http://web.ebscohost.com/novelist/search?vid=1&hid=6&sid=dfc5e0bc-1a4d-4e16-b107-318ed9dd5be8%40sessionmgr10

Miss Smilla’s sense of snow by Peter Hoeg

This is a translated crime fiction written by an author from Danish.

In his first novel to be published in English, Danish author Hoeg offers readers a wonderfully original, elegantly crafted, ominously savage story. The plot is cryptically clever, beginning with the death of a six-year-old boy and ending with the discovery of an international smuggling ring. The pervasive violence–both to the body and to the soul–is recounted so matter-of-factly as to be doubly chilling, and the characters are as mesmerizing, as enigmatic, and as engrossing as any populating the pages of recent crime fiction. But perhaps Hoeg’s most wonderful invention is heroine Smilla Jaspersen, a rebellious, stubborn, tough, fearless Eskimo woman who’s spent most of her life in Copenhagen. She has an uncanny sense of direction, a love of Isaac Newton’s theories, and a gift for mathematics. She treasures her aloneness, successfully hiding her vulnerability under a near-impenetrable facade of aggressiveness–an aggressiveness that has caused her to be an outcast most of her life but that serves her well when she decides her six-year-old neighbor, Isaiah, did not die accidentally. Be forewarned that this is not an easy book to read. Its leaps and starts, from present to past to future, are confusing. Cryptic references and ambiguous, unexplained plot twists are often frustrating. But readers who persevere will be well rewarded. While the book may not appeal to mystery buffs looking only for pure entertainment, it is a must-read for serious fans of the genre. ((Reviewed July 1993)) — Emily Melton

The 1st Wednesday Reading Group enjoyed their discussion about this book.

A member who was from the country gave some very useful information about Greenland and the Inuits to the group. There are a lot problems facing the Inuits – similar to Australian Aborigines. Life expectancy of Inuits was about 35. It’s just too tough.

some said it is a controversial book.

some commented it is a social commentary, mystery and a fabulous book, well researched. It has a lot description of winter, and ice.

Some said although it was written in 1993, could be referred to 2008, quite comtemporary.

Some felt some confusion over characters, gender and an abrupt finish.

The group related this with the movie and thought it might appeal to a much winder audience.

Overall, members thought it was a wonderful read and will recommend it to others, along the line of Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell.

The shameful peace: how French artists and intellectuals survived the Nazi occupation by Frederic Spotts It is a period that French people don’t want to talk about very often, or rather, avoid talking about it. 

It is a period that still brings embarrassment and humiliation for the generation now, still feel shameful. 

1940, Europe was divided and in a great war. Nazi Germany advanced and invaded half of the world. Vichy government did nothing to resist Germans take over. After all, this government itself had no hesitation to get rid of Jews, Freemasons, and communists whatever the cost. 

A nation which had given birth to so many thinkers, artists, and intellectuals, a nation which inspired so many cultures, France now faced a wrenching challenge. From 1940-1945, artists and intellectuals, must come up with a choice. Some of them chose to escape, some barely survived, some became heroes but some, willingly, became collaborators.  

The propaganda machine had been on long before the armistice. The main aim was simple, to destroy French culture and to bring in a superiority of German culture over French culture. Paris became a city where one festival by another. Leading German musicians played Mozart, Wagner, and Beethoven. In 1942 and 1943, there were seventy one concerts orchestrated by German musicians. The author pointed out, ‘never in peacetime, much less in wartime, had there been such a massive cultural assault’. (p. 43.)

It was just one of the examples of cultural invasion.  While artists, even prominent like Jean Cocteau, became a heartless collabo, Andre Gide, and others, joined resistance or refused to write any word under censorship of German or Vichy. However, it was shameful that so many intellectuals were happy to fit in. Artists salons were flourish at the time. Paris was in a festival mood with new fashion and many publications that didn’t lack prominent artists and writers.  

The book is very well researched and is full of anecdotes and facts. It reminds everyone that in history, there were times that when war might not destroy innocent souls, then culture could.

http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/News.htm

Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas scoops the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world’s richest literary prize, announced today by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Éibhlin Byrne, Patron of the Award.

Michael Thomas was born and raised in Boston. He lives in New York with his wife and three children. His debut novel has beaten off competition from 145 titles, nominated by 157 public libraries from 41 countries.

The winning novel, first published by Grove Atlantic, USA, and a New York Times top ten book of 2007, was chosen from a shortlist of eight, which included novels from the USA, France, India, Pakistan and Norway.  Man Gone Down was published by Atlantic Books, UK in 2009.

Also shortlisted were The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz; The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen, in translation; Ravel by Jean Echenoz, in translation; Animal’s People by Indra Sinha; The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid; The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland and The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.

Golda’s pick

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) written by Dominican-American author Junot Díaz is an epic family saga for the MTV generation.

The frenetic energy of the novel skips and jumps between time, place, and narrative voices, from historical and fictional with out missing a beat. Diaz even manages to use footnotes to give the novel an extra-diegetic content that is self referential in a way usually only a film can achieve. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey where Díaz was raised and deals explicitly with his ancestral homeland’s experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Fans of Diaz will recognize the central narrator, Yunior de Las Casas, as the protagonist of Díaz’s first book Drown who chronicles the "Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar is obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels, with comic books and role-playing games and with falling in love and comes to be a physical embodiment of the general malaise that seems to characterize the Wao family. The reason for Oscar’s woes and those of his family we are told is that they are curse by the "fukú”, a curse so powerful it has not only plagued Oscar’s family for generations, but also the Caribbean (and perhaps the entire world) since colonization and slavery.You can not help but be enraptured by this tale or discontent, misfortune and struggle and though it does not conclude with the cliché surmounting of all challenges to find the underdog a transformed and victorious; there is no way you can walk away from this novel without a feeling of satisfaction.

REBORN: Early Diaries 1947-1964             By Susan Sontag (Hamish Hamilton) Hardback held at Parramatta – Katherine’s pick

Susan Sontag was one of the great intellectuals of her generation. She is considered an authority on American popular culture, she wrote books of essays, novels and a well known book on American photography.

Her son David edited her first diary and it is a fascinating account of the coming of age of a precious and brilliant mind. It begins when she is just 14yrs old and charts her impressions, thoughts and ambitions as a university student, her young married life, motherhood and finally he escape from a suffocating marriage. Finally it places her squarely into the mileu her future life will follow, that of intellectuals, free thinkers, academics, writers and artists, first in Paris and later in New York City. Sontag is fearlessly and rigorously honest to herself in these diaries and espouses her credo throughout which is” that the most important thing in the world is freedom to be true to oneself.

Sontag sadly died in 2004 having fulfilled most of her life’s ambitions. Always a great role model for young women, she proved that a satisfying and successful career could be forged in the world of letters, no matter who you where. Just as long as you believed in yourself and strived to be the best you could be. This publication is the 1st of three volumes.