A WILD SHEEP CHASE

Author: Haruki Murakami
Year: 2003 (1982)
Publisher: Vintage Books
Language: English (translator Alfred Birnbaum)

In the spring of 2010, the Icelandic volcano at Eyjafjalljökull experienced a peculiar eruption. Seismologically, it was an insignificant event with the first phase barely reaching 1 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.  It gradually intensified and by the end of the event had spewed an, as volcanoes go, moderate amount of 0.3 km³ of tephra into the atmosphere. What made this eruption remarkable was not its force or longevity, but rather the composition of the tephra that it discharged. The matter ejected into the sky was in the form of tiny particles that formed a massive billow of ash which, propelled by the west winds, swept over Scandinavia, the British Isles, and Northern Europe. The microscopic silica-rich debris, threatening to blast aeroplane windscreens and disrupt the function of turbine engines, shut air travel down across most of Europe. The skies went silent, returned for a moment to the birds and the clouds.  

At the time of the eruption, I was on a business trip to Bulgaria. Realising that my flight home had been cancelled and that the chance of my getting airborne again in the near future was slim, I managed to book myself onto one of the northbound long-distance buses that opportunistic entrepreneurs had been quick to offer to stranded travellers. Preparing for the long ride, I purchased one small pillow and two books: Chuck Palahniuk’s “Choke”, and Haruki Murakami’s “A Wild Sheep Chase”. I read Palahniuk on the bus and finished Murakami about a week ago.

The synopsis for this novel is not terribly complicated. The protagonist is a bored Japanese man who runs a dwindling copywriting firm with his alcoholic partner. He is in the midst of a mundane divorce process because he and his wife got tired of each other. No animosity, no drama, just plain ennui. Our man is not an archetypal failure, just an average bloke in his early 30s who has reached the pinnacle of his existence and surrendered to the fact that his accomplishments are distinctly average.

One day he publishes an ad for one of his few clients using a photograph he had received a long time ago from his notoriously wayward and ultimately long-lost friend. It is a perfectly ordinary Japanese photograph showing a mob of sheep grazing on a meadow with a snow-capped mountain peak in the background. The man is understandably surprised when one day he is picked up by a black car and brought to the secluded office of a powerful politician/mafia boss who wishes to have a word about it. At closer inspection under the guidance of the boss, he notices that one of the sheep in the picture seems to have a star-shaped spot on its back. He is unceremoniously instructed to locate that particular sheep or else his company will be put out of business and he and his partner ruined. No further explanations are offered. He feels neither particularly inspired nor particularly intimidated by this, but as he has nothing better to do he sets off on what to the reader will be a highly enjoyable sheep chase.

Haruki Murakami has said that the secret to his success is that he prefers to write in English rather than in his native Japanese precisely because his command of English is limited. This forces him to write down his thoughts and images using simple words and short sentences. His greatness lies in that the resulting text is incredibly accessible without sacrificing any of its richness in colour, flavour, or scent. Murakami has an extraordinary talent for creating worlds that effortlessly envelop his reader. I have never travelled to Hokkaido but after reading “A Wild Sheep Chase” I feel like I have nevertheless been there.

There is however more to this read than masterful prose. On a deeper level, the way I read it, the novel is about detachment and loneliness. All of the characters are in one way or another lonely; aloof from the rest of the world. They function in it and affect each other but without ever really touching, similar to ships on a lake whose wakes rock nearby vessels without their ever rubbing against each other. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that none of the characters has a name. They are “the girlfriend”, “the man”, “the partner”, etc. It is as if everyone is expendable and replaceable to the point of not meriting a proper name. This way, “the cat” can be substituted for any other cat. The protagonist, his friend, his ex-wife, his new girlfriend, the boss, and the sheep with the star on its back somehow exist in the story without connecting, thrust to and forth through life like the ball in a pinball machine. They all construct different ways to deal with this reality, but none of them defeats the futility of being. In essence, “A Wild Sheep Chase” is about the vain hunt for mutuality and the utter disappointment that awaits those who believe that they have gained it. Not even those that go to extremes in order to liaise with another being are, in the end, successful.

The ending is actually the only section with which I struggled a bit. It both is and is not predictable and although the magic realism, for which Murakami is famous, is usually non-invasive and adds an interesting dimension to the universe, to me it partially clouded the final few chapters. Somewhat like the salt that, if used moderately, binds together and brings out the flavours of the other ingredients in the recipe but when over-applied ruins the meal.

