The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975 … That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past … Looking back now, I realise I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last 26 years”.

I first read The Kite Runner in, I think, 2005. A friend bought a copy for my birthday after the wife of a Greek oligarch she met at a work do on a yacht told her it was the best book she had ever read. I can only conclude the Greek oligarch’s wife wasn’t super into books.

I’m being a bit unfair. Back in 2005 I gave The Kite Runner a four-star rating. I’m more cynical now, more battered by life and more demanding of books. Yet I still gave it three stars on a second reading.

Its structure, a litany of woes based around a war-torn country, in this case Afghanistan, has since become a familiar genre of Western misery lit, which is aimed squarely at tugging at the heartstrings of complacent readers living comfortably insulated from political trauma and violent personal tragedy in highly developed countries.

In 1970s Afghanistan Amir also lives a comfortable life, with his father, his Baba. He is tended to by staff and spends most of his time with his unquestioningly loyal friend Hassan, the son of their faithful retainer. Amir and Hassan’s uneven relationship is described unsparingly, and Amir is well-drawn as the spoilt princeling, desperate for parental approval, who makes a split-second decision that affects his life for ever. The first part of the novel, culminating in a thrilling kite-running tournament, is genuinely gripping and beautifully evocative.

After Amir and his father flee Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, however, it begins to flag. Baba remains a strong and fascinating character to the end, but once Amir is living independently as an adult he feels less credible.

Amir becomes an author (don’t they all!), and lives a pleasant life in America with his perfect, under-drawn wife Soraya (she is just there to be pretty, forgiving and all-round virtuous – the Victorian-era ‘Angel in the House’ type, albeit one who leaves the house to inspiringly teach small children). But Amir is haunted by his past. Finally, he finds himself returning to his homeland, now Taliban-controlled, in a long redemptive episode that piles horror on horror, ties up some loose ends from childhood and feels utterly implausible and horribly emotionally manipulative.

Hosseini was brought up in Afghanistan until conflict broke out in the late 1970s. He and his family received political asylum in the USA in 1980,  when he was in his teens. Perhaps the earlier sections are so well-handled because he was able to use material from his own past to help bring them to life. The latter part, though, I found descended into mawkishness, while the Talib uber-baddy was just too much, with his extravagantly wealthy family, John Lennon-style sunglasses, penchant for mascara-painted little boys, track marks on his arms and psychopathic monologues.

Massoud Hassani – Afghanistani Artist

Marcel Duchamp famously repurposed and reinterpreted a useful, everyday item and declared it a ‘readymade’ piece of art. Fountain was simply a standard urinal, often exhibited on its back, signed and dated ‘R. Mutt 1917’. His work Bottle Rack (1914) was … a bottle rack.

It feels as though, a century later, Afghan designer Massoud Hassani has done the reverse, by devising something intensely useful, that has nevertheless been displayed in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. His ‘Mine Kafon’ is a mine detonator, but also a work of beauty.

Sadly, with Afghanistan mired in conflict since the late 1970s, war keeps coming up, even in relation to its art and design. As children, Hassani, his brother and their friends made light, wind-borne racing toys from paper. Living near a scene of recent conflict, these toys sometimes blew onto minefields, and couldn’t be safely retrieved.

Later in life Hassani came up with a solution to this childhood problem, using those early toys as inspiration and making something that looks delicate, like a dandelion, but which has the ability to safely detonate buried landmines. The detonator that Hassani designed comprises a core of moulded plastic, with bamboo stems and plastic feet (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/160434):

Once on a minefield, the object is heavy enough to detonate a mine, but light enough to be carried along by the wind. And if exploded by a land mine it breaks into parts that can be reused and reassembled into a new Mine Kafon.

It is an object that can be made available throughout the world at low cost, that is simple to use and fairly straightforward to make. But the Mine Kafon is the result of an ingenious and elegant design, which combines the aesthetic qualities of sculpture with a life-saving purpose. It’s just sad that such a thing should be so useful.

