Absurdistan

What? Non-fiction?
Well, it couldn’t hurt.

Absurdistan is a book written by Eric Campbell, an Australian journalist who decided to work abroad in 1995, and ended up in Moscow, Beijing and the middle-east. I decided to read it because one of my customers at work had just read it and he told me it was really good; I leafed through it and liked the writing style.
The beginning is quite thrilling: it’s a prologue where Eric is wounded in a terrorist attack in Iraq. The rest of the book he explains how he ended up there, but also explaining a lot about the situation in the places he visited, places who were usually at war.
I found that I kept forgetting this was the real world I was reading about whilst I read this book. Some of the situations are just so unbelievably cruel – the work camps in northern Russia, war in Chechnya, Kosovo, secrecy and censorship in China,…

this is a excerpt  from when Eric was in Macedonia in 1999, when the Albanians and Serbian, well, disagreed with each other about Kosovo, to put it mildly.
(I apologise for my bad translation in advance)

… the Macedonian units enclosed a field near the border. The fugitives all had to find a place within the fence. They had no choice; they sat down on the ground with the meagre possessions they had managed to save. Everyone thought the camp was established to speed up registration. But the day went by and no one was let out…
…trains came and went. In two days there were more than 30.000 people in the camp. The UN fugitive organisation, UNHCR, predicted that another 200.000 people were on their way…
…there was no shelter, no water, no lavatories and no food. It was April and it was hot, the fugitives were thirsty. Because of a lack of toilets the fugitives just did their business wherever they could. We could smell the stench that was caused by that. The fugitives were only twenty metres away, but there was nothing we could do…

So yeah, it made me realise how ignorant I have been about the world. Granted, I was seven years old at the time, but I feel like these are things I should know more about.
Luckily, the book isn’t all woe. We meet Jack, a wannabe hero from America, people who still have hope after years of protesting, and Eric himself finds a wife and has a son along the road (figuratively). Those personal touches and impressions make the book much more readable – even though they can be quite horrible as well.

… I had a terrible toothache and gobbled painkillers to stay on my feet. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went to a dentist [in Moscow]. He told me a wisdom tooth had to be pulled out immediately. Five hours later I was home, heavily drugged, still in pain. The dentist called: ‘you probably noticed we accidentally cut of a piece out of your tongue, but you don’t have to worry.’
I hadn’t noticed, but hey, good to know. ‘We also accidentally drilled a hole in the bone’, he continued, ‘so that could stay painful for a while. You can always come by again if you have any issues’…

Should you read it? Well, I don’t know. If you read to escape from the real world, probably not. But if you read to cure ignorance, then yes, you should read this.

Until next time,

Bejoes.

This is How You Lose Her

This is a book written by the upcoming author Junot Díaz, a Dominican-American. I was keeping an eye open for potential romance novels for valentine (yes, I know that was two weeks ago), and this seemed reasonably suitable.
This book contains several short stories about a Dominican called Yunior. He isn’t born in the best circumstances – his father is working hard in America so his family can one day join him, his brother is quite a player and his mother has a praying group that he calls the horsefaces of the apocalypse. Things go further and further downhill – he himself can’t quite keep it in his pants as he cheats time and time again, as a sort of comfort blanket he keeps returning to, his brother is diagnosed with cancer, America is cold, and his true loves keep abandoning him when they find out about his cheating.
The short stories cut the book in easy-to-consume chapters, which aren’t chronologically and you can’t quite work out the whole story until you’ve finished the last short story. They are all laced with Spanish, which was a bit of an obstacle for me. I can understand the basic ‘por favor’ and ‘puta madre’ but then there are these:

…My mother would take food out of Pura’s hands, but as soon as mami turned around Pura would be back in the fridge helping herself. Even told mami that she should paint the apartment. You need color in here. Esta sala está muerta.
I shouldn’t laugh, but it was all kinda funny.
And the horsefaces? They could have moderated things a little, don’t you think, but they were, like, fuck that, what are friendships for if not for instigating? They beat the anti-Pura drums daily. Ella es prieta. Ella es fea. Ella dejó un hijo en Santo Domingo. Ella tiene otro aquí. No tiene hombre. No tiene dinero. No tiene papeles. qué tú crees que ella busca por aquí?...

And of course I can put it all through google translate, but I get the gist and I’m lazy. Also if I try reading next to the computer I end up closing the book and scrolling on 9gag for the next hour instead. But I do think that if you studied Spanish for a year or know the basics you’ll get more out of it than I did.
Still, the book wasn’t really my style. I loved the similes, but I’m a sucker for happy endings.

Until next time,

Bejoes

Hamlet

I promise, this’ll be the last Shakespeare for now.
I doubt that I will have to explain much about this book – it’s one that everyone (I know) has already read, for school or for pleasure. Reading it for the second time felt comfortable.
You might remember that I wrote about Shakespeare’s plays that he usually focuses on one emotion; and here it’s betrayal. Hamlet’s uncle kills the king and marries his wife to boot, and although Hamlet is clearly upset about that and is looking for revenge, he rather speaks in riddles like a madman than to take action and actually kill the sonnuvabitch. It’s only toward the very end that he stabs his uncle – but the king pretty much shoved the sword in his hand. And Shakespeare probably did that because what’s a Shakespeare tragedy without at least three deaths in the last five pages?
(I still love his words though.)
The true puzzling character for me in this play is Ophelia. She’s confusing, and seems confused as well as she tries to be obedient to her brother’s and father’s will, who are both reluctant to let her open her heart to Hamlet. She never seems to have an opinion of her own until her father dies; then she is so uncontrollably stricken with grief that no good advice reaches her, until at last – a scene often painted – she falls in the river and drowns. I can never quite figure out if she loved Hamlet, or what her thoughts were about the other characters. She seems quite empty indeed, until the death of her father.

If you haven’t read this play, I suggest you do it, even though Shakespeare might not be your thing. Even if it’s just so you won’t quote the “To be or not to be” scene whilst pretending to hold a skull. Those are two completely different scenes; and the right quote would be “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.” (just in case you want to wet some literature students’ panties)



Until next time,

Bejoes