I would be thrilled to hear what you have to say about it as I think it can be interpreted in any number of different ways. Come to think of it, while I do not know if this was Murakami’s intention, this seems like a valid statement about your and mine and everybody else’s time on Earth.

TAGE ERLANDER

Author: Tage Erlander
Year: 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1982, 
Publisher: Tidens Förlag
Language: Swedish 

Since the end of the Second World War, Sweden has had a Social Democratic prime minister for a total of 59 years. For more than 1/3 of those, the name of the Prime Minister was Tage Erlander. These are his memoirs in six tomes: ”1901-1939”, ”1940-1949”, ”1949-1954”, ”1955-1960”, ”1960-talet” (”The 1960s”), and ”Sjuttiotalet” (The Seventies”). The first four volumes are penned by Erlander himself, the fifth by Arvid Lagercrantz in the form of interviews with Erlander, and the last by what seems to be an undisclosed ghostwriter.

In Sweden, Tage Erlander is remembered as the builder of “Folkhemmet”, the People’s Home. Folkhemmet is a vision of the country as the home for its entire people based on the idea of a trilateral partnership between capital, labour, and people who all benefit from a stable co-existence and co-dependence marked by negotiation rather than confrontation. The concept was spawned by Erlander’s predecessor as Prime Minister, Per Albin Hansson, in the 1920s, but the necessary means and financial strength to put it into practice were not available until after the war.  

Although Erlander was the builder of Folkhemmet, he was not its architect. It is obvious from his memoirs, and he himself emphasises it, that he was no great ideologist. He is careful to credit several thinkers (most notably Ernst Wigforss and Gustav Möller but there were many others) for the ideas that formed the politics of his government and claims few, if any, ideas for his own. However, he was an outstanding politician who had an unusual aptitude for turning will into action. And there was no lack of will in the Social Democracy at the time!

Sweden after the world war was lifted up from the poor provincial agricultural nation that it used to be, to become the highly industrialised welfare state that we know today. Erlander supervised the overhaul of the mandatory primary school, pensions, public health insurance, non-alliance based defence, nuclear power, science and innovation, modern housing, and infrastructure. Under his stewardship, Sweden rose to become one of the most prosperous nations in the world.

Democratic Socialism, too, was tested during this time. With the end of Stalinism and the rise of various incarnations of socialism in different governments around Europe, parliamentary democracy being a young form of government still was by no means a given, and Sweden’s constitution as a hereditary monarchy was an unlikely but nonetheless lingering threat.

Tage Erlander writes in great detail about events, people, and ideas.  He has been greatly aided by his habitude of keeping a diary and retaining his letters but he has also employed the assistance of many of his friends and colleagues, as well as public files and journalistic archives. Although his tone is consistently placid throughout the series and he never veers from his respectful attitude toward the people that he mentions by name, allies and adversaries alike, it does show that the memoirs were written over a long period of time and that the Prime Minister aged significantly between each volume. While the first book that covers his youth and first steps into politics before the war is light-hearted, humorous, and witty, the middle volumes are more technical, featuring lengthy quoted passages from meeting minutes, news articles, diary entries, and speeches, whereas the last two tomes are contemplative, pensive, and sometimes philosophical.

Already in the second volume, he takes a moment to dwell on the essence of democratic socialism against the backdrop of the Second World War and the increasingly loud Communists. He writes “The supporting pillar in the ideology of social democracy is the respect for the freedom of the individual and the principles of democracy.” It is telling how the much smaller Swedish Communist Party persisted in calling the Social Democrats “traitors” on account of categorically rejecting revolution and dictatorship as permissible instruments for the liberation of the workers. Indeed, passages from his diaries show signs of concern due to his own longevity as Prime Minister and the detrimental impact that he might have on the faith in the democratic system among the Swedish electorate.

Although the political challenges for Sweden have changed since Tage Erlander’s days, it is useful to follow the ideological thread that derived out of thoughts that shaped his politics and that proceeds to the modern social democrats of today under Magdalena Andersson’s leadership. Erlander frequently returns to concepts such as democracy, rule of law, and liberty, and his actions and choices are routinely guided by these values. He explains how it is possible to be a socialist and support private investments into production and trade with ensuing profits. He defends a labour market that is based on mutual agreements between employers’ organisations and trade unions free from political interference (which is why there is no regulatory minimum wage in Sweden). In the fifth volume, Erlander talks at length about his dialogues and meetings with some of the most important industrialists in Sweden, among others Marcus Wallenberg and Axel Wenner-Gren.

