This week: new novels from Paulo Coelho and Michael Chabon.
Scorched Earth: Stalin’s Reign of Terror
Baberowski, professor of Eastern European history at Humboldt University in Berlin, analyzes the Stalinist system in what is arguably the most comprehensive and perceptive volume of its kind in the West. He begins with a brief, brilliant study of the nature of Stalinist violence. Stalin detached violence from communist ideology, making violence “subject to the purposes of the dictator alone” and a continuation of “the tsarist project of registering, homogenizing, and subjugating” the empire’s subjects. This practice was developed in a culture of civil war that produced “a synthesis of delusions and excessive violence” and a generation of functionaries to implement them. They could control their regime by force, but not the general population. The result was a “dictatorship of subjugation” that violently disciplined people who “were nothing more than raw material from which New Men were to be sculpted.” Power and propaganda produced a “public world of lies and a private world of truth,” in which “no one was able to protect themselves from persecution.” Any hope that the violence “served a higher purpose” was trampled as domestic terror expanded through endemic deportation and murder. Baberowski’s chilling account of Stalin’s system shows how the country cannibalized itself as one man sought total power.
Moonglow
Chabon’s (Telegraph Avenue) charming and elegantly structured novel is presented as a memoir by a narrator named Mike who shares several autobiographical details with Chabon (for one, they’re both novelists who live in the Bay Area). Mike’s memoir is concerned less with his own life than with the lives of his deceased maternal Jewish grandparents, who remain unnamed. His grandfather—whose deathbed reminisces serve as the novel’s main narrative engine—is a WWII veteran with an anger streak (the stint he does in prison after a workplace assault is one of the novel’s finest sections) and a fascination with V-2 rockets, astronomy, space travel, and all things celestial or skyward. Mike’s grandmother, born in France, is alluring but unstable, “a source of fire, madness, and poetry” whose personal history overlaps in unclear ways with the Holocaust, and whose fits of depression and hallucination result in her institutionalization (also one of the novel’s finest sections). Chabon imbricates his characters’ particular histories with broader, detail-rich narratives of war, migration, and technological advances involving such figures as Alger Hiss and Wernher von Braun. This move can sometimes feel forced. What seduces the reader is Chabon’s language, which reinvents the world, joyously, on almost every page. Listening to his grandfather’s often-harrowing stories, Mike thinks to himself, “What I knew about shame... would fit into half a pistachio shell.”
The Spy
Coelho's striking novel about Margaretha Zelle, aka Mata Hari, the Dutch courtesan and "exotic" dancer who was executed in 1917 for treason and in all likelihood was innocent, unfolds through letters to her lawyer that she hopes will be given to her daughter if she is killed. Smooth, assured writing reveals a woman who refuses to be a victim: "someone who moved forward with courage, fearlessly paying the price she had to pay." She was raped by her headmaster at school and abused by her husband (a Dutch military officer), and she retaliated by exploiting the European love of the mysterious Orient through her "Eastern" veil dances. Although the novel is not Coelho's strongest work, the ending is brilliant in its irony, and throughout, he displays an ability to inhabit her voice. Through the letters, he illustrates the difficulties of being an independent woman in that time and place. By the end, readers will believe they've read Zelle's actual letters.
Of Fire and Stars
At the start of Coulthurst’s spectacular debut, seven-year-old Princess Dennaleia of Havemont discovers that she has a magical “Affinity” for fire. Unfortunately, she is already betrothed to Prince Thandilimon of Mynaria, a kingdom where the practice of magic is considered heresy. Dennaleia’s mother swears that if she ignores her gift, it will fade, but the opposite proves true; when a 16-year-old Dennaleia arrives in Mynaria to start her new life, she nearly starts a conflagration. While hiding her ability, Dennaleia must also find a way to work with the prince’s prickly and rebellious older sister, Amaranthine, to dissuade Mynaria’s king from waging an unjustified war. But Dennaleia is faced with difficult choices about her future after something other than friendship unexpectedly develops between the two princesses. Dennaleia and Amaranthine’s narratives combine to create a powerful and exquisite love story that also provides incisive political commentary and cautions against zealotry, vengeance, and intolerance. The central mystery is intriguing, Coulthurst’s worldbuilding is excellent, and the book’s explosive conclusion both thrills and satisfies.
