spring 2025
Family
Making and unmaking
Threads
Folk narratives
Accumulations
Memory
Copies of all the 15 Reads are available to browse at CAMPLE LINE or to borrow from Thornhill Library
Family is the thread running through this selection of spring reads. Notions of kinship and the families we create in the broadest sense of the word are examined in ancient texts through to modernist writing, taking the form of folk narratives, literary fiction, essays, poetry and a play.
Family in all its guises and complexities is expressed through acts of making and unmaking, remembering and as the context within which life’s experiences accumulate. Together these reads offer a literary conversation around the work of artist Sayan Chanda, whose exhibition Between the Two Fires is at Cample this spring. They reflect a montage of human experiences which span the globe from Bangladesh to Italy, Scotland to Mexico, Algeria to the US.
As always, these Fifteen Reads express our commitment to independent publishers and celebrates women’s voices, stories from marginalised communities and works in translation.
Arundhati Roy
The god of small Things
After an absence of twenty-three years, Rahel returns to the now crumbling family home in Kerala ruled over by her grand aunt Baby Kochamma where her silent twin brother Estha also lives.
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, (1997), Fourth Estate, 2009.
After an absence of twenty-three years, Rahel returns to the now crumbling family home in Kerala ruled over by her grand aunt Baby Kochamma where her silent twin brother Estha also lives. She returns to the family’s ruined pickle factory and the river’s dark secrets. Above all she returns to her past, recalling how the accumulation of calamitous events engulfed her family when she and Estha were children. Seen through their eyes, this is a story of how this family’s world was irreparably broken, of how crimes went unpunished and where the only truth tellers were the masked Kathakali dancers, watched by the twins as they danced their truths in the deserted temple.
John Burnside, All One Breath, Jonathan Cape, 2014.
In this collection John Burnside shows himself as the feeling observer on the edge of things, glimpsing himself in mirrors, standing at the edge of a wood, watching a farmer from his yard at home. Remembered situations expose facets of childhood incidents, his inner consciousness or the natural world around him, expanding to consider the wider human condition. Remaining open-ended Burnside’s poems avoid the traps of self-absorption as ideas, language, and imagery lead the reader to an understanding that love and mortality, visceral pleasure and loss are all part of our common lived experience. As such, he invites us in the final poem, to at least all come together in recognition of the light and shade of life: ‘all one; the living and the dead: / first catch, then canon; fugal; all one breath.’
Natalia Ginzburg
Family Lexicon
Ginzburg asks that we read this account of her family not as a history but as if it were a novel and although based on reality, her memories, she tells us are merely the ‘faint glimpses and fragments that remain’.
Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon, (1963), Introduction, Tim Parks, trans. Jenny McPhee, Daunt Books, 2018.
Ginzburg asks that we read this account of her family not as a history but as if it were a novel and although based on reality, her memories, she tells us are merely the ‘faint glimpses and fragments that remain’. These are centred around her irascible father and luxury-loving mother, her five siblings and an array of friends and relatives. It is through the lens of family life that Ginzburg shows the changing face of Italy from Mussolini’s dictatorship during the 1920s, through the dangers and losses of the Second World War to the years of post-war recovery. Constancy in Ginzburg’s fragmented world was provided by the family’s lexicon of often explosive nonsense words (dribbledrams, doodledums, nitwitteries to name a few) and epithets which not only formed the ‘dictionary of [her] past’ but also in retelling were a political act. Their iteration on the page was an expression of post-war freedom to write with honesty once again without the threat of censorship. This was a time Ginzburg tells us, when it was ‘necessary for writers to go back and choose their words, scrutinise them to see if they were false or real, if they had actual origins in our experience.’
Elisa Shua Dusapin, Vladivostock Circus, trans. Aneesa Abbas Higgins, Daunt Books, 2024.
Natalie makes the six-day journey to Vladivostock to design costumes for a trio of circus artists preparing to perform the dangerous Russian bar act at the winter circus festival in Ulan-Ude. The novel charts the forging of relationships between four disparate characters, the Ukrainian ‘flyer’, the German and Russian ‘bases’, the Quebecois director and Natalie, fresh from her studies in Belgium. Remaining behind in the atmospheric circus buildings at the end of the season, despite differences in age, experience, culture and expectations, each learns how to collaborate and work as a group, finally developing bonds of trust and respect which are imperative for the survival of the performers.
Nina Mingya Powles
Slipstitch
Delicately threaded through these brief image-text pieces are memories connecting family, objects and place.