It is inevitable that a person writing his autobiography will take the opportunity to shape his or her reputation. At its worst, an autobiography can become a self-aggrandising propaganda piece. At its best, it is the product of selective memory. I do not expect Tage Erlander’s memoirs to be an exception. Having said that, despite his numerous and radical accomplishments, I never get the feeling of reading about a great man. Although Erlander rarely brings up any significant mistakes or miscalculations from his past, he also resists the urge to glorify himself or his achievements.  From this perspective, the fifth entry, “1960-talet”, where he is interviewed by Arvid Lagercrantz, is perhaps the most revealing part of the series and at some point Erlander even schools his speaking partner when he disapproves of a certain question. This somehow underscores his modesty and leaves me with a feeling of having read the thoughts and memories of a person who is not altogether different from me. 

As a historical document about one of the most exciting periods in Swedish post-war politics, Tage Erlander’s memoirs are close to matchless and I am delighted to have had the opportunity to spend this time in the company of this influential person. Despite the books being written before I was born and deal with a time dating back to the first half of the 20^th century, I am often struck by how current the topics that he brings up are and how crisp (and often witty) his political commentary. “What would Erlander have done?” is not a bad thought experiment for modern-day social democrats when faced with the issues of our time. And that, perhaps, is the best testament to the greatness of this man.

HARD RETURN

Author: Julie Jézéquel
Year: 2011 (2009)
Publisher: Sekwa förlag
Language: Swedish (translator Ragna Essén)

There is often something mildly humiliating about people who have reached a moderate level of fame and try to monetise before they are duly returned to their rightful place in the mists of anonymity. Yet there is also something recognisable about it. I am quite certain that each of you who read this post would probably do the same if the opportunity presented itself. I would, too. If I were a famous musician, athlete, or artist you can be sure that before long you would find a recipe book, an eau de cologne, and a line of underwear with my name on it in a store near you. All of poor quality, of course. Especially the recipes.

Based on the above, I am usually sceptical of celebrities who have a go at writing novels. I imagine that theirs are more often than not sub-par products where the author’s name is a more important selling point than the quality of the writing.

It is a good thing then, that I am not excessively gaga over French cinema or I would have known, when I picked up her novel “Vända Blad” (“Retour á la ligne”, not available in English but the title could be translated to something like “Hard Return”), that Julie Jézéquel is a notable French actress who has appeared in numerous movies and TV-productions for more than three decades. Had I been better informed, I might have put the book down again but as it happens, in my ignorant bliss I carried the book home.

It turned out to be quite a charming read. Jézéquel is clever (and modest) enough to write about a world she knows well – television. Her protagonist Clara is an appreciated and productive writer of film scripts for TV. She does not write scripts for the big screen and she does not do series or soap operas. She keeps inside the confines of her expertise and never ventures outside. But when her producer one day insists that she rewrite an ending to one of her scripts she gets into an argument that ends up ruining her career. Overnight, she finds herself persona non grata in an entire industry.

In a desperate attempt to earn a livelihood, Clara advertises her services as a ghostwriter and meets with a somewhat peculiar client. One who asks her to re-imagine and put on paper his entire life story from scratch. He offers her no instructions, no framework, and no pointers other than a few documents to prove his identity and that of his family’s, some notes, letters and photographs, and a sizeable advance payment. Clara, not knowing what to think of it, gets to work.

“Vända blad” is the closest I will come to an up-lit novel and truth be told, it is far from a literary masterpiece. The language is simple and straightforward although not annoyingly so. The characters are few and stereotypical but in an endearing way. The side characters play no role whatsoever other than making Clara’s universe a little thicker but the story could just as easily have been told without their presence. The ostensible inconspicuousness of Clara’s client feels flat but marries well with Clara’s desperate attempts to try to understand this diffident person. The plot is linear with a few flashbacks but no offshoots or tangents while the ending, albeit surprising, is much too abrupt to make a lasting impression. The main indication that the book is drawing to a close is not to be found in the storyline but rather in the fact that you are running out of pages.

Despite these obvious flaws, I will admit I enjoyed the book. Without raising any critical issues it still touches on some curious topics that reveal one or two things about the working environment in French television. Another interesting connection, although superficial, is the examination of the relationship between an unwanted but real existence and a manufactured one.