Film ‘Midnight Traveler’ by Hassan Fazili (Afghanistan)

NORTH AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA

I’ve never understood the lack of empathy and dehumanizing torrent of media and political ire directed towards refugees and other migrants. It doesn’t take an impossible leap of imagination to understand how desperate someone would have to be to sell their possessions and hand over all their savings to people-smugglers, putting their life, and the lives of their family in the dubious hands of professional traffickers.

Midnight Traveler, a 2019 film directed by the Afghanistani filmmaker Hassan Fazili, documents his family’s attempt to escape Afghanistan after he is tipped off that his life is in danger. The family’s aim is to reach safety in Western Europe.

Shot entirely on three mobile phones over a period of about three years, we follow the ups and downs of Fazili’s family. They leave Tajikistan (where they’ve stayed for over a year during their unsuccessful efforts to apply for refugee status in various countries), after making the desperate decision to make their way to Turkey and take the perilous refugee route that was well-documented in the European media in 2015-16. From Iran they plan to reach Turkey, then cross to Greece, passing through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, in the hope of finally making it safely to Germany, which famously announced a (domestically controversial) policy of extending an unequivocal welcome to refugees in the mid-2010s.

Often the events of the film are pictured against an evocative soundscape: sometimes discordant, sometimes beautiful and mournful. Although, like the excellent Syrian documentary For Sama, this is an account of real events, Midnight Traveler is also a work of art – a testament to Fazili’s talents.

Amid the harrowing events, there are moments of joy, connection and fun – playing in the snow in Serbia or the older daughter’s exultation at the tidal waters in Turkey – which really shine forth from this film. And although filmed on mobile phones in difficult conditions, the finished film does not feel scrappy or incoherent. Emelie Mahdavian, a US-based documentary maker, produced and wrote the film that emerged, and it went through extensive post-production. The film notably won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for No Borders at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Hassan and his mostly cheerful wife Fatima try to remain positive in the most gruelling circumstances, partly for the sake of their two young daughters. Despite nights in the freezing forest and the barest of facilities in the various refugee camps and safe houses in which they end up, the girls and their clothing always look astonishingly clean and well-cared for. But their lives are uncertain, and at best simply on hold. In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at times they’re not even ticking off the bottom rung, and the countries they reach on their way to Germany do not exactly welcome them with open arms.

I wonder why people avoid films like this. Is it too much reality? I’m really glad I watched this film. It was beautifully made, fascinating and enlightening, and it should be essential viewing.

January 2022 Cultural Round-Up; Reading Plans for 2022; Additions to the TBR

FILMS

I’ve reviewed Japanese film Drive My Car already, but I also watched a few films during January that I’ve not given the full review treatment:

Don’t Look Up was entertaining, star-studded, often very funny, shocking and ultimately heavy-handed.

Freaky was a bodyshock, body swap teen horror – self-aware, bloody and intermittently funny.

Spiderman: No Way Home and Eternals are films that I only saw because of my children – but I must admit I have got quite into the Marvel Cinematic Universe by virtue of having kids, though I always feel slightly lost.

Parallel Mothers, Almodovar’s latest film, which I watched at the flicks with my pal Bridget, was engrossing and surprising, and Penelope Cruz is such a stunning actor in every way, I love her.

BOOKS NOT ALREADY REVIEWED INDIVIDUALLY

As well as reading and reviewing Japanese books, and a couple of randoms (A Moth to a Flame by Swedish writer Stig Dagerman and Hour of the Star by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector), I also read the following:

The Foundling by Stacey Halls was tightly plotted and very well-performed on Audible. I prefer Audible for these kind of slightly tropey (hmm not a word?) trashy books.

William Palmer’s work of literary biography In Love with Hell traces the lives and dysfunctional relationship with alcohol of 11 writers (eg Martin Amis, Malcolm Lowry, Jean Rhys…). I love writing on addiction (and I am also too fond of wine and use a complicated system of self-regulation to stop myself drinking every night). I think having children is what has saved me from an over-hedonistic lifestyle!

An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley: I read this mercifully short play because my daughter is doing it for GCSE. Its message ain’t subtle, but I guess that wasn’t the point. Can’t imagine ever wanting to watch it performed!

