August Reads
Women in Translation made me fall back in love with reading this month + all the big books I want to (try) to read before the end of the year.
For factors I can identify, and others I can’t, my love for reading has felt a bit strained this summer. May was one of the worst reading months I had had in a long time. June was better, but ended up being clouded over by the loss of our dog and sickness. In July most of my time was spent with our new puppy, and only two books impressed me amid a sea of pretty average novels (I loved how everyone agreed in the comments that the ending of The Safekeep was poorly done).
But in August, I felt like my love for reading came flooding back. August was Women in Translation Month, and in honour of my love for women, and translation, that is all I read - and I loved it. It made me feel like my reading spark is back, and it makes me wonder why I ever read non-translated work, when I evidently love translated so much?! What I learnt from all of these novels, and how they challenged me as a reader, is why I love reading translated books so much.
It has motivated me to self impose many more ‘reading only translated books’ months, with certain themes, in the future. (I’ll make sure to let you know in advance so you can join me, if you so desire).
To see the translated reads from August on Martha’s Map, including authors from Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Mauritius, Ecuador, Portugal, Spain and South Sudan, click here.
For those who are new, buy, borrow, bust is my recommendation key: Buy = I loved this book and highly recommend it. Borrow = I liked this book and think it is worth a read. Bust = I wouldn’t recommend this book from my reading experience.
‘Strangers I Know’ by Claudia Durastanti
Every family has its own mythology, and Strangers I Know is Durastanti telling us hers with fluid introspection. It begins at Durastanti’s beginning - her conception. Durastanti’s parents are both deaf, and have contrasting tales as to how they met, how she came to be. However, just as quickly as they come together, they separate. Claudia comes of age amid this strange union, her life divided between Italy and New York City. Neither of her parents know sign language, neither does she, so Durastanti family communications are rife with misunderstanding and misinterpretations.
Raised with unconventional parents, in an unconventional family unit, Durastanti longs for a sense of belonging and freedom - but is unsure where to find it. From a young age she is made to feel like an outsider because of her deaf parents. This feeling is further entrenched when she moves from New York City to a small, rural village in Southern Italy. Unable to get any sense of direction from her passionately eccentric parents, Durastanti creates her own mythology by skipping school and becoming increasingly obsessed with reading. Where a path of understanding is not given to her in a conventional sense, Durastanti writes her own.
Strangers I Know explores what it means to be accepted, and excluded, by society. Durastanti offers a tender but affirming perspective of a girl who has, in many ways, been on the fringes of society her whole life. This sense of othering is identified as a lineage from her parents because of how they are treated due to their disabilities. Durastanti interrogates what it is like to move through the world as someone who isn’t able-bodied, something which they both experience, and she witnesses, throughout her life. While acknowledging how terribly her parents were treated because of their deafness, Durastanti also celebrates the different perspective disability gives you;
‘The disabled are a hidden majority: in spite of the machines and drugs and prosthetics attempting to prove death doesn’t exist, nearly all of us, over time, will lose a superpower: sight, or an arm, or our memory. The inability to do things we should be able to do, the impossibility of seeing, hearing, remembering, walking - these aren’t the exception, they’re the destination. [...] Sooner or later, we all become disabled.’ 1
Durastanti’s matter-of-fact discussion surrounding disability was illuminative and humorous. She suggests that what shaped her life more than her parents' disability was how everyone treated them. It is in their reactions to their existence that Durastanti begins to understand how language shapes our relationship to ourselves and others.
Strangers I Know contains a rich emotional complexity - Durastanti has a nuanced understanding of her own life that others could only dream of having. Her bold, incisive snapshots about a young girl's experiences were mesmerising. Durastanti meditates on how we move through the world, identifying with one another. Her reflections on her childhood and early adulthood are both heartbreakingly familiar and entirely unique. She struggled with relationships within her family, making and maintaining friends, and pursuing romantic interests. She discusses money, the absence of it and how her parents' relationship to it shaped her. She interrogates what it means to be a ‘healthy’ member of society, part of a community and to gain an education - every facet of human life is empathetically excavated by Durastanti in the context of her family.
I loved how this novel made me feel. I loved how Durastanti threaded together the history of her parents with her lived experiences as a child. I love how vulnerable Durastanti is as a narrator about how painfully hard her childhood was, and the honesty she approaches when discussing what it means to be excluded. I was enamoured with how she chose to tell the story of her life, how she constructed approaching the themes that dominate all of our existences. There was something deeply human in how Durastanti explored the poignancy of understanding our own personal identities - the pain and joy that can be found side by side there.
