January 2020: Romania and Zimbabwe

Read: Nostalgia by Mircea Cartarescu (Romania), An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe)

Over the last few years, I’ve turned my casual reading of whatever book I fancy into some sort of epic challenge. It started with reading the complete works of Charles Dickens, a loose challenge that took a number of years to complete. Then, I did a twelve-book yearly challenge that I found online and lots of my colleagues were doing. I failed that one, not completing the final book before the year was out. I was meant to read a book I’d started before and not finished and I had already stumbled and failed to finish Middlemarch by George Eliot twice before and was determined that it would be third time lucky. Although the New Year rolled around without me finishing it, I did eventually get to the end during the following year’s alphabetical challenge where I read a book by an author with a surname beginning with every letter of the alphabet. Next up was a 100-book a year challenge. I managed to complete this, but did have to include a few graphic novels, collections of poetry and also include the books I read aloud to my classes at school. 

So, what next? I didn’t want to do a numerical challenge again. Whilst I obviously enjoy reading, there were certainly times when the century of books felt like a bit of a burden and I certainly neglected anything that went past 500 pages. I had a look at other reading challenges and after dismissing many that just didn’t sound that fulfilling, I found a blog by an author called Ann Morgan (https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/thelist/) and she smashed through a book from every independent country in just one year: 196 books in all. There’s no way that I’m going to match her read-rate and I don’t want to rush this because one role books play in my life is helping me to relax and there is a limit (variable on each day) as to how much time I desire to give to reading. There’s other things in my life as well. I’m going to take it at more of a sedate pace. I turn forty in March and I’m thinking that it would be good to have travelled the world through literature in the next decade. I also want to connect with people as I read. For each book I read, I want it to be a recommendation from someone from that nation so that after reading, there is a conversation to be had. While I read their book, I find a little more about them at the same time.

It’ll be easy to start with. I know lots of people from different nations and I’ve started with my friends. As the countries get ticked off though, for sure, it’s going to get quite challenging to track down someone who can recommend me a book from that nation. First to be completed were Romania and Zimbabwe.

A friend from the church I attend, Dana, recommended Nostalgia by Mircea Cartarescu. My church is a rich source of international friends. I think of all the other parts of my life and largely, I am surrounded by white British people who have had similar cultural experiences to me. Other people I know come from my workplaces, past and present (both schools), places where I have been educated (school, college, university) and football teams I’ve been part of. In these settings, there are very few people from other nations, but my church, beautifully, has people from loads of nations around the world and they’ll be glad to know that I’ll be badgering them for book recommendations.

Nostalgia was published in 1989 and it includes five loosely connected stories set on the streets of Bucharest. Pre-reading research told me that to tackle this book, I would have to reimagine what a novel could be which basically told this was going to be an unconventional book or to put it more bluntly: a very weird book. It would be categorised as magical-realism which is a disconcerting category of book. You feel like you’re reading a normal story with normal people doing humdrum things and then suddenly, you get hit with something bewilderingly odd. For example, man enjoys music so much that he transforms his car into an organ and plays music for the people of Bucharest - odd, but realistic so far. He then gets so fat that he consumes the whole car like a snail in a shell, plays such beautiful music that he achieves world peace, but a jealous saxophonist chops off his finger and a nuclear holocaust ensues. Then, you either have to figure out what all this craziness means or just accept it and enjoy the story. Generally, I just enjoyed the story, but there were moments when I reflected on life and what it all means. Two characters exchange genders (or maybe it’s just in one of the character’s imaginations) and I pondered upon what it is to be confused about your gender. In another moment, a character has to fulfil a number of dreams in the correct order to find R.E.M which in the context of the story seems to be the meaning of life. After following the dream sequence, they find that their life story is being written by a bloke in a room and it made me think of God as an author, writing out our stories. Generally though, I just enjoyed or got confused by the bizarre directions the stories went in.

To a degree, and depending on the story, I live a book a little while I’m reading. I daydream about it, put myself into it and find the book entangling itself with my life. This doesn’t always happen, but the weirdness of this book did cause me to ponder upon it every now and then as I went about life. One evening, I was at a place called ‘The Dice Saloon’ which is a board games cafe. I go there on the middle Monday of every month to be an utter board game geek and hopefully triumph over my friends. During one game, I glanced up to see someone I knew but had not expected to see in this setting sat alone at another table. Seeing someone out of the context you expect to see them in would normally just cause me to think, ‘Oh, it’s a very minor surprise to see you here,’ but it felt like my life had become a moment of magical realism and for a moment I wondered if they were really there and then I roused myself from my board game stupor and recognised that I didn’t live in a world where men played organs in cars until they bloated and became a slimy ball of flesh and if I saw someone, they were pretty certain to be actually there, so I went over, said hello and invited them to join in with our game and life extricated itself from literature.

The second book I read this month was another collection of short stories, An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah. Again, friends of mine from church, Taka and Henrietta, recommended this Zimbabwean writer. I’d been reading a book set in Zimbabwe during Robert Mugabe’s reign to one of my classes at school, so I’d been doing some research into Zimbabwe’s history before coming to this book. I felt like this collection of stories gave me the heart behind the historical facsts. Every story covered a very different person within Zimbabwean society: young, old, rich, poor, good and bad and by the end of it, I felt like I’d walked Zimbabwe’s streets. There were moments of light and humour, but there was also a blanket of suffering and grief that blanketed so many of the stories. Some of the characters longed for the shores of England and America and when you read about suffering that feels so simple and real, I reflect upon how good I have it in England. I’m gutted that Brexit is happening today, but I have never been a victim of the ruthless politics of Robert Mugabe or other similar politicians who treat the people in their country in a cruel and callous way.