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| Getting hooked on George RR Martin Thinking it was time I experimented with contemporary fantasy fiction, I'm somewhat startled to find myself hooked alreadyBack in the summer, I wrote a blog about the interesting new David Gemmell Legend Award for fantasy and asked why fantasy novels are viewed so negatively by those that don't actually read them. Hundreds of people came on to comment and as the debate proceeded it became clear that I myself actually knew next to nothing about contemporary fantasy novels. I was soon challenged to address my ignorance – and given a host of recommendations as to where I should start.I accepted the challenge and began my re-education pretty quickly, believe it or not, even though a full six months have passed since then. It's taken me all this time to write a follow-up partly because of other commitments, but mainly because I decided to read George RR Martin's A Game Of Thrones. Which is a mighty 800 pages long. A pretty terrifying figure if you consider that this is one of the shorter entries in a projected seven-part series. Seven books that are each almost as fat as the Lord Of The Rings …… Not that this has put people off. I was convinced that I should embark on the Ice and Fire books, thanks to the many enthusiastic posts on the Gemmell blog, alongside the novels' fearsome reputation as "dragon-crack". The series' fanbase literally can't get enough of the stuff. George RR Martin hasn't finished the fifth book yet (long after original projected publication dates) and the delay is causing so much angst among readers that Martin himself has been moved to ask them to stop haranguing him, and Neil Gaiman has had to explain (to someone intent on pressing Martin for more) the important principle that "George RR Martin is not your bitch". At first I couldn't understand this enthusiasm. The UK Voyager edition has a hideous cover with embossed letters and a horsey-looking dragon on the front. Open it up and there's the perennial fantasy cliché of a pen and ink map with funny little pictures of trees, improbable coastlines and towns with names like "Maidenpool".Within the story proper there is plenty more of that kind of thing. By the second page of the story proper, a sword is given a name (Ice, unexcitingly). There's an intensely irritating wandering minstrel (although Martin has at least given his the hilarious name Marillion). There's a silly castle called the Eyrie high up "steps carved into a mountain" and a path "too steep even for mules" - but presumably not too steep to transport food supplies and the tonnes of lumber needed to build the place. After sex, women are left with "aching loins". There are also plenty of other frequent and heinous archaisms: "Would that I were a pumpkin" and "Lord Tywin is greatly wroth."There are other less cosmetic problems, too. Martin has a great talent when it comes to placing his reader inside the heads of his characters, and his character-per-chapter format gives an intimate and interesting perspective on his world. But the people he describes are too often one-dimensional and dull, and they exist on a simplistic George W Bush-style moral plane of black and white, good and evil. The good guys are generally insufferably good: their nobility comes attached to pomposity, preachiness and predictability. The bad guys are camp pantomine villains given over to deviant sex, the slaughter of innocents and laughing at others' pain. There's a dumb princess who thinks only of handsome princes and good manners and pink fluffy cliché. There's a court surrounding a declining king made up of consummate liars, sycophants and poisoners. There's a brattish heir to the kingdom with severe entitlement issues. It's daft. It's unsophisticated. It's cartoonish.And yet, I couldn't stop reading. And it wasn't with the kind of self-loathing desperation for closure that took me to the end of The Da Vinci Code. I read A Game Of Thrones with genuine pleasure. It may be a cartoon, but it's one that is brilliantly drawn. Archaic absurdity aside, Martin's writing is excellent. His dialogue is snappy and frequently funny. His descriptive prose is immediate and atmospheric, especially when it comes to building a sense of deliciously dark foreboding relating to a long winter that is about to engulf his fictional land.Indeed, darkness is something Martin excels in. He indulges in plenty of the pulse-quickening battlefield heroics in Tolkien's gory glory mould, but he also never fails to show the grimy reality of the slaughter. In these wars, children are killed at their mothers' breasts, the old are tortured and humiliated, women are raped, suffering is everywhere and Martin doesn't flinch in the face of it. Meanwhile, there are unsettling passages of bracingly weird sex, inventively unpleasant killing (a pot of semi-molten gold worn as a hat being a memorable example) and a strain of political intrigue (supposedly based on the Wars Of The Roses, interestingly enough) that would make Machiavelli blush.Finally, there's the simple fact of Martin's storytelling ability. Each chapter ends on an effective cliff-hanger, each one of the numerous story strands contains dozens of others and they all contribute to further pressing questions about the fate of each of his hundreds of characters … Although I cared for few of them, I had to know what happened to each. I have to know what's going to happen too. Especially since so many reviews have suggested that the simplistic morality I complain of here gets fascinatingly muddled later on. I know why they call it dragon-crack. I have no choice but to read the next novel.Science fiction, fantasy and horrorSam Jordisonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