Nina Mingya Powles, Slipstitch, Guillemot Press, 2024.
Delicately threaded through these brief image-text pieces are memories connecting family, objects and place. The spark igniting them is a sewing machine which Nina Mingya Powles’ grandfather used to make quilts from fabric scraps and the family’s clothes. Patchwork becomes both the symbolic representation of the fragmentary nature of memory and its literal expression on the page culminating in the creation of a patchwork quilt of words. Slipstitch resulted from the residency Nina Mingya Powles undertook at CAMPLE LINE.
Nina Mingya Powles, Slipstitch, Guillemot Press, 2024.
Delicately threaded through these brief image-text pieces are memories connecting family, objects and place. The spark igniting them is a sewing machine which Nina Mingya Powles’ grandfather used to make quilts from fabric scraps and the family’s clothes. Patchwork becomes both the symbolic representation of the fragmentary nature of memory and its literal expression on the page culminating in the creation of a patchwork quilt of words. Slipstitch resulted from the residency Nina Mingya Powles undertook at CAMPLE LINE.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
The Jewellers of Ummah. A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World
Beginning with her family history Ariella Aïsha Azoulay reclaims the destroyed Arab Jewish world of the Ummah, reinstating stories of her people who had lived in Algeria for over two millennia.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, The Jewellers of Ummah. A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World, Verso, 2024.
Beginning with her family history Ariella Aïsha Azoulay reclaims the destroyed Arab Jewish world of the Ummah, reinstating stories of her people who had lived in Algeria for over two millennia. Written as a series of letters to family past and present and to scholars, Azoulay traces histories of subjugation, attempted assimilation and finally erasure enforced by French colonial policies. Focusing particularly on the traditional jewellery and gold thread making skills predominantly practised by Algerian Jews, Azoulay examines how their long history of making was commodified, orientalised and then anonymised which stripped cultural and ancestral meaning from the makers, their communities and their ancestral jewellery. Born to settler parents in what Azoulay describes as a Zionist colony in Palestine, and growing up in ignorance of her heritage she describes her writing as ‘a kinship of care, care for the world that we are told no longer exists and will never exist again’, telling us: ‘I connect this care with a commitment to inhabit my ancestor’s world and refuse to accept that it is past’.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, The Jewellers of Ummah. A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World, Verso, 2024.
Beginning with her family history Ariella Aïsha Azoulay reclaims the destroyed Arab Jewish world of the Ummah, reinstating stories of her people who had lived in Algeria for over two millennia. Written as a series of letters to family past and present and to scholars, Azoulay traces histories of subjugation, attempted assimilation and finally erasure enforced by French colonial policies. Focusing particularly on the traditional jewellery and gold thread making skills predominantly practised by Algerian Jews, Azoulay examines how their long history of making was commodified, orientalised and then anonymised which stripped cultural and ancestral meaning from the makers, their communities and their ancestral jewellery. Born to settler parents in what Azoulay describes as a Zionist colony in Palestine, and growing up in ignorance of her heritage she describes her writing as ‘a kinship of care, care for the world that we are told no longer exists and will never exist again’, telling us: ‘I connect this care with a commitment to inhabit my ancestor’s world and refuse to accept that it is past’.
Kathleen Jamie
Surfacing
Throughout this series of essays, objects and memories are brought to the surface – from a Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement on the Orkney Island of Westray, long buried for 5000 years and now exposed by the weather – to recent memories of family, and reflections on the passing of time.
Kathleen Jamie, Surfacing, Sort of Books, 2020.
Throughout this series of essays, objects and memories are brought to the surface – from a Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement on the Orkney Island of Westray, long buried for 5000 years and now exposed by the weather – to recent memories of family, and reflections on the passing of time. In one essay, her interest in finding Inuit articles in museums on the east coast of the UK led her to Alaska and the Yup’ik village of Quinhagak where everyday objects, tools, adornments, all baring traces of their use, were being dug from the thawing ground and placed ‘back into the hands of the people who call them into memory and know them, weigh them, test them, name them’. On Westray, Jamie writes in part in the second person, reconstructing vividly the lives that were once lived here. Closer to home, a fragment of crockery, a mantlepiece ornament, now ‘winking from the ground’ give a ‘glimpse of a memory, a time’. Through removing ‘layers of occupation’, the layers underneath reveal lives of whole communities of which our understanding can only be partial, but no less poignant, compelling and vital.
Kathleen Jamie, Surfacing, Sort of Books, 2020.