To sum up, Julie Jézéquel has no apparent reason to be ashamed of her writing. She is probably not a writer I will return to seeing as there are so many other authors out there whose production I am yet to discover, but I am quite happy with having made her acquaintance and for the right reader and the right circumstance, I can actually recommend the book. As up-lit goes, it is vastly superior to the last book I read in the genre (the most detestable balderdash spawned from Jojo Moyes’s ungodly quill). This one is coherent, witty, and at the end of the day rather entertaining. It is just what you need for a tedious transatlantic flight or as a leisurely beach-read.

THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL

Author: Jerome K Jerome
Year: 1900
Publisher: Bernhard Tauchnitz
Language: English

Sequels are a bit like the second cup of tea from the same tea bag: you recognise the flavour but miss the intensity.  

After the tremendous commercial fortunes of his “Three Men in a Boat”(see my review from October 2021), which marked the pinnacle of his fame, Jerome K Jerome’s star power faded relentlessly.  He wrote a few more books, typically based on his observations during one or another journey, but he was unable to repeat the success of his previous blockbuster. Eventually he returned to his most successful creations in the hope of being able to squeeze some more value out of them. In 1898, “Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow” was published as a sequel to his comparatively successful “Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow”, and two years later he returned to his boating heroes J, George, and Harris in “Three Men on the Bummel”.

This time around, our merry adventurers set off on a train-/bicycle ride across Germany. The tone of the novel is very similar to that of its predecessor. The travel party is just as inept and ill-prepared, the story line is frequently interrupted by more or less loosely connected anecdotes and tangents, and slapstick comedy based on awkwardness and absurdity abounds. The very decision process leading up to the trip offers the first laughs as the three gentlemen go to great lengths to ensure that their wives, who they assume will be devastated by grief and longing in their absence, will not demand to join them on their trip lest they perish from heart-ache and pining. Their disappointment upon discovering that the wives could not be happier about the chaps’ giving them some space and a bit of time to themselves, is priceless.   

Well under way, J, George, and Harris encounter a string of events and situations that allows Jerome to ponder on the cultural differences between the Brits and Germans and how their respective societies are organised. This is of particular interest as the book was written a decade and a half before the First World War and in the nearing end of the age of empires. Germany at the time was on the rise and had only recently caught up with the industrialisation level of France and Britain and seriously begun to challenge them as a colonial power. The novel was unambiguously intended for British readers and the narrator mixes humorous observations about the Germans and the British alike, but exclusively from an insular perspective. It is slightly amusing that many of the traits and characteristics that he ascribed to the Germans 120 years ago would still be recognised by a modern Briton as typical for a “Kraut” to this day.

Despite the jocularities, pranks, and antics, the British image of, or indeed prejudice to, Germany and the German people is palpable but unfailingly in a good-humoured and, as I read it, essentially respectful way. Jerome could hardly have penned a book like “Three Men on the Bummel” without having spent considerable amounts of time in Germany and gotten to at least superficially know German customs, language, architecture, cuisine, and geography. There is no doubt that Jerome during his travels around Germany took a liking to the country and its people.

A word on the history of my personal copy since it looks like it was flushed down the toilet before being retrieved from the water purification plant and subsequently dried over Mount Doom in Mordor. As a matter of fact this is the first 1900-edition which was owned by my great-grandfather, Emil, presumably through his English-born wife Magdalene who must have taken it with her to Poland and incorporated it into her husband’s library at the family estate in the early 1910s. It went on to survive two world wars and Stalinist oppression which banned Western culture and artwork, before being handed down to me by my grandfather before he passed away.   

Although this novel is less famous than “Three Men in a Boat”, as a leisurely read it is surprisingly charming for a sequel. The jokes are a little further apart and the sections of purple writing and half-baked musings a bit more tedious, but all in all, much like its predecessor, it is too a silly book.

THREE MEN IN A BOAT

Author: Jerome K Jerome
Year: 1994 (1889)
Publisher: Forum
Language: Swedish (translator Birgitta Hammar)

What a silly little book ”Tre män i en båt” (Three Men in a Boat”) by Jerome K Jerome is! It is as silly as books come. Utterly, utterly silly.

