Book Review: The Heike Story by Yoshikawa Eiji

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We all tend to think of the past as “good old times” and easily forget that our ancestors often had much harder and more dangerous lives than we have today. The proof: leafing through any history book we find a succession of bloody wars, terrible pandemics, natural disasters and migration waves. Some historical events and their heroes became the subjects of legends like the story of the rise and fall of the Heike clan in twelfth-century Japan passed on from generation to generation in scattered poems that were assembled only two hundred years later. The Heike Story by Yoshikawa Eiji retells in modern – fictionalised – style the ancient tale of war and peace surrounding the warrior Heita Kiyomori who led the poor clan of the Heike through wars and court intrigues to wealth, power and glory provoking the anger and envy of the rival Genji clan that he almost erased.

Japanese Literature Challenge 9 - The Summary

June 2015 - January 2016

January is drawing towards its close and the Japanese Literature Challenge 9 hosted by Dolce Bellezza - for literary and translated fiction in which I participated is coming to an end too. High time to make my summary! 

When I joined the challenge in June, I put eight books on my TBR list – one for each month. Four of them were classics and four contemporary works first released after 1970. Moreover, I took my usual care to have as many female as male authors on my list. And I seized the opportunity to review a book by a Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, namely Ōe Kenzaburō, for the perpetual Read the Nobels challenge.

Some of the books were really difficult to find. In fact, I was forced to exchange a few of my planned reads for others because I couldn't get hold of a translation into a language that I know. So I had to renounce to read and review The River Ki or The Doctor's Wife by Ariyoshi Sawako, for instance. I also discarded An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro because the author has passed almost his entire life in the United Kingdom and is so rooted in his country of residence that he writes in English instead of Japanese.

Nonetheless, I read eight books for the ninth edition of the challenge and reviewed them all. The last one is the monumental novel The Heike Story by Yoshikawa Eiji that I finished just recently. The review is going online on Friday.

To see the complete list of my reviews
please go to my post for the Japanese Literature Challenge 9.

Poetry Revisited: The Quiet Snow by Raymond Knister

The Quiet Snow

(from Collected Poems of Raymond Knister: 1949)

The quiet snow
Will splotch
Each in the row of cedars
With a fine
And patient hand;
Numb the harshness,
Tangle of that swamp.
It does not say, The sun
Does these things another way.

Even on hats of walkers,
The air of noise
And street-car ledges
It does not know
There should be hurry.

Raymond Knister (1899-1932)
Canadian novelist, short-story writer, and poet

Book Review: The Diary of a Lost Girl by Margarete Böhme

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

As time progresses, society and with it literature undergo considerable changes. Even books that have once been called daring or even scandalous, easily fall into oblivion when later generations can no longer appreciate their merits for one reason or another. It suffices that plot and language cease to fit in as happened with the best-selling novel The Diary of a Lost Girl by Margarete Böhme, for instance. The timeless topic of the book was clearly at odds with Nazi thinking that idealised German womanhood and virtue because it tells the revealing as well as touching story of a teenage girl who knows nothing of the sexual relations between men and women and who is ruined for life because a business assistant living in the same household takes advantage of her innocence to sexually abuse her. Society looks mercilessly down on the fallen girl and doesn’t give her a chance to resume an honorable existence.

Poetry Revisited: The Winter Wind by Louisa Lawson

The Winter Wind

(from The Lonely Crossing and Other Poems: 1905)

The winter wind! e wh-e-e, e wh-e-e!
It bites and smites and chases me,
And pelts with boughs and shrieks with glee,
This winter wind so fierce and free;
Till wide-eyed stars so white and wee
Peer through the scud all fearsomely.

The love-warm rose no longer now
Clings fondly round fair nature's brow;
But in its place the chill winds roam
Through locks as white as frozen foam.
The winter wind so fierce and free
Has wrought this change. Ah me! Ah me!

Her dress that once was green and bright
Is stiffened sheer and bleached to white.
And where did rose and lily be
Are flecks of frosty filagree.
His breath is death, his voice is dree,
This winter wind so fierce and free.

Louisa Lawson (1848-1920)
Australian poet, writer, publisher, suffragist, and feminist

Book Review: Softcore by Tirdad Zolghadr

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The international art scene is a world by itself that few of us know from personal experience and yet most of us think of it as carefree, debauched, crazy. Artists seldom do something to refute the impression. In fact, they are more likely to confirm it because it’s one of the unspoken rules of the game that getting public attention of any kind is good publicity. This doesn’t mean, though, that it’s the artists themselves who are the main players. The narrating protagonist of the satirical novel Softcore by Tirdad Zolghadr, for instance, isn’t an artist, but a young man who knows important people in the international art scene. With their backing he sets out to open a place to showcase modern art in Tehran, Iran. Alas, he is someone who takes things easy and likes to indulge in all kinds of pleasures, legal or illegal.