This novel was exceptional. I loved it so much (this is without a doubt going to be one of my favourite reads of 2025) and I recommended it to anyone who enjoys contemplative reflections about how we come to be the people we are and what it means to live a life excluded from the cultural norm. This is an undeniable buy! I love how Durastanti writes and I love how she made me feel.
‘In Late Summer’ by Magdalena Blažević
In 1992 the Bosnian war breaks out. In August 1993, a picturesque village in the Bosnian countryside is engulfed into the turmoil of this war. In this village lives Ivana with her family and best friend Dunja. Ivana is just fourteen years old when she is shot and killed. In Late Summer is a portrait of her last summer.
‘My name is Ivana. I lived for fourteen summers , and this is the story of my last’ 2
Blažević has written a poetically sobering account of conflict through the innocent eyes of a child. The prose is juvenile and earnest; when observations of violence pierce through Ivana’s perspective, it is quite sickening. Ivana is noticing the things that are important to her; sweets, playing with her friends, picking flowers, watching her family's day-to-day rhythm. Through her perspective we see the multi-generational living of the village where the community intimately lives off the land. Alongside this, Ivana watches the sanity of her family disintegrate around her as they begin to live in fear, as this idyllic rural life is pierced by the war.
In Late Summer is an innovatively lyrical portrait of how domestic life is irrevocably changed by war. The fear Ivana begins to witness within the adults around here is increasingly heartbreaking - as they are forcibly removed from their homes, Ivana’s observations are rooted in the changes of the food she is eating, and what the toilets are like. It makes the account of war deeply human, focusing on how day to day life is changed rather than the actors of the political instability. To root any account of war in the physical act of fighting, instead of the experiences of the normal civilian’s lives, is to erroneously convey what war is truly like.
Blažević furthers this with Ivana’s ambiguous observations of violence. Sides are not identified, harm is not labeled as being committed by anyone other than a fellow human being. The reader is not able to associate the acts of violence within any political context, instead forced to witness the blood shed without being able to understand if it was ‘necessary’. Through this poetic decentering of the political motives of the war, Blažević explores the impact of war on everyone. There are no clearly marked ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sides in In Late Summer - only the inhumanity of war.
Blažević’s prose are so lyrically fluid, lulling the reader almost into a false sense of security. I frequently found myself so transfixed with Ivana’s observations of life in the Bosnian countryside that I immediately re-read vignettes in the search for clues of the conflict. What is not said, rather than what is, is the strength of this novel. In Late Summer is driven by the emotional experience of war rather than a factual one - it is exceptionally powerful. I knew nothing about the Bosnian war, other than what I gleaned from reading Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris several years ago. But as soon as I finished In Late Summer, I found myself researching the conflict for hours. While I value fiction that instructs sociopolitical history above all else, there is great power in Blažević’s novel leaving me with the desire to research the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina for myself.
I thought it was exceptionally well done, a uniquely creative approach to discussing the horrendous reality of war that will stay with me for a long time. Blažević skilfully took a conflict that could be considered confusing, and made it simplistic in its pain. I would recommend this novel and call it a borrow! Linden Editions (who published this novel) are a new publishing house this year that I am very impressed with, and am keeping a close eye on!
‘Sad Tiger’ by Neige Sinno
This memoir is best introduced by it’s opening;
‘Portrait of my rapist
Because for me too, when it comes down to it, the thing that’s most interesting is what’s going on in the perpetrators head. With victims it’s easy, we can all put ourselves in their shoes. Even if you’ve not experienced it, the traumatic amnesia, the bewilderment, the silence of the victim is something we can all imagine, or think we can.
The perpetrator, on the other hand, is a different story. Being in a room alone with a seven-year-old child, getting an erection from imagining what is about to happen. Saying the words to make a child come closer [...] That is fascinating. It is beyond comprehensible. And after it’s over getting dressed, going back to family life as if nothing has happened.’ 3
From the outset, Sinno reveals that this book is about when she was sexually abused by her stepfather as a child - she was six, he was twenty four. It lasted for several years, taking place inside the home where her family lived. There is no climax to this event occurring, because that would put too much onus on the event itself. Sinno does not want the focus of Sad Tiger to be about anything other than an interrogation of her stepfather - not a how did this happen, but a why. What ensues is a incisive, provocative enquiry into the existence of child sexual abuse in society.