Three decadent young men – George, Harris and the narrator J – all of whose wits are vastly overshadowed by their laziness, having concluded that they suffer from exhaustion, embark on a recreational boat trip upon the River Thames from London to Oxford. They are accompanied by J’s dog Montmorency. They first consider other travel options but every time someone in the party recalls a story of a friend or family member who has already tried it with discouraging results and so the three discard the idea. In the end, a boat trip on the river remains the only feasible choice.

They rent a boat and off they go. The comical situations they encounter on the way and the more or less loosely connected anecdotes they tell each other during the journey are what the book is famous for. Jerome finds room to ruminate on such diverse issues as the fallibility of the weather report, the ease of getting lost at Victoria Station, the disadvantages of learning how to play the banjo from a manual, and the challenges of cooking and Irish stew on a river boat.

The book also has some exceptional quotes and one-liners.
“I like work, it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
“George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two.”
“He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the crops seemed to be coming up nicely.”

To me, the descriptions of the humorous events read a bit like a manuscript to Mr Bean episodes. Although some of the jokes are fresh and on target, the difficulties of writing as opposed to acting out slapstick frequently shine through quite strongly. More often than not, I have the feeling that I am listening to someone relating a funny incident from their lives or a scene from a movie they have seen. It must have been hilarious to have been there, but rather less captivating to have it re-told to you.

“Tre män in en båt” was originally intended to be a serious travel guide. The Thames had only recently been made available for recreational sailing after it had been cleaned up by the government only a few decades earlier. The railway revolution had moved most goods transport from the English waterways to the tracks which in a short time had afforded an abundance of room on the river. By the late 19^th century, boating up and down the river had become something of a fad among the prosperous bourgeoisie and Jerome decided to write a vade mecum for prospective boaters. It seems the skits were designed to intersperse the fact-laden portions in order to make the book more pleasurable (and perhaps to mirror the author’s jocose personality) but they soon took the upper hand and the book turned out to become a satirical commentary on the vacation habits of the privileged classes; popular with the reading masses, scoffed at by literary critics.

A fun fact is that, if applied as a travel guide, “Tre män i en båt” is still perfectly useful. All the landmarks described and all the pubs and inns recommended along the river stretch between London and Oxford are still there to this day. So if you are so inclined, hop on a boat, ropes away, and off you go.

“There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.”     

THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS

Author: Arundhati Roy
Year: 2017
Publisher: Brombergs Bokförlag
Language: Swedish (translator Peter Samuelsson)

Now and again you come across a work of art that tests the limits of your cognitive abilities. Almost as if it nudged your centre of gravity or shifted your points of reference. In some cases, it is the topic that the artist examines that boggles your mind. At other times, it is a perspective offered that thus far had remained unrevealed. Yet every now and then, you encounter artwork, be it a musical piece, a poem, drama, painting, performance, or dance that by its sheer anatomy thrusts a new layer of consciousness onto your existence.    

Such provocative art will chip away with surgical precision at the joints in the fabric of your world-matrix where concepts meet; right at the edge between the familiar and the foreign, black and white, good and bad, heaven and earth. These are the points of our Weltanschauung where we as humans are already struggling and therefore easily provoked, angered, and frustrated when our conceptual compartments, chiselled with such painstaking meticulousness are challenged.

This might explain why Arundhati Roy’s second and most recent novel “Den yttersta lyckans ministerium” (“The Ministry of Utmost Happiness”) became so controversial. Particularly in her native India. Her book-launches have been interrupted by violent protesters and her critics have burned effigies of her in the streets and attacked her rabidly in the media. The truth of the matter is that the novel methodically homes in on some of the most widely open wounds in the Hindu society: Kashmir, the Caste system, and the culture of toxic masculinity. To people who are unable or unwilling to take a step back and observe their world at a distance for a second, this will be painful.

The novel opens with a child being born in a dark room during a blackout and being presented to her mother as the long-coveted son she was hoping for. She calls him Aftab. At a closer inspection in better lighting the next morning she realises that Aftab is actually a hermaphrodite with both male and female genitalia. Neither boy nor girl. Or both. Right on the joint in the matrix.  

“In Urdu, the only language she knew, all things, not just living things but all things- carpets, clothes, books, pens, musical instruments- had a gender. Everything was either masculine or feminine, man or woman. Everything except her baby. Yes of course she knew there was a word for those like him- Hijra. Two words actually, Hijra and Kinnar. But two words do not make a language.
Could you live outside of language?”  

