Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate (Peru): Review no 150

Translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott

AMERICAS AND THE CARIBBEAN

With this book, the celebrated Peruvian journalist Joseph Zárate has created a work of reportage on the environmental and human costs of the demands of globalisation. Published in Spanish in 2018 as Guerras del interior, an English translation has just been released by Granta. Wars of the Interior isn’t my usual fare, but it seemed to be more than topical, and I’ve not yet covered Peru at all in my sofa-bound tour of global culture.

The book is divided into three sections, focusing on three principal commodities: wood, gold and oil. And it is full of righteous anger at the injustices wrought against ordinary, often illiterate and thus essentially powerless people by the large logging and mining companies. These behemoths replicate against often indigenous, peasant people the same inhumane brutalities that were enacted by colonial rulers in the past.

Reading about the absolute lack of environmental concern shown by loggers, the corruption, and the amount of environmental damage caused by the production of everyday commodities made me feel I should stop buying completely. It certainly made me feel guilty for the amount of books I buy, and for the piles of proofs that I print out for work (I just can’t keep sufficient focus if I read them on screen).

“A map is an instrument of power”, and the apparently empty land (or “silences”) mapped by official cartographers based in the capital, Lima, can frequently obscure areas of rainforest or land attractive for mining where native communities have traditionally made their homes, which is then parcelled off piecemeal and sold off to massive corporations. Communities unused to official bureaucracy, unable to read and write, who have perhaps never travelled to a large town or city before or even traversed a paved road are ill-placed to take on these companies. Maps say different things, and the bureaucracy in Peru doesn’t acknowledge the way peasants have exchanged land for centuries, or recognise their documentation as legitimate. And troublemakers are at genuine risk of assassination. Criminal links are widespread in these industries. For example, according to the World Bank, 80% of wood exports from Peru have illegal origins.

Peru is the greatest exporter of gold in Latin America, and the sixth largest exporter worldwide. But gold is a rare metal:

“If we collected all the gold collected throughout history – 187,000 tonnes, the World Gold Council estimates – and melted it down, it would barely fill four Olympic swimming pools”.

The mining of gold is also intrinsically wasteful and toxic. “To end up with an ounce of gold – enough to make a wedding ring – you need to extract fifty tonnes of earth, or the contents of forty removal lorries,” writes Zárate. Later he tells us that “whole mountains disappear in weeks”, and that mining enough gold for a pair of fancy earrings “produces some twenty tonnes of waste, which includes chemicals and poisonous metals” – specifically cyanide, since a wash of cyanide and water is used to dissolve the rock that surrounds the precious metal.

The final section discusses the oil industry, and shares evidence that the corrupting forces of capitalism have resulted in the misuse of both environmental resources and people. Children are coerced to help clean up oil spills with promises of the money for electronics, while the chemicals used to “clean” the rivers are accused of simply causing oil residues to disperse to the bottom.

By tackling these important but easily overlooked issues through a work of reportage, the impact on communities and the natural world really hits home. Not an easy read, but no doubt an important one. Whether it will make any difference at a grass roots level remains to be seen.

Die Tomorrow – A Film from Thailand: Review no 149

FAR EAST, SOUTH ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this film was. Written and directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, it opens with on-screen text informing the viewer that a mayfly lives for just 24 hrs, followed by the statement that the film is a personal memoir of the years between between 2012 and 2017. A timer counts down the seconds on the top left of the screen, a sledge-hammer of a memento mori. We’re not here for nuance.

Trailed as a film about “today”, about the “day before”, it opens with a group of female students celebrating in a hotel room. They drink beer and read their horoscopes and discuss their aspirations; their graduation ceremony will take place the next morning. Having run out of beer, someone needs to go out for more supplies. Then comes the stark statement “24 May 2017: a 21 year old student was hit by a truck”.

So, we watch people’s carefree, oblivious interactions, and other moments that come brimming with care, before we are suddenly taken to the aftermath of a tragedy: a cleaner tidying a silent hotel room, or some washing flapping in the breeze on an empty terrace. The deaths themselves thankfully all take place off-screen.

These are primarily tragedies of the young, but we observe how one person’s unexpected demise can be another person’s lifeline: such as the woman with a failing heart, whose life is dependent on the donation of a healthy organ after someone else’s fatal accident or sudden death. In another scene, a delighted young woman gets her big break after the shocking death of a rival performer. We also encounter the ironies of those who feel they have had too much of life, but whose bodies propel them seemingly endlessly on. One man, interviewed at 102, says he is more than ready to die, before we cut forward to his muted 104th birthday celebrations.

