Téa Obreht - The Tiger's Wife

Téa Obreht, at the age of twenty-five, won the Orange Prize for her debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, which was given to me as a birthday present on my twenty-sixth birthday. In the blogging universe, the opinions on the book were widely divided, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Almost immediately, I was struck by how direct and wonderful the writing is - it's emotive without being sensational, and it's beautiful without being hyperbolic.

Set against the backdrop of the Balkan civil wars, Natalia, the narrator traces back to her childhood and recalls the stories her grandfather told her, after she finds out about his death in a strange city from her grandmother. He had told the family that he was going to visit Natalia, but... that was not the case.

As Natalia embarks on a journey to figure out who her grandfather was, she realises that there are two stories - two legends, if you like - which sum up her grandfather's life.

Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life – of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again.

Her grandfather was an avid animal lover, with a special place in his heart for tigers, and he oft' took Natalia to see the tigers at the local zoo, before war erupted and the zoo was forced to shut down, resulting in a strain in the relationship between the two - a strain that they conquered with time. I found myself completely floored by some of the thoughts put forward by Natalia's grandfather, who, despite being the secondary character, took centerstage.

"You must understand, this is one of those moments."

"What moments?"

"One of those moments you keep to yourself," he said.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Why?"

"We're in a war," he said. "The story of this war -- dates, names, who started it, why -- that belongs to everyone. Not just the people involved in it, but the people who write newspapers, politicians thousands of miles away, people who've never even been here or heard of it before . But something like this -- this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. Only to us."

The multiple narratives that transpire - the story of the deathless man, the story of the tiger's wife, the present-day mission that Natalia is on (to help young children at an orphanage across the border) and the story of her grandfather's life - on her quest are handled effortlessly and had me gripped throughout. Perhaps some of the stories were fictional fables, perhaps some were plain superstitions. Indeed, some were not even believable, but all of that took a backseat while I read the legends and tried to work out how they all fit together.

While the relationship between the grandfather and granddaughter was the essence of the book, what had me captivated was the awe and reverence that the scenes about the tiger invoked. Tigers are one of my favourite animals - they are definitely the most regal, and command all the respect in the world. However, to be completely honest, I've never once spared a thought to how wars affect animals.

The tiger did not know that they were bombs. He did not know anything beyond the hiss and screech of the fighters passing overhead, missiles falling, the sound of bears bellowing in another part of the fortress, the sudden silence of birds. There was smoke and terrible warmth, a gray sun rising and falling in what seemed like a matter of minutes, and the tiger, frenzied, dry-tongued, ran back and forth across the span of the rusted bars, lowing like an ox. He was alone and hungry, and that hunger, coupled with the thunderous noise of bombardment, had burned in him a kind of awareness of his own death, an imminent and innate knowledge he could neither dismiss nor succumb to. He did not know what to do with it. His water had dried up, and he rolled and rolled in the stone bed of his trough, in the uneaten bones lying in a corner of the cage, making that long sad sound that tigers make.

I loved this book, and would recommend it greatly... and I look forward to Obreht's next book.

Linda Grant - When I Lived In Modern Times

The year is 1946, Israel doesn't exist yet, and Tel Aviv is part of Palestine. World War II has just ended, but, its aftermath continues, as the global map is changing. and colonialism is coming to an end. Evelyn Sert, a twenty year old hairdresser from Soho (London), sails to Palestine to be part of the Zionist movement, as Israel is born. Her mother has just died after a series of strokes, and her mother's lover, Uncle Joe, arranges for her to leave London, with ample money, and the dream of being part of a historical movement for all Jews.

Thus, starts the story:

This is my story. Scratch a Jew and you've got a story. If you don't like elaborate pictursques full of unlikely events and torturous explanations, steer clear of the Jews. If you want things to be straightforward, find someone else to listen to. You might even get to say something yourself. How do we begin a sentence?

Listen...

After spending twenty years bounded by Soho in the east, and Hyde Park in the west, Evelyn was a self-proclaimed 'west-end girl', and her initial reaction to Palestine is that of excitement, and alarm. Unaccustomed to the heat, defecating while squatting, and telling Jews from Arabs, who looked strangely identical in their summer outfits, one can hardly blame her. However, when she moves into the kibbutz, she is swayed by their ideals and the road the diaspora is taking. However, she is incapable of carrying out the hard menial tasks, in the heat, and decides to  make her way to Tel Aviv.

At a cafe, en route to Tel Aviv, she meets Johnny, who tells her to "hop on" to his motor bicycle, and he'll ensure she gets there in a flash. And so she does. She moves into an apartment, and finds a job as a hairdresser - the first thing she does is dye her hair a platinum blonde. This is beautiful symbology, for the rebirth of Evelyn as Priscilla goes hand-in-hand with the birth of Israel as a Zionist nation, as she spies on the British who come to the salon.

As things go, she gets romantically involved with Johnny, and while he tries to keep her at arm's length from some of his activities, insisting she doesn't want to know about them, she does get sucked into them, and thus we see another flash of history - of how things worked in a country on the verge of being born, but still being a British colony.

This is a fascinating book, full of metaphors and symbols from probably one of the most compelling times in our history. Be it the hairdresser reference mentioned above, or the stark white building complexes where Evelyn lived, which seem to signify purity and idealism, as the birth of a dream is realized.

The 1940s will always be remembered for World War II, Nazism, and the bombings at Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Linda Grant herself says:

We usually think of the 1940s as the war years but that was only 50 per cent of it. From 1945, the whole political map was changing, colonialism was coming to an end, people - either refugees or demobbed soldiers - were trying to go home or find homes to go to. It was an extraordinary period both of flux but also a time when people were more interested in the future than the past (how different from now) and none more so than the Jews, for whom the past was a very bad memory indeed.

I've read a lot about that era, but this is the first book I've read about the birth of a country, which continues to play an important role in the political map today, and I found myself wondering: why haven't I read more about this movement?

Evelyn's character itself is a contradiction of sorts, as she struggles to find an identity: be it conforming to the Jews who she wants to be like, or hang out with the British, who she finds it easier to associate with, due to her upbringing in London. It's a coming-of-age novel, as for the first time, she has to make decisions for herself, and is oft' confused and sometimes decides to do things against her better judgement.

However, her relationship with Johnny seems far-fetched, and one has to wonder if Evelyn is actually as naive as some of the events in the book make her out to be. Does she honestly not contemplate the consequences of her actions, or does she not realize the gravity of them?

Rating: 3.5

Have you read this book? Or, have you read any other books on Israel and Palestine? Do you recommend any of them?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half Of A Yellow Sun

War destroys all that is left of innocence. It pulls people together, and it drives them apart. People are left asking questions, as they pine for their loved ones, as they try and contemplate the horrors of war, and as they struggle to survive - just so that they can see a better day.

And it is this aspect of war that Adichie focuses on in her much-acclaimed novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. The story, based in the 1960s, revolves around the Nigeria-Biafra war - a historical event that has escaped the chapters of most history texts outside Africa - and the massacre, starvation, illness, and fear it brought in its wake, as the Igbo people battled for their independence, which was short-lived. Biafra (even my spell-check doesn't recognize it!), in 1970, returned to Nigeria, and as the book stated: a million people died, in the process.

The story's main protagonists are the twins: Olanna and Kainene, who are poles apart, both in looks and in attitude; their lovers: the 'revolutioary professor' Odenigbo, and the awkward introverted Richard - an expatriate writer, enchanted by Igbo history. And then of course, there's Ugwu, a poor village boy who has come to serve the professor, as a house-boy.

The twins, at the outset, are estranged and distant, for no reason whatsoever. Olanna is about to move in with Odenigbo, and teach in Nsukka, whereas Kainene is looking to take her father's business to greater heights. However, as things turn out, due to love and betrayal, the twins' rift grows deeper, and Olanna finds herself avoiding Kainene. She does, however, adopt Odenigbo's love-child from a brief one-night affair, and finds herself devoted to Baby's health and happiness.

When war breaks out, and strains some of the relationships, while simultaneously bridging the gap in some, we see the weakness and strength in the characters as never before.

Richard, an Englishman (and Kainene's lover) remains in the warzone, and writes articles for the international media, propagating the cause of the Igbo, instead of returning to his motherland. He is disgusted when some white journalists show up, and ask about the unfortunate death of another Englishman. His sarcastic comment at that point is along the lines of: one white person is equivalent to a thousand Biafrans.

Odenigbo finds comfort in his papers, and his theories, but when war breaks out he resorts to alcohol. Olanna, and Ugwu set up a small formal school, as all the schools around them are closed down, and transformed into refugee camps. Kainene, on the other hand, sets up a refugee camp, and tries to ensure that there are enough protein pills and food for everyone - specially the children.

As the characters are introduced, and their role in the story starts shaping up, I couldn't help but marvel at how Adichie's writing shifts from prosaic to poetic. And that, at times, is disconcerting. For example, in the opening chapter, Ugwu is overwhelmed by the richness of his new environment:

He looked up at the ceiling, so high up, so piercingly white. He closed his eyes and tried to reimagine this spacious room with the alien furniture, but he couldn't. He opened his eyes, overcome by a new wonder, and looked around to make sure it was all real. To think that he would sit on these sofas, polish this slippery-smooth floor, wash these gauzy curtains.

and I think that's a beautiful piece of writing - so vivid, and I can close my eyes, and actually imagine Ugwu's wonder, just by the above line.

But then, later on in the book, after the war had started, the descriptions were enough to make me, as a second-hand observer, feel queasy. The below is a snippet when Olanna was on a train, heading back home to her revolutionary lover, after the war had broken out, and the Igbo people were being found out and massacred.

Olanna looked at the bowl. She saw the little girl's head with the ashy-grey skin and the plaited hair and rolled back eyes and open mouth. She stared at it for a while before she looked away. Somebody screamed.

The woman closed the calabash. 'Do you know,' she said, 'it took me so long to plait this hair. She had such thick hair'.

And then there's the scene Richard witnessed at the airport, on landing from England, where his cousin was getting married.

Richard saw fear etched so deeply on to his face that it collapsed his cheeks and transfigured him into a mask that looked nothing like him. He would not say 'Allahu Akbar' because his accent would give him away. Richard willed him to say the words, anyway, to try; he willed him something, anything, to happen in the stifling silence and as if in answer to his thoughts, the rifle went off and (his) chest blew open, a splattering red mass [...]

My favorite character of the book has to be Kainene, just because she's offbeat, and has no illusions (read delusions) of grandeus about herself. While Olanna was occasionally self-piteous, Odenigbo was a character I couldn't relate to. He was an intellect, but came across as a know-it-all. Ugwu was a character I had grown quite fond of, as I could actually relate to some of his thoughts (hats off to Adichie for creating one of the most 'real' characters I've come across, in a long time), but without giving much away, I will say that there are certain things that make a character somewhat irredeemable. And Richard, well, I admired him for sticking to the Igbo people, as though they were his own, but, his character was probably the blandest of them all, if you know what I mean?

In this story about love, loyalty, betrayal, redemption, and survival, Adichie brings up the painful reality of war; unflinchingly discussing gang-rapes, starvation, children dying, and the horrors of air-strikes, where everyone tries to hide in a bunker. In an ironic statement, we see how everything is held together, precariously, as a girl's belly starts to swell, and her mother wonders is she pregnant or is she dying. (a swollen belly indicates 'kwashiorkar', or protein deficiency).

This is a very well-written profound book, and it really wouldn't surprise me if it became a classic of our times. However, in critique, the couple of things I will say are:

In my opinion, the flow of the book was disrupted by how the first section was based in the early 1960s, the second in the late 60s, the third in the early 60s again, and the final section was based in the late 1970s. I didn't quite understand why that was done, because I'm not at all convinced it enhanced the story in any way.

Second, why on earth was a six year old referred to as Baby throughout the whole book? Fair enough, it worked for Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing, but, in a warzone, even if you're trying to depict the innocence of a child, the name 'Baby' really doesn't do it. Well, it didn't for me!

And also, I found the last paragraph a weak ending to an otherwise great story. I really do not want to give much away at the time, but, it was an ending that left a bit to be desired. In fact, the way it came about was almost rushed.

Overall, a 7.5 on 10.