Read the Nobels 2016 - My List

click on the image to go to the
challenge announcement
on Guiltless Reading

My Reads of 2016
Written by Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature

- completed books including links to my reviews -

1929 – Thomas Mann: Royal Highness (1909), original German title: Königliche Hoheit
1932 – John Galsworthy: The Dark Flower (1913)
1973 – Patrick White: The Tree of Man (1955)
1978 – Isaac Bashevis Singer: Satan in Goray (1933), original Yiddish title: Der sotn in Goray
1989 – José Camilo Cela: The Hive (1951), original Spanish title: La Colmena
1990 – Octavio Paz: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), original Spanish title: El mono gramático

Women Challenge # 4 - My 2016 List

click on the image to go to the
challenge announcement
on peek-a-booK!

An Alphabet of Women Writers

- completed and forthcoming reviews -

• Margaret Atwood: Cat's Eye (1988)
• Margarete Böhme: The Diary of a Lost Girl (1905), original German title: Tagebuch einer Verlorenen
• Monica Cantieni: The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons (2011), original German title: Grünschnabel
• Daphne du Maurier: The Loving Spirit (1931)
• Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place (1984), original French title: La Place
   -, A Woman's Story (1989), original French title: Une Femme (short review on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)
• Janet Frame: Owls Do Cry (1957)
• Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House (1984), original Italian title: La città e la casa
• Winifred Holtby: South Riding (1936)
• Sylvia Iparraguirre: Tierra del Fuego (1998), original Spanish title: La Tierra des Fuego
• Else Jerusalem: The Red House (1908), original German title: Der Heilige Skarabäus
• Dorothy Koomson: The Rose Petal Beach (2012)
• Margaret Landon: Anna and the King of Siam (1944)
• Rani Manicka: The Rice Mother (2002)
• Suzanne Normand: Five Women in a Galley (1927), original French title: Cinq femmes sur une galère
• Ogawa Ito: The Restaurant of Love Regained (2008), original Japanese title: 食堂かたつむり
• Vera Panova: The Train (1946), original Russian title: Спутники
  Emilia Pardo Bazán: The House of Ulloa (1886), original Spanish title: Los Pazos de Ulloa (short review on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)
• Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2011) 
• Mercè Rodoreda: In Diamond Square (1962), original Catalan title: La Plaça del Diamant
• Brigitte Schwaiger: Why Is There Salt in the Sea (1977), original German title: Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?
• Tsuboi Sakae: Twenty-four Eyes (1952), original Japanese title: 二十四の瞳
• Chika Unigwe: On Black Sisters' Street (2007), original Dutch title: Fata Morgana 
• Annie Vivanti: The Devourers (1910), title of the rewritten Italian edition: I divoratori (1911)
• Christa Wolf: Cassandra (1983), original German title: Kassandra
• Françoise Xénakis: The Fig Tree (1970), original French title: Elle lui dirait dans l'île
• Yoshimoto Banana: The Lake (2005), original title: みずうみ
• Countess Zanardi Landi: The Secret of an Empress (1914)

52 Books in 52 Weeks - My 2016 List

click on the image to go to the
challenge announcement
on Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks
     

A Double Alphabet of Writers

- completed and forthcoming reviews -

• Margaret Atwood: Cat's Eye (1988)
  Abe Kōbō: The Face of Another (1964), original Japanese title: 他人の顔
• Margarete Böhme: The Diary of a Lost Girl (1905), original German title: Tagebuch einer Verlorenen
  Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot (1984)
• Monica Cantieni: The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons (2011), original German title: Grünschnabel
  Camilo José Cela: The Hive (1951), original Spanish title: La colmena
• Daphne du Maurier: The Loving Spirit (1931)
  Roddy Doyle: The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996)
• Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place (1984), original French title: La Place
  Endō Shūsaku: Silence (1966), original Japanese title: 沈黙
• Janet Frame: Owls Do Cry (1957)
  Max Frisch: Montauk (1975), original German title: Montauk
• Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House (1984), original Italian title: La città e la casa
  John Galsworthy: The Dark Flower (1913)
  
