Penguin, 2019, 126 p. Translated from the Japanese 光の領分 (Hikari no ryōbun,) by Geraldine Harcourt. First published in 1978-1979 as a series in the literary monthly Gunzō.

The book outlines in first person narration the life of an unnamed woman recently separated from her husband, Fujino, in the year following his leaving. They have a two-year-old daughter, also unnamed, who begins to react badly to her new life after mother and daughter move into an apartment on the fourth floor of a building which has mostly offices below. Its large windows flood the interior with light, hence the book’s title.

Over the course of the year we see the daughter’s behaviour deteriorate; she throws objects out of the window onto a roof below and gets into trouble at her daycare centre.

This is paralleled by her mother’s increasingly difficulty to cope with her life, turning up late for her job in a library, having a one-night stand with the father of another child at daycare.

There are parallels here with the other of Tsushima’s novels I have read, Child of Fortune.  whose protagonist is also separated from her husband (but in her case divorced.) The absence of Fujino, like that of Hatanaka in Child of Fortune, is core to the narrator’s sense of drift. This is an indictment of the men involved, though, not of the women they have left.

The book’s origins as a series of twelve monthly instalments in the magazine Gunzō (群像) lead to some repetitions in later chapters of information the reader already knows and which would have been unnecessary to include in a novel per se.

I note as an aside that the living space in Japanese dwellings is described in terms of how many tatami mats the rooms can accommodate.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing comma before a piece of direct speech embedded in a larger sentence (x 2,) a similar missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech embedded in a larger sentence.

American University of Cairo Press, 1987, 256 p, including vii p Introduction by Trevor le Gassick. Translated from the Arabic Zuqāq al-Midaq by Trevor le Gassick. First published in 1947.

The back cover blurb describes this as probably Mahfouz’s most popular work. Set during the Second World War – there are mentions of air-raids and the British Army – it depicts life in the titular alley, in a poor area of Cairo, and features a variety of colourful characters each with a distinctive trait and several of whom have chapters devoted to them, some several chapters. It occurred to me while reading it that this may have had an influence on Mahfouz’s fellow Egyptian Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building.

Perhaps the main character is Hamida, an orphan who was adopted by Umm Hamida but suckled by the wife of café owner Kirsha, whose son Hussain she was nursing at the time. Kirsha himself has a taste for teenage boys. Umm Hamida arranges marriages and her landlady Saniya Afify makes use of her service in this regard. Dr Booshy isn’t (a doctor that is) but has parlayed his reputation into providing dentistry, sourcing the gold teeth he offers his clients (but unbeknownst to them) from the mouths of the recently buried dead. The unkempt and filthy Zaita makes his supplicants into cripples so that they can make a living through begging and thereafter exacts a toll from them. Retired teacher Sheikh Darwish is fond of quoting English words and spelling them out. Abbas, the young barber, wants to marry Hamida but doesn’t have the money so takes himself off to work for the British Army. Salim Alwan is a wealthy businessman getting on a bit who imbibes a special concoction to stimulate his sexual appetite. Tiring of his wife, he proposes marriage to Hamida but has a heart attack before any arrangement can be made

Then Hamida comes to the attention of one Ibrahim Faraj, who habitually gazes on her from a seat in the café. At once attracted and repelled, Hamida eventually falls under his spell but his intentions for her are far from honourable.

Midaq Alley is one of those books which represents the world in microcosm. If not all human life is depicted in its pages then certainly a good deal of it is.

Sensitivity note. A character uses the phrase “nigger-black face.”

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; Mahfouz’ (x 5, Mahfouz’s.) Elsewhere; translated into USian, “piaster” (several times, piastre,) “reflexion” (reflection, used later,) “Tell-el-Kebir” (several times, usually spelled Tel-el-Kebir,) “struck a responsive cord in the boy” (responsive chord,) “Abbas’ face” (Abbas’s,) a missing comma after a piece of dialogue embedded in a larger sentence (x 2,) such a comma placed after the end quotation mark not immediately before, similar placing of a question mark – and of a full stop, “abcess” (abscess,) both “jewelry” and “jewellery” appear in the text, “and bid them welcome” (bade them welcome,) a missing opening quotation mark on a piece of dialogue, “by her sexuals instincts” (sexual,) “Hedjaz” (usually spelled ‘Hijaz’.)