Mrs March by Virginia Feito was an excellent read. Published just last year it was a bit Stepford Wives and a bit Patricia Highsmith. Gripping.

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, which seems to have been universally well-reviewed, actually annoyed me quite a bit. I am well-acquainted with mental illness but Martha’s pathological selfishness drove me to distraction – I just couldn’t bear how relentlessly cruel she was to her lovely husband, although I admit it was very funny in places.

LISTENING

Interspersed with my usual playlists, in January I enjoyed listening to the 2021 album Isles by Bicep, which has appeared on quite a few ‘best ofs’ lists for 2021. I also have really enjoyed Prioritise Pleasure by Self Esteem, which, as my 17 year old has pointed out, is “such an embarrassing name”.

READING PROJECTS

After spending the end of 2021 on Turkey and January on Japan (when I reviewed films and books, plus art, TV, food and music), I’m dedicating February to Afghanistan.

Interspersed with this reading, and random books I pick up on a whim, I’m also trying read a load of classic novels from 1922 throughout the year (maybe even Ulysses, who knows), plus lots of Virginia Woolf (who I love but who I also find really difficult!). Oh, and I’m currently tackling Middlemarch on audiobook.

ADDITIONS TO THE TBR

I’ve just had my 48th birthday and received seven exciting books, plus I splurged at the charity shop after my COVID booster, and basically now have teetering piles of books to read, including library ones and some Japanese ones I didn’t get to.

Five of the exciting birthday books (these from my parents and two more from husband Ant – Autobibliography by Rob Doyle and Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick). Can’t wait to get stuck into these:

Also my Afghanistan pile – I’m re-reading The Kite Runner first, before plunging into the non-fiction:

Teetering randoms, with 1922s standing upright:

And then some library books, eek:

Left over Japan books:

And a few art books to read/re-read and extras:

Japanese Music

I was reliably informed that Japan’s biggest pop act is Hatsune Miku, who sounds like a demented guinea pig singing slightly hysterical tunes at about 190 bpm. Then it turned out that she is not even human. And not a guinea pig. Instead, “she” is a hologram, and started out in 2007 as vocal synthesising software. Now, bizarrely, Hatsune Miku attracts “music lovers” wielding glow sticks to sold-out concerts across Japan.

As usual my slightly leftfield preference is for 1970s psychedelic rock. My husband out of nowhere recommended that I listen to Extremely Bad Man, a laid-back track by Shintaro Sakamoto, who is a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter and producer and former frontman for psychedelic rock band Yura Yura Teikoku before going solo about a decade ago. I love the track, from the 2014 album Let’s Dance Raw, although it also displays some guinea pig/chipmunk-adjacent musical traits (in a good way, this time) alongside twangy strings and excellent drums (sampled I believe).

Next I turned to the group Yellow Magic Orchestra, formed in the late 1970s, for some classic Japanese electronica: these guys were early adopters of snythesizers, drum machines and such, and according to Wikipedia largely anticipated the “‘electropop boom” of the 1980s’. Surely an influence on both Kraftwerk and later Air.

Finally, I rounded off with experimental ambient music by composer and house DJ Susumu Yokota, which lulled me pleasantly to sleep (perhaps it’s my age). Here’s Tanuki off the album Acid Mt Fuji (from 1994).

Japanese TV series Aggretsuko

I’m a bit late writing up my last few posts for Japanuary, as work and so on got in the way – though I’m sure no one is losing sleep over my lack of posts!

I told my fairly underwhelmed family that I needed to watch some Japanese telly during the cultural event that has been Japanuary. “Then watch Aggretsuko” said my 15-year-old, “it’s great”. Anime, I thought. Ugh. It’s for children. But you know what, this series (streaming on Netflix UK in handy 15-minute episodes) is really entertaining, especially if you have ever worked in an office for any length of time. And it’s definitely not aimed at little kids.

Retsuku (meaning “Fierce Child”) is, yes, a cute red panda in a kilt, but she’s also a 25-year-old young woman who is into death metal and who spends her days working in a tedious office environment, with a huge misogynistic pig (literally a pig) as a boss.