Throughout this series of essays, objects and memories are brought to the surface – from a Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement on the Orkney Island of Westray, long buried for 5000 years and now exposed by the weather – to recent memories of family, and reflections on the passing of time. In one essay, her interest in finding Inuit articles in museums on the east coast of the UK led her to Alaska and the Yup’ik village of Quinhagak where everyday objects, tools, adornments, all baring traces of their use, were being dug from the thawing ground and placed ‘back into the hands of the people who call them into memory and know them, weigh them, test them, name them’. On Westray, Jamie writes in part in the second person, reconstructing vividly the lives that were once lived here. Closer to home, a fragment of crockery, a mantlepiece ornament, now ‘winking from the ground’ give a ‘glimpse of a memory, a time’. Through removing ‘layers of occupation’, the layers underneath reveal lives of whole communities of which our understanding can only be partial, but no less poignant, compelling and vital.
Homero Aridjis
Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence
Published in his eighty-third year, Aridjis shows his readers that the distance between dreams and reality, myth and history, life and poetry is a mere construct.
Homero Aridjis, Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, trans. George McWhirter, New Directions, 2023.
Published in his eighty-third year, Aridjis shows his readers that the distance between dreams and reality, myth and history, life and poetry is a mere construct. In these worlds of waking and dreaming he creates on the page, Aridjis draws upon the span of his life writing as an environmentalist, statesman, activist, poet, husband, father and cat enthusiast. Intense, at times surreal, at other times pragmatic, his poetry transports readers into the wilds of his imagination before bringing us crashing down to earth’s realities. The collection includes a translation by Kathleen Jamie.
Homero Aridjis, Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, trans. George McWhirter, New Directions, 2023.
Published in his eighty-third year, Aridjis shows his readers that the distance between dreams and reality, myth and history, life and poetry is a mere construct. In these worlds of waking and dreaming he creates on the page, Aridjis draws upon the span of his life writing as an environmentalist, statesman, activist, poet, husband, father and cat enthusiast. Intense, at times surreal, at other times pragmatic, his poetry transports readers into the wilds of his imagination before bringing us crashing down to earth’s realities. The collection includes a translation by Kathleen Jamie.
Mahasweta Devi
After Kurukshetra
The bloody battle of Kurukshetra has ended, but as the funeral pyres burn and the mourning rituals are conducted, five women, widows of foot soldiers killed in the battle, are taken to the royal palace as dasis to the newly widowed young princess.
Mahasweta Devi, After Kurukshetra, trans. Anjum Katyal, Seagull Books, (2005), 2018.
The bloody battle of Kurukshetra has ended, but as the funeral pyres burn and the mourning rituals are conducted, five women, widows of foot soldiers killed in the battle, are taken to the royal palace as dasis to the newly widowed young princess. And so begins the first of Devi’s three stories which give voice to the women who remain in the shadows of the Mahabharata’s epic tales of fratricide, betrayal, hidden identity and divine power. Widows, courtesans and dalits are Devi’s subjects, their actions revealing the caste divisions as royalty is confronted by truths spoken by these marginalised, dispossessed women. One of India’s foremost writers, Mahasweta Devi (1926 – 2016) was a prominent social activist who exposed the discrimination faced by the country’s lower castes and tribal people.
Mahasweta Devi, After Kurukshetra, trans. Anjum Katyal, Seagull Books, (2005), 2018.
The bloody battle of Kurukshetra has ended, but as the funeral pyres burn and the mourning rituals are conducted, five women, widows of foot soldiers killed in the battle, are taken to the royal palace as dasis to the newly widowed young princess. And so begins the first of Devi’s three stories which give voice to the women who remain in the shadows of the Mahabharata’s epic tales of fratricide, betrayal, hidden identity and divine power. Widows, courtesans and dalits are Devi’s subjects, their actions revealing the caste divisions as royalty is confronted by truths spoken by these marginalised, dispossessed women. One of India’s foremost writers, Mahasweta Devi (1926 – 2016) was a prominent social activist who exposed the discrimination faced by the country’s lower castes and tribal people.
Tony Harrison
The Oresteia
Harrison’s translation of ‘The Oresteia’ tells a story of male versus female power and the ancient ways of heroic blood clan revenge versus Athenian democratic justice.
Aeschylus, ‘The Oresteia’, trans. Tony Harrison (1981), in Tony Harrison, Plays 4, Faber and Faber 2002.