• Winifred Holtby: South Riding (1936)
  Michel Houellebecq: Submission (2015), original French title: Soumission
• Sylvia Iparraguirre: Tierra del Fuego (1998), original Spanish title: La Tierra del Fuego
  Ibuse Masuji: Black Rain (1966), original Japanese title: 黒い雨
• Else Jerusalem: The Red House (1908), original German title: Der Heilige Skarabäus
  Howard Jacobson: The Mighty Walzer (1999)
• Dorothy Koomson: The Rose Petal Beach (2012)
  Alfred Kubin: The Other Side (1909), original German title: Die andere Seite. Ein phantastischer Roman
• Margaret Landon: Anna and the King of Siam (1944)
  Primo Levi: If Not Now, When? (1982), original Italian title: Se non ora, quando?
• Rani Manicka: The Rice Mother (2002)
  Thomas Mann: Royal Highness (1909), original German title: Königliche Hoheit
• Nakamura Fuminori: The Thief (2009), original Japanese title: 掏摸
  Suzanne Normand: Five Women on a Galley (1927), original French title: Cinq femmes sur une galère 
• George Orwell: Burmese Days (1934)
  Ogawa Ito: The Restaurant of Love Regained (2008), original Japanese title: 食堂かたつむり
• Octavio Paz: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), original Spanish title: El mono gramático
  Vera Panova: The Train (1946), original Russian title: Спутники
• Raymond Queneau: The Blue Flowers (1965), original French title: Les fleurs bleues
  Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2011) 
• Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Florence (2008)
  Mercè Rodoreda: In Diamond Square (1962), original Catalan title: La Plaça del Diamant
• Isaac Bashevis Singer: Satan in Goray (1933), original Yiddish title: Der sotn in Goray
  Brigitte Schwaiger: Why Is There Salt in the Sea (1977), original German title: Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?
• Peter Truschner: Serpent's Child (2001), original German title: Schlangenkind
  Tsuboi Sakae: Twenty-four Eyes (1952), original Japanese title: 二十四の瞳
  
• Miguel de Unamuno: Abel Sanchez and Other Stories (1917/1904/1931), original Spanish titles: Abel Sánchez; La Locura del Doctor Montarco; San Manuel Bueno, mártir
  Chika Unigwe: On Black Sisters' Street (2007), original Dutch title: Fata Morgana
• Timur Vermes: Look Who's Back (2012), original German title: Er ist wieder da
  Annie Vivanti: The Devourers (1910), title of the rewritten Italian edition: I divoratori (1911)
  
• Patrick White: The Tree of Man (1955)
  Christa Wolf: Cassandra (1983), original German title: Kassandra
• David Xavier: Bells Above Greens (2013)
  Françoise Xénakis: The Fig Tree (1970), original French title: Elle lui dirait dans l'ile
• Yoshikawa Eiji: The Heike Story (1951), original Japanese title: 新平家物語
  Yoshimoto Banana: The Lake (2005), original Japanese title: みずうみ
• Tirdad Zolghadr: Softcore (2007)
  Countess Zanardi Landi: The Secret of an Empress (1914)

Poetry Revisited: A January Night by Thomas Hardy

A January Night

(1879; first published in Moments of Vision: 1917)

The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
The water wheezes.

The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour's face;
There is some hid dread afoot
That we cannot trace.

Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in to-day?
We do not know.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
English novelist and poet

Book Review: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Many of us tend to think of childhood as the happiest time in life because we associate anxieties and worries with the adult world. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t care about age and not all children enjoy a sheltered and carefree existence. It’s not necessarily adults who make a child’s life the perfect hell. Children can be really cruel among themselves. While boys may do bodily harm to others to show their supremacy, girls often prefer more subtle ways of terror that can undermine the victim’s self-esteem even more lastingly. As a child in primary school the protagonist of Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood has been bullied by three girls whom she considered her best friends, but she was lucky. She was able to free herself just when her inexplicable dependence took a dangerous turn. Moreover, she became a painter who could get over the dreadful experience in her creative work.

2016 Reading Challenges & Specials

or: A Double Alphabet of Writers Including Nobel Prize Laureates

Right on New Year’s Day I plunged into the book blogging year with the review of the humorous classic The Man Who Searched for Love by Italian writer Pitigrilli that has never been reprinted in English translation since 1932 and thus made it into my small Out-of-Print selection. It was the first of altogether fifty-three books on my review schedule of 2016… and it’s hors concours so-to-speak because it was too early or  unsuitable to dedicate it to one of the three annual reading challenges to which I decided to sign on this year or to the one that is still running.

First of all, I’m challenging myself. This year I want to make my way up and down the entire English alphabet, but I don’t care about titles. My starting point are the initial letters of the family names of writers from around the world – women and men, forgotten and famous, classic and contemporary. It goes without saying that some of them will be winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, too, and that a duplicate of my reviews of their books will sooner or later appear on Read the Nobels, the site of the perpetual challenge open since 2007, or readathon if you prefer, where everybody who signed up like me can re-post any suitable review (with a reference to where it was originally published).

»»» see my post for Read the Nobels with the complete list of winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the links to my own book reviews here on Edith's Miscellany and on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion. 