Victoria
Inspired by the diaries of Queen Victoria, British TV producer and author Goodwin (The American Heiress) mines a rich vein of royal history with the ascension of the impetuous and imperious 18-year-old—whose sole companions were dolls and a lapdog—to the English throne in 1837. “Your subjects are not dolls to be played with. To be a queen, you have to be more than a little girl with a crown,” scolds a dying lady of the court whom Victoria has cruelly shamed. It is a heartbreaking lesson as the new monarch navigates the palace and political intrigues under the guidance of her charming and lovelorn prime minister, Lord Melbourne. It’s this relationship between the impressionable teen and her attentive middle-aged adviser that forms the irresistible emotional center of Goodwin’s rich and passionate historical novel. “When you give your heart it will be without hesitation... but you cannot give it to me,” Melbourne tells Victoria after she confesses that her prime minister is “the only companion I could ever desire.” Rejected, Victoria begins the stormy and politically fraught courtship with her German cousin and future husband, Albert. That true-life ending, however, pales in comparison to Goodwin’s timeless recounting of a young girl’s aching first love.
The Tongue of Adam
In this slim volume based on his lecture series, prominent Moroccan writer Kilito muses on the origins of multilingualism via an analysis of the historical debate about what language Adam and his family spoke. Citing an array of sources—medieval Arab theologians, the Hebrew Bible, Herodotus, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II—he opens up a new world for his reader, demonstrating the religious and philosophical urgency this question held for many through history and the many forms it has taken, including debates over whether poetry could be written by Adam and experiments with depriving children of language. Kilito treats his history with respect (especially considering the implications and controversial nature of the questions) and, with his blend of erudition and whimsy, comparisons to Borges are inevitable. Yet his commentary on the age-old debate, though minimal and mostly contained in an afterword, reveals his personal connection to the subject as a writer in both French and Arabic, making the work both poignant and relevant for contemporary readers. Fans of Kilito’s work should be pleased here, and those who have never read him should be intrigued this introduction.
Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin
Pushkin (1799–1837), arguably Russia’s greatest poet, finds worthy translators in Pevear and Volokhonsky, who have compiled an indispensable edition of the master’s complete prose. Pushkin’s great ambition, keen curiosity, and comprehensive range are all in evidence here, beginning with the unfinished “The Moor of Peter the Great,” a historical fiction about the writer’s grandfather, an African courtier of the czar. Russian history also figures in the short novel “The Captain’s Daughter,” set during a bloody 18th-century peasant rebellion, as a young officer in a besieged rural fortress develops a strange comradeship with the Cossack ringleader of the uprising. In “Dubrovsky,” a young aristocrat flouts the law after his inheritance is unjustly denied him. Always mindful of his position vis-à-vis European literature, Pushkin both draws on romanticism and lampoons it; in the short story “The Queen of Spades,” rational young engineer Hermann comes to believe in a mystic secret of gambling, and in his quest to learn the secret wrecks several lives, including his own. Pushkin moves with great facility from bored, hotheaded St. Petersburg aristocracy to the pastoral peccadilloes of country squires and the deprivations of peasant life (“The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin”), and even farther afield, to the exoticized landscape of the Caucasia (“Journey to Arzrum”). Pushkin the storyteller is witty and compassionate, panoramic and precise. Although he’s best known in the States for poetry, in this thoughtfully annotated, syntactically loyal edition, readers will discover another facet of a prodigious talent.