The trilogy opens with King Agamemnon’s homecoming after a ten-year absence fighting the Trojan War. Celebration turns to horror as Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra in revenge for Agamemnon’s earlier sacrifice of their daughter. The matricide is aided by her lover in revenge for the deaths of his kin suffered at the hands of Agamemnon’s father Atreus. Returning from exile Clytemnestra’s son Orestes then murders his mother and her lover in revenge for his father’s death. Hounded by the ancient justice-seekers, the Furies, Orestes arrives in Athens to receive pronouncement on his fate in a court of law. Respecting the ancient Greek tradition by performing the play with an all-male masked cast, their speech accompanied by the steady beat of a drum, Harrison’s translation tells a story of male versus female power and the ancient ways of heroic blood clan revenge versus Athenian democratic justice.
Aeschylus, ‘The Oresteia’, trans. Tony Harrison (1981), in Tony Harrison, Plays 4, Faber and Faber 2002.
The trilogy opens with King Agamemnon’s homecoming after a ten-year absence fighting the Trojan War. Celebration turns to horror as Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra in revenge for Agamemnon’s earlier sacrifice of their daughter. The matricide is aided by her lover in revenge for the deaths of his kin suffered at the hands of Agamemnon’s father Atreus. Returning from exile Clytemnestra’s son Orestes then murders his mother and her lover in revenge for his father’s death. Hounded by the ancient justice-seekers, the Furies, Orestes arrives in Athens to receive pronouncement on his fate in a court of law. Respecting the ancient Greek tradition by performing the play with an all-male masked cast, their speech accompanied by the steady beat of a drum, Harrison’s translation tells a story of male versus female power and the ancient ways of heroic blood clan revenge versus Athenian democratic justice.
For younger readers: Liz Hyder, The Twelve
On the longest night of the year, at the church with the white tower, Libby disappears. She disappears so completely that not even her own mother remembers her existence.
For younger readers:
Liz Hyder, The Twelve, Pushkin Press, 2024.
On the longest night of the year, at the church with the white tower, Libby disappears. She disappears so completely that not even her own mother remembers her existence. Only Libby’s older sister Kit and a boy she meets called Story remember her. And so begins their search which takes the two back into Britain’s ancient past until past and present collide in a final reckoning when a difficult decision has to be made. Drawing upon British folklore, this is an adventure story which deftly weaves contemporary themes concerning friendship, belonging and the natural world with courage, justice and ancient wisdom.
For younger readers: Liz Hyder, The Twelve, Pushkin Press, 2024.
On the longest night of the year, at the church with the white tower, Libby disappears. She disappears so completely that not even her own mother remembers her existence. Only Libby’s older sister Kit and a boy she meets called Story remember her. And so begins their search which takes the two back into Britain’s ancient past until past and present collide in a final reckoning when a difficult decision has to be made. Drawing upon British folklore, this is an adventure story which deftly weaves contemporary themes concerning friendship, belonging and the natural world with courage, justice and ancient wisdom.
Jon Fosse
Aliss at the Fire
It’s been twenty-three years since Asle disappeared and still Signe lies on the bench waiting, seeing herself waiting on the bench and at the window as she sees Asle at the window before he went down to the stormy fjord.
Jon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire, (2003), Trans. Damion Searls, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2022
It’s been twenty-three years since Asle disappeared and still Signe lies on the bench waiting, seeing herself waiting on the bench and at the window as she sees Asle at the window before he went down to the stormy fjord. She sees generations of Asle’s family who had lived in the house in which she Signe is still waiting, watching and remembering. A meditation on family, loss and the accumulation of time when the veil thins that separates the past from the present, the living from the dead.
Jon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire, (2003), Trans. Damion Searls, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2022
It’s been twenty-three years since Asle disappeared and still Signe lies on the bench waiting, seeing herself waiting on the bench and at the window as she sees Asle at the window before he went down to the stormy fjord. She sees generations of Asle’s family who had lived in the house in which she Signe is still waiting, watching and remembering. A meditation on family, loss and the accumulation of time when the veil thins that separates the past from the present, the living from the dead.
Arunava Sinha (editor)
Penguin Book of Bengali Short Stories
An extraordinary anthology of short form writing, translated and edited by Arunava Sin, which brings together thirty-seven short stories by writers such as Rabindranath Tagore and Sarah Chandra Chattopadhyay, with Satyajit Ray and Mahasweta Devi, and Anita Agnihotri and Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay.
The Penguin Book of Bengali Short Stories, translated and edited by Arunava Sinha, Penguin Classics, 2024.