Penguin, 2013, 349 p.

When you start to read a book written by someone raised in a Muslim country and its title is Honour, you will most likely have a certain expectation of what will be in store. That expectation isn’t disappointed here. But this novel is written by Elif Shafak. Things are a bit more nuanced.

The novel does not have a linear structure. It starts in 1992, well after the main event it is concerned with exploring, before flipping back to a village near the River Euphrates in 1945, where the twin Kurdish girls Pink Destiny (Pembe) and Enough Beauty (Jamila) are born to a family already overburdened with daughters but still striving for a son. Its succeeding chapters stray unchronologically over the times in between those dates. Most of the scenes are rendered in third person past tense but there is a first-person account by Esma, Pembe’s daughter, and a journal written by her brother – “He a murderer” as Esma tells us in Chapter One, so not a spoiler – Iskender/Askander (the Kurdish and Turkish renderings of the name equivalent to Alexander) as he serves time in Shrewsbury Prison for that murder.

The plot gets in train when a man called Adem visits relatives in the Euphrates village and falls for Jamila. Unfortunately, she had been kidnapped in a dispute some while before and held hostage so her purity is in doubt. In such a place, “Men – even schoolboys – had honour. Women did not have honour. Instead they had shame.” Whether that is warranted or not.

Knowing his family would therefore not agree to a union with Jamila, Adem agrees to marry Pembe instead, eventually taking her to London while Jamila stays and becomes a sought-after midwife. Unsurprisingly Adem’s and Pembe’s marriage is not overly happy. When he leaves home to take up with an exotic dancer their eldest son Iskender takes on himself the mantle of protector of the family’s honour. However, Esma and younger brother Yunus are more liberal in their outlook. Pembe meanwhile muses on the way in which British people say of something minor, “It’s a shame.” To her, shame is a burning thing; not to be thought of as anything trivial.

Like Adem’s brother, Tafiq, Iskender is heavily under the influence of his traditional past. A Muslim known as the Orator tells a gathering Iskender has arranged that, “The two major industries in the West are the machine of war and the machine of beauty. With the machine of war they attack, imprison, torture and kill. But the machine of beauty is no less evil. All those glittery dresses, fashion magazines, androgynous men and butch women. Everything is blurred. The machine of beauty is controlling your minds.” Maybe so, but it illustrates the Orator’s blind spot. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that the machine of religion also does that – usually far more effectively.

Tafiq reflects that, “Their honour was all some men had in this world.” For the rich it didn’t matter as they could buy influence. But; “the less means a man had, the higher was the worth of his honour.” His hint to Iskender that Pembe might be seeing another man (innocently enough, but Tafiq and Iskender don’t know that) sets the central tragedy in motion.

Honour is inflected with magic realism, but with a light touch. The twist towards the end which alters the perspective is signalled in the book’s first sentence and inherent in the plot, which is elegantly constructed with incidents and relationships which are seemingly peripheral turning out to be carefully inserted.

Shafak displays empathy with her characters, not condemnation. Despite the act of violence around which it revolves Honour is an intricate and ultimately humane read.

Pedant’s corner:- “The undeveloped baby had remained joined to her twin” (the undeveloped baby was previously described as a boy; so ‘had remained joined to his twin’.)

Harvill Press, 2000, 268 p. Translated by Derek Coltman from the French Le Générale de l’armée mort, itself translated from the Albanian, Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur, first published in Albania in 1963.

Twenty years after the Second World War an Italian general is sent to Albania to retrieve for repatriation the bodies of soldiers who had been killed in the conflict there. He is accompanied by a priest. They are working with lists of the dead containing their particulars – height, dentition and so on, plus the probable location of the grave – provided by the Italian Government. The actual exhumations are largely carried out by local Albanians of course.

Prior to the expedition the general had been visited by various relatives of the deceased with specific requests and information about the individuals concerned. Foremost in his mind though, is finding the remains of Colonel Z of the infamous “Blue Battalion,” whose wife the general finds still attractive but suspects may have some sort of relationship with the priest.

