The Wind Knows My Name - Isabel Allende

What's cooler than being cool? Ice cold!

And what's cheaper than trying to write something supposedly moving by brining in children? Adding the Holocaust!

I have long stopped enjoying Isabel Allende novels (actually, I think I only ever really enjoyed Paula), yet I keep on reading them because the Southwark library is so desperately under-stocked. 

And I also read them because they are easy. Yet, this novel is not just the standard "easy" and "sentimental" Allende novel, it's also - as mentioned above - really rather cheap. I hope it's not actually the case, but to me it read as if she was exploiting the suffering of fictional (yet fully believable) children across centuries to sell a few copies and make a few readers feel like they've read something deep about the tragedies of contemporary society. 

Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut

  

I have to be honest: I generally wouldn't pick a Vonnegut novel if I had a vast choice. I find his wackiness growing stale over the course of novels with a minimal (or at times a highly convoluted) plot. 

But the plot in Mother Night is actually clear and linear, and the wackiness grows gradually, like in so many books that I love from Jonathan Coe to Zadie Smith, or like in the best Coen brothers movies. And I read this book more or less at the same time as I read The Porcupine by Jonathan Barnes, so I was probably positively inclined towards a book about the Cold War and the legacy of the Second World War. 

In short: I really liked Mother Night, but in spite of that I still won't rush to read my next Vonnegut book.

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

  

One of the closest things to a history book that I've read over the last couple of years. Yes, I'm truly an excellent historian...

This book was given to me as a thank-you gift by a student I worked with as he was writing his dissertation (I wouldn't say supervised because I'm not allowed to do that, but man did I read some drafts!). Apparently, it was one of his go-to gifts to friends, and I can understand why. 

Given the subject-matter, this is obviously a very compelling read, though it's clearly written by someone with a sizeabale ego. Then again, if one survives the Holocaust I think s/he is entitled to have whatever kind of ego. 

I've also read plenty of reviews criticizing the author's idea that his attitude contributed to his survival. Yes, I highly doubt that attitude had much to do with survival in a concentration camp and think that many other factors - including pure chance! - had a more significant impact. Then again, if one survives the Holocaust I think s/he is entitled to believe whatever they want as a way to explain coming out of it alive.

Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

One of the last "big" buys at the local farm - nowadays I'm not 100% sure if most of the half-decent books they sell are old ones of mine, or whether there's simply another reader somewhere in the area with a similar taste in books who discards virtually the same titles.

I went in with big expectations, having watched the movie a few years ago, and it really didn't disappoint. Actually, it was in many ways better than the movie itself - the grandfather an even more complex character, Alex's writing even funnier than his spoken English (and also, Alex himself is quite a lot deeper), and really rather interesting description of Ukraine and its 20th century history.

If not one of my all-time top-10 books, then definitely one of last year's top-10. It now is in the hands of a couple of friends who went to Ukraine for a trip a month or so ago. 20p say the book will never land back on my shelf. Oh well, at least I really like those guys...

Diary – Anne Frank

I had never read this book chiefly because I had a wonderful middle-school teacher who had us watch the great 1959 movie (in the same year she had us watch Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapo, Norman Jewison’s Hurricane, Barry Levinson’s Sleepers, study in depth the Arab-Israeli conflict, and plenty of other things – easily the best teacher I’ve ever had while in Italy).

How does one actually read Anne Frank’s diary? Again a rather problematic philological issue: she wrote it thinking that she would share it with posterity herself, but everyone knows how her life ended and I’m not sure any reader can read the diary without constantly remembering that the SS will eventually breach into the Franks’ hiding place.

Regardless of that, and regardless of how heavily or not the diary/diaries might have been edited, this book remains an exceptional read. It is undeniably extremely well-written, and knowing Anna’s tragic end makes her comments about love appear even more cute (for want of a better term). I am not going to comment on her political acumen, because after all we are talking about a young girl who found herself locked in a flat for two years, but her personal observations  on the attitudes of her family and the other people around them can remain a priceless primary source for any young historian studying the Second World War. Too bad my own students probably don’t even manage to read a book a year. 

