Angelica Gorodischer, Taslima Nasrin

[vass]

19. Angélica Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial
If I believed in schools handing out books and insisting people read them, which I don't, then this would be one of the books they should hand out and insist people read. It's just wonderful. "A storyteller is nothing less than a free man."

I did find the ending a little bit too cute for my taste, but your mileage may vary. I also would have liked a slightly blunter interrogation of the concept of empire (it's there, but it's very subtle) but that's probably just me. It was, as I said, wonderful as it was.

20. Taslima Nasrin, Shame (original title: Lajja)
This book was written about the ethnic and religious conflict between the Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh in 1992. Her thesis is that it's not 'conflict' when one side's doing it to another side. This point of view did not make her popular with Muslim leaders, who declared a fatwa on her for the book. I think if I'd known that Taslima Nasrin was so emphatically anti-Islam I wouldn't have read the book, but Shame does not actually attack the religion itself, only fundamentalism of all kinds, and the actions of some Muslims.

This is a very difficult book to read. It has two conflicting aims: to narrate a novel, and to bear careful and detailed witness to atrocity. The latter purpose often overwhelms the former, as the author bursts into long, horrifying lists of places that were looted and burned, people who were beaten, women who were raped.

The translator, Kankabatti Datta, is, I think, translating out of his/her first language, not into it (as is best practice in translation.) As a result, this edition is rather stilted and purple; it also has more typoes than I'd like.

Here's Dr Nasrin at her best: "Riots are not natural phenomena or disasters. Riots reflect the perversity of human nature." To make this intersectional for a moment, she reminds me how people say that a woman 'was raped', instead of 'somebody raped her' - as if it's a natural disaster that happened to her. The riots in Bangladesh are like that: they didn't happen, people did them.

A warning, for people who like warnings: the protagonist graphically rapes a woman.

Comments

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

I loved Kalpa Imperial. I would love it if more of her work were translated.

Is Shame fiction or non-fiction?

[vass]

Good question. It's a novel, but she keeps interrupting the novel to tell the facts of the riots.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Ursula Le Guin also translated (http://www.lcrw.net/kalpa/) this book, which is how I read it. I liked it, and I also recommend it; however, I don't see how the author qualifies as a PoC; I believe she's a German immigrant to Brazil (or from a German family that immigrated to Brazil).

[roadrunnertwice]

Guh, really? I figured she was Latina or mixed-race on account of being born Argentine; file under conclusions, hazards of jumping to. :/