What's Really Wrong with the Middle East by Brian Whitaker | Book review A lively survey of the Middle East calls for far-reaching reformThe problems of the Middle East are always somebody else's fault. Arabs blame their problems on centuries of foreign interference; their critics retort that the Arabs must shoulder responsibility for their own failures. The argument is about the allocation of blame: no one denies that the problems of the Arab world are deeply rooted and pervasive. As for the causes, both sides have a case: the problems of the region are the product of a unique combination of internal and external factors.Brian Whitaker's book is very wide in scope: it ranges over the entire area from the Persian Gulf to North Africa but without sacrificing the distinctiveness and idiosyncrasy of individual countries. The purpose of the book is not to suggest what the west should do but to set out the "Middle East problem" in terms that go beyond common perceptions of the region. He focuses his attention on actual concerns expressed by the Arabs (such as despotism, patriarchy, tribalism, corruption, and inequality), rather than the concerns of western governments.One of the many merits of this book is that it tries, as far as possible, to let the Arabs provide the narrative. The narrative comes partly from Whitaker's encounters as a traveller interested in the Middle East and later as a journalist reporting for the Guardian newspaper; partly from written sources; and also from a series of lengthy interviews conducted especially for this book. Listening to the Arabs makes a refreshing change from the all too common habit of western pundits of pontificating about the Middle East and lecturing to the Arabs.There are, of course, deep historical reasons for what is sometimes called "the Arab malaise". Wherever they are and however wealthy they might be, the Arab people are haunted by a sense of powerlessness. Recent Arab history, from the victors' peace that followed the first world war, through the nakba,or catastrophe, of 1948 and the numerous wars involving foreign powers, has left a deep mark.Whitaker is not oblivious to the part played by foreign powers in supporting tyrants and in deterring democracy in the region. His argument is that if positive change is to come, the overhanging cloud of fatalism and resignation needs to be blown away. He knows that to be aware of the past has value when considering the present. His argument is that "to analyse the past endlessly and blame the Other (often with good reason), as the Arabs tend to do, merely reinforces the sense of powerlessness and adds to the malaise rather than addressing it".Whitaker considers that in order to take charge of their predicament, the Arabs must stop asking "How did we get here?" and instead say: "This is where we are. How can we move forward?" The advice is well-intentioned but utterly unrealistic. Had the Arabs been capable of stepping outside their history or of coping collectively with their predicament, they would surely have done so long ago. The persistence of the predicament suggests that preoccupation with the past is by no means the only obstacle to change.Whitaker writes with empathy and insight about the many ills that afflict Arab society, especially in the realm of education. Education may not be the most obvious of the region's problems, yet in many ways it is central. The curricula taught in Arab countries tend to encourage submission, obedience and compliance, rather than critical thinking. Law students at Cairo University, for example, can buy a cheap 20-page summary instead of reading the lecturer's textbook. Over the years this has become known as ra'i al-ductoor – the doctor's opinion. This is what students have to memorise because that has to be their opinion too if they want to get high marks.Education in the Arab countries, Whitaker concludes, is where the paternalism of the traditional family structure, the authoritarianism of the state and the dogmatism of religion all meet. The result is to discourage critical thought and analysis, to stifle creativity and to instil submissiveness. Education thus serves to buttress the status quo instead of shaking it. It makes young Arabs well-equipped to survive in an authoritarian system but it does not prepare them to be active citizens and to contribute to their countries' development.Of all the problems that afflict their society, corruption is probably the one that Arabs complain about most. There is no doubt in the minds of most Arabs that corruption is rife. More than 90% of the participants in a survey for the Arab Human Development Report believed it to be pervasive. The report noted that in the five countries surveyed, "politicians, businessmen and high-ranking officials head the list in the spread of corruption".In practical terms, as Whitaker observes, corruption has many harmful effects. It is intrinsically unfair, undermines democratic processes, denies equality of opportunity, and in general creates obstacles to progress. Resentment of official corruption has become a galvanising factor for opposition movements, especially Islamist ones, providing them with opportunities to claim the moral high ground. Rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority, for example, was a