books @ cc.

by Danilo Kiš (1983)

A collection of metaphysical short stories set in various times and places, luminously darkened with the themes of fate and death’s impenetrability. With strong political undercurrents and recondite personal insights, Kiš’s reworked facts, Gnostic, Biblical, Koran myths and legends, political situations, rural folktales, depicting the delicate multitude and vicissitude of human life, perhaps with less faux vérité style than A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, yet with the same finely-crafted prose, subtle ironies and detachment that is both powerful and constrained.

by Danilo Kiš (1976)

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich consists of seven different yet casually interlinked short stories about revolutionaries, mostly centering around the Russian Revolution and its blind Stalinist totalitarianism that arbitrarily consumes its children. In its loose labyrinth of characters, loose deeds, occurences and details artfully described, readers find shadows of Borgesian influence. While the literary polemic with Borges is unmistakably deliberate with his faux documentary style (particularly A Universal History of Iniquity), Kiš’ lyrical mastery is all the more remarkably powerful in his detached yet delicate constructions of the grim subjects.

by Orhan Pamuk (1979)

Part meta-, part historical fiction, The White Castle is the story of the narrator (whose name is never revealed), a young Italian savant and his ambivalent relationship with his Turkish double. In 17th century, caught by the Ottoman fleet during his journey from Venice to Naples, the narrator was brought to Istanbul as a slave, yet his various skilled knowledge acquired him better treatment and fame. Summoned to medicate the ailing pasha (and suceeding), he was then dispensed to assist the Hoja — a master-teacher — who could easily pass for his twin.

by Natsume Soseki (1922)

Botchan, a young Japanese “black sheep of the family”, a younger son that fell short from his older brother, is a “straight-shooter” with a knack for troubles and misdeeds. With his family favouring his older brother, the only one who seems to genuinely care for him (and vice versa) is Kiyo, the woman-servant. When his father dies, he was given a small portion of the legacy but was disclaimed of any further family responsibility.

by Kenzaburo Oe (1964)

Bird, the anti-hero protagonist of this book, is the archetypal frustrated, alienated youth, resenting the burdens of responsibility that age and marriage has caged him in from reaching his utopian dream of travelling to Africa. Casting his life adrift, never bothering for (if not resentin) any purpose, never facing his problems, Bird is forced to face his newly-born baby, the final obligation that “may clang the door shut”: a deformed, vegetable infant.

A Biography of the Prophet
by Karen Armstrong (1991)

Initially written in the height of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses crisis in 1990 (with a new introduction for the post-9/11), the book was written not as an an all-inclusive biography, but rather as a readable introductory account of Muhammad’s (frequently misunderstood) life and teachings. There is, as such, much to find in the current context of the common (mis)conceptions of Islam, particularly in regard to the Rushdie affair, the question of jihad, polygamy, and female role in Islamic societies.

by Remy Sylado (2003)

A historical novel, the story of Kembang Jepun tells the story of a Menadonese child sold by her brother to Shinju in Kembang Jepun, Surabaya, to be trained, disguised, into an out-and-out Japanese geisha, and takes place from pre-Japanese colonial to post-independence era. The strength of the novel lies not on its romantic plot, but on its rich historical facts and nuances colouring its meticulously constructed universe.

by Elfriede Jelinek (1981)

A somewhat failed musical prodigy, the strict and rigid Erika Kohut taught piano at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory during the day and trawls the porn districts by night. Living (and still sleeping in one bed) with her domineering mother, who’s “old enough to be her grandmother”, her life has been congenitally forced along her Mother’s ideal.

Menjadi Mahasiswa di Uni Soviet
by Koesalah Soebagyo Toer (2003)

A collection of vignettes about his study in the former USSR, Kampus Kabelnaya is divided into two parts: the first written as a recollection, the second more of diary entry-like short pieces, written during Toer’s study. Most of the pieces in the first part are longer, carefully-thought of (taking age into consideration), while the second has the youthful (if sometimes naive) romanticism.

by Ahmadou Kourouma (1981)

The Suns of Independence, a short novel of early post-colonial Africa, tells the story of Fama, the prince of Horodugu region, ‘the last of the Dumbuya’ who had reigned over the Malinke. Inheriting the respect of the position title yet stripped from the power of the pre-Independence world, Fama and his wife, Salimata, struggles to fit in this ill-fitted world, “his efforts had brought about his ruin, for like aleaf that’s just been used to wipe somebody’s arse, once Independence had been won Fama was thrown to the flies and forgotten.”