The series follows her day-to-day travails as she negotiates office politics, friendships, crushes on unsuitable men and her relationship with her over-protective mother, who is always popping round to hoover Retsuko’s apartment and trying to fix her up with awful prospective husbands. (To be honest, with a daughter about to go off to university, I actually hard relate to this woman as much as I do Retsuko!)

Retsuko, who was dreamed up by the same people who came up with the Hello Kitty brand, is outwardly sweet and placatory, until every now and then she loses her shit and goes into “death metal karaoke mode” (when she’s voiced by an entirely different actor!). You go girl.

The series is funny and cute and relatable, and I’d recommend it to anyone for a bit of light relief after a January that seemed never to end. And I found out that the series is so widely loved that there’s even a whole fan Wiki to take a deep dive into, if that’s your bag!

Drive My Car – Japanese film

Review by Imogen G.

I went to see the much-praised Japanese film Drive My Car at my local, vaguely art house cinema. The movie is an adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami, directed by Japanese auteur Hamaguchi Ryusuke, and a long film at 179 minutes. The opening credits don’t roll until we’re 40 minutes in, and the story moves at a leisurely pace, but, to its credit, it is never boring. Sight and Sound have named this their third best film of 2021.

The plot seems straightforward enough. Kafuku Yusuke is an actor and theatre director who lives with his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a former actor and screenwriter. They have a stylish, glamorous lifestyle, but a tragedy lies at the heart of their marriage: the loss of their only child, many years before. Oto copes with her sublimated grief by spinning elaborate and oblique erotic fairy tales in a sort of fugue state during sex with her husband (which I think a lot of people would find a bit off-putting!), and by sleeping around, though Kafuku keeps his knowledge of her affairs to himself, as he fears losing her.

After Oto’s sudden death, Kafuku travels to Hiroshima to direct a stage version of a Russian play, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Hiroshima, a place that was utterly destroyed and then rebuilt, is surely a symbolic choice of location. Kafuku casts one of Oto’s lovers in the play, bad-tempered celebrity rake Koji (Masaki Okada). Meanwhile, during his residency in Hiroshima Kafuku is allocated a driver to transport him to rehearsals and back each day in his glossy red Saab 900 – a tersely proficient young woman called Misaki (played by Toko Miura). Kafuku initially resents having a driver imposed on him, but over time he begins to open up to Misaki, who is also grieving, another complicated grief, after losing her mentally ill, abusive mother.

With themes of loss, betrayal and art, this film is Oscar catnip. Full of interesting ideas and arresting visuals, it is Japan’s official entry for the upcoming Academy Awards.

A Moth to a Flame by Stig Dagerman (Sweden)

Translated by Benjamin Mier-Cruz

Reviewed by Imogen G.

I took some time out from Japanese culture to read the Swedish novel A Moth to a Flame for Annabel’s month of Nordic FINDS. By the end of this very beautifully written, psychologically intense novel, however, I felt a bit sullied after spending so much time with such horrible people.

The book was first published in Sweden in 1948, and appeared in English in 1950 as The Burnt Child; it has been republished in English translation as part of the new Penguin European Writers series (2019). Dagerman was one of the most prominent Swedish authors in the period after the Second World War, and is still widely read there.

The novel opens with the funeral of a middle-aged woman, Alma, who leaves behind her husband Knut and her 20-year-old, sometime student son, Bergt. While Knut is superficially focused on what is beautiful, and seems unable to face those things in life that lack beauty (such as a dying wife, or a dead wife for that matter), Bergt initially inspires sympathy, as he weeps openly and describes his love for his mother simply and openly too:

He isn’t doing it [crying] because he’s been drinking. In fact, he never drinks. Almost never. He is doing it because he loved her. And, of course, you talk about the one you loved – if you talk at all. And he loved her because she loved him. And the one who has loved you should always receive your love in return. Otherwise you are a fool.

But this isn’t a straightforward novel, or a straightforward family. There’s an abundance of shame here: lowered shades, lies – to oneself and to others – and the covering of keyholes.