Interspersed with these vignettes are death-related facts and statistics – did you know there are 120 deaths a minute worldwide? There are also segments featuring mortality-orientated interviews with both the very young and the very old. Thus a young child is asked, “what do you think about the notion that human suffering and death are inevitable?“. Although a surprisingly mature and well-reasoned answer comes back in reply, I found such exchanges uncomfortable.

Overall I found the piece heavy-handed, mawkish and somehow adolescent, and I could have done without it in the midst of a massive pandemic.

Review no 148: German TV Series Deutschland ’86

EUROPE

Stylish Cold War spy drama Deutschland ’83, a co-production between Germany and the USA, aired in the UK in 2016, and became a runaway hit. We’ve recently been watching the follow-up series, set in 1986, and imaginatively called Deutschland ’86. Deutschland ’89, set in the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, has just come out, and I dare say we’ll get to it at some point.

In the five years since we watched Deutschland ’83 I’d unfortunately forgotten everything about the plot, as well as all the names, motivations and back stories of every single character. This happens a lot. I can reread a book from a few years ago, and it might as well be new to me. I can watch films and only towards the end remember that, yes, I’ve seen it already. Indeed, one of the reasons for writing this blog is so I can remember what I’ve done with my spare time for past X amount of years.

Jonas Nay plays Martin Rauch, a young former East German border patrol guard, who at the start of the series is in hiding in Anglola, teaching children English, after going undercover in West Germany in 1983.

Maria Schrader plays Martin’s implausibly and expensively modish aunt Leonora Rauch, who is also his former handler (it’s all a bit nepotistic). She’s now operating out of South Africa, where she is professionally and romantically embroiled with Rose Seithathi, an African National Congress operative.

Martin’s inscrutable dad Walter Schweppenstette (Sylvester Groth) is also Lenora’s former boss, while former school-teacher Annett Schneider (Sonja Gerhardt), Martin’s high-gloss former fiancée and the mother of his presumed child (there’s at least a 50% chance Max is his), is now an intelligence agent.

This second series, the storyline of which is based around East Germany’s increasingly desperate attempts to get its hands on hard (convertible) currency (illicit weapons’ sales, the sale of blood), is supplemented by a documentary, Comrades and Cash, which I haven’t seen. It seeks to explain the various real life nefarious and ethically dubious money-spinning business activities employed by the GDR in the 80s.

The plot can be confusing at times, especially, as I say, when you can’t remember what happened before, but the drama is engagingly super-slick, and intermittently drily humorous, with an excellent soundtrack. I think my German has risen from the dead slightly, too, as I could definitely understand the odd phrase by episode 9, whereas it was all utterly incomprehensible to me at episode 1 (I got a good German GCSE … albeit in 1990 … and have never used the language since). So, definitely watch it, but from season 1, and don’t leave a gap of five years before watching the next series.

Review no 147: Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama

AFRICA

It’s been over a year since I’ve set foot in a gallery, although I look forward to a time when I can get back on buses and trains and inside public buildings without anxiety. Meanwhile, I’m still getting my art fix at home.

This month I’ve been looking at the work of Ibrahim Mahama, born in Tampale, Ghana, a young artist who is known for his monumental, sometimes richly textural installations, made out of layered materials, including repurposed jute sacking(historically used for transporting food) and recycled objects and materials collected from all over Ghana. Like the Bulgarian artist Christo, who I wrote about last year, Mahama has even used jute sacking, stitched together on an enormous scale, to cover entire buildings.

The work focuses on the post-colonial experience in Ghana, but avoids being dry or heavy-going. For example, the Parliament of Ghosts exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester in 2019 created a kind of legislative chamber full of archival documents and other artefacts from early on in the creation of the independent state, such as old railway seating and storage cabinets.

Although the work sometimes focuses on the unrealised dreams of independence, it also pays testimony to the valuable human qualities of endeavour, resilience and hopefulness – even in the absence of any direct representation of the body. Instead the well-used artefacts evoke the absent bodies of those involved in the nation’s transition and history. Through the re-working of everyday, quietly momentous objects, that have been an intrinsic part of the lives of so many people, Mahama’s work demonstrates a sort of collective humanity, without ever lapsing into sentimentality.

Review no 146: Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev (Russia)

Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

EUROPE

This Russian novel could hardly be more topical, particularly given the recent much-reported assassination attempt on opposition figure Alexei Navalny, as well as the bodged Skripal poisonings in the UK in 2018. First published in Russian in 2020, Untraceable has just been published in English translation by indie publisher Head of Zeus.