significant factor behind the unexpected victory of Hamas in the January 2006 elections.Whitaker has given us a lively, highly readable and illuminating survey of the countless things that are wrong with the Middle East today. What emerges clearly from his survey is that the root problem, at least in the Arab world, is the lack of freedom. He concludes that in order to achieve peace, prosperity and full participation in the global economy, the Arabs should embrace far-reaching social, economic and political reform. Few would disagree with this conclusion but one has to be an incorrigible optimist to expect real change to take place in the foreseeable future.Even if the unelected and unloved rulers of the Arab world fall, they are most likely to be replaced by Islamists who are no friends of freedom. So the Arab world is caught in a vicious circle. It is difficult to see how it might turn the corner because there are no corners in a vicious circle.Avi Shlaim's Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations is published by Verso.HistoryPoliticsMiddle Eastguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
The decade's best unread books While people are busy ranking the hit books of the last 10 years, many a publishing insider is quietly mourning a volume that unnaccountably never made the 'best of' or bestseller lists, but should have. Here publishers, agents and translators speak up for the ones that really shouldn't have got awayJamie Byng, Canongate publisher and managing directorThe Spare Room by Helen Garner, published 2008. This deceptively slight novel is as good as anything Canongate has ever published. Or will publish. It's deceptive in many ways and I think its great subtlety is one of the reasons that it will only get fully appreciated over time. I've read it three times now and on each occasion my awe at what Garner has achieved increases. The Spare Room is a brutally honest novel about death, friendship and emotional dishonesty, written in prose that manages to be both delicate and visceral. It was overlooked by all the judges of the literary prizes in this country and these prizes are key for a book like this to sell in any serious quantity. But I still remain confident that this exceptional book will be come to be widely regarded as a modern classic. Because that is what it is.Anthea Bell, translatorThere's a novel by Robert Löhr called The Secrets of the Chess Machine about the famous chess-playing automaton that caused a sensation at the court of Maria Theresa. Löhr's flight of fancy is that there was a dwarf who supposedly operated the machinery. It's a very funny book, and I spent a lot of my time trying to persuade the English-speaking public that, contrary to popular opinion, the Germans do have a sense of humour.Margaret Jull Costa, translatorThere have been at least 14 translations of Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quixote, the earliest in 1612. Two more translations were brought out in 2005, in time for the 400th anniversary of the book's first publication in Spain. Oddly, one of them got all the attention and the other was virtually ignored. Don Quixote makes huge demands on the translator: there is comedy, broad and subtle, poetry, good and deliberately dire, there are proverbs and puns, and, above all, there is Cervantes' own wry, playful voice as narrator. Both of those "anniversary" translations were good, but it seems to me that John Rutherford's translation (the one that was largely ignored) most satisfyingly meets the challenge to the translator and does what all fine English translations should do, breathing English life into every sentence. If you don't know Spanish and have never read Don Quixote or are thinking of reading it again, then this is the English translation I would recommend, recreating as it does the novel's vibrant (and, to the modern sensibility, sometimes cruel) humour, and doing equal honour to its pathos.Victoria Hobbs, literary agent, AM HeathMutiny was published in 2001. It was Lindsey Collen's fourth book and, we thought, her break-out novel. She had previously won the Commonwealth Writers' prize for the Africa region and been longlisted for the Orange. There was a sense that appreciation of Lindsey's work was growing and we were getting somewhere – John Berger called it "a break-out and a breakthrough". She was published with great energy and commitment by Bloomsbury. She came to London (from Mauritius) to promote and there could be no better advocate for her work – she is an extraordinary woman whose own experiences of an oppressive political system and incarceration as a result of that system fed directly into the writing of Mutiny. The few reviews she received were excellent. And somehow it just never quite took off. The novel is not an easy or comforting read; it is fierce and challenging but is utterly compelling.Mark Lucas, literary agent, Lucas Alexander WhitleyBarefoot Soldier by Johnson Beharry VC, published in 2006. It was a Sunday Times bestseller, but should have gone on to take the world by storm. And never did, quite. Johnson was the first living recipient of the Victoria Cross for nearly 40 years. He saved the lives of at least 30 of his fellow soldiers during two separate ambushes within weeks of each other in Iraq in 2004. Little, Brown published it in 2006 with considerable passion, a major marketing campaign, and utter devotion to this most charming and courageous of young men. He's an example to us all. So why isn't Barefoot Soldier up there with Bravo