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Sukarno, A Political Biography by J. D. Legge: nationalism revisited.
2007-09-26 16:24:00
I don’t read a lot of history, contemporary or otherwise, and when I do, it is usually in the area of political economy. In recent years, for instance, I have delighted at the scholarship and intellect of Eric Hobsbawm. But what always strikes me about history is how perfect our vision can be from the distance of time. Not so if you are closer, and so I can forgive J. D. Legge my single criticism of his book, Suka rno – A Politic al Biography , which is its lack of overview. Legge published the book in 1972 and so did not have the luxury of 35 years of clarifying hindsight that we have today.J. D. Legge’s biography charts the life and career of Sukarno in intricate detail. Particularly strong are the descriptions of the internal machinations and wheeler dealing amongst the Indonesian political elite. Sukarno is presented as one of the major political figures of the twentieth century. If anyone should doubt this, then recall that the terms “Third World” and “Non-Aligned”, ...
More About: Nationalism

A memory of Kyoto
2007-09-23 16:09:00
It’s often that chance encounters, the unplanned events, linger, long after the excursions and the sights of a particular trip have faded. It was in 1998 when my wife and I visited central Japan, basing ourselves in Kyoto , having availed ourselves of cheap flights from Bandar Seri Begawan, courtesy of Royal Brunei. I can place the date exactly, because it was during the early group stages of the 1998 World Cup in France. I can remember vividly watching television in a bar and seeing David Beckham being sent off in the game against Argentina. And on the evening that the Japanese team was eliminated, beaten by Croatia, it seemed that the whole nation cried. And then they all got up for work the next day as if nothing had happened, all hubris presumably having been publicly and duly dispatched.But of course it’s the differences that the ephemeral traveller notices. We had done our research and were resolved to experience something quintessentially Japanese. An essential part of thi...
More About: Memory

A review of Mukiwa by Peter Godwin
2007-09-23 16:09:00
Peter Godwin certainly has a story to tell. It’s a story of an idyllic, if unusual childhood, a disrupted but eventually immensely successful education, military service and then two careers, one in law, planned but aborted, and then one in journalism, discovered almost by default. Listed like this these elements might sound just a bit mundane, perhaps not the subject of memoir. When one adds, however, the location, Rhodesia becoming Zimbabwe, the result is a deeply moving, in places deeply sad, as well as quite disturbing account of a life lived thus far. Mukiwa, by the way, is Shona for white man.The setting for Peter Godwin’s early years was a middle class, professional and, crucially, liberal family living in eastern Rhodesia, close to the Mozambique border. I had relatives in that same area, near Umtali and Melsetter, and they used to do exactly what the Godwins did regularly which was to visit the Indian Ocean beaches near Beira. We used to get postcards from there every y...
More About: Review , Peter

A Million Would Be Nice by Ken Scott
2007-09-15 21:23:00
I don’t read many books that claim membership of a genre. In my humble opinion, a work of fiction should aspire to create its own world, describe it, communicate it and then live in it. I want a book’s characters to inhabit the events that are portrayed, events that are clearly influenced by the character’s presence, but which are also usually bigger than any individual’s contribution. Wars don’t exist unless people fight them. Crimes are not committed without criminals. Love stories are made by lovers and ghosts don’t exist.For instance, in my own book, Mission, there are four wars, but it’s not a war novel. There are at least three love stories, but it’s not a romance. There are several deaths, one of which is a murder, but it’s not a crime novel or a thriller. And then there’s a character who comes back from the dead to haunt an old man, but it’s not a ghost story or a fantasy. In short, it’s Mission, a novel set in Kenya.So I approached Ken Scott ’s crim...
More About: Nice , Million

A reflection on Saville by David Storey
2007-08-27 09:03:00
Saville won the Booker Prize in 1976. In such a vast novel it is inevitable that the pace will occasionally quicken and slacken, but a book like this can be read over weeks, almost dipped into as the passing phases of Colin’s life unfold. David Story was born in Wakefield, and so was I. It could be argued that his most famous and perhaps still most successful work is “This Sporting Life”, a portrait of a Rugby League player who achieves local fame and then notoriety as his life and career blossom and then fall apart. It was filmed in the early 1960s, with Richard Harris playing the starring role. Along with about 28000 others, I was in Wakefield Trinity’s Belle Vue ground soon after midday to make sure that I got a standing place by the railings next to the pitch to see Trinity play Wigan in a cup-tie. I was only ten and needed to be early because, had I been further back amongst the crowd, I would have seen nothing. Wakefield beat Wigan 5-4, with Fred Smith scoring the only...
More About: Reflection