Sad Tiger is a daringly breathtaking memoir, literary criticism and all round masterpiece. I was so arrested by this novel, and continue to be so, that I am frankly intimated by the act of trying to convey to you how incredible it was. The narrative of Sad Tiger is a break of conventional form. It consists of fragments of memory and literary criticism brought together to create a fluid exploration of abuse. Sinno is in constant conversation with the reader, consistently breaking the ‘fourth wall’, if you will. She envelops us into a deeply personal assessment of how abuse is ignored and romanticised throughout our society. Sinno asks us to comprehend her story from every uncomfortable angle and question how we understand abuse.
From the very beginning, Sinno intends to make the reader uncomfortable. But not by her rape, although this is obviously uncomfortable, but by the culture we live in. She analyses our society from all angles, such as the cultural interpretation of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - where Nabokov felt compelled, because of its rising romanticisation, to clarify the intention of the novel. Sinno assesses how our culture frequently uses sexual abuse as an instrument for character development, to explain or justify horrendous behaviour. Sad Tiger looks at the dichotomy between the existence of child sex abuse and the prolific silence at the prospect of discussing it; how the cultural response is to ignore, to make it go away.
Primarily, Sad Tiger is Sinno’s ambition to pin her abuser down, to excavate his personality and, perhaps shockingly so, to humanise him. Often, abusers are discussed with dehumanising language, creating a perpetrator beyond our comprehension. Sinno argues how unhelpful of an approach this is. All abusers are just people. By villanising them beyond our comprehension, we are not attempting to understand them. The subject of Sad Tiger is predominantly him as the perpetrator, and the wider society he exists in. It is a (perfectly reasonable) damning character assassination of how he can fall in love with a woman, build a life with her, only to rape one of her daughters in the room next door.
Everything Sinno discusses in this novel is done with such nuance. She addresses the privilege in her race, nationality and culture in being able to persecute, and subsequently publicly discuss, her rapist. She shares how her experience is ‘utterly monstrous’, but she doesn’t want him to go to prison, because she is an abolitionist - that the system is not fit for genuine rehabilitation. She trusts the reader with expressing the internal conflict she faced in pressing charges; opposed to incarceration as it only deepens violence in societies. Nothing in this book is digestible or clear cut - everything Sinno probes has no answers. Instead, it encourages a wider reflection on how her abuse can be seen as a microcosm of a culture at large.
What struck me the most was how Sinno discussed her relationship with him - how it looked in the shadows and the light, the variations of its existence. Sinno wrestles with the complexities of abuse in all its horror and banality, revisiting memories where nothing, and everything, happened. She shares times when they were friendly, when she’d trust him, when she understood she was the only one in the world who knew him in this way. She addresses the deplorability of the negligence of the adults around her, while simultaneously accepting what her mother did not know. She questions how the same events can be perceived so differently by different people, genuinely wondering how people testified the character of a child rapist in court - what does this say about society?
There is no distinct answer, or judgement, to be found in Sad Tiger. Instead, it is strikingly beautiful in its complexity, enveloping us into her remarkable mind to share with us how this abuse has, and continues to, shape her life. How she has navigated her relationships with her family going forward was arresting in its difficulty. While Sinno discusses society's challenging relationship with victimisation - where people are equally encouraged, and shamed, for sharing abuse - we witness her growing, unwavering agency through telling this story.
I will think about this book forever. I am in awe of what Sinno crafted and I think everyone (if they can) should read this. Especially any writers - how Sinno approaches topics in such fluid prose is frankly inspiring. This is the best book I have read all year - maybe even ever? Sinno’s clarity in sincerely exploring the topic's complexity is truly remarkable. I unequivocally recommend this and call it a buy!
‘Far’ by Rosa Ribas
On a residential development in Spain, lives a small, isolated community. Despite being far away from other civilisations, this neighbourhood is attempting to feign a normal life. They have town meetings and a community gardener keeps the environment meticulously clean. The development promised luxury, but was left unfinished. An eerie undertone emerges as we learn that the streets lead to nowhere and behind a high metal fence, unfinished houses are occupied by people on the fringes of society. Our two unnamed protagonists come from either side of the fence - one leading a ‘desirable’ life, another leading an ‘undesirable’ life. Separated only by circumstance, we are submerged in their lives, wondering when they will notice each other, and how they will inevitably meet.
