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The Nobel Prize for Literature 2023 has been awarded to the master of “mystic realism”, Jon Fosse. The Norwegian playwright, novelist and poet has been a contender for long, and in his win, the Swedish Academy hopes that his “innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable” will be read widely. The “unsayable” to Fosse is the human condition itself, and in his writing, he builds layers, with characters talking or thinking about the past and present, their feelings about love, loss and grief, and the eternal quest for peace. Revered and much-feted in Norway, Fosse, which means “waterfall” in Norwegian, writes in Nynorsk, one of two official languages of Norway. His most well-known novel is Septology (a book in seven parts, compiled into a trilogy), translated into English by Damion Searls and published by small independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions. The novel, an example of pared down prose, termed “Fosse minimalism”, and written in “slow prose,” begins with Asle, an ageing painter and widower, reminiscing about his life and art. His friend, also called Asle who lives with his dog Bragi, has his battles with the bottle and his mind. Fosse is a master at giving access to interiority and the minutiae of the quotidian experience, and this gives a dreamlike quality to his work -- nothing is as it seems and many emotions are scrambling for attention, in a quiet way.
Jon Fosse | Master of mystic realism
The Economics Nobel has been awarded to Claudia Goldin for “having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”. In her research, collected over 200 years of data from the U.S., and her books, Understanding the Gender Gap, The Race Between Education and Technology (written with Lawrence Katz), Career & Family, she shows why women are under-represented in the global labour market and, “when they work, they earn less than men.” The global gender gap in 2023 for 146 countries included in the Global Gender Gap report of 2023 stands at 68.4% closed, which means there is considerable work left to do. Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said understanding women’s role in the labour is important for society, and thanks to Goldin’s groundbreaking research “we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future.
In reviews, we read Vivek Shanbag’s Sakina’s Kiss, translated by Srinath Perur, his first novel in eight years after the hugely successful Ghachar Ghochar, Anne Patchett’s Tom Lake, and Rosie Llewellyn-Jones new book, Empire Building. We also talk to Radhika Iyengar about her debut non-fiction, Fire on the Ganges, and profile Ambai, seen as the first feminist Tamil writer who has just won the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award.
Books of the week
Historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones’ Empire Building (Penguin/Viking) explores how the British used architecture to map the “jungal” that was India. In his review, Gautam Bhatia writes that she mentions the two architectural intentions that set the early colonisers apart. First and foremost was the establishment of architectural boundaries in entirely unknown and invented type -- the bungalow, the rest house, the botanical garden, the club, and urban forms like forts, cantonments and hill stations. “Second, was the more pervasive, less noticeable engineering works – construction enterprises as essential to conquest and governance. As the East India Company’s interests spread westwards from Calcutta into areas not seen by Europeans, roads, canals, railways, bridges, flood barriers, defence structures and forts that were essential to regulate a difficult and unknown landscape, and physically connect a disjointed country, became crucial.” The book, says Bhatia, is not written with the hectoring authority of an established urban history scholar but rather with the conversational ease of a thoughtful storyteller. “Empire Building can be read as an engrossing sociological exercise from a painful historic era.”
Review of Rosie Llewellyn-Jones’s Empire Building: Visible supremacy
Vivek Shanbag’s new novel, Sakina’s Kiss (Penguin), is narrated by Venkataramana, a mid-level executive, whose name “dwindled to Venkat” early in his career. He is married to Viji and they have a daughter Rekha who has gone to their native village when the novel opens. Within a day or two, it seems that Rekha has in fact disappeared. In pursuit of his daughter, Venkat and Viji, will be forced to confront aspects of their past, and a changing present. In his review, Keshava Guha writes that the slim novel takes in a lot – from Malnad and Bengaluru, class, caste and gender (and their intersections), and the battle between idealism and the cynicism that calls itself pragmatism. “Few novels of any length are so versatile in their offerings.”
Anne Patchett’s new novel, Tom Lake (Bloomsbury), is the story of Lara (who dropped the ‘u’ in her name Laura on reading Doctor Zhivago) who is telling her three grown daughters – during COVID – how she used to be an actress before she became their mother and her relationship with a famous actor, Peter Duke. In her review, Veena Venugopal says Patchett, a master storyteller, begins her narration from the core of the onion, as it were, and adds layer upon layer, so much so that even the origin story of the names of the girls are revelatory exercise for the reader. “Reading Patchett is often a unique mix of admiration and resentment at how easily she manipulates you,” says Venugopal.
Spotlight
Debut author Radhika Iyengar gives an in-depth picture of the life of the Doms of Banaras in her book, Fire on the Ganges (Harper). Asked what led her to choose the subject for a debut book, she told Ziya Us Salam she had several questions about what motivated the community beyond the cremation ground? What choices were the men making each day? Did the women work outside their homes as well? Did the children go to school, and if they did, was it good quality education? “These questions could only be explored against the larger backdrop of the Doms’ crematory work. From the time I began the research and writing, it has taken 7-8 years.” The book, says Iyengar, is many things: “It tries to draw focus on a few individuals from the Dom community who are challenging society in their own ways to lead lives on their own terms, whether it is through education, running a small business or other alternative means. At the same time, it tries to examine how a community that performs a specialised funerary practice continues to be regarded as ‘untouchable’ by a majority of caste Hindus.”
C.S. Lakshmi, who writes under the pseudonym Ambai, has a body of feminist writing in Tamil that rivals no other. The 79-year-old writer who won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2021, last week won both the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award and the Shakti Bhatt Body of Work prize. In her profile, Ramya Kannan writes that the Tamil publishing world believes Ambai to be the language’s first (and abiding) feminist writer, constantly challenging social gender normatives and, sometimes, rewriting them. As the writer herself puts it: “I lived as a feminist without compromise.” Like Perumal Murugan, her work has been translated into English, thus enlarging her audience of readers. “As for her writing, one can only hope she will keep the promise she made in the foreword to A Night with a Black Spider: “…my stories are not done. There will be another collection that comes out soon holding onto the tail of this one. Then another one holding to the tail of that one.”
Ambai | Feminist without compromise
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- As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of the AI revolution. In The Coming Wave (Penguin), he warns of unprecedented risks that a wave of fast-developing technologies poses to global order, and how we to contain them while there’s a chance.
- Drawing on Greek myths and pop culture, economist Yanis Varoufakis explains the rise of an exploitative system, technofeudalism, which he argues is posing the greatest current threat to social democracy. It is enslaving minds and rewriting the rules of global power, he argues in Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Penguin).
- Rescuing a River Breeze (Bloomsbury) by Mrinalini Harchandrai is set in 1961 Goa when it is under Portuguese rule. But as Indian forces amass across the border, 13-year-old Shirly Quarachim has to face off against all sorts of adversity.
- Madhur Jaffrey’s 1982 book, Indian Cookery (Bloomsbury), has been updated with new recipes and a new cover for its 40th anniversary edition. The book on Indian home cooking which accompanied the TV series has recipes on dals, curries, chutneys and breads and also techniques on how to master them.
