The Malayan Trilogy – Anthony Burgess

A book (well, actually three) that my mum gave me back in my teenage years. She asked me all smugly if I knew who Burgess was and, having just discovered Kubrick at the time, I had to disappoint (or impress?) her by saying that yes, I did know he was the guy who wrote A Clockwork Orange. After that pseudo high-brow cultural exchange, neither one of us read the trilogy for a good dozen years.

Turns out that the three books are just awesome. The atmosphere is very similar to that of many of my beloved Graham Greene novels, with a not-so-veiled critique of the white man and the wonders of colonization and “progress”. What I found particularly interesting is that the three books have a very different mood: Time for a Tiger is at times absolutely hilarious (and Nabby Adams and his love/dependence on warm beer is one of the best side-kicks I’ve ever come across), The Enemy in the Blanket is a much deeper exploration of love and envy than I thought I would encounter after reading the first book, and Beds in the East is the book that I would like all my students to read when they study the British decolonization process.

All in all, I probably enjoyed the book so much because Crabbe’s approach to colonialism reflects mine, and also because he goes out with a  bang (or a plop?) 

Una Vita Violenta – Pier Paolo Pasolini

My parents each had a copy of this book when they moved in together back in the 1980s and, thirty years later, realized they had no need for two copies in the same house so gave one of them to me (that said, they’re not even sure whether they read the novel or not!)

I did love Ragazzi di Vita, but I found Una Vita Violenta (which in many ways follows in its footsteps) to be of a whole other calibre. Whereas one grows to like the Riccetto in the former a bit less as the book goes on and he settles within “the system”, I actually fell in love with Tommaso more and more with each page (after feeling the intense desire to strangle him during his football match with kids half his size at the beginning of the book, I just felt the need to protect him from the evils of the world).

Sure, his political path is a bit too allegoric for me, but by the end of the book my nerves were completely shattered. I was glad he did not drown in the flood that hit his old neighbourhood, but the end is really no less devastating (and yet, it is the only way the book could/should have ended in order to be one of the great works of the Italian literature of the last century).