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Last Thursday, the Nobel Prize for Literature was announced and this year it went to the French writer Annie Ernaux, who had been on the contenders’ list for years. A memoirist, who has written about her life in many different ways, Ernaux, born in 1940, grew up in a small town in Normandy where her parents had a grocery store and café. In her mostly autobiographical work, she looks closely at gender, class, language, memory, love and loss, pursuing her themes as if she is seeking the truth. Ernaux, an “ethnologist of herself”, skirts fiction and puts events of her life under the scanner. She began a probe of her country background with her debut novel, Les armoires vides (1974; translated into English by Carol Sanders, Cleaned Out, 1990). It tells the story of 20-year-old Denise Lesur who suffers in the aftermath of an illegal abortion. Later, Ernaux would revisit this trauma in several of her autobiographical works,Simple Passion, translated by Tanya Leslie, in 1993, in L’événement, also translated by Leslie, Happening, in 2001 or A Girl’s Story in 2016. Her literary success came with her fourth novel, A Man’s Place, in 1983, a portrait of her father. In 1987, she wrote A Woman’s Story about her mother; she would recount her parents’ life again in Shame a decade later, beginning the story with a devastating line: “My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon.” The Nobel committee, awarding her the 2022 Prize “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory,” says Ernaux believes in the liberating force of writing. “Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean,” revealing the agony of the experience of class, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy or inability to see who you are with great courage. Asked which of her books would be a good starting point for people unaware of her work, she said, The Years “could bring together everyone.” Translated by Alison L. Strayer and shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, Ernaux recalls her life from 1941 to 2006 in the ambitious book, because “all the images will disappear.”
In reviews, we read Jerry Pinto’s new coming-of-age novel, a biography of George Fernandes, an anthology on the hills and more. We also talk to corporate honcho R. Seshasayee who has written a debut book of fiction and Mrinal Pande whose new book traces the history of Hindi journalism in India.
Books of the week
Cheerful young friends chatting on terrace. | Photo Credit: VSanandhakrishna
Jerry Pinto’s The Education of Yuri (Speaking Tiger) follows the trials and tribulations of a precocious 15-year-old growing up in the Bombay of the early 1980s. It takes in its sweep the liberalisation push, the rise of Hindutva and the right wing, and the chipping away of the secular heart of India. But for Yuri, uppermost in his mind as he begins college, is whether he will find a friend. When he does find a friend, the easy-going Muzammil Merchant, that upmarket Peddar Road world is far away from Yuri’s Catholic upbringing in Mahim. In her review, Janice Pariat says it is bildungsroman at is best. “We are pulled easily along by Pinto’s magical prose,” a language “fresh, flexible, surprising.” In the way that many ‘growing up’ novels are structured, The Education of Yuri employs steadfast linear storytelling, says Pariat. “As readers, we are privy to Yuri’s thoughts, his bits of amateur poetry, his scribbled notebook entries. Who am I, he often asks. What Pinto does, and does so well, is infuse this growing-up tale with heart and much humour.”
Late socialist leader and former Union Minister George Fernandes had a storied career almost mirroring the contemporary political history of India. Rahul Ramagundam’s The Life and Times of George Fernandes (Allen Lane), therefore, is of interest not just in terms of one man’s life and political journey, but the coterminous streams of events and ideology that flowed with it.
Fernandes, born in Mangalore, who cut his teeth in politics in Bombay as a trade union leader, and was a Member of Parliament from Muzzaffarpur in Bihar, traversed India geographically. He also explored the ideological spectrum -- his politics may have been largely socialist but he was also compatible with the BJP as an ally for many years. The biography takes an exhaustive look at life, and also the “times” he lived in, as the title suggests, says Nistula Hebbar in her review. “What has intrigued most people is his alliance with the BJP and the ease with which he became a part of the National Democratic Alliance, becoming the chairperson of the alliance too.” Ramagundam says anti-Congressism directed his every move -- for Fernandes, the personal became political.