Roy knows exactly what she is doing with her writing. By this intense prelude, she declares the purpose of her novel. Aftab goes on to grow up and decides to cast off the gender identity ascribed to him by his mother and embrace his female side. He becomes she. Aftab becomes Anjum.

In the second part, Roy breaks with the bustling capital and hurls the reader into the hotbed of political turmoil that is Kashmir. This part of the book pivots on another woman, Tilo, and the three men who all love her for different reasons and each with a love of a different kind. The three men come to represent the scattered identities of Indian citizens in the Kashmir conflict. Musa is the casteless soldier of the Muslim resistance and an active enemy to the Indian forces stationed in Kashmir. Biplab is the Indian intelligence officer and member of the highest caste. Naga is right in between, a journalist who is seemingly impartial and makes it look like he is holding the policy-makers responsible but who in reality is a useful idiot who runs the errands of the government, and knows about it.

Tilo is a mix of them all. Born of a high-caste mother and an untouchable father. A Kashmiri activist from Kerala far away from the northern provinces. She ends up marrying two of her three friends but never the one with whom she has the strongest bond.

What then unites a hermaphrodite prostitute from Shahjahanabad with a reluctant warrior from Kashmir? The former having violently broken with every premise of her middle-class existence to glissade into the bliss of resigned harmony. The latter evolving gradually through the mounting pressure of society until violence envelopes her in a climactic discharge of defiance and rebellion. One clue is in exclusion; the common experience of being a stranger in one’s own land, and the intimate acquaintance with being considered an outcast, a provocation, and a menace.

Roy brings them together at a graveyard where Anjum has created a makeshift asylum for unwanted Indian residents of all kinds. The same way the dead are being removed and deposited outside of the city walls, so are the living ejected from the community. They all gather in the same place, sharing the same site. The living, in Musa’s words, are after all “only dead people pretending to be alive.”  

In the hands of Arundhati Roy, musings such as these can only culminate in a literary masterpiece. I dare say that the main thing standing between Roy and the Nobel Prize in literature is her meagre production. Den yttersta lyckans ministerium is but her second work of fiction since her debut “The God of Small Things” almost 25 years ago. Her writing is gentle and sublime. The attention to detail is astounding. The strength is neither in the plot nor in the characters – the plot is almost non-existent and the characters, although manifold and diversified, incomplete – but rather in her unrelenting low-frequency pecking on the social fabric to which her characters are barely but inescapably connected and her ability to shine the light on the feeble threads that unite them. In this, her authorship reminds me of that of Doris Lessing (reviewed August 2020) and Virginia Woolf (reviewed September 2020). Similarly to theirs, Roy’s writing forces you to recognise that you are in fact largely ignorant of your world, as if it was poking you with a stick and pushing you against your will toward the precipice of wisdom. You do not necessarily have to love the art that does this to you. You may even hate it for tearing down a perfectly good illusion that has served you well for half a lifetime or more.

But you might have to acknowledge that the joints in your matrix are actually cracks ready to burst.

THE PIANIST

Author: Wladyslaw Szpilman
Year: 2000 (1946)
Publisher: Wydawnictwo Znak
Language: Polish

The Second World War is probably the lowest point of our species so far. Mankind, undressed to all its bare-naked evil, rage, bigotry, hypocrisy, savagery, and moral bankruptcy, deliberately imprinted an indelible bloodstain on its history. It is estimated that up to 60 million people perished. They died from genocide, massacres, bombings, and disease. Some were killed in battle. Some committed suicide. Some starved to death. Many more still went through unspeakable hardship, pain, despair, horror, and trauma.

Truth be told, I try to avoid reading books about the Second World War. It marks such a revolting epoch that it makes my stomach turn at the mere thought. And yet, some books just have to be read, contemplated, and shared. Some experiences may never be forgotten and by reading them, I imagine that I add my own conscience to the collective memory of the people and events of the 1930s and 1940s. One such book is “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank (see my review from June 2020). Another is “Pianista” (“The Pianist”) by Wladyslaw Szpilman.

The book ventures to capture the haunting memories of a Varsovian Polish-Jewish pianist and employee of the National Polish Radio, from the day the Second World War broke out to the day the Nazis surrendered and Warsaw was liberated.

