Hodder, 2014, 347 p.

This is at once an unusual but also common tale, innovative in style but not so much in plot. (Then again, there are only supposed to be seven of those.) The narrative is conducted in large part via short, verbless sentences, sometimes only one or two words long, at times almost reading like a description of a film playing out before the reader’s eyes, telling us what we would be seeing on the screen. Now and then an authorial voice slides in, adopting the first person plural, as if the reader is a cinema audience relating the story to itself. The narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time from 1926 to the present day, allowing Tidhar’s characters to be active at various points in the unfolding of the violent mid- to late twentieth century, even the early twenty-first. Scene changes are akin to cinematic dissolves, though each is “captioned” with its time and place in its chapter heading. Throughout, direct speech is not set within quotation marks – which does lead to the occasional phrase requiring a reread.

The plot begins (and periodically unwinds) like an echo of le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Henry Fogg called in by his old oppo, Oblivion, to meet the Old Man, boss at his former employer, The Bureau for Superannuated Affairs, to be questioned about his past evasions.

The background is that sometime in 1932 Dr Joachim Vomacht pushed the button on his machine and unleashed a quantum wave. As a Dr Turing (Alan, we assume) tells the British altered, recruited to a training area in Devon, “To observe an event is to change it. On the quantum level. When Vomacht pressed the button, everything changed. The Vomacht wave was a probability wave. The wave made genetic changes at a subatomic level… For most the change was undetectable ….. But perhaps a few hundred became … you.” The changed, dubbed Übermenschen, have superpowers and are named appropriately. Fogg conjures fog out of the air or any smoke available, Oblivion destroys things, Spit conjures up and projects bullets from her mouth, Mr Blur … blurs, Tank is built like one, Mrs Tinkle can make time retrace itself. Corresponding Übermenschen exist in other countries. The US has Tigerman, the Green Gunman and Whirlwind; the Soviets, the Red Sickle and Rusalka; Germany, Schneesturm and Der Wolfsmann.

The crux of the plot is Sommertag, Vomacht’s daughter Klara, who can pass through doors into a perfect summer’s day, an attribute Fogg finds irresistible despite her being an enemy citizen when they meet. His defence is that, “‘It,’” (the Vomacht wave,) “‘fused into her somehow. It kept her pure.’”

Tidhar appears to have gone to great lengths to make sure that history in this story is unchanged from what the reader knows happened – apart from the appearance of rocket men on the Russian Front (unless this is a WW2 manifestation of which I had not previously heard, a singular unlikelihood) and the Potsdam Conference being held one year later than it was, still with Churchill attending rather than Attlee as it would have been in 1946 (and as it was for the latter part in 1945) – the rise of the Nazis, World War 2, the Cold War, Vietnam, September 11^th all take place here as they did in our time. It is as if the comic books were true and those superheroes were present to take part in events but without affecting anything substantial, participants but not decisive.

One scene in Afghanistan involves Sheik Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden calling the changed ‘abominations’ while the Americans (who regard him as, “The rich spoiled son of a rich and powerful family…. Playing soldiers in the desert,”) are trying to use him against the Soviets – and thereby sow the seeds for the Twin Towers whirlwind. Of that 11^th September our (plural) narrator tells us, “That day we look up to the sky and see the death of heroes.”

A Russian says, “We should have learned from your history. The British. Three wars and you lost every one. You can’t win a war here. You couldn’t, we can’t, and whoever comes after us is going to lose too. This land hates invaders,” and warns, “This bin Laden. This Saudi. Kill him now. Kill him when you have the chance, or he will turn on you.” Easy to say in a book published over ten years after an event but many did give out warnings at the time.

The Violent Century is admirably plotted and well paced, with an atmosphere of menace throughout, I’m puzzled as to why this wasn’t on any award shortlist for its year.

Pedant’s corner:- Antennas (antennae.) “Facing the bar counter are a row of barstools.” (Facing the bar counter is a row of barstools,) barkeep (not a British usage. We say ‘barman’ or maybe ‘landlord’,) “air separating into nitrogen and hydrogen” (that’s a neat trick, there’s very little hydrogen in air, only what is the relatively low proportion of air comprised of water vapour.) “None of us choose what we become” (None of us chooses,) King George IV (George VI, as he was correctly designated later,) “the moans reach a crescendo” (a climax perhaps; a crescendo is a build-up, not a culmination,) eldrich (eldritch,.) “None of them have been properly introduced yet” (None of them has been properly introduced.) “None of them are.” (None of them is,) Roberts’ (Roberts’s,) “none come” (none comes,) “do this hundreds of time” (of times.) “Millions more watched the ceremony around the world in a special broadcast by the BBC.” (Millions around the world watched the Coronation ? In 1953? Before communication satellites? I don’t think so.) “The only thing in motion are his eyes” (‘thing’ is singular so cannot have a plural verb form; ‘the only things in motion are his eyes,) Johnny Rivers’ (Rivers’s,) a missing question mark after “What do I know”, another question mark ought to replace a comma later on, “we’re not in the army here, Bob, Bob says, Yeah, yeah,” (a full stop instead of a comma after the first ‘Bob’) “Incoming!” (British troops do not shout this. They yell, ‘Take cover!) “Goddamned” (nor do British folk say this.)