Far is a tale about the narratives that are constructed in order to create division and fear. On this unfinished development, we have those who have aspirationally bought property there living a stones-throw-away from those who have nothing else left. A ‘Crash’ is referenced throughout but never explained - implying a financial crash that left many destitute. Strange references are made about the world outside the development, and it is evident that those on both sides of the fence feel they have nowhere to go, but for different reasons. The community in the residential development are seemingly trapped - those who leave are considered betrayers. For the remaining, leaving does not seem to be an option. On the other side of the fence, people hiding from the outside world - but what they are hiding from is never quite spoken of.
The novel is incredibly atmospheric; with little explanation, it is up to the reader to feel their way through the story to understand how our protagonists ended up there. This artificial division of society from Ribas comments on the criminalisation of those who are less fortunate. A menacing undertone emerges from the community towards those in the unfinished houses - they believe they are ruining their opportunity to lead a specific way of life. All this suspicion creates a culture of surveillance where distrust blossoms. They make it their entire focus to monitor what is happening in the unfinished houses. Those who are squatting there have extremely limited access to water, food and electricity. They creep around, terrified of the potential violent end they might meet if they bump into one of the residents. On either side of the fence, their lives are ruled by fear - of the known and unknown.
In alternating point-of-views, we gain an omniscient perspective of the lives on either side. This narrative was propulsive, even if it started to become predictable. There is a thrust to keep reading to find out what it all means, despite the emerging inevitability that our protagonists are destined to collide. Far is unsettling in what it doesn’t say - rather than what it does. Ribas never explains the circumstances as to why the squatters are there, so it is impossible to contextualise the hatred the residential community feel towards them. However, therein lies the brilliance of this story, because Ribas exemplifies that we need no context.
Ribas does not need to explain why those who are squatting in the unfinished houses are there because regardless of reason, it does not justify the treatment. Whether they have fallen through the cracks of society because of socioeconomic or political reasons, Far explores how it could be anyone - that there is no difference between those on either side of the fence, except luck. Ribas explores our common humanity and the ridiculousness in the way we can treat each other because of circumstances. Far is suspended in time, simultaneously both a futuristic and present day tale. While I was reading I kept thinking about all the examples of lives existing in geographic parallels but diametrical safety; the divide between Gaza and Israel, migrants trying to cross borders, ‘The Zone of Interest’, the list could be endless.
Far was an easy, enjoyable read - the plot was propulsively intriguing, eerily engrossing. It was a politically charged novel that has a timelessness to it because of how persistent othering the less fortunate is within society. While the romantic adjacent element to the story was arguably overly drawn out, I think the hope Ribas injects into the novel through it is worthwhile because, as it suggests, love knows no division. I would recommend this and call it a borrow! I devoured it over a short space of time because of how well paced and gripping it was - this novel is a good time to read, as thought-provoking as it was simple.
‘Cockfight’ by María Fernanda Ampuero
Appropriately named, Cockfight is a vividly violent short story collection about Ecuador. More specifically, these stories are connected by the abuse experienced by women in this deeply misogynistic society. Cockfight paints an alarming portrait of Ecuador, exploring the proliferation of all forms of abuse, criminality and the class struggles that characterise some parts of this society in South America.
The tone of this collection is best exemplified by the opening story, Auction. It details people who are being kidnapped by taxi drivers to be auctioned off to the highest bidder - for their bodies and assets - if they have property, spouses or kids, their appeal increases. The level of dehumanisation Ampuero situated the reader in from the beginning is alarming, but necessary, to understand the severity of gender-based violence in Ecuador. Sixty-five percent of women in Ecuador have suffered some sort of violence in their life, and a woman is killed every twenty-six hours in the country, mostly at the hands of someone they know. Ampuero opens with a shocking story, but what is more disconcerting is the stories get more horrifying.