The whole situation is awkward for the general; though their tradition is one of hospitality, the locals are in many ways suspicious, the expedition’s presence triggering unpleasant memories and resentments – and the task is arduous. The difficulties of working in such an environment, the sensibilities to be navigated are beyond him. The discovery of the particulars of Colonel Z’s fate (and of his bones) arise from this disparity.

This is the sort of novel – and subject matter – which I suspect no Anglophone writer would contemplate. I know the circumstances surrounding the undertakings would be less problematic but can you, for example, imagine an extended fictional narrative – or even a short story – about the work of the Commonweath War Graves Commission? A non-fiction book, yes; but never a novel.

That Kadare was working under the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha makes the fact that he could examine any aspect of Albanian society remarkable. It was subtle of him to choose such an oblique angle to do so.

There were occasional points at which the language of the text seemed a bit strained – possibly due to the fact that the book has undergone successive translations – but this did not impact on its readability.

Pedant’s corner:- “withlittle” (with little,) “the generalasked” (the general asked,) “even asemblance” (even a semblance,) “bothvery” (both very,) a missing full stop at the end of a piece of dialogue, a misplaced line break, “anylonger” (any longer.) “Those are the sort of things” (Those are the sorts of things,) “dark,gentle eyes” (dark, gentle eyes,) a missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech where the sentence it was embedded in continued, a missing comma in a list, “would all departin various directions” (would all depart in,) span (spun.) “Then,fighting free” (Then, fighting free.) “Six or seven oundsat the most” (Six or seven pounds at the most.) “There were a number of” (There was a number of.)  “‘You wantto be able’” (want to.)

In Virago Omnibus II, Virago, 1987, 279 p, plus xi p Introduction by Polly Devlin. First published in 1941.

Last night I dreamt I went to Aragon again.

Oops. Sorry. Wrong book.

Yet, despite being not like it at all (well, apart from the fire,) there was something about this which kept reminding me of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Maybe it was the looming presence of the house itself – the author is lavish in her descriptions of it and its grounds – or the emotional investment in it the characters have, especially its housekeeper Nan O’Neill, who feels herself its custodian all the more strongly since her intimate connection to it came from her sire (on the wrong side of the blanket) being from the present owner’s previous generation but one.

Aragon is what in Scotland used to called a big house, that is where the local landowner lived and lorded it over the general populace. The novel is an illustration of how the Anglo-Irish gentry (who thought of themselves as Irish) considered their Catholic servants and employees as being somehow empathetic with them. It is 1920, though, and events, dear boy, events, will be inevitable, though the gear change when this manifests itself is a little jarring since the story starts off as looking to be one of unsuitable love across the class divide.

Aragon has belonged to the Foxes for centuries. Like many such houses it has its secrets – not least a long neglected, indeed all but forgotten, room full of S&M paraphernalia.

Its head is Mrs Viola Fox, whose husband is long dead, but it is Nan O’Neill who runs things. Of Viola’s two daughters, Sylvia, the eldest, is level-headed but Grania, barely sixteen, is a deluded naïve, imagining herself to be in love with Nan O’Neill’s son, Foley, the local horse master – and sometimes dodgy horse trader. Foley is, of course, not even toying with Grania’s affections but, instead, exploiting her inexperience.

Symptom of Nan’s control is her treatment of Miss Pigeon, an elderly Fox aunt, whom she all but starves and occasionally locks in her room. Yet Nan is in many ways the heroine of the book when, in order to exonerate Foley, who stands accused of complicity in the abduction, she steps in to confront the IRA men who have kidnapped two British officers, one of whom is the object of Sylvia’s affections.

Sensitivity notes; “a black plaster nigger,” “that cup of tea in moments of crisis, whether disastrous or happy, is to the peasant Irish what his opium is to the Chinaman.”