Two Zero? Part of the problem, I fear, is that a huge number of people under the age of 40 have no idea what the Victoria Cross stands for. Perhaps the public got confused, and saw him as more victim than hero. Perhaps their antipathy to the conflict itself coloured their response to his experience. Perhaps there wasn't enough gunfire. And maybe the BNP played a part ... I don't begrudge Jordan her megasales. But I'd prefer to live in a world where Johnson Beharry VC's astonishing, selfless bravery is more vigorously cherished.Roland Philipps, John Murray managing directorWar Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres, published in 2005, is one of the funniest books I have ever been involved with – it's about the author's hapless time as an embedded reporter with the US Marines in Iraq. I think the reason it did not take off as it should was to do with the gap between commissioning it in 2003 and it being written and published two years later: by then the war had got so unpopular with the public that every book about it, brilliantly entertaining or not, was struggling. I hope in time it will become recognised as a classic.Lee Brackstone, Faber editorial directorThe book I want to choose is by the late Gordon Burn and it is his final novel, Born Yesterday. An in-the-moment experiment in fictional chronicling of the 2007 summer (Maddy's disappearance; Tony's disappearance; Gordon's arrival), it stands alongside the best of Mailer and DeLillo and should have seen Gordon anointed as their fearless equal. That he is gone so prematurely saddens me, but I remain more committed than ever to finding readers for his extraordinary sequence of books about ghosts of footballers past and ghosts of prime ministers present.Simon Spanton, Gollancz editorial directorBlack Juice by Margo Lanagan, published in 2006: Yes, it was a collection of short stories and yes, the industry wisdom is that it's hellishly difficult to sell short story collections but what a collection this was. It was like having a new Angela Carter on your list. Margo is an award-winning author of fantasy stories of haunting power and beauty which seemed to speak to genre fan and non-genre fan alike courtesy of strikingly beautiful prose and an unflinching eye for truth. Black Juice contained Singing My Sister Down. When this story was circulated in-house it had an unprecedented impact – countless people admitted to being brought to tears by it. We sent that story out to the trade and the response was the same. We had a stunning cover for the book, we published it as a hardback for the price of the paperback, the trade supported us to the hilt, we got a decent number out, got rave reviews ... and 60% of them came back. Crushed. And utterly mystified.Christopher MacLehose, MacLehose Press publisherJournal by Hélène Berr, published in 2008, deserves to be read and studied in every school in the civilised world, read and reread for what it tells of the circumstances of the arrest of a young and brilliant Jewish girl in Paris and her eventual murder in Bergen-Belsen, days before that camp was liberated. The story of how the text of her journal came to light so many years later is remarkable enough. The journal, which is a love story too and an account of inescapable horror, is beautiful and beautifully translated by David Bellos, whose Afterword entitled France and the Jews is also essential reading.Rebecca Gray, Serpent's Tail editorBoy A by Jonathan Trigell, published in 2004, is an incredibly powerful story, very sad, a very psychological read. It's all about having sympathy for people who do terrible things, about whether people can change. And it's beautifully done – a really fully realised world. It's an exquisite book. We really thought it was going to be big when we published in 2004 but absolutely nobody took any notice. We sold no copies, but come 2008 it all completely turned around. There's been a film, it won the Books to Talk About prize – what I take from this is that sometimes these things take time to come around. There is something very heartwarming about it suddenly becoming a book people were excited about.Dan Franklin, Jonathan Cape publishing directorOver the last decade Julia Blackburn has written some mesmerisingly original books (as Kate Mosse said on Radio 4, if she were Scandinavian she'd have won the Nobel by now), but the best, her greatest achievement, is The Three of Us, a memoir of her poet father and painter mother and the extraordinary muddle they made of their own lives and thus Julia's too. In other hands this would be a "misery memoir", but she tells her story with such skill and candour, with such a matter-of-fact tone, that we accept the sometimes alarming events she is telling us about without a qualm. The Three of Us got rave reviews and won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for the best memoir of 2008, but I can't help being disappointed that it never quite achieved the sales or recognition of that other remarkable memoir, Bad Blood by Lorna Sage. As Jeremy Lewis said in the Telegraph, "In a halfway sensible world Julia Blackburn would be a household name".Isobel Akenhead, Hodder & Stoughton women's fiction editorThe one book I would say I felt almost physically heartbroken about not succeeding with in the last decade was The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson. She's the most phenomenally talented (and bestselling) American author, whose unique voice just sings off the page, and this brilliant novel tells the tale of a woman who has to search through her own past to uncover what really happened to a little girl who has just been found dead in her swimming pool. It's as pacy as a thriller, but so rich that you feel you're reading something much deeper. There were a number of reasons it wasn't the success we hoped for – primarily I think that it trod the line between commercial and literary in a way that made the retailers struggle to understand it. But I'd urge anyone to read it – I feel absolutely sure they wouldn't be disappointed.Fictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