Szpilman recounts how despite German bombs barraging the once prosperous Polish capital, shattering windows and setting entire neighbourhoods aflame, tossing carts, vehicles, horses, and people into the air leaving only charred shadows in their stead, he made his way to the studio of the radio station to make his final broadcast. In the midst of this inferno, where the noise of the crumbling city and the blasts from the enemy’s relentless bombardment much of the time overcame the sound of his grand piano, he gave an incandescent Chopin recital to his horrified listeners as a musical valediction to the country that was to be no more. The Polish radio was soon thereafter taken off the air and replaced by Nazi-controlled transmissions.

He reminisces how one day, the dwindling population of Warsaw, already decimated by being systematically  bit by bit transported out of the city and to the extermination camps, is shocked to learn that a sizeable portion of the centre was to be designated Jewish and surrounded by walls on each side making it impossible to get either in or out without authorisation. Jews living in other quarters needed to move inside the walls, and non-Jewish Poles having thitherto resided within the designated area needed to move out. Neighbourhoods, friendships, households, businesses, schools were broken up in an instant and the ghetto came into existence.

In fact there were two ghettos, connected only by a narrow passageway across Chlodna Street which was, and I seem to recall still is, a busy thoroughfare in Warsaw with some critical tramlines running along it. It was guarded by German soldiers who had to stop the heavy traffic in order to allow the residents to cross from one of the ghettos to the other. In one memorable sequence, Szpilman relates how the soldiers, having grown bored with their monotonous jobs of keeping the Jews at bay during rush hours, came up with a game where they commanded a group of street musicians to play some merry tunes and then forced some unfortunate individuals from the anticipating masses on the pavement on each side of Chlodna Street to dance for their amusement. They found particular pleasure in matching up conspicuously silly pairs such as the shortest man they could find with the tallest woman or elderly and crippled couples which they spurred to dance faster and faster under the threat of being shot on the spot, until their frail bodies succumbed to the fatigue and tumbled to the ground.

The book is packed with stories like these. Every single page saturated with disbelief, fear, humiliation, despair, sacrifice, and senseless killing and death. Wladyslaw Szpilman would lose everything and everyone to the war; except his life. As if by a miracle, almost six years after he had given the last live recital on the wireless in 1939, he gave the first to a once again free Poland in 1945, playing the same piece by Frédéric Chopin as if to declare the indomitability of the Polish resolve through the music of one of the nation’s most illustrious patriots.     

Szpilman was to recover quickly after the war and his loyalty to Polish music and the Polish National Radio would become his path back to some sort of normality. Rebuilding the fine arts would prove to be a slow process facing many obstacles. While the Germans had prohibited much Polish music during the occupation years, Chopin among them, after the war the Russian overlords continued to restrict the freedom of Warsaw’s musicians, artists, writers, poets, and film-makers. Not until after Joseph Stalin’s death, did the Communist grip loosen enough to permit western influence and a more liberal production of art and entertainment.

In 1962, Szpilman, who was already an established and respected pianist, composer and songwriter at the time, became one of the founding members of what was to be the global phenomenon “The Warsaw Quintet” and from that moment his fame was secured.*

All this without anybody even having heard about “Pianista”.

The fact is that as early as 1946, the first edition of this book was released under the name “Smierc miasta” (“Death of a City”). The actual author was the Polish nobleman, socialite, intellectual, and cultural celebrity Jerzy Waldorff, to whom Szpilman had entrusted the literary composition of his memoir. The book was quickly censored by the totalitarian pro-Stalinist regime and soon put out of print. Not until 1998, when Szpilman was 87 years old, would it see the day of light in an uncensored German translation. It instantly became a global success and within two years had been issued in several languages, including the original Polish now under the title “Pianista”. Roman Polanski’s film adaptation another two years later went on to win three Academy Awards.

During the course of this revival, Jerzy Waldorff’s name was somehow lost. Still, the language of the Polish original could only have been produced by a lettered and sophisticated writer, far from Szpilman’s direct and sometimes crude way of communicating. The contrast between the literary and high flying language on the one hand and the horrendous events that it describes on the other, time and time again punched me right in the gut and I found that I could only read one chapter at the time on account of my heart-rate and blood pressure. Graphic descriptions of one unthinkable atrocity after the other are, after all, emotionally rather taxing.

What then can be said about actually living through this experience?   

 

*A comprehensive detail on the exploits of the Warsaw Quintet based on interviews with surviving members as well as historical records and documents is brilliantly provided in the Master thesis “Kwintet Warszawski – historia i opis dzialalnosci” by Karolina Orzelska from 2010.