March, in my mind at least, always marks the arrival of spring with the first hint of warming temperatures and tiny sprouts of green. At Wide World Books & Maps the spring publishing season has already filled the Front Table with a bouquet of new titles. Looking at the new arrivals, I was struck by how many of them had a search for identity as a central theme.
Basque author Bernardo Atxaga’s new novel, The Accordionist’s Son, is about a man trying to understand his father and himself. A teenager in 1950s Spain, David discovers evidence that his father may have been involved in a fascist massacre during Spain’s brutal civil war and responds by trying to disassociate himself from his father and his family traditions and later from the Basque separatist violence. Even moving to California doesn’t completely separate him from his identity. He sneaks away from his family at night to write a memoir in his native language, struggling to come to terms with his father’s history and his own. Atxaga style is complicated, with many actors and sometimes bordering on magical realism but his characters are strong personalities that draw the reader into the complexities of what is means to be Basque, to be part of a group, to be the son of a half-understood father. ($25.00)
In his novel Atxaga makes language central to his character’s identity. Ngugi wa Thiong’o argues in Something Torn and New that the loss of African languages is destroying African memory and culture. Thiong’o is a Kenyan novelist and professor of comparative literature whose 1977 novel Petals of Blood helped send him to prison for criticizing the government. These essays, based on a series of lectures he gave at Harvard in 2006, explore the effects of colonialism, particularly the imposition of European languages on the local populations and their subsequent loss of identity. The author himself gave up writing in English during his imprisonment and now writes in Gikuyu, the language of the Kikuyu people, in order to find a more authentic voice. It’s an interesting topic in these days of globalization and homogenization from an author with real experience. ($25.00)
The Seattle setting of Jamie Ford’s first novel, The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, adds a dimension to this story of immigrants striving for a new identity, trying to find a secure place in alien surroundings. We meet Chinese American Henry Lee as he is watching the 1986 uncovering of a cache of items belonging to Japanese Americans sent to relocation camps. This discovery sends him back in memory to his childhood during WWII when his parents made him wear an “I am Chinese” button to make sure he wasn’t mistaken for a hated Japanese. Henry’s non-English speaking parents force him to stop speaking Cantonese at home even though it effectively cuts off all communication with them and isolates him from their culture. At his all white school he is a lonely misfit until he meets and becomes friends with Keiko, a Japanese American girl. When Keiko and her family are sent to the camps, Henry vows to wait for her. This sweet, sentimental story of young love is also a wonderful look at 1940s Seattle and its mixing bowl of ethnicities. ($24.00)
Originally published in 1970 and finally available in a new English translation, The Siege is being hailed as a masterwork by an author whose works are at last beginning to gain the recognition they deserve. Albanian Ismail Kadare writes, as always, of his homeland, a tiny nation that has fought for its identity against empires, neighbors and communism. In 1540 a citadel in the mountains has refused to yield to the envoys of the powerful Ottoman army and so comes under siege. The defenders barricade themselves inside their city and hang on with grim determination to their land, their faith, and their traditions. Outside, the military might and technical advantages of the Ottomans seem to be invincible. Kadare uses an interesting device to tell the story. The bulk of the novel is set in the besiegers’ camp with only brief italicized entries at the beginning of each chapter telling the Albanian story. Even in the writing the Albanians have so little, the Ottomans so much, and yet the outcome is not as clear as you would think. ($24.00)
Sean Carroll, a molecular biologist, is more interested in identity of a scientific nature. His new book, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, is a history of the science of evolution as told through the lives of the people who work to understand who we are and where we came from. He begins with the explorers like Darwin and Wallace whose observations in nature led to a revolution in thought. He continues with paleontologists like Dubois and Leakey who found support for the theory in the fossil record and brings us up to date with modern DNA research. Even though Carroll includes plenty of data, and evidence, his conversational writing and his obvious enthusiasm for his subject make this a painless way to learn about our origins. ($26.00)
The title of Jeffrey Tayler’s book Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing took me a minute to understand. He explains in his first chapter that he considered it notable that Lenin and Mao, both responsible for the deaths of so many of their people, are still on display in the main squares of their respective capitals. A writer for Atlantic Monthly and a long-time resident of Moscow, Tayler decided to get a better feel for the connections between the two countries and set off on a meandering 7,200 mile journey to Beijing. He speaks Russian and Turkish and learned some Chinese for the trip, allowing him to have the kind of spontaneous interaction with local people that adds so much to a book like this. He finds a lot of anger along the way among people still dealing with the aftereffects of the dissolution of the USSR. Finding that new identity is never easy. ($24.00)
Come take a look at the Front Table for yourself and find the books you identify with.
Tags: accordiantist's son, corner of bitter and sweet, front table, hotel, murderers in mausoleums, remarkable creatures, siege, terrill
