cat gods and coexistence

The recent paper on how worshipping cat gods helps people in India to coexist with leopards and even tigers inspired me to look for other examples. Naively, I assumed I would find similar stories around the world, but most of the surviving cultures codifying coexistence with dangerous wildlife led me back to India. So it became a slightly lopsided tour du monde, but I also have mentions of Central America, Australia, and Nigeria in there. The feature is out now:

A culture of coexistence

Current Biology Volume 31, Issue 15, 09 August 2021, Pages R931-R934

FREE access to full text and PDF download

Children play with Waghoba at Manali temple
Source.
(this picture didn't quite make it into the published article)

reading the world

I was very impressed when I read that the author Ann Morgan had managed to read one book from each of the 196 countries represented at the 2012 Olympics in London. Her list of books read and others that were recommended to her is here, and the book she wrote about the experience is reviewed here.

Thinking about how embarrassingly far I would fall short of that figure I estimated I would be lucky to make it to 50 countries (in my life so far, not in a year) and started my own list to prove it. If and when I've reviewed a book on this list, I've included a link to the review. If I can't remember whether I've actually read it (even though it's on my shelf), I've marked it with CR. NFY means not finished yet. Still struggling to get to 50 though.

1. Algeria – Mehdi Charef: Thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed (CR - saw the movie though)
2. Argentina – Federico Andahazi: El anatomista (The anatomist)
3. Austria – Daniel Kehlmann: Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the world)
4. Belgium – Amélie Nothomb – L’hygiène de l’assassin
5. Brazil – Paulo Coelho: Der Alchemist (The alchemist)
6. Canada - L. M. Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables
7. Chile – Isabel Allende: La casa de los espiritus (The house of the spirits)
8. China – Hong Ying: K – the art of love
9. Colombia – Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Cien años de soledad
10. Congo, Republic of the – Alain Mabanckou: Verre Cassé (Broken Glass)
11. Cote d'Ivoire – Fatou Keita: La rebelle
12. Cuba – Zoe Valdes: La nada cotidiana
13. Ecuador – Alicia Yanez Cossio: El cristo feo
14. Equatorial Guinea – Guillermina Mekuy: El llanto del perro
15. France – Anna Gavalda: Ensemble, c’est tout (Hunting and gathering)
16. Germany – Charlotte Roche: Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands)
17. Guatemala – Miguel Angel Asturias: Leyendas de Guatemala (CR)
18. India – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Heat and dust
19. Iraq - Weam Namou: The feminine art
20. Israel – Ephraim Kishon: Oh, oh, Juliet
21. Italy – Umberto Eco: Der Name der Rose (The name of the rose)
22. Kyrgyzstan – Chinghiz Aitmatov: Jamila
23. Lebanon - Vénus Khoury-Ghata: Les fiancés du Cap-Ténès (CR)
24. Madagascar – Michele Rakotoson: Dadabé
25. Mexico – Laura Esquivel: Como agua para chocolate
26. Mongolia – Galsan Tschinag: Die Karawane (NFY)
27. Morocco – Tahar Ben Jelloun: Harrouda (CR)
28. Netherlands – Anne Frank: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank (Diary of a young girl)
29. New Zealand - Katherine Mansfield: Stories
30. Nicaragua – Gioconda Belli: El pergamino de la seduccion (The scroll of seduction)
31. Nigeria – Sefi Atta: Swallow
32. Peru – Mario Vargas Llosa: El sueño del Celta (The dream of the Celt)
33. Poland – Stanislaw Lem: Stories
34. Russia – Mikhail Bulgakov: Master and Margerita
35. Senegal – Ousmane Sembene: Guelwaar
36. Sierra Leone - Aminatta Forna: The memory of love (NFY)
37. Spain – Almudena Grandes: Castillos de carton
38. Sweden – Astrid Lindgren: Pippi Longstocking
39. Switzerland – Max Frisch: Homo faber
40. Syria - Rafik Schami: Die dunkle Seite der Liebe (NFY)
41. United Kingdom – Esther Freud: Lucky break
42. United States – Megan Clark: Seduce me
43. Vietnam - Kim Thuy: ru (NFY)

Own photo of my reading pile some time in early 2014.

PS: I'll keep updating this with any further reading adventures, hoping that one day I can travel around the world in 80 books ... So this post will also serve as a directory to my reviews of world fiction.

It's my turn to speak

review of

Swallow
by Sefi Atta
Interlink books 2010

The book opens with a dialogue between two friends on the bus, on their way to work, after narrowly escaping a possible accident. Rose talks a lot, and preferably about what her friend Tolani should do with her life and her boyfriend, while Tolani herself only gives laconic replies. Both face an uphill struggle trying to survive in the chaotic metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria, in a society dominated by men who tend to be unreliable, molesting, or even criminal.

Tolani doesn’t appear to be very good at getting her way through dialogue, even though there is a lot of it going on. Somehow, it never goes her way, and she always ends up swallowing her pride. Her employers kick her around, her useless boyfriend squanders her savings, her mother tells her everything except what she needs to know, and her friend Rose signs the pair of them up for a trip as drug mules, which, again, requires Tolani to swallow her pride, not to mention a condom filled with cocaine.

With its colourful representation of everyday life in Nigeria, this short novel (like Atta’s debut, Everything good will come) is very engaging - at least in the short term, for 10 or 20 pages. I especially enjoyed the swipes at us western people (“oyinbo” seems to be the Yoruba equivalent to “gringo”), such as: “… oyinbos write theories about things they can’t understand, and by the time they finish, you can’t understand either, even if they’re writing about you.” (p. 167) However, given the very slow pace of the progress our heroine makes, the reading experience is also a little bit frustrating in the longer term. This may very well be intentional, reflecting the frustration that this woman suffers every day. (Atta's debut novel was a coming of age story, so there naturally was a bit more of direction to it.) Only in the very last paragraph she seems to have picked herself up. “It’s my turn to speak,” she says. About time, too.



amazon.co.uk

everything good will come

Taking a break from plugging my new book, I will plug my mum's instead. She has translated "Everything good will come" by Nigerian writer Sefi Atta, and the German version should appear this month at Peter Hammer Verlag, looking like this:



For details visit www.sigridgross.com

It's a coming-of-age story set in the chaotic (and often dangerous) city of Lagos. Atta is certainly an interesting new voice in the underappreciated field of African literature.

PS I'll take this opportunity to emphasize that Peter Hammer Verlag is not a publishing company founded by a Mr Hammer. It is named thus after a tradition going back over centuries of publishing texts that were threatened by censorship under a fictional imprint, which was sometimes given as "Pierre Marteau" and sometimes as the German equivalent "Peter Hammer". The whole point of the exercise being that the person Peter Hammer did not exist. So it's both amusing and somewhat frustrating to read on booksellers websites and in reviews something like Published by Hammer, or by Hammer, Peter.