The Zone of Interest – Martin Amis

One of those extremely rare books that I borrowed from a library (actually two libraries, since I read half of it in its Italian translation in Bra – yes, my hometown has a funny name! – and half of it in its original version in London). I had somehow managed to avoid reading anything by both Kingsley and Martin Amis, but my mom told me I absolutely had to read The Zone of Interest, and for once I did as I was told straight away.

The Zone of Interest is hugely moving, despite the fact that a number of its characters occasionally read a bit too much like allegories of the German population of the time. Needless to say, of the three main narrators, the Jewish Szmul is the one who often provides the most interesting insight into the (fictionalized) life of the camp. Somehow, though, I have the feeling that the epilogue is a bit unnecessary (much like I felt no need for the final chapters of Group Portrait with Lady or the last book of The Tin Drum) and I feel like the novel would have had a more long-lasting impact on me without its final pages.

The book also made me think about artists telling the stories of people that are not their own. In particular I thought about the comments made by Spike Lee on Tarantino’s Django Unchained. To me, as long as you have class and tact (like Martin Amis in this case), you can tell anyone’s story – sadly two things that were lacking from Spike Lee’s Miracle at Sant’Anna.  

La Tregua – Primo Levi

 

I’ve stolen this book from my granddad’s bookshelf. It was a gift for him by my mom some 20 years ago. His memory is really rather wobbly now, I don’t think he’ll realize it’s gone (or, sadly, that he’s ever read it).

I’ve read it because my mother – rightfully, as is sometimes the case! – scolded me for saying that often Levi’s writing is (understandably, obviously) quite humourless. I stand by what I said in relation to books about the holocaust. But La Tregua is more than that. It’s about the long journey home, about the light at the end of the tunnel, about the desire to live. Also, La Tregua was written in the early 1960s, 15 years after Se Questo E’ un Uomo, and I’m sure that this played an important role in the way in which Levi recalled his turbulent days in 1945 and 1946.

Levi’s self-mocking when describing his lack of street smarts is endearing, the plethora of secondary characters with very often stereotypical national quirks is extremely funny (at times actually hilarious), and the never-ending road back to Turin is of such an epic and heroic kind that I am sure McCarthy would love to have written La Tregua. And, clearly, the anecdotes that Levi magisterially recalls in La Tregua are of the kind which can only be lived and told by the chosen people.

Il Prete Giusto – Nuto Revelli

Another wonderfully moving book by Nuto Revelli. And yet another one about Italian Fascism (in my defence, I hadn’t written about one of those in a while).

Similarly to Il Mondo dei Vinti, this is oral history at its finest. However, Raimondo Vitale, isn’t like the poor peasants of the other masterpiece by Revelli, he is a man capable of shaping his own destiny (at least to an extent) and to help others. The word “giusto” in the title does not signify that Viale was a just man, but that he was – rightfully – named “Righteous among the nations” because of the help he gave to persecuted Jewish families during the Second World War.

This is a book that students in their final year of high-school should be forced to read (in Italy and France, at least), but again I’m afraid we’re not going to run the risk of that happening anytime soon. So bring on pointless feuillettons from the early 19^th century (yes, to this day I am still very fond of Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi)

Se Questo E’ un Uomo – Primo Levi

Without a doubt Primo Levi’s most famous book. Given the topic (the author’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps) it’s really hard to write anything about it, and even more to offer any sort of vague critique. We were strongly encouraged to read the book in high-school (by the time I had already read it), but I think we should have all been forced to do so.

From a sociological and anthropological point of view, the book offers a unique insight into human relations in the direst of situations. Yet, at the same time, the book ultimately doesn’t cast a moral judgement on the persecutors, something that I found extremely surprising.

I first read it when I was 13 or 14, and I remember being really shocked when I realized that often in concentration camps the ones more likely to die soon were the strongest men, capable of doing the hardest jobs and incapable of doing them without using their full strength. The frequent references to the Divine Comedy made me want to read some of its key “Canti” already then, when I was surely too young to understand them.

I don’t think that someone who has survived to tell this tale then decided to kill himself more than 40 years later. But maybe I’m just naive...