The UK under Tony Blair followed blindly (hung on the coat-tails?) where the US led in invading Iraq – ostensibly to get rid of weapons of mass destruction (which anybody with the slightest understanding of Saddam Hussein’s psychology knew didn’t exist – though he wanted us, but more especially Iran, to think they did) but really simply to be seen to be doing something about the attacks on the World Trade Center (which Saddam Hussein had not a thing to do with; Al Qaida had no presence in Iraq before the war precisely because he had such a firm grip on things they weren’t allowed one) the operations in Afghanistan not being satisfactory in rooting out Osama Bin Laden, or just possibly to “secure” oil supplies.

Now that all worked out terribly well, didn’t it?

About two years ago some of the blowback from the mistakes of those adventures resulted in a vote in the UK Parliament on bombing Syria. No consensus on such action could be found.

Yesterday, more or less prompted by the murders committed by Isis/Isil/Daesh in Paris, a measure to bomb Syria was passed by that Parliament’s successor. This time, though, the target is different. Not the forces of President Assad, but those of Daesh.

The decision seems to be from the “grab at a false syllogism” school. This goes along the lines of, “The events in Paris were terrible. Something must be done about the perpetrators. Bombing is something. Therefore we must bomb.”

The fact that bombing Syria is against international law, notwithstanding the recent UN resolution, that bombing by near enough everybody else has had absolutely no effect in reducing Daesh’s activities does not seem to count against this argument. The facts that it won’t defeat them, that it won’t make us any safer, that it will only increase their appeal to potential adherents, that such a response is precisely what they look for when planning their atrocities weighed nothing against the apparent need to be seen to be doing something. Anything.

I had to give a hollow laugh when in the run-up to the vote Mr Irresponsible, aka David Cameron, havered on about outsourcing our security to others. If the UK is not outsourcing its security to others why, exactly, is it a member of NATO? (And, as a by-the by, what exactly is the purpose of the nuclear deterrent? France’s Force de Frappe didn’t prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks nor those of this November. Trident didn’t stop the IRA nor 7/7 bombers.)

He also said that opponents of the bombing were terrorist sympathisers. Language such as that proves once again that the man is unfit to be Prime Minister.

Yes Daesh is a murdering, barbaric organisation utterly antithetical to freedom. But, Mr Cameron. Isn’t it possible conscientiously to think that bombing is a strategic mistake? That it will only encourage Daesh that it has got under our skin? That it will be profoundly counter-productive? That it will cause civilian casualties far in excess of any damage it might do to Daesh? That it will not bring about an end to Daesh? That it will not reassure Muslims in Britain that war is not being waged against their religion? That it makes us even more of a target than we were already? That it can only strengthen the position of the man the original bombing was supposed to help oust?

The history of British interference in the Middle East goes back a long way. The Sykes-Picot Agreement carved the area up between Britain and France, becoming effective after the Great War. In the 1920s the RAF (in Iraq) was the first air-force in the world to bomb indigenous rebels though it’s likely civilians bore the brunt as usual. The UK mandate in Palestine led (in)directly to the formation of Israel. Along with the US Britain was instrumental in removing the Mossadeq regime from Iran in the 1950s. Then there was the chaos we recently left behind in Iraq and contributed to in Libya.

Our politicians seem to have forgotten all this. Unlike them, the locals have long memories.

I can’t see anything good coming out of this at all.

Solaris 2012, 302 p

The novel opens in Vientiane, Laos – part of the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, a signal that we are not in our time line. Among other differences to our world there are references to Kuomintang China and Chiang Kai-shek. Here credit cards are novel, “The world is safe and healthy Opium comes from Asia, is made into medicine… and eases suffering. The money is taxed, which aids governance,” and cigarettes are smoked openly.

Joe is a private detective who reads the novels of Mike Longshott, extracts from which are reproduced in a typewriter–like font every so often through the novel. These recognisably feature our real Osama bin-Laden, or at least the actions of his followers.

A girl wanders into Joe’s office and asks him to find Longshott. This is only the first of many echoes of films noir or certainly those of Humphrey Bogart. This influence is made explicit when Joe meets in a bar a man called Rick (though Rick Laszlo) and with a couple of nods to the final departure scene in Casablanca.

Joe is puzzled by Longshott’s novels, wondering why the various bombings would take place as they are obviously part of a war of some sort. He muses, “If this was a war, how many dead were on the other side.” In Joe’s world there are Osama conventions – and all sorts of rumours about the reclusive Longshott.