The novel is a bit of “deadly game of cat and mouse” as a cheesy ad might say, and the prose itself can be a bit airport novel, although it veers closer to literary than genre fiction with its focus on moral degeneracy and characterization as much as on plot, with both main characters haunted by spectres of the past.

Professor Kalitin has spent his working life developing and perfecting an incredibly powerful – and untraceable – neurotoxin, Neophyte (clearly modelled on Novichok). The labour of love to which the creepy Kalitin has dedicated himself in his covert laboratories in the Russian Far East (on “the Island”) means he has an unfathomable amount of blood on his hands, both animal and human, and a Neophyte-related incident even led to the accidental death of his wife, Vera. Having defected from Russia, he has lived a secret life under a new identity for many years, squirrelled away in Germany. However, after he is invited to take part in a German investigation into a political poisoning, his cover is blown and he has the distinct sense that time is beginning to run out for him.

Meanwhile, Shershnev, another iniquitous individual, is tasked with travelling from Russia to take Kalitin out with his own chemical weapon. Along with an accomplice, Shershnev sets out on a murderous road trip, although events do not unfold as smoothly as planned.

Untraceable is a slow-burn thriller, not fast-paced like Tom Rob Smith’s Booker-longlisted, edge-of-the-seat Child 44., of which it is faintly resonant. While the two main characters are tainted by a form of moral poison, the merciless toxin developed by Professor Kalitin feels like another principal character in its slipperiness and its terrible potency.

“He began his attempts to tame his creation, solve the problems of preservation, stability – without that he could not hope for certification, for its production.

But Neophyte turned out to be excessively sensitive ad high-spirited. If he changed the original composition just an iota, the whole became unbalanced. Neophyte was born to be just as it was; limited in use because of its wildness, its instant passion to kill.“

With the book’s uncompromising illumination of moral corruption and the continued impact of the Soviet legacy on modern Russia, I was not surprised to learn that Lebedev no longer lives in Moscow, or even Russia (he is based in Berlin). While Neophyte might not leave a detectable trace, the taint it leaves on those who weaponize it is indelible. As one short-lived character, Kazarnovsky, notes: “I don’t know about the enemies, but we’re doing a very good job of destroying ourselves“.

March 2021 Round-up

I’ve read a few great books this month, after splurging on a handful of newly released hardbacks (well, the library’s shut so…. and never mind all the unread books around the house).

The most enjoyable read was Canadian author Emily St Mandel’s 2020 release The Glass Hotel. I’d loved Station Eleven a few years back, which was feat of enlightening dystopia, following as it did a group of itinerant Shakespearean actors through a world rebuilding itself after a devastating deadly flu pandemic (the “Georgia flu”).

The Glass Hotel is very different and, at the most basic level, considers the fall-out from a Richard Madoff-type Ponzi scheme. It is way more than that though. It’s a cleverly layered tale of our capacity for complacency, and for simultaneously knowing and not-knowing, and the haunting narrative gradually creates a dreamlike, faintly hallucinatory world. The book is backdropped by the surreal glass hotel of the title, glowing on a Canadian promontory and only reachable by boat, where a young woman, Vincent, works as a bartender. It’s a haunting and philosophical study of resilience and morality, and best of all is utterly immersive and a pleasure to read – I recommend this book.

Also recommended, though possibly triggering, is the newly published A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies. I gobble up books that touch on traumas that resonate with my own. I had treatment for PTSD after my youngest daughter’s birth and I still wince if anyone says the word “midwife” in my presence. I find it cathartic to understand that other people have shared similarly traumatic experiences.

Widely described as autofiction rather than memoir, previously Booker-longlisted Ho Davies’ book is a beautifully written account of life touched by tragedy, when he and his wife are compelled to abort a much-wanted baby that is strongly suspected (but not guaranteed) to be carrying a devastating genetic mutation. Wracked with guilt, but simultaneously convinced of the inevitability of the decision, the father in the book, a university professor and writer (just as Ho Davies is) struggles to come to terms with the decision they made and with their loss. A much-wanted baby boy, an only child, follows, but his development is delayed in subtle and distressing ways that involve a coming to terms with adjusted assumptions. This book is a little like a prose poem, and reminded me a little of the incredible Blue Sky July, an elegiac and moving account (I sobbed throughout that book when it came out in 2008) of a mother’s experience of raising a small child born with a brain injury.

