Fiction
Verdict: Read it
Anita Desai is a favourite of mine, so when Justbooks offered me a selection of her books because they aren't shipping what I want, I picked one I hadn't read yet.
I have to tell you internet, the forward was intimidating. Pulling together Germany, WW2, an internment camp, and India and it's a mess of confusion. Definitely an angle I've never even remotely thought of. It took me a while to get into, partly because of the reason I just said, and partly because Desai's main character is, so.....bland. He's not wildly loveable, hateable, or even notable. But he's had one hell of a life.
However I did get into it. And had a hard time putting it down. Desai gets into being a long term foreigner who tries to fit in, mixed families, people without a solid direction in life, and what it means when you no longer belong somewhere you thought was home. Right up my alley if I do say so myself.
Underneath it all, Baumgartner is a good man. It unfortunately costs him in the end, but he's a harmless character. He has a spate of run ins with decent people also, making his life nothing fancy, but comfortable and not traumatic. I guess what's so striking about him is how ordinary and uninteresting him. He's truly the ordinary man. If you didn't know his history and his life, you'd just assume he was a plain doughnut.
Not that I'm an expert or anything like that, but there are very few things that take me by surprise about India anymore. The internment camp, however, really threw me sideways. It was such a logical but surprising occurrence. No one ever talks about India in relation to WW2 so I assumed it was a typical isolationist country, totally neglecting that Britain's rule in India would have had consequences for Germans, Jewish or not. I definitely will read up on this more.
It's rare to find an Indian author who incorporates anything but mildly British references, and Anita Desai does a masterful job of it. I truly believe she understands the cultural references she includes. It's an amazing thing to watch.
My only complaint is the German poetry - in German - that persists through the book. As a non-German speaker, I wish I could have understood these snipets. Languages leave clues that help us understand context and I definitely felt it when I couldn't appreciate those as well.
Do read it for a different perspective on Indian literature.
~Becky~
Verdict: Read it
Anita Desai is a favourite of mine, so when Justbooks offered me a selection of her books because they aren't shipping what I want, I picked one I hadn't read yet.
I have to tell you internet, the forward was intimidating. Pulling together Germany, WW2, an internment camp, and India and it's a mess of confusion. Definitely an angle I've never even remotely thought of. It took me a while to get into, partly because of the reason I just said, and partly because Desai's main character is, so.....bland. He's not wildly loveable, hateable, or even notable. But he's had one hell of a life.
However I did get into it. And had a hard time putting it down. Desai gets into being a long term foreigner who tries to fit in, mixed families, people without a solid direction in life, and what it means when you no longer belong somewhere you thought was home. Right up my alley if I do say so myself.
Underneath it all, Baumgartner is a good man. It unfortunately costs him in the end, but he's a harmless character. He has a spate of run ins with decent people also, making his life nothing fancy, but comfortable and not traumatic. I guess what's so striking about him is how ordinary and uninteresting him. He's truly the ordinary man. If you didn't know his history and his life, you'd just assume he was a plain doughnut.
Not that I'm an expert or anything like that, but there are very few things that take me by surprise about India anymore. The internment camp, however, really threw me sideways. It was such a logical but surprising occurrence. No one ever talks about India in relation to WW2 so I assumed it was a typical isolationist country, totally neglecting that Britain's rule in India would have had consequences for Germans, Jewish or not. I definitely will read up on this more.
It's rare to find an Indian author who incorporates anything but mildly British references, and Anita Desai does a masterful job of it. I truly believe she understands the cultural references she includes. It's an amazing thing to watch.
My only complaint is the German poetry - in German - that persists through the book. As a non-German speaker, I wish I could have understood these snipets. Languages leave clues that help us understand context and I definitely felt it when I couldn't appreciate those as well.
Do read it for a different perspective on Indian literature.
~Becky~
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