An extraordinary anthology of short form writing, translated and edited by Arunava Sin, which brings together thirty-seven short stories by writers such as Rabindranath Tagore and Sarah Chandra Chattopadhyay, with Satyajit Ray and Mahasweta Devi, and Anita Agnihotri and Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay. Bengali fiction, Arunava Sinha writes: ‘has always been written in a time of turmoil.’ Of the scope of the storytelling gathered in this volume, he observes: ‘These stories were written in Bengali for family, friends, neighbours and fellow inhabitants of the worlds they depict. They were meant to be not doors though which to enter an unfamiliar world, but windows through which to gaze into a familiar world brought afresh to readers… And yet you may find a thread – or a dozen – that seems to bind them together. It might be something as simple as longing for what is not, or a suppressed anger about the world being the way it is, or a confession that human existence is too peculiar to be understood… it might be all of these, and other things as well.’
The Penguin Book of Bengali Short Stories, translated and edited by Arunava Sinha, Penguin Classics, 2024.
An extraordinary anthology of short form writing, translated and edited by Arunava Sin, which brings together thirty-seven short stories by writers such as Rabindranath Tagore and Sarah Chandra Chattopadhyay, with Satyajit Ray and Mahasweta Devi, and Anita Agnihotri and Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay. Bengali fiction, Arunava Sinha writes: ‘has always been written in a time of turmoil.’ Of the scope of the storytelling gathered in this volume, he observes: ‘These stories were written in Bengali for family, friends, neighbours and fellow inhabitants of the worlds they depict. They were meant to be not doors though which to enter an unfamiliar world, but windows through which to gaze into a familiar world brought afresh to readers… And yet you may find a thread – or a dozen – that seems to bind them together. It might be something as simple as longing for what is not, or a suppressed anger about the world being the way it is, or a confession that human existence is too peculiar to be understood… it might be all of these, and other things as well.’
Tony K. Stewart
Needle at the Bottom of the Sea: Bengali Tales from the Land of the Eighteen Tides
The protagonists in these five tales Tony K. Stewart writes in his introduction, ‘encounter predicaments faced by every human being, but the presence of marvels beyond the ordinary signals creative solutions on an heroic scale’.
Tony K. Stewart with a contribution by Ayesha A. Irani, Needle at the Bottom of the Sea: Bengali Tales from the Land of the Eighteen Tides, University of California Press, 2023.
The protagonists in these five tales Tony K. Stewart writes in his introduction, ‘encounter predicaments faced by every human being, but the presence of marvels beyond the ordinary signals creative solutions on an heroic scale’. In essence these are adventure stories set in the ever-changing, hostile environment of the Sundarban swamps where life is unpredictable but where the balance between people and nature must be maintained to ensure survival. Dating from the fifteenth century, these are tales of ordinary folk as well as merchants, Sufis, witches, saints and animals in which wonder exists in the everyday. Ethnographically, they also reflect, Stewart tells us more recent Islamic perspectives intertwined with Bengal’s ancient Indic traditional culture.
Tony K. Stewart with a contribution by Ayesha A. Irani, Needle at the Bottom of the Sea: Bengali Tales from the Land of the Eighteen Tides, University of California Press, 2023.
The protagonists in these five tales Tony K. Stewart writes in his introduction, ‘encounter predicaments faced by every human being, but the presence of marvels beyond the ordinary signals creative solutions on an heroic scale’. In essence these are adventure stories set in the ever-changing, hostile environment of the Sundarban swamps where life is unpredictable but where the balance between people and nature must be maintained to ensure survival. Dating from the fifteenth century, these are tales of ordinary folk as well as merchants, Sufis, witches, saints and animals in which wonder exists in the everyday. Ethnographically, they also reflect, Stewart tells us more recent Islamic perspectives intertwined with Bengal’s ancient Indic traditional culture.
Jess Bailey
Many Hands Make a Quilt
The eleven quilts, described in this zine tell eleven different stories contextualised within the history of nineteenth and twentieth century quilting. ‘Quilts can hold us’ Jess Bailey tells us, ‘they hold us together and they hold us to articulating our values across the everyday’.
Jess Bailey, Many Hands Make a Quilt. Short Histories of Radical Quiltmaking, Common Threads Press, (2021), 2024.