The father looks briefly into the son’s eyes. The funeral eyes. He think they are ugly, and he doesn’t like anything ugly. There is something about ugliness that he fears. Therefore it isn’t his son that he fears. It’s the ugliness inside him. And the ugliness inside him is so hideously similar to the dead wife that he immediately has to look at something else.

The characters’ interactions are often described in this distant, depersonalizing way, in terms of their familial role, rather than their names. All the major characters are majorly flawed, from violent, disturbed Bergt to his insipid girlfriend Berit, dissolute father Knut and his largely amoral lover, Gun.

Everything feels bleached-out and heavy. Bergt writes angry, circular letters to himself, drinks and takes his violent despair out on dogs. As he becomes increasingly obsessed with Gun, who quite literally wears his mother’s shoes, the angst ramps up and the novel begins to read more and more like a cross between Ingmar Bergman and Barbara Vine, with a sense of creeping dread, incipient violence and brooding intensity.

Sadly, Dagerman stopped writing in 1949, and killed himself at the age of 31.

Intense family relations in a nihilistic Sweden

A Japanese Meal at Yama Momo, London

As part of my monthly exploration of different countries, I’m trying to sample a menu from each country. In ‘Turkey month’ I cooked some Turkish meze, but frankly the idea of cooking up a Japanese feast during ‘Japanuary’ was too scary. We have two Japanese restaurants near by, but because I have a sesame allergy I felt it was a bit dicey to try them (so much Japanese cooking is heavily reliant on sesame).

I was really pleased then when I noticed that Yama Momo, 15 minutes walk from my house, has a detailed allergy menu online (although strangely not in the printed menu on tables). So I booked a table for 2 and headed off there with my husband.

The restaurant was very busy on a Saturday night, with a dubious 80s soundtrack playing all night (Beautiful South, anyone? OK, how about a bit of Steve Winwood’s Valerie?). There were tons of staff, slightly too many staff one might say, but at least that meant the service was good.

I had veggie sushi, noodles and lovely crunchy veg, plus tempura and a sort of seafood dumpling, while my husband added an order of truffle rib eye beef and eek, sesame rice for himself.

We had fun with the sake testing order, each trying three different sakes, as well as trying a Japanese-influenced cocktail and a digestif. This, combined with the two large G&Ts consumed at home meant we were nicely oiled by the time we left.

The food was amazing, fresh and light and delicious, and much better than I would have expected from the bland decor and terrible music!

Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (1920-77, Brazil)

Translated by Benjamin Moser

I’ve made a minor incursion into South America during Japanuary! I don’t really know where to start with this very short book, which was definitely interesting, if not madly enjoyable.

Published in 1977, the year of Clarice Lispector’s death, Hour of the Star is a sort of story within a story, as a self-consciously very present (male) narrator/author, writing in the first person, effortfully crafts a story about a young woman’s failed romance.

The protagonist of that tale, Macabea, is a secretary living in Rio. She is poor, neglected, deliberately unremarkable in character, unintelligent, nondescript – but definitely horny, and a bit romantic. The writing is self-referential, often surreal, and shot through with a sort of dark and desperate humour.

The text must have been horrible to translate from the original Potuguese, as Lispector wields language rather than writes it, layering on adjectives, going off at tangents, and constantly the writer (or Lispector in the guise of the anonymous male writer) forces their way roughly into the text.

“I have to say that the girl isn’t aware of me, if she was she’d have someone to pray to and that would mean salvation. But I’m fully aware of her: through this young person I scream my horror of life. Of this life I love so much.“

We have the sense that Macabea’s tale will not have a happy ending, and the ending is sudden, brutal and ironic.

Looking around to see what others have made of this book I was amused to see that Peter Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before you Die basically gives up in its very patchy attempt to discuss this novel, announcing that “Lispector must be read, not written about”. (A cop-out, no, in a book about books?!)

Overall, I have to say that I found this book to be weirdly brilliant – but definitely not a relaxing diversion. And despite being only 77 pages in length, it took me an awfully long time to read!