Ampuero’s prose is brilliantly unnerving. Every story is bursting with character, and entire worlds unfold in just a few pages. Almost every story was enigmatic and exceptionally well crafted. They transport the reader to the worst place - right inside the story. My stomach was churning at some of the contents of these tales, almost too gruesome to bear. Most of the women throughout the collection are survivors of some form of abuse, and it is unnerving to think how, or if, these stories were inspired by real events. When being interviewed by Victor Meadowcroft for Words Without Borders, Ampuero discusses the ‘inspiration’ for this collection;
‘The inspiration? Unfortunately, reality. It’s very sad to have to say that in relation to such a cruel book. But, as I always tell everybody, I don’t even scratch the surface of the horror. I can’t. I remember, for example, when they found that authorities were stories hundreds of corpses inside a container here in Mexico. Who can describe that? Who would think that up? Or the decapitated bodies that appear? Or the ones hanging from bridges, in view of children? Unfortunately, I have to say that it comes from reality. And, this is hard to say as well, but I don’t know anybody whose family life has been free from cruelty. Everybody has lost their innocence in horrible ways, very early on, inside their own homes. So I think that’s where it comes from. It’s not just my pain, but the pain of everyone I’ve met in my life [...] this crushing of the Other, just because they aren’t white men from the West. - María Fernanda Ampuero in Words Without Borders.
While this is a long quote, I think it is necessary to include in its entirety because no one is more suited than Ampuero herself, an Ecuadorian journalist and activist, to communicate how these stories came to be. Through her blunt prose and the unflinchingly horrific subject matter, Ampuero’s writing demands uncomfortable attention from the reader. The collection is unsparing - but appropriately so - they are as confronting as they are enthralling. Not all the stories are horrendous, with the few that are narrated by children offering a glimpse of childlike wonder that felt like a necessary antidote to everything else.
Cockfight as a collection, and a window into a country, is deeply impressive. Ampuero’s use of language is exceptional - to achieve the level of succinct character development she manages to in such few pages is extraordinary. There is no better vehicle than fiction to help others learn and Cockfight exemplifies this. While it is not necessarily enjoyable to read Cockfight in its entirety, it is enjoyable to have an opportunity to understand a different culture - and Ampuero provides this. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys short story collections, the exploration of violence behind closed doors and anything gruesome. I call it a borrow!
‘Now And At The Hour Of Our Death’ by Susana Moreira Marques
In 2009, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation launched a home palliative care project in the Planalto Mirandes, in Trás-os-Montes, a remote region in Portugal. Now And At The Hour Of Our Death is the result of Moreira Marques accompanying several visits by healthcare professionals. They traveled from village to village, helping patients of varying age, class and circumstance to live the end of their lives in as much comfort as possible. 4
Moreira Marques visits villages where young people have fled to the cities, leaving their elderly relatives and a different way of life behind. She listens to families tell their stories in the face of death, blending oral histories, and family mythologies with matter-of-fact reporting that death is just part of living; that to die means you have lived.
This novel is uniquely formatted, opening with ‘Travel Notes About Death’ where Moreira Marques shares brief deftly honest, meditations expressed by those facing death, and those who are close to them. They are anonymous, which is the beauty of them. As they near the end, a poignancy emerges in the way people consider their existence and it is this that is so beautiful to read. There is some fear, but mostly, there is a matter-of-fact humour about how we process death;
‘On bedside tables, clocks mark the times for their medications. No one seems to notice the irony in having clocks at the bedsides of the dying’ 5
While this novel is appropriately named Now And At The Hour Of Our Death, it is intrinsically about the emotions, and memories, that facing death elicits. Moreira Marques listens to people reflect on the life they have lived. Something which persists across the socioeconomic differences is the desire to relish in the love they have felt, and feel, towards friends and family. In the face of death, Moreira Marques presents portraits of those who found meaning within the life they lived.
There is a bifurcated reflection here; about the meaning of life being found within those we love, and the death of a traditional way of life. With each passing, a particular form of existence evaporates. Moreira Marques leaves space on the page for the reader to meditate on what this means. It is not didactic, but rather melancholic about how much humanity constantly changes - it is part of the rhythm of evolution. When one way of life disappears, a new one emerges. Moreira Marques poetically encapsulates the mundane nature of death, that our existence is not special, we are part of something significantly larger than we can comprehend.
‘In the cemetery: a photograph and at times no more than a name. Names may survive, but they are never what made us unique’ 6
Moreira Marques graciously challenges modern society's foolishness in believing that we have a hand in our fate. Sickness, and death, is the destination for all of us, that defiance towards either is a ridiculous waste of time;
‘We think we control everything, but we don’t control anything at all’ 7
I could not read this novel without thinking about my proximity to sickness and how it has changed my life. To be, as Suleika Jaouad calls it, between two kingdoms, the living and the dead, is a radical place to be - somewhere many are so terrified of, and yet here you are, existing within it. Several of the sentiments expressed within this novel resonated with me significantly; about what truly matters, our relationship to the natural world and the passing of time. There is a liberation to be gained from merely accepting sickness and death within your life, and this is the essence of this novel.