A case of Holmesophobia? The chemistry between Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Watson is no mystery, yet there seems to be no end to the outrage over the film's homosexual overtonesSir Arthur Conan Doyle famously had a soft spot for fairies. The same cannot, it seems, be said of the keepers of his literary flame – not, at least, of Andrea Plunket, who lays claim to the remaining US copyrights relating to Conan Doyle's most iconic creation. According to IMDB, Plunket has reacted with fury to Robert Downey Jr's suggestion on The Late Show with David Letterman that Sherlock Holmes, whom he plays in Guy Ritchie's film, could be perceived as "a very butch homosexual". Introducing a clip in which Holmes lets off some steam bare-knuckle boxing after offending Watson, Downey also floated the possibility that Rachel McAdams's character, with whom the detective is apparently besotted, "could be a beard. Who knows?""I hope this is just an example of Mr Downey's black sense of humour," Plunket reportedly fumed in an interview with Total Film. "It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books." It's hard to think of the last time so much befuddled, hateful knee-jerk reaction was funnelled into so few words. Oh, wait, no, it isn't – Jan Moir's Daily Mail article on Stephen Gately will be hard to top on that front for some time. Still, Plunket does awfully well, insisting that the idea of a beloved character being gay is not just a joke but a sick joke before offering a declaration of tolerance to stand alongside "I've nothing against black people" and "Don't get me wrong, I love women". To an extent, it's silly even to take note of the outburst. If the movie's nine-figure takings do spur the production of a sequel, then it seems questionable that Plunket would have the power to nix it and even more questionable that it would include anything sufficiently offensive to her sensibilities for her to try. Certainly, the new movie makes Holmes and Watson's intimate bond plain, showing them squabbling over housework and making explicit the jealousy the former feels at the latter's engagement to a (barely-written) woman. The director has even stated that "these guys are sort of in love with each other." But this is fairly standard buddy-movie homosociability; the chances of Richie et al taking the couple's domestic partnership into explicitly romantic let alone sexual territory seem vanishingly small. As a look at the Letterman clip makes clear, this whole kerfuffle is less about any serious engagement with the stories' homoerotic subtext than about Downey having a laugh at the expense of prurient attitudes to gay sex, including those of Letterman and his band leader, and generating some coverage for his movie at the same time. He pulled off the same trick nearly a year ago, during the film's production, when his tongue-in-cheek assertion that Holmes and Watson "wrestle a lot and share a bed" was quoted by the News of the World under the classy headline "Queerstalker".Not that there isn't something to the idea of Holmes and Watson as a couple. As with any other number of crime-fighting duos, their bond has long been fertile territory for such speculation; indeed, in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the detective himself encourages rumours that he and Watson are lovers. Overall, of course, such intimations are best left sublimated. The most detailed excavation of the original stories can unearth a thousand proofs of the pair's intimate mutual attraction without any hint of fluids being exchanged.The real inanity of Plunket's objection lies in its philistinic – and hilariously inconsistent – insistence on fidelity to a source text. If Plunket were sincere about the need to stay "true to the spirit of the books", she would be aghast at the introduction of a heterosexual love interest for Holmes; indeed, at the whole edifice of Richie's wham-bam steampunk spookfest.If the film's depictions of Holmes engaging in underground boxing bouts, rescuing damsels from occult ceremonies through brute force and diving for cover from exploding warehouses are to get a pass – if, that is, it's fine for the physical prowess described by Conan Doyle to be ramped up a few notches – then why shouldn't a similar process of exaggerated extrapolation apply to the intimacy unquestionably enjoyed by the detective and his sidekick in the original stories? It's simply a case of deductive reasoning, observing small clues and imaginatively hypothesising what they might connote. To veto such investigation is not merely prejudiced but counter to the enquiring spirit of Conan Doyle's character; not just homophobic but Holmesophobic.Arthur Conan DoyleCrimeCrime booksAction and adventureBen Waltersguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Anne Boleyn, Queen for a Day This history of Anne Boleyn’s downfall evaluates the range of opinion about what lay behind her execution. feeds.nytimes.com |