Scythe
In the future Earth of this grim novel from National Book Award–winner Shusterman (Challenger Deep), the digital cloud has transformed into the self-aware Thunderhead, whose benevolent totalitarian rule has turned the planet into a utopia. There’s no poverty or crime, and everyone is guaranteed immortality. Well, almost everyone. Because babies are still being born, population growth must be limited. Thus evolved the Scythes, an organization whose members are charged with “gleaning” citizens at random. Sixteen-year-old Citra and Rowan are chosen by a Scythe named Faraday to train as apprentices. Neither likes the idea, but they’re given no choice. Later, Citra becomes an apprentice to Curie, a legendary Scythe, but Rowan is apprenticed to Goddard, who kills for sadistic pleasure. Calling to mind Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Shusterman’s story forces readers to confront difficult ethical questions. Is the gleaning of a few acceptable if it maximizes the happiness of all? Is it possible to live a moral life within such a system? This powerful tale is guaranteed to make readers think deeply.
Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs
In this monumental and soul-shaking biography, historian and translator Smith (Former People) demystifies the figure of Grigory Rasputin a century after his gruesome murder in 1916 at age 47. He portrays the Siberian peasant and Romanov family confidante as earthy, complex, and innocent of the worst claims against him: that he was a German spy, royal seducer, and de facto head of state. Smith relies on diaries, letters, police files, and memoirs to dispel long-held rumors about Rasputin’s relationship with Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. With a Dostoyevskian flair for noir and obsession, Smith exposes the base motivations behind Rasputin’s enemies—including Duma members, church fathers, noble families, government ministers, and heads of secret police—while being frank about his subject’s love of Madeira and women. Smith expertly handles the intricacies of the salacious scandals that enveloped the empire in anti-Rasputin hysteria and that eerily presaged the fall of the Romanovs in 1917. Displaying commendable detective work and a firm understanding of the Russian silver age and the synod, Smith articulates even the most obscure cultural nuances with fluidity, sometimes slowing the pace but never losing his focus on his worthy and mesmerizing subject. Smith’s depravity-laden history of turn-of-the-20th-century Russia hinges on his insightful readings of myth and motive, and their tragic consequences.
The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland
The blurry geographic and cultural line between regions that have been (and might someday be) separate nations is explored in this ruminative travelogue. Stewart, an Englishman who grew up partly in Scotland and represents an English border district in Parliament, follows The Places In Between, his 2006 account of trekking across Afghanistan by foot, with this narrative of walking trips through English-Scottish border areas. Musing on the nature of frontiers, he ponders Hadrian's Wall marking Roman Britain off from the barbarian north; the Northumbrian lands where medieval Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse settlers uneasily coexisted; cross-border feuds that inspired Walter Scott's romances; and the separatist impulses surrounding the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. He also paints vivid portraits of the region's rich (though sodden) landscapes, and trenchantly critiques environment policies that try to return the human-scaled "living countryside" of 1,000-year-old grazing and farming terrain to wild bog and forest for the sake of biodiversity and carbon sinks. Stewart anchors his lively mix of history, travelogue, and reportage on local communities in a vibrant portrait of his father, who was both a tartan-wearing Scotsman and a thoroughly British soldier and diplomat. This is a subtle, clear-eyed, ardent case for the United Kingdom's future, one that recognizes cross-border divisions but deeply values ties that bind.
Moses: A Human Life
In this slim volume, acclaimed scholar and lecturer Zornberg (Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers) offers another richly textured and nuanced biblical study. Early on she sets an academic tone, writing of Moses that “he exists in a metonymic relation to the relation to the people who are, at first, both his and not his.” That kind of language will be a barrier to some, but those who persist will find Zornberg’s illuminating use of both midrash and literary sources, such as George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, worth the effort. She gives her commentary immediacy not usually found in similar titles by opening with an anecdote about her affecting experience during a rabbinical retreat, where she envisioned Moses pleading with God to allow him to enter the promised land. That blend of the personal and scholarly supports her ultimate argument about the biblical figure’s enduring significance: “Veiled and unveiled, he remains lodged in the Jewish imagination where in his uncompleted humanity he comes to represent the yet-unattained but attainable messianic future.” For those wishing to engage the legacy of Moses more deeply, this is a must-read.