Joe doesn’t know what The World Trade Center is or was, nor Samsung and Sanyo, nor the song Imagine, nor why people have “wires trailing from their ears.” The graffiti 9/11 and 7/7 also mean nothing to him. His world does contain the statue of Anteros in Piccadilly Circus but also WS Gilbert’s Topseyturveydom.

In his investigations – which take him as far as Paris and London – he encounters a girl who fades away unless she drinks alcohol and agents of the Committee on the Present Danger who are trying to prevent him contacting Longshott. The CPD questions him about iPods, flash mobs, DRM, Asian fusion, Star Wars, modems, James Bond, smart cars, Al-Jazeera, how cell phones work, what Area 51 is etc. It is very anxious indeed that none of the troubles of our world intrude into its, where the Cairo Conference of 1921 didn’t divide up the Middle East for the British; there was no Hashemite king in Iraq and no revolution in the 1950s, no US involvement in Vietnam and the British lost their African colonies after WW2.

As the book progresses ghosts increasingly flicker at the corners of Joe’s eyes. These are dubbed fuzzy-wuzzies. In their meeting at last Longshott talks about a woman who waxed and waned with the Moon. The CPD is desperate to prevent the fuzzy-wuzzies manifesting properly.
Perhaps because Tidhar is an Israeli the text has frequent USian touches (dove, off of, cell phone, curb, airplane) but there are also British usages.

I noticed an overfondness for the phrase “went past,” epicentre is used to mean point of balance and we had a “shrunk,” plus the text was littered with typos like “dusty shops selling stationary,” “snails … leaving their rails behind them,” “ the books did not seem particularly conductive for airplane flights,” “There was something her voice,” “he couldn’t… been explain.”

Some of the typos teetered on the edge of genius. “One woman was trapped under the rabble,” “the depilated building,” “baskets imprisoning the singing of live frogs,” “they were gone, fleeting from the edges of his cell like ghosts.” The last might not even have been a typo while “the depilated building” is positively Ballardian.

Despite the presence of these small irritants Osama is a well-written, gripping novel, casting a sly sidewise eye at our poor troubled world.

Two notable (to me, anyway) deaths over the weekend. I doubt either will be joining Osama Bin Laden in the Muslim version of Hell (if there is one.)

The first is military historian Richard Holmes who came to my attention with his TV series War Walks in which he walked us through various battlefields where the British Army had been involved focusing on the role of the soldier rather than the strategy and tactics of the battles and the campaigns.

His down to earth approach included his mentioning of a “sharpener” – necessary when you’re in a tight spot about to face the enemy. A sharpener was a shot of alcohol from a hip flask. Holmes proceeded to demonstrate with a sharpener of his own.

He was, it turns out, the highest ranking Territorial Army officer, reaching the heights of Brigadier.

He was however mainly involved in education, military and civilian. After lecturing at Sandhurst he became a professor at Cranfield University and is apparently the only person to be such a lofty academic and a high ranking TA officer at the same time.

The second was Henry Cooper, the best loved British boxer of my lifetime – forgiven even for his involvement in the commercials for the after-shave Brut.

He was most famous for flooring the then Cassius Clay with a left hook before Clay (as Muhammad Ali) went on to become the best heavyweight of his times. It was only some jiggery-pokery with Clay’s gloves by his seconds that gave him time to recover and go on to win the fight. Clay was regarded in Britain at the time as something of a braggart – his boxing genius had yet to manifest itself, and it was before his stunning first victory over Sonny Liston – and Cooper was warmly loved for his bringing Clay down to size, albeit temporarily. The pair had a great mutual regard thereafter, however.

Edward Richard Holmes, 29/3/1947 – 30/4/2011.
Henry Cooper, 3/5/1934 – 1/5/2011.

So it goes.

Did anyone else find the scenes of rejoicing in the US over the death of Osama Bin Laden a little premature? Not to mention a trifle unseemly?

In many parts it was greeted in much the same way a victory in a sporting contest might have been and whatever the “War on Terror” was or is it is far from sporting.

Yes he was a bad lot and totally against almost all that we in the West take for granted yet his demise came about in exactly the same way as his crimes were committed; in effect it was an extra-judicial execution. While there may have been no other way to remove his menace and his capture might have led to problematic scenarios involving the taking of hostages to be used as pawns in an attempt to have him freed – in effect President Obama had no choice – the fact remains that he was not subject to what ought to be our overriding principle; that a person has to be tried in court before being deprived of liberty or life.

It always bears saying; if we are no better than them then we are in fact worse. Or we are, at best, hypocrites.

And this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It might not even be the end of the beginning.

The circumstances that led to Bin Laden taking up the cudgels against the USA in particular and its hangers-on in general are still in existence and his umbrella organisation will still act as a focus for disaffected individuals and those with an axe (or a suicide bomb) to grind.