The eleven quilts, described in this zine tell eleven different stories contextualised within the history of nineteenth and twentieth century quilting. ‘Quilts can hold us’ Jess Bailey tells us, ‘they hold us together and they hold us to articulating our values across the everyday’. Pieced together from scraps of cloth and often categorised as women’s work made for the home, she shows us that quilts were also constructed to make visible hidden histories and the experiences of marginalised communities. As such the quilts Bailey describes tell stories of transportation, colonialism, black power, the AIDS pandemic and trans and non-binary people, each piece an act of restitution and resilience, each an expression of struggles for recognition and social justice. Considered as an artform, Bailey positions the often-anonymous quilters as artists in their own right.
Jess Bailey, Many Hands Make a Quilt. Short Histories of Radical Quiltmaking, Common Threads Press, (2021), 2024.
The eleven quilts, described in this zine tell eleven different stories contextualised within the history of nineteenth and twentieth century quilting. ‘Quilts can hold us’ Jess Bailey tells us, ‘they hold us together and they hold us to articulating our values across the everyday’. Pieced together from scraps of cloth and often categorised as women’s work made for the home, she shows us that quilts were also constructed to make visible hidden histories and the experiences of marginalised communities. As such the quilts Bailey describes tell stories of transportation, colonialism, black power, the AIDS pandemic and trans and non-binary people, each piece an act of restitution and resilience, each an expression of struggles for recognition and social justice. Considered as an artform, Bailey positions the often-anonymous quilters as artists in their own right.
José Eduardo Agualusa
My Father’s Wives
Part travelogue, part a search for identity, part an accounting of the fallout of southern Africa’s complex colonial history, this is a story told from multiple perspectives, the main protagonists being documentary film maker Laurentina and her boyfriend.
José Eduardo Agualusa, My Father’s Wives, (2007), trans. Daniel Hahn, Arcadia Books, 2008.
Part travelogue, part a search for identity, part an accounting of the fallout of southern Africa’s complex colonial history, this is a story told from multiple perspectives, the main protagonists being documentary film maker Laurentina and her boyfriend. They journey from Angola to Mozambique to learn about Laurentina’s biological father the famous Angolan musician Faustino Manso, a man she never met but whose biography she pieces together from the stories told by his numerous lovers (‘wives’) and their children. Running parallel to her own story is the author’s own account as he travels the same route with his film-maker companion. An ambitious expansive novel which balances notions of personal quest with universal experience, this is a work which examines love and loyalty, family, dissemblance, and the importance of memory brought into sharp focus by the aftermath of civil war and the end of apartheid.
José Eduardo Agualusa, My Father’s Wives, (2007), trans. Daniel Hahn, Arcadia Books, 2008.
Part travelogue, part a search for identity, part an accounting of the fallout of southern Africa’s complex colonial history, this is a story told from multiple perspectives, the main protagonists being documentary film maker Laurentina and her boyfriend. They journey from Angola to Mozambique to learn about Laurentina’s biological father the famous Angolan musician Faustino Manso, a man she never met but whose biography she pieces together from the stories told by his numerous lovers (‘wives’) and their children. Running parallel to her own story is the author’s own account as he travels the same route with his film-maker companion. An ambitious expansive novel which balances notions of personal quest with universal experience, this is a work which examines love and loyalty, family, dissemblance, and the importance of memory brought into sharp focus by the aftermath of civil war and the end of apartheid.
Monique Schwitter
Goldfish Memory
These darkly comic short stories bear witness to characters in existential crises: The aging actress who no longer remembers her lines, an unwilling interviewee, a daughter whose only defence against her mother is to sleep, a monthly meeting in a casino with a relative stranger.
Monique Schwitter, Goldfish Memory, trans. Eluned Gramich, Parthian Books, 2015.
These darkly comic short stories bear witness to characters in existential crises: The aging actress who no longer remembers her lines, an unwilling interviewee, a daughter whose only defence against her mother is to sleep, a monthly meeting in a casino with a relative stranger. Schwitters writes of friends, family, lovers, passing acquaintances and the threads which connect people to each other and to life. She shows us glimpses of the extraordinary in what a chance observer could assume to be the mundane lives of strangers.
Monique Schwitter, Goldfish Memory, trans. Eluned Gramich, Parthian Books, 2015.
These darkly comic short stories bear witness to characters in existential crises: The aging actress who no longer remembers her lines, an unwilling interviewee, a daughter whose only defence against her mother is to sleep, a monthly meeting in a casino with a relative stranger. Schwitters writes of friends, family, lovers, passing acquaintances and the threads which connect people to each other and to life. She shows us glimpses of the extraordinary in what a chance observer could assume to be the mundane lives of strangers.