Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza

 

- This new book by celebrated Indian political essayist Pankaj Mishra is a masterpiece. It is so incredibly enlightening, thought-provoking and challenging. It's a reflection on Israel’s transition to a right wing, genocidal state over the decades.  

- It's full of quotes from major Jewish activists, politicians, thinkers and writers wrestling with the challenges the Jews faced after the Holocaust. The writings of Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt, Jean Amery, James Baldwin and many others are examined in depth. They convey deep insights into the struggles and debates over the last century after the founding of Israel.  

- The blurb on the dust jacket describes the book well:

The world after Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad re-evaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West's triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism, and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the global majority's frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world's balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world's population.  

As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorientate us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis - about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present and future. 

Rachel Kushner, Creation

 

- This latest novel by acclaimed British author Rachel Kushner was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. I had not read any of her previous three novels so was attracted to it. And the back cover blurb was very enticing. Basically it's an ode to social protest and resistance, full of all sorts of whacky outsiders who hate what the government is doing to their rural communities in the provinces of France.

- Does it all add up to a powerful novel? No, not really. But it does have likeable elements, particularly the ending. 

- It's a mishmash of amateurish anthropology, astrology, sociology, philosophy and politics. One local and aging 'primitivist' in particular, who lives in a cave because that's what the Neanderthals did, is the main inspiration to the local communities. He writes long emails about how wrong and anti-human our modern civilisation is. ‘The world ruled by capital would not be dismantled. Instead, it had to be left behind...I deplore violence in all its forms'. 

- The other main person of influence in the commune is an 'activist', not a deep thinker. He has long been the head of a radical farming cooperative who are organising a huge and possibly violent protest against corporate and government plans to modernise the region by building massive dams, tunnels and agricultural operations that would effectively destroy the local communities. Capitalism must be destroyed and governments brought down, 

- The main character, thankfully, is a thirty-four year old American woman. She is a former FBI agent who is now privately contracted and has been instructed to insert herself into the commune to spy on their plans. 

- She gradually develops a real affection for the compound. The farming, the maintenance, the creche, are all impressive, and the people 'real'. ‘There are no politics inside of people.’ 

- There is plenty of drama as the story comes to a climax. It's by far the best part of the book, and the only really absorbing part in my view. 

(Here's an interesting bit: a politician has been invited to open the annual agricultural fair. He is accompanied by a Michel Thomas, a celebrated and mysterious author. Kushner must surely be satirising Michel Houellebecq! ‘Thomas was always at the scene of the crime, a bystander and observer to society’s convulsions….with a talent for washing up on the shores of chaos’). 

Melanie Cheng, The Burrow

 

- Melanie Cheng has written a sensitive drama of death, pain, sadness and profound regret. 

- In an unnamed city in Australia a baby named Ruby drowns in a bathtub. Her grandmother, who was bathing her at the time, had suffered a minor stroke. This beautiful novel digs deep into the emotional repercussions of this tragedy on the baby's family over the years to come.

- A feature of the novel is the pace of the unfolding of the full story. Cheng is in full control. The details emerge slowly and surely. Each short chapter is narrated in turn by the family members - the father Jin, the mother Amy and the older daughter Lucie. Lucie was six at the time of Ruby's death and is ten now. The other narrator is the grandmother Pauline. 

- The family live in a gentrified inner-city neighbourhood. They are renovating their house which is a bit of a shambolic construction site with the facade covered in blue tarp. The grandmother has broken her wrist and is staying with them for a few weeks. There is tension. She is not liked by Jin and barely tolerated by her daughter Amy. But she does get on well with Lucie and her new pet rabbit. 

- Covid restrictions still in place. Home schooling, social distancing, and mask wearing are all mandatory, and travelling beyond a limited area is severely restricted. This greatly adds to the pressures on this family. 

- Cheng introduces other elements into the story that add to the drama very effectively. The strenuous relationships between the adults are compounded by various events. 

- This is a short novel (184 pages), but it's very emotionally powerful, and enriched in the end by compassion and generosity. 

- I loved it. 

Michel Houellebecq, Annihilation

 

- I've long been a fan of celebrated French author Michel Houellebecq, having read all his novels over the years. He offers a delicious immersion in all things French - politics, history, class, culture, food and wine. And of course sex.

- His latest novel is his longest yet at 525 pages. But it's probably his best. It's about family relationships and the drama of politics. Families are rarely the source of happiness, but politics and work are. Annihilation focuses on parents, siblings, couples, friends, and work colleagues. Relationships are under the microscope. And we're taken inside the political world because a Presidential election is the background to all that's happening on the personal level.

- Houellebecq is a delightful literary show-off and never ceases to drop quotes from noted authors and poets, so we're constantly confronted with challenging, enriching ideas, and wit. ‘…she had probably nodded off over her Anita Brookner’.

- The principal characters are Paul from Finance and his wife Prudence from Treasury, ('They were in complete agreement about value added tax’). They split up eventually, and had not 'fucked' for ten years. (In all Houellebecq's novels couples don’t ‘make love’ or become ‘intimate’ - they ‘fuck’). Paul's boss Bruno, who has been the Minister of Finance, is now a key member of the Presidential candidate's team.

- Houellebecq lobs in plenty of challenging ideas. He loves babyboomers for one. The years 1945-1975 were the best. After the triumph over Nazism, hope, joy and economic opportunity became central. ‘Popular culture production had proved to be aesthetically superior to the cultural production of the elite’. Nevertheless ‘..we can no longer stand older people….it's why we park them in specialised places..’

- A new President is elected and we're reminded of Trump. He wants to remove the position of Prime Minister, reduce the House members, and enshrine more power to the President. It will be a ‘post-democracy…democracy is dead as a system, it’s too slow, too ponderous’.

- Three terrorist attacks occur over the course of the election, one killing 500 people. The terrorists are described as anarcho-primitivists, like the Unabomber in the US. Such radical political movements are not unfamiliar to Houellebecq readers. As social guardrails and fences collapse, so does political order. The comfort and security of earlier conservative times is missed. And ‘…a lot of people today had become very stupid; it was a striking and indisputable contemporary phenomenon....Family and marriage: these were the two residual poles around which the lives of the last Westerners were organised in the first half of the twenty-first century...It seemed obvious to Paul that the whole system was going to come crashing down’. 'The concept of decadence...Europe as a whole had become a distant, ageing, depressive and slightly ludicrous province of the United States of America’.

- The last hundred or so pages focus on Paul's severe illness. He is diagnosed with cancer of the jaw. The medical specialists recommend a major operation including removal of his tongue, and intense radio and chemo therapy. Houellebecq dives deep into the medical details and treatment options, and the decisions Paul is confronted with. The survival rate over the next five years is very low.

- At least he and his wife Prudence re-discover their intimacy and begin to once again have frequent sex. It becomes the real joy in their lives.

- There are various dramas of life and death, of parents, partners, family, friends, and society as a whole in this amazing and very enjoyable novel.

- I highly recommend it. 

(Unfortunately it is very poorly edited. It's full of so many simple errors - wrong words, missing words, commas instead of full stops, etc. For example: ‘It couldn’t have been later than five o’clock on the morning’; ‘in the end how found a space five hundred metres from the house’. Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, is a highly professional publisher, but its standards have fallen to a real low if this book is any guide.)