This June plays host to a certain military parade, which many District citizens would very much like to avoid. Whether we like it or not, the event stands at our door. Before you mix yourself a stiff drink on the morning of June 14th, and if you are, for some reason, skipping out on [1] from the local goings-on.
First, consider Magda Szabó’s 1969 novel, Katalin Street, which has been translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix. Szabó’s novel immerses the reader into the lives of a tightly-knit group of friends, and we see them grow, mature, fall in love, and much more over the course of decades. Yet, we also see their lives completely upended by world war and military occupation. The flaws that each friend denies, or embraces, show the reader just how real these characters are. It is this humanness that stands out in Szabó’s novel: the guilt these characters feel not just from participation in war, but also proximity to war, will be a profound lesson for many readers. Yet it is not just proximity to war that sings out in this novel, but also how power is constructed, both in war time and after. June 14th would be a grand day to dive into this work. Rix’s translation does a wonderful job as well, and indeed it earned the 2018 Pen Translation Prize. Now, I do understand that narratives about the Second World War may be a touch cliché given the current moment, so my second and third recommendations situate themselves within different historical eras.
If the reader wants to embrace the ancient, as well as the psychological, Eastern German novelist Christa Wolf’s 1983[3] informer, but to do so is a grave literary error. Cassandra delves not only into the real human and psychological costs of war, but just as in the Ancient Greek, it explores the notion of not being believed when the truth is known to you. This may be, perhaps for readers in the District, a little too sharp a theme, but Cassandra gives readers a lexicon with which they can describe an all-too-common feeling: knowing something bad is happening and not being able to convince anyone to do anything about it. Set in the Trojan War, this novel presents us with a thesis out of an immemorial past: what is the value of war when it causes nothing but pain, suffering, and collapse? This novel is translated from the German by Jan van Heurck.
Finally, readers may also consider Assia Djebar’s 1985 novel, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade. Dorothy S. Blair’s translation from the French does wonders, and this novel’s prose truly sings. Set over the course of a century of French colonial rule and Algerian resistance (from around 1830 to the revolution in the 1950s), this novel is not only prescient, and brutally honest, about the pervasive horrors of war (and of the resistance to war), but it is a genuine testament to Djebar’s status as one of the most talented novelists in all of the 20th Century. Blending together fiction, memoir, and history (oral history, official records, references to painters, Djebar’s reach in the novel is impressively wide), Djebar’s Fantasia rivals James Joyce’s Ulysses[4] in its experimentation. It is no wonder that despite the Académie Française’s reputation for being deeply conservative (at least from a language perspective, that is) why Djebar was itted into its exclusive hip, which was no small feat considering that she was the very first Northern African elected to the prestigious academy, and only the fifth woman. If you are looking for a widely overlooked masterpiece, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade is a must read.
All three of these novels weave a tapestry of undeniable perspective: no matter the era, no matter our history, we hope for peace in the face of war-caused chaos. All three writers experienced the collapse and mayhem of war and the powers that exploit war for their own means. What we can learn from these women is much: how to resist, how to speak truth to power, how to conduct ourselves inside of families undeniably tied up in all of this chaos, and how to grieve when all is lost. One thing is clear in any of these three novels: none of us are immune to proximity. . . So when you arise from your slumber on the morning of June 14th and greet the morning light, consider it a moment, like any other, to enrich yourself with literature. Szabó, Wolf, and Djebar each present the reader with a sharp pen and a focused lens. While we may be shut up in our homes, or at least willfully avoiding certain goings-on, our minds are free to explore the realities presented by war and strife, and the blatant glorification of war itself, throughout history.
And if these recommendations are not enough, my own novel, Sing Lazarus, is being published on June 13th, and I would humbly state that it will be a worthy distraction as well.
George Koors is a novelist and is the author of Sing Lazarus and Always the Wanderer. You can email him at [email protected], follow him on Instagram or YouTube @gbk7288, or visit his website georgekoors.com. George has in-depth videos about all three novels presented in this article on his YouTube channel.
[1] Likewise, all three of these novels are relatively short, that is under 300 pages, so well worth a quick weekend read.
[2] That is right, where many US American readers may credit Madeline Miller for feminist rewrites of Ancient Greek mythology, Christa Wolf published this brilliant feminist novel when Miller was just five years old. Miller’s novels remain well worth a read.
[3] The Staatssicherheitsdienst was an intelligence agency which spied on its own citizens with famous intensity. Cassandra is filled with commentary on the Stasi and the paranoia they engendered. For a highly informative film about the Stasi, see Das Leben der Anderen or The Lives of Others.
[4] Yes, I will absolutely stand by this claim. Read 100 pages of Fantasia and you will see why!