Now And At The Hour Of Our Death is a vehicle for reflecting on what it means to be alive, what it means to die. This book is a thought provoking meditation on an aspect of our humanity we will all face. I enjoyed the discussion surrounding rural areas of Portugal being forgotten; illustrating how the death of these individuals also signals a death to a way of life - it was melancholic. Despite a desire for more from this novel, I appreciated the beauty in its brevity. I would recommend this to anyone who is uncomfortable with death and sickness because this novel truly illustrates the mundane, commonality of it all; we are not invincible. I’d call this a borrow!
‘Four by Four’ by Sera Mesa
‘Certain rebellions are impossible to start if one doesn’t know what lies behind the wall’ 8
Wybrany College houses two kinds of students: the children of the rich and powerful, and the ‘Special’s’. Sealed off from a decaying outside world ravaged by social unrest, the school promises safety, and a different life. However, when one of them disappears, the illusions that Wybrany works so hard to maintain begin to disintegrate. Hidden hierarchies begin to shift, and the boundary between protector and predator blurs.
Four by Four is an eerie, suspense filled story - after finishing, I still don’t know how to feel. The dynamic at Wybrany College is bizarre. We have children from the upper echelon of society, children from the lowest rungs of society, together in a boarding school where nothing is as it seems. Gender is separated and boys and girls never interact. The novel opens with alternating point-of-views from either side of the divide. There are allusions to forces beyond our comprehension at work, suspicious undercurrents of abuse and alliances that are unclear. These opening vignettes are intriguing in their brevity, but compound to portray an environment that is hard to discern. Who has the upper hand here?
In part two, the novel moves to a more traditional narrative structure following the diary of a new substitute teacher. The reader is pivoted from being submerged in the culture of Wybrany to the perspective of an outsider. From here, we can begin to understand the unspoken hierarchies as we observe them through the eyes of someone equally clueless. Four by Four is built on what is unsaid - what can be sensed, but not detected. It is evident that the power dynamics of this college is essential to its operations; isolation is wielded and a maze of etiquette is unable to be deciphered.
The more we read about Wybrant College, the tension and unease heightens. Secrets are revealed bit by bit by those around the substitute, uncovering sinister secrets. The reader begins to wonder - how horrific has the world become that inside the walls of this college are considered safe? Mesa contemplates on what it means for individuals to have unregulated power, and the extent at which people will fight to keep it.
Mesa’s story building is exquisite, I could have kept reading the unveiling of Wybrany College forever. The sense of foreboding throughout was excellent, continually thrust forward by Mesa’s resistance to reveal anything with clarity. Mesa’s prose makes repeated references to conditioned discipline, the role of silence and surveillance. Language is used in the college to reinforce hierarchies that many are unable to see. We know bad things are taking place in this school, illustrated by shadowy descriptions and continual references to the unknown, but we aren’t shown anything explicit.
Four by Four is a characteristically gothic novel - set in a beautiful place and shrouded in mystery. I equally loved and felt frustrated by this. I loved the world building, and how masterfully Mesa trusts the reader to infer what she refuses to say. Yet, I wanted more - something I always feel when reading the gothic genre. When I read my first Shirley Jackson last year, I famously felt underwhelmed by the constant expectation for something to happen when it never did. There is a similar feeling of this here - a yearning for more. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean there should have been more. Despite my feelings, I know that revealing anymore would have unraveled the taught world building so crucial to the suspense of the novel.
Mesa has crafted a brilliant story that becomes more engrossing with every page. I thoroughly enjoyed my time reading this, would recommend it for upcoming spooky season and call it a borrow! I am eager to read more of Mesa - her writing style challenges me in the best way by working directly against what I normally look for in a novel (information and answers) - and I love a challenge.
‘Tropic of Violence’ by Nathacha Appanah
Marie lives on the island of Mayotte, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean and a department of France. She adopts a baby, with two different coloured eyes, who has been abandoned by his refugee mother because she believes he will bring her bad luck. Marie names him Moïse. When he is thirteen, Marie very suddenly dies and Moïse is left alone. Faced with the uncertainty about his past, and future, he travels to the largest slum in Mayotte - Gaza. There, he collides with the infamous gang and gets absorbed into a chaos he cannot escape. In his search for identity, Moïse is consumed by the violence in Gaza and ends up murdering a boy called Bruce.
Tropic of Violence focuses on this murder and the perspectives of both the victim and the perpetrator - two young boys. Appanah traces how Moïse and Bruce ended up in this circumstance - specifically one so violent. It traces the way colonialism and statelessness have shaped the lives of two children on this island. Mayotte’s slum, nicknamed ‘Gaza’, is a metaphor for understanding how the inhabitants of Mayotte are portrayed in French media - many of them both Afro descendants and French citizens. To read a novel that is comparing an area to Gaza, in the current context of the ongoing genocide, is unsettling. It unfortunately articulates more fervently to a present day reader an even deeper comprehension of how dehumanised the inhabitants are.
Additionally to the perspectives of Moïse and Bruce, we hear narration from Marie, a nurse, an NGO aid worker, Stéphane, and a police officer, Oliver. Appanah’s succinct masterful narrative structure gives an exceptional perspective of the island, the humanitarian industrial complex, and the consistent failing of the French government. A climax of horror occurs where with every perspective, more is revealed about how integrated violence is in this society, and how it is perpetrated. This accumulation is painful - it is profoundly devastating to read about two young boys trapped in a cycle of violence they had no hand in creating.
‘I’m not just a killer, I was once a boy who read books, who listened to music, who was an ace at lego’ 9
Appanah is incisive in laying out exactly how a scenario such as this came to be, unwavering in her emphasis on how helpless most of the actors are on this island. Tropic of Violence reveals where the perceived power lies in Gaza, compared to where it actually resides. Oliver and Stéphane are disheartened and feel equally powerless to the currents that encircle Gaza. It is horrendous that a leading Western nation can have a territory with this extremity of suffering and choose to ignore it.
‘I told myself that someone, somewhere, would remember this French Island [...] But nothing ever changes and sometimes I feel as though I’m living in a parallel dimension in which what happens here never crosses the ocean and doesn’t have any effect on people. We’re alone’ 10
I finished this novel feeling such a profound sense of sadness. Appanah envelops the reader into an incredibly evocative story by harrowingly exploring the festering nature of post-colonial violence through the eyes of children. What is explored within Appanah’s novel is bone-chilling because it is done with such heart. Moïse’s sincerity, Bruce’s fear driven violence, Oliver’s weary desperation and Stéphane’s helplessness convene to show a landscape trapped and suffering as a result of some of the most evil aspects of humanity.
I was deeply moved by this portrayal of the wounds of colonialism. Tropic of Violence holds a beautiful story alongside an unsettling reality - one I don’t think I will forget for a long time. I want to read more Appanah despite how frankly awful I know the themes of her oeuvre are. Since reading this, and my interview with Saramandi, I can’t stop thinking about these post-colonial islands that have been abandoned by those who forcefully stole their culture all those years ago. I would enormously recommend this book and call it a buy! It shines a light on a corner of the world that so many of us know nothing about.
‘Edo’s Souls’ by Stella Gaitano
In a village in southern Sudan, in the 1970s, Lucy has just been asked for her hand in marriage by Marco. When rumours start to circulate that there is violence approaching, they have no choice but to flee. They travel northwards to Khartoum to stay with Marco’s friend Peter, a soldier, his wife, Theresa, and their children. Marco, a new father, is determined to avoid any violence where possible. Lucy struggles to assimilate among northerners and her village traditions only further cement her differences. Peter permits their presence and blossoming family in his home because of his fierce loyalty towards Marco, and an emerging fear about his future. It is unclear where Peter’s loyalties lie - is it with the rebels, or the government? Edo’s Souls follow Lucy, Marco and Peter as they are trapped in a nation in the throes of a terrifying civil war.
The generational plot of this story is never once sacrificed by the history and politics of the civil war. Gaitano creates a diverse landscape of the perspectives of men and women, supporters and detractors of the civil war. Edo’s Souls exceptionally illuminates on the impact the war had on daily life and communities - particularly for women. The discussions about female genital mutilation, the culture of misogyny and sexual violence used as a weapon of war were unnervingly horrendous. The tense relationship between Lucy and Theresa’s characters represents an emerging tension between tradition and modernity for women in Sudan - a conflict between what is expected of them domestically, versus what they desire personally.