Review of The Life and Times of George Fernandes: Personal and political
An anthology, Between Heaven and Earth: Writings on the Indian Hills (Speaking Tiger), edited by Ruskin Bond and Bulbul Sharma, provides a glimpse of life in hill stations of India. Bond, who lives in Landour, and has been a prolific writer on the hills, says in the Preface that the book includes pieces, written by British diarists and writers of the 19th century and early 20th century, which paint a vivid picture of the social life in the quaint resorts of Shimla, Mussoorie, Nainital, Kasauli, Ooty, Darjeeling and so forth. However, Bond rues the lack of Indian writing on the hills today, “they come and go in a rush, driving up in their cars and air-conditioned coaches.” In the Introduction, Bulbul Sharma, who has also profiled the hills in her books, contends that “all writers discover a hidden aspect of themselves in the hills and mountains.” In his review, Nimesh Ved says the anthology, with 37 essays and extracts, brings out many facets of the hills, warts and all. “Some of the earlier writings tell us how even more than a century ago an author found one of the places in the hills to be ‘spoilt’ while another was unhappy about the ‘modern architecture’. Several of the newer pieces highlight the tremendous changes man has inflicted on the hills in recent years.”
Review of Between Heaven & Earth — Writings on the Indian Hills: Call of the mountains
Spotlight
Mrinal Pande is an iconic figure in Hindi journalism. An author, pioneering woman-chief editor and a Padmashree, Pande has worked in print and audio-visual mediums, and was also chairperson of Prasar Bharati. In a conversation with journalist Seema Chishti over her new book, The Journey of Hindi Language Journalism in India – From Raj to Swaraj and Beyond (Orient BlackSwan), Pande explains why she feels vibrant Hindi journalism is under threat. Pande says the movement died out somewhere around the late 1980s, as a need was felt because of the changing context to do hard news. “When senior writers died or retired, those who replaced them gradually excised social and cultural issues which actually threaded together the political and national perspective – this is when Hindi journalism began to go downhill. Ironically, that was also the time when neo-literate north India threw up new readers and the major politicians were all from the Hindi belt and didn’t speak English. So Hindi’s footprint kept extending and its soul kept shrinking. The myriad streams that fed it, the socio, economic reporting, the kind of long, lingering serialised travelogues they published, came to a halt, the several dialects were also thrown out on grounds that there must be a standardised Hindi.”
Hindi has expanded but its soul has shrunk: Mrinal Pande
The Dance of Faith (HarperCollins) by R. Seshasayee revolves around the story of Zaheer, a Muslim boy from a small village at the foothills of Yercaud, who is obsessed with dance from childhood. Seshasayee, who has held several leadership positions in the corporate world, and is currently vice-chairman at the Hinduja Group and independent director at Asian Paints, wanted to question the stereotyping of art and religion in his debut fiction. Explaining his choice of subject, he tells Sushila Ravindranath that he had an internal urge to get away from the corporate world, and think about other things in life. “The question I was trying to address transcends art forms. Whether art as an identity needs to be tied to faith, which is yet another identity, is worth contemplating.”
Interview with R. Seshasayee, corporate honcho-turned-novelist
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- In The Newlyweds (Viking), Mansi Choksi shines a light on three young couples who stand up against arranged marriages in the pursuit of love, and face immense challenges and struggles. As Choksi investigates forbidden love, she also probes social norms.
- The best-selling historian of religion, Karen Armstrong, argues that if the world wants to avert environmental catastrophe, people need to think differently and rekindle their spiritual bond with nature in Sacred Nature (PRH).
- With contributions from 70 poets, Tapestry of Women in Indian Mythology (Hawakal Publishers), edited by Meenakshi Mohan, brings out women’s stories in prose and poetry. Going beyond identity and understanding the crevices of feminism, the anthology showcases joy, pride, humility, struggle and persistence.
- Nine-year-old Varun finds it hard to adjust to his new life after the death of his parents until he finds a mysterious colony in his garden. But something dark lurks waiting to wreak havoc on Varun in Bikram Sharma’s The Colony of Shadows (Hachette).