Last but most definitely not least, I found the TV series The Terror, first shown in the USA in 2018 and currently showing on iplayer in the UK, ridiculously enjoyable. Based on a novel by Dan Cummins, it is an imagined account of the doomed Arctic expedition led by Captain John Franklin in the 1840s, when the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus sought to traverse the last unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage. ]

The cast is outstanding, with Jared Harris (also from the excellent Chernobyl) as the compelling Captain Francis Crozier and Tobias Menzies as Commander James Fitzjames. Paul Ready (the hapless dad from Motherland – which as I see it is basically a documentary) plays Dr Harry Goodsir and the thrilling Adam Nagaitis plays Cornelius Hickey. It’s just the right side of silly, with an excellent baddy and some good stiff upper lip captaining going on, plus some overblown supernatural horror stuff dropped in to zhuzh things up should they start to get too introspective. By the end I was on the edge of my seat, and I’m bereft now it’s finished. I haven’t been so entertained for ages. Or at least not since The Great finished.

Review no 145: The Global Dominance of Swedish pop

EUROPE

Earlier this month I happened on a few reviews for pop singer Zara Larsson’s new album Poster Girl, and got to thinking how Swedish singers seem particularly adept at giving us a catchy tune. I’m not mad on Larsson;s music myself, but she is wildly popular in the UK and in Sweden. Larsson’s last (2017) release, her second album So Good, reached number one in Sweden and was a top 10 hit in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and the UK. Poster Girl, which to my ears is basically more of the same successful formula of unchallenging, escapist, proficient pop, has reached no 3 in the Swedish charts, no 11 in Norway, no 12 in the UK and no 170 in the USA, where I assume she is little known.

All the successful Swedish singers that I can think of are working very much in the genre of pop. Naturally, ABBA (named for the first initials of the four band members, Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid) spring immediately to mind. I wouldn’t call myself a massive ABBA fan, but having said that I was more than happy to sit through jukebox movie Mamma Mia, and even paid a trip to the cinema for Mamma Mia III. And if an ABBA song comes on the radio I’ll have a bit of an involuntary singsong, as if I’ve been subliminally conditioned to do so, which I suppose I have been. Oh yeah, and I did go to see Mamma Mia! – The Musical in the West End a few years ago but that was honestly only because a friend of ours was in the cast…

Pop songstress Robyn exploded onto the Swedish music scene in 1995, releasing her first album in her teens. She became increasingly successful and latterly (and arguably equally impressively) even credible. I genuinely like Robyn’s music, and listen to it for fun, which I couldn’t necessarily say for Zara Larsson – perhaps it’s a generation thing. In 2018 Robyn made a sensational comeback after almost a decade away, with her brilliant album Honey, which is an excellent example of smooth, intelligent pop music.

Coincidentally, I heard a programme on the radio this week that told me something I really didn’t know: Swedish songwriters are behind some of the biggest hits of the last couple of decades, and Swedish producers haven’t just been behind homegrown talent like Ace of Base, Avicii, Swedish House Mafia and Roxette. They have also produced career-defining hits for massive, global superstars like Britney Spears, Katy Perry and Backstreet Boys. Indeed, Sweden is the biggest exporter of pop hits per head of any country worldwide. The Swedish music industry has somehow employed the same methodical, technical brilliance pioneered by top Swedish-grown companies like IKEA to give pop music everywhere a Scandi-inspired sound.

Review no 144: Supa Modo – a movie from Kenya

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

In Swahili with English subtitles

TRIGGER WARNING: This film has a plot that focuses on the life of a terminally ill child

Supa Modo (2018) is an emotionally involving drama directed and co-written by Likarion Wainaina, which follows a family’s efforts to care for terminally ill nine-year-old girl Jo in the best way possible.

Jo has been staying in hospital full-time for treatment, seeing her mother and older sister only at weekends, although the days there are made more cheerful (albeit bitter-sweet) through friendships with other sick children and, in particular, superhero movies, which are shown along with live commentary by local film buff Mike.

When Jo’s mother realises that her condition in incurable, she makes the decision to take her back home to her rural village and look after her there. The whole village is touched by Jo’s plight, and her sister Mwix dreams of fulfilling Jo’s dreams of living the life of a superhero.

I liked the way Jo’s “tomboyish” interests in action films and football are presented as part of her, and refreshingly never challenged or treated as odd by those around her. With its focus on the love and support that a close-knit community can offer, the film reminded me of the old adage “it takes a village to raise a child” (which appropriately originated in Africa, a Google search tells me). However, although charming and moving in parts, for me it did tip over into mawkishness at times.

The film was a naturalistic study in love and resilience, but although described as a family film, I would hesitate to show young children such a potentially upsetting movie, especially if you don’t fancy answering a bunch of impossible questions afterwards. And if you’re looking for an escape from the grit and sadness of life, say, during a massive, seemingly never-ending pandemic, then I really can’t recommend watching this film, though I imagine it could be cathartic for some.

Supa Modo won the Film Africa 2018 Audience Award and is dedicated it “to everyone who has suffered loss”.

Review no 143: The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe)

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Set in modern Zimbabwe, The Hairdresser of Harare was a book club pick by my friend Dr Emily, a hotshot scientist, who has an unexpected tendency to search out and champion obscure African novels. Author Tendai Huchu was born and raised in Zimbabwe, but now lives in Edinburgh where it turns out, a little incongruously, he is now a qualified podiatrist.

The novel was published by Ohio University Press in 2010 as part of their Modern African Writing list, which aims to bring the best in contemporary African writing to international attention. The Hairdresser of Harare is written from the first person perspective of twenty-something Vimbai. Queen Bee at the Khumalo Hair and Beauty Treatment Salon, Vimbai is distrustful and quickly resentful when a disarmingly confident guy turns up hoping to fill a vacancy. Dumisami is good-looking, charming and adept at coming up with the perfect restyle for every woman and every type of hair, and threatens Vimbai’s status at the salon.

“Trust me, sister. This is your chance to help me” the man said, his voice as soft as running water. … “You have a round face, so instead of these curls we need to layer it so that it flows with the smooth contours of your face.” He worked briskly with his comb, then took a pair of scissors to trim the ends.

My heart was pounding. It had taken me an hour and a half to do that style and he dared to say that I’d got it wrong. The customer is always king. I’d done the style she asked for.

Five minutes later he was finished. He put his hands on Matilda’s shoulders and made her look in the mirror. …

“Sweet Jesus, I look like Naomi Campbell.” Matilda’s body was trembling with excitement.

Despite her resentment that she is at risk of being usurped by Dumi, Vimbai is in need of a lodger and she finds herself softening towards him when he happily moves in, making himself helpful around the house and teaching her young daughter Chiwoniso to read.

Nevertheless, after accompanying Vimbai to a local church service, complete with voluble pontificating priest, Dumi’s usually upbeat mood becomes distinctly darker and Vimbai is mystified as to why. It becomes clear that there is more to Dumi’s surface shine than meets the eye.

This novel is a deceptively easy, often comic read, which nevertheless adroitly covers some important contemporary issues. The social commentary is dropped in with a light touch, including mention of the head-spinning rates of inflation that render handfuls of cash almost worthless in an instant, the continuing threat of AIDS, casual corruption, the widespread poverty and the pressure of school fees (most parents have to pay fees of some sort for their children’s education in Zimbabwe). Added into the mix is homophobia: gay sex is considered to be a criminal act in Zimbabwe, but as the narrative progresses Vimbai is forced to confront some of her ingrained prejudices.

Review no 142: The Young Offenders (Irish TV comedy series)

Based on a film from 2016, this 2018-20 Irish coming-of-age comedy series is ostensibly unappealing. The main characters are feckless teens Conor (Alex Murphy) and Jock (Chris Walley), who spend their days engaged in acts of petty crime and trying to get off with the headmaster’s daughters (“shifting”). Conor and Jock are low in intelligence, inventively sweary and a constant source of mild disappointment to Conor’s mum, Mairéad (Hilary Rose). Mairéad is a sympathetic character who works on the local fish stall and struggles to manage the bills single-handedly, while trying to retain some semblance of control over her errant son and juggle a nascent romance with the slightly inept but amiable local policeman Sergeant Tony Healey (Dominic McHale), who is unable to drive and has to give chase to criminals on a push bike.

Despite, or perhaps because of, their absent dress sense and terrible haircuts, there is something endearing about the impressionable Conor and ringleader Jock. Underneath their laddish banter and bluster, terrible plans and frequent run-ins with Sergeant Healy they are openly affectionate to Mairéad, and mostly misguided but essentially well-meaning boys. And their frequent farcical scrapes are very funny.

My 14-year-old and I love the show, as the filthy language and illegal elements make it feel appealingly edgy without being amoral, and because her 12-year-old brother isn’t allowed to watch it (she insists on sub-titles as she can’t penetrate the strong Cork accents though!). We watched the first season, written and directed by Peter Foott, over a succession of Saturday nights during lockdown, and we’re looking forward to seasons 2 and 3 – and apparently there’s also a Christmas special starring eye candy Robert Sheehan (who I know best for his role as Nathan from Misfits). I liked Derry Girls and The Inbetweeners, but, for our family at least, this series has wider appeal.