Recent reading - Swift, le Carre, Dawkins, Baverstock
2007-08-14 16:57:00
A few books…..Marketing Your Book: An Author’s Guide – Alison BaverstockIt stated the obvious, but I suppose most of these books do. Rule 1: Be creative. Rule 2: There is no rule 2. Rule 3: Same as rule 2. The most enlightening bit was the use of the word “lookist” to describe the fact that a lot of publishers decide what is sellable on the basis of the appearance of the author. So that’s where I am going wrong!Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift It’s a good read and probably every bit the masterpiece its reputation claims. The problem with satire, however, is that it doesn’t stand alone. Parody, on the other hand, ought to make sense in itself, but obviously more sense if the object of the parody is understood and familiar. Satire only seems to make sense if you know the original.The section in Lilliput describing the bloke with different sized heels on his shoes, for instance, is very funny, but only when the footnote has provided the context. He is described as...
More About: Reading , Recent , Dawkins , Carre

A Culture of Benidorm
2007-08-11 11:54:00
Mention Benidorm and with it, by implication, the concepts of package tourism, hotel buffets, British bars with one euro a pint lager, northern English Working Men’s Club turns imitating something neither themselves nor their audience have ever been, lobster-impersonating spit-burnt sunbathers and fried English breakfasts with the bacon already coated in tomato sauce, and I would bet that very few punters would auto-associate the phrase “cultural experience”. More likely, perhaps, might be the image of over-revelled revellers spewing out from the industrial-sized, garish and scruffy discos along the strip at nine in the morning, seated wavering by the roadside amidst the split, cracked and squashed plastic waste which these no doubt environmentally aware individuals seem to generate by the ton.Benidorm, certainly, is not Spain. Like many other popular mass tourism resorts around the world, it has an identity which is quite apart from its host country or hinterland. Benidorm is...
More About: Culture

Something of a disappointment - Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Ad
2007-07-26 15:43:00
It is not often that a novel comes to hand that has been prized, praised and pre-inflated. Half of a Yellow Sun was in that category when I opened it and began to read. And I was captivated immediately. I read the first hundred pages at a pace, delighting in the ease with which the Chimanada Ngozi Adichie used language to draw me into the middle-class clique centred on the University of Nsukka which provides the core characters of her book. Their infidelities, their inconsistencies, their desire, despite the servants, for equality and freedom are symptomatic of their time. The dissimilar twin sisters, Olanna and Kainene, one imagines will provide a vehicle for parallel and different lives, providing contrast and metaphor, and I eagerly awaited their stories to unfold.The book’s sections alternate between the early and late 1960s, the latter period in Nigeria, of course, being the Biafran War. And, yes, the characters live through the war, and their lives and their natures, and alo...
More About: Disappointment , Some , Amanda

Advice to aspiring writers. A speech at the awards ceremony for the Libros
2007-07-22 07:05:00
Like the students who entered this competition, I started writing when I was quite young. I wrote a lot of poetry in my early teens. I wrote a novel when I was 18 and another when I was 20. Thankfully all of that was long ago put in the bin. Actually I lent the second novel to a friend – it was hand written and, of course, the only copy. I lost contact with the friend and I never saw the novel again. Perhaps his aesthetic judgment was better than mine.One thing I have done since August 1973 is keep a journal. I am told that writers like to call them “commonplace books”. They aren’t diaries.. They’re a cross between a scrapbook and a notebook, like an artist’s sketchbook. You come across something you think is worth recording and you write it down. Sometimes it might be a review of a book or a concert. You might be doing research on some topic and need a place to keep notes. And there might be just stupid things that crop up. Here’s some examples:A restaurant menu in Gr...
More About: Advice , Awards , Writers , Ceremony , Speech