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction “rhymster” (rhymester.) “Startled though she was, to discover” (ought not to have that comma,) “and is therefore a cousin” (not a cousin; an aunt,) devotion (devotion.) In the text: “the Fox’s” (many times employed here as a plural for Fox. This should, of course be ‘Foxes’, which was used once,) “six Miss Foxs” (Foxes, but the phrase ought to be ‘six Misses Fox’, ‘two Misses Fox’ appeared later,) “slipped off her rings and settle down” (settled down,) “unbrindled confidence” (unbridled,) goulish (ghoulish,) “octopus like quality” (octopus-like.) “Everyone on the place” (in the place,) “how would it effect and disgrace her?) (how would it affect and…,) “‘what happened Doatie?’” (what happened to Doatie?) “‘your Sunday afternoon’s off’” (afternoons.) “‘How could you be, poor child.’” (Is a question, so needs a question mark,) “into it’s socket” (its socket,) “some silly christian demur” (Christian,) “‘Captain Purvis’ name on it’” (Purvis’s.) “‘If anything happens them’” (happens to them,) “‘what happens Mr Foley’” (what happens to Mr Foley,) “more awful stalactites reached up” (if they’re reaching up then they’re not stalactites; they’re stalagmites,) “a quite insolence” (quiet insolence,) “meeting each the others branches” (the other’s branches.)

Head of Zeus, 2023, 397 p.

This is the second in Tidhar’s Maror sequence, in which he examines the history of Israel. I reviewed the first here. In Adama (the name is Hebrew for earth, and here is used as a synonym for homeland) the focus is on the setting up and evolution of the Israeli state as seen through the experiences of the members of one family. The book is episodic in nature, ranging in time from Haifa in 1946 and a displaced persons, DP, camp in Germany in 1947 via the war to establish Israel (what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba,) the aftermaths of the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars, events in Kibbutz Trashim in intervening years, to Florida in 2009; not necessarily in date order.

Told in fifteen parts starting with one titled The End and with the last called The Beginning, our viewpoint characters are matriarch Ruth, her sister Shosh, their children Yoram, Ophek and Yael, grandchildren Lior and Esther, fourth generation Hanna and Shosh’s husband Dov.

As a staunch believer in a Jewish homeland, Ruth made her way to Palestine early, leaving behind in Europe her family who were apparently betrayed to the Nazis by Shosh’s then boyfriend Nathan Deutsch – upon whom Ruth later wreaks an extended revenge. Only Shosh survived. Unlike her sister, Shosh was not invested in the dream of Israel, only ever wanting to make her way to the US. Their descendants navigate the vicissitudes of the Israeli experience, the souring of the kibbutz ideal of socialism, its failure (and by extension Israel’s) to live up to its promise, the compromises and accommodations necessary to keep things going.

Ruth does what she has to as a member of the Jewish underground during the British mandate; as does Shosh in her efforts to be away from the DP camp. Only Ruth has some success. Dov’s tale relates to the 1948 war and shows its unforgiving nature. Kibbutz life is illuminated in passing as the book’s incidents unfold.

In 1989 Lior returns to the kibbutz from Tel Aviv for the funeral of his friend Danny, not believing the story he is told about Danny’s apparent suicide, and finds something rotten in its state. “Lior knew what hash smelled like, it smelled like Lebanon, there was so fucking much of it.” In this section Chief Inspector Cohen from Maror makes a brief appearance, reminding the reader (if any such were needed) of the murky underbelly of Israeli society which Tidhar is exploring.

A prominent recurring reference in the novel is a fictional film called The Vultures, starring actor Bill Goodrich, a film shot partly in the kibbutz, perhaps here intended to show the founding of Israel as Israelis would like to see it: but extortion, drug running and violence are never far away from any of the characters in this book.

Tidhar’s writing is immediate; sharp, abrasive and to the point. Despite its tight focus, Adama contains multitudes.

Pedant’s corner:- “Ruth was sat in front of the television” (‘was sitting in front of the television.) “They were sat in the Casino” (They were sitting,) “where there were nothing but camels” (where there was nothing but….,) “the metaplot” (elsewhere spelled metapelet.) “‘Did he, fuck,’ he said.” (no need for that comma after ‘he’; plus it actually changes the meaning.)

Faber and Faber, 2023, p. Translated from the Turkish, Veba Geceleri, by Rekin Oklap.