In addition, I joined the annual event Read the Nobels 2016 hosted by Aloi aka the Guiltless Reader on both her blogs Guiltless Reading and Read the Nobels. It runs from 1 January through 31 December 2016 and it’s a usual challenge inviting participants to post links to their reviews of books written by winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It covers the widest range thinkable of genres because not only novelists and short-fiction writers received the prestigious award, but also journalists like the 2015 laureate from Belarus, Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich, and poets, playwrights, philosophers, historians, even politicians,… Once more, I expect to dig out some true gems in the treasure trove of Nobel reads, more precisely six or seven of them so in the end I'll be a Nobel keener at least.

»»» see my Read the Nobels 2016 list of completed and planned reviews.

Posting weekly reviews here, it’s an obvious choice to sign up for Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks at last. The challenge beginning on 1 January and ending on 31 December 2016 has its own blog and is hosted by Robin of My Two Blessings – like every year, as it seems. There are also some tempting mini-challenges on the site, but for the time being, I content myself with committing myself to Reading Through the Alphabet since it perfectly matches my reading plans for this year that I have already explained above.

»»» see my 2016 Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks list of completed and forthcoming reviews.

The same goes for the Women Challenge # 4 of Valentina from peek-a-booK!, a bilingual book blog in Italian and English. As regular readers will know, I always alternate female and male authors on this blog. The challenge is on from 1 January to 31 December 2016. Last year I joined only in March and couldn’t contribute the full list, but this year I’m in from the start. Thus by the end of the year there will be 26 more reviews of books written by women on this blog, i.e. I’ll again reach Level 4: WONDER WOMAN – read 20+ books written by a woman author and that without making an extra effort.

»»» see my 2016 Women Challenge # 4 list of completed and forthcoming reviews.

There’s still a month to go with the Japanese Literature Challenge 9 hosted by Dolce Bellezza - for literary and translated fiction and one last book is on my review schedule for it. Seven others already went online in 2015.

»»» see my post of the Japanese Literature Challenge 9 with the complete review list.


As for my personal blog specials, I continue The Great War in Literature although I must admit that I’ve been neglecting it quite a lot during the past couple of months and there aren’t many suitable books on my TBR list of 2016, either.

»»» see my The Great War in Literature post with the book list.

I’d say that my Challenges & Specials projects will keep me quite busy. I hope that you’ll accompany me on my literary adventures. To a year of many gripping reviews!

Poetry Revisited: Frühlingsahnung – Presentiment of Spring by Betty Paoli

Frühlingsahnen (aus Neue Gedichte: 1850) Wenn des Winters starrer Traum Berg und Flur mit Schnee bedecket, Jeder dürre Zweig am Baum Jammernd sich gen Himmel strecket: Kannst du da begreifen, sag' Wie nach wen'gen Mondesneigen Der jetzt frosterstarrte Hag Einen Blüthenflor wird zeigen? Doch du weißt, der lichte Trost Naht auf unsichtbaren Wegen Und im rauhen Winterfrost Lächelst du dem Lenz entgegen. Und so kann, so kann auch ich Nicht begreifen und nicht fassen, Wie in meiner Seele sich Noch ein Glück wird ziehen lassen. Doch ich weiß: zur Wonne geht, Wer da wallt auf Dornenbahnen, Und durch meinen Winter weht Ein tief selig Frühlingsahnen! Betty Paoli (1814-1894) Pseudonym von Barbara Elisabeth Glück, österreichische Lyrikerin, Essayistin, Novellistin und Übersetzerin

Presentiment of Spring (from New Poems: 1850) When winter’s stiff dream Covers with snow mountain and field, Every skinny branch on the tree Stretches whining to the sky: Say, can you conceive How after few settings of the moon The now frost chilled grove Will display abundant bloom? But you know, the light comfort Is coming nearer on invisible paths And in the biting winter frost You smile at approaching spring. And thus I can, thus I too can Neither understand nor seize, How into my soul Still happiness will be drawn. But I know: towards bliss goes, Who wanders on thorny tracks, And through my winter drifts A deep happy presentiment of spring! Betty Paoli (1814-1894) literally translated by Edith LaGraziana 2016 pseudonym of Barbara Elisabeth Glück, Austrian poet, essayist, novelettist and translator

Book Review: The Man Who Searched for Love by Pitigrilli

Click on the index card to enlarge it!

Let’s be truthful, who of us doesn’t sometimes think of the world as a big circus and of people as clowns in it? It suffices to read the headlines of a newspaper or to turn on the TV news to come to this conclusion, doesn’t it? It’s rare, however, that an author takes up the idea in a novel not just metaphorically, but also in the literal sense. Such a novel is The Man Who Searched for Love by Pitigrilli, a humoristic Italian classic from 1929 about a disillusioned judge from Paris who exchanges the courtroom for the circus ring to be a clown in robe and who eventually returns to the law becoming Justice of the Peace at the back of beyond. And along the way he tries to find out what true love actually is living with a philosophical circus-rider.