Lucy and Marco’s represent a traditional way of life, while Peter and Theresa represent a modern form of existence. This quadrant's relationship represents a microcosm of Sudan in their home - the tensions reflective of the political atmosphere. Ultimately, Gaitano crafts a beautiful story with these characters, whose relationships with each other only become more endearing as the novel progresses; a direct contrast to the development of the civil war in the 1970s.
‘Times of war were alike, infecting individuals like a disease - everyone could feel it without having anything in their power to stop it’ 11
The characterisation in this novel is exceptionally well done, with individual development seamlessly integrated into the story. I was immersed into the trajectory of their lives as individuals and as a collective. Gaitano skilfully manages to tell the story of a broken country through a family full of love - a dichotomy that works perfectly. They balance each other out, producing a novel that is horrendous as it is beautiful. Edo’s Souls is accessible enough to learn about Sudan, but not so ladened with detail that it overpowers the story. I was impressed with all Gaitano managed to explore in such a concise tale. Gaitano discusses being a daughter of both Sudan and South Sudan, and you can feel this in this novel. Edo’s Souls equally celebrates and critiques the cultures found in the countries.
The violence and suffering in Edo’s Souls is confronting, but unfortunately not just a tale of the past. While South Sudan became independent in 2011, since 2023, Sudan has been plunged into another civil war - one that has unfortunately been characterised by horrendous reports of genocide and sexual violence against women. Reading Edo’s Souls, and knowing this information, made the affinity I felt with the characters even more heartbreaking.
Structurally some of the point-of-view changes could have been made more distinct, but there is a fluidity to be found in Gaitano’s defiance to holding the reader's hand through this tale. It epitomised the idea that neither character's experience was singular - simultaneously all suffering, in slightly different ways, because of the war. I was surprised by the emotional complexity of this novel. It reminded me of Brotherless Night in its equally relentless detail of war. I would recommend this to fans of generational, sprawling novels and call this a buy!
And that concludes my August Reads! My favourite books of the month were ‘Strangers I Know and ‘Sad Tiger’.
My first read of September is ‘Prodigal Summer’ by Barbara Kingsolver. I have a soft spot for Kingsolver and a tradition where I read a book by her every summer (last summer I read The Lacuna and loved it). So here I am, squeezing it in, just before the weather changes.12
Let me know your thoughts:
☀︎ What have you read and enjoyed in August? Any recommendations for me?
☆ Have you read any of these books? Would you like to?
❊ Did you read any (or many) books in honour of Women in Translation month? Tell me your favourites.
✿ Does anyone have any recommendations for books translated from Montenegrin? I have my eye on ‘Anomaly’ by Andrej Nikolaidis and maybe ‘Catherine the Great and the Small’ by Olja Knežević? I am visiting soon and I’d like to read a Montenegrin translated book IN Montenegro.
☞ I recently shared my realisation of how many ‘big books’ I want to read before the year ends:
Does anyone have recommendations of where I should start? Or, perhaps more importantly, what I should prioritise to read from such a formidable stack?
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Love you all! Happy Reading!
Martha
Share this with that friend who is always looking for books to read! It will make you look cool, well read and highly intelligent.
Catch up on what you might have missed:
And what I was reading in August 2024;
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p.37-8 in Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti
p.16 in In Late Summer by Magdalena Blažević
p.1 in Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno
This information / paragraph is paraphrased and quoted from introduction in Now And At The Hour Of Our Death on p.9
p.38 in Now And At The Hour Of Our Death by Susana Moreira Marques
p.33 in Now And At The Hour Of Our Death by Susana Moreira Marques
p.105 in Now And At The Hour Of Our Death by Susana Moreira Marques
p.290 in Four by Four by Sera Mesa
p.33 in Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah
p.46 in Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah
p.43 in Edo’s Souls by Stella Gaitano
The weather has since changed in the UK since I wrote this. It is now raining a lot, and quite windy, and I must say reading a book with ‘summer’ in the title is feeling increasingly criminal.
Thank you for these amazing reviews. I'm looking forward to reading Strangers I Know, sounds very much up my alley. I just finished Heart Lamp, which was funnier and weirder than I expected.
Will definitely be exploring some of these. I did get Hunchback, and also The Accidentals from last time. I also read Exteriors by Annie Ernaux, which I loved so much I immediately went and bought The Years, which is my current read.