristic tone can be hilarious at times or even like a caricature, but nevertheless carries behind it more than what it suggests.

Unlike other books we read, in “Fear and Trembling”, the author doesn’t take us anywhere in Tokyo, apart from the restricted view from her office window. The year Amélie spends at the Yumimoto company is all devoted to a description of the Japanese headquarters, the people working for it, their devotion to their work and the hierarchical system. Not forgetting to describe at length, the uncompromising Japanese mentality.

At the end of her one year contract with Yumimoto, Amélie-San returns to Europe. And like a phoenix, after all the humiliation endured, emerges from the ashes, glorious and successful with her prize winning book “Hygiéne de l’assassin”.

She then receives a congratulatory letter from her former superior, Mori Fubuki acknowledging her success. The letter was written in Japanese as a sign of friendship which seems to have been accepted at last.