This is not a typical Pamuk novel. For a start it’s not set in Istanbul which has been pretty much a major character in most of his books. Instead, it deals with the fictional Mediterranean island of Mingheria during a 1901 outbreak of bubonic plague which provided the opportunity for its revolt against Ottoman rule. Also, unlike most Pamuk novels. it’s largely told rather than shown. Part of this is that the narration is couched partly as a historical record of the revolution.

Mingheria is supposedly located somewhere northeast of Crete. Its main city, Arkaz, is dominated by a castle on a hill at one side of the harbour entrance but there isn’t adequate anchorage for large modern ships and landfall has to be made by rowing boat.

The present Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid, who was installed as Sultan by a palace coup in which he replaced his brother Murad V, has sent Bonkowski Pasha to combat the outbreak. On the same ship but en route to China as envoys are Murad’s daughter (and therefore Abdul Hamid’s niece) Princess Pakize, until recently kept in seclusion in Istanbul until she married the husband Abdul Hamid procured for her, Doctor Nuri. Hence Nuri is often referred to in the text as “the Doctor and Prince Consort.”

A few days later, after Bonkowski Pasha is murdered having inadvisedly gone walkabout, Princess Pakize and Doctor Nuri are ordered back to Mingheria to investigate his death using the methods of Sherlock Holmes. (Abdul Hamid is an avid consumer of detective fiction.)

Many locals, especially devout Muslims, resist the attempts by the authorities to enforce quarantine. The ensuing confusion allows a Major Kâmil to institute a revolution which overthrows Ottoman rule. The Major (soon Commander) becomes the first leader of independent Mingheria.

Much of the supposed history here is said to be taken from the letters of Princess Pakize to her sister Princess Hatice back in Istanbul, letters which she wrote daily even when the postal service had been suspended. An emphasis on the relationships between Princess Hatice and Nuri and Major Kâmil and his wife Zeynep (nostalgic legends in Mingheria) are a corollary to this.

Several narratorial interpolations reveal that this retrospective history of the founding of the Mingherian state has been written by a descendant of Princess Hatice and Nuri. The final chapter is an envoi from that point of view.

The means by which a new state establishes itself and the myths it comes to believe are subtly portrayed (as are the parallels with the decline of the Ottoman state,) but like most revolutions the Mingherian one soon begins to eat itself. In short order Kâmil and Zeynep are dead due to plague; his successor, the Muslim sect leader and quarantine opposer Sheik Hamdullah, also succumbs to the disease; Princess Hatice is made Mingheria’s Queen but pushed into the background by Nimetullah Effendi with the felt hat; and so on. Relations with the Great Powers, who blockade the island to prevent the plague reaching Europe, are critical to Mingheria’s future.

Pamuk is consummate and always in control but to my mind in Nights of Plague, though there is plenty of story (you could almost say too much) some of the rewards of reading fiction are missing. There is not much here to allow the exploration of character, most of whom are sketched rather than fleshed out, or indeed character development. It is certainly unusually structured for a novel. It is however an exemplary way of writing a critique of Turkish society without going at it head-on; an approach arguably necessary for a writer from a state sensitive to any hint of criticism.

Since he started writing this book in 2016 it is also unlikely to be a reflection on the Covid pandemic, though of course that does now hang over any reading.

Mention of football (albeit only in one sentence) and of the author Orhan Pamuk as being an acquaintance of the narrator – both are museum enthusiasts – are typical Pamuk touches.

It is of course essential reading for Pamuk completists but has enough to recommend it to the merely curious.

Pedant’s corner:- Translated into USian. “the hoi polloi” (hoi means ‘the’; it’s just ‘hoi polloi’, then, no ‘the’,) enormity (employed here to mean ‘hugeness’. It doesn’t; it means ‘monstrousness’,) “off of” (no ‘of’, just ‘off’,) “a particularly tough contingent who was known to mistrust” (a particularly tough contingent which was known to mistrust,) “that he was going be punished” (going to be punished,) a chapter beginning with a sentence of dialogue with no starting quotation mark (I know this is a publisher’s convention but it annoys me,) “the Halifiye sect were being goaded” (the Halifiye sect was being goaded,) “landscapes …. that Sami Pasha had hanged on the walls” (I doubt this meant they were executed: ‘had hung on the walls’,) “arrival to the island” (arrival on the island,) Cretian (Cretan,) “moored to the docks” (moored at the docks,) “was I was finally” (the second ‘was’ is superfluous.)

Penguin, 2016, 263 p.

This is the final book in Barker’s Brooke family trilogy which started with Life Class and continued in Toby’s Room. In this one we have moved on to World War 2, Elinor Brooke and Paul Tarrant are long married and volunteering during the London Blitz; she as an ambulance driver, he as an ARP warden. Their lives are still entwined with that of Kit Neville who is also a volunteer. All three still paint whenever they can.

Paul wishes Elinor to remain in the country in her childhood home where the family has taken in an evacuee called Kenny who keeps getting let down by his mother’s failures to visit. Elinor’s mother is on her death bed but still has enough recall to reveal she knew how close Elinor and brother Toby had been. Kenny eventually disappears off back to London where his family is bombed out and finds shelter in a school, which is later the scene of a tragedy underreported for morale reasons. Paul bears a residual guilt about guiding them there.

The scenes of danger during bombing raids in London and their aftermaths of damage and destruction are well described, if a little familiar from documentaries and histories. Throughout we track the gradual erosion of Elinor and Paul’s marriage.

A curious interpolation is that of a medium (I nearly typed fraudulent medium; as if there were any other kind) – named somewhat oddly as Bertha Mason and who, like the first Mrs Rochester, lives in an attic – but who doesn’t seem to fulfil any narrative purpose apart from to discomfit Paul.

Elinor is asked by Kenneth Clark, head of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, to contribute to its collection, but only with portrayals of women and children. Elinor has other ideas but suspects they won’t be accepted.

As a conclusion to the trilogy this lacks the impact which the Great War had on the characters’ lives in the previous books and stands in contrast to it. It is, though, a reminder that in the midst of war people’s lives still carry on, with all their imperfections and resiliences. Plus it ends on a slightly hopeful note.

Pedant’s corner:- “just now give her” (just now gave her,) “stood there” (standing there.) “She was sat” (she was sitting,) fetid (foetid; even better fœtid,) “a plastic bag” (plastic? In 1940?) “twenty foot deep” (‘twenty feet deep’ please,) “‘His majesty’s ship Repulse is at the bottom of the sea’” (Repulse was sunk in December 1941, well after the blitz waned,) an extraneous quotation mark, “hadn’t showed up” (hadn’t shown up,) a missing full stop.

Penguin, 2023, 182 p. Translated from the Japanese, 寵児, (Choji,) Kawada Shobo Shinsha, 1978, by Geraldine Harcourt

Kōko is a divorced mother of eleven-year-old daughter Kayako. She is struggling with her life and her job giving piano lessons is not really enough to sustain them both. For this and other reasons Kayako has moved in with her Aunt Shōko, Kōko’s sister, who thinks of herself as the responsible sibling. Kōko’s memories of her handicapped brother who died when he was twelve colour her feelings towards both Kayako and Shōko. Since her relationship with Kayako’s father, Hatanaka, ended, she has had a long-standing (but now finished) affair with Doi, with whom she also became pregnant but aborted the child. She now feels she would have liked a child to Doi but has embarked on an on-off liaison with Hatanaka’s friend Osada, who acted as intermediary between him and her.

Child of Fortune is a portrait of a woman pulled and pushed between her past and present, and the future she devoutly wishes but is somehow unable to grasp, acutely conscious of the way in which society views women like her. The signs of pregnancy she notices precipitate her crisis.

The novel, though unmistakably Japanese, is not specific to Japan. Kōko’s troubles could be those of a woman anywhere in a judgemental world.

Pedant’s corner:- Dialogue which Kōko remembers is indicated by dashes, in the novel’s “present” (written in the past tense) it is rendered in the usual way. There was also a missing comma before one piece of direct speech.

Only twelve works are on my best list this year; eight by women, four by men. Five were in translation – plus two more if you count Elif Shafak.

Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Hex by Jenni Fagan

Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness

The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

The Photograph by Penelope Lively

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Shanghai Nights by Juan Marsé

The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov