A Luminous Republic – The Stunning Strangeness & Marvel of Barba’s World

For children, the world is a museum in which the adult guardians might be loving most of the time, but that doesn’t stop them from imposing rules: everything there is solid, everything has always already existed, long before them. In exchange for love, the children are required to uphold the myth of their innocence. Not only do they have to be innocent, they have to perform it. 

In Such Small Hands, Spanish writer Andres Barba delves into the unsettling, hyper-real world of a girl-child as she attempts to come to terms with her trauma. With A Luminous Republic (published April 20 & translated to English by Lisa Dillman), Barba explores the depths of human soul and the truths about childhood through a enigmatic tale of feral children. Narrated by a lulling yet a detached unnamed narrator, A Luminous Republic is set in a fictional Argentinean city of San Cristobal. Our narrator recounts the strange events of 1995, who is sent to San Cristobal by the social services department to develop a social integration programme for indigenous communities.

The narrator recalls moving to the city in April 1993 with his music teacher wife Maia and her daughter, also named Maia, whom our narrator simply addresses as ‘The Girl’. San Cristobal is Maia’s native place. In the early portion of the novel, the narrator, a total outsider, concisely sketches the portrait of the city – its river, the vast jungle, the marginalization of Nee Indians, etc. The narration is filled with the dichotomies, especially in the contrast he sees between the order of city and the anarchy of jungle. Yet it is not the Nee community that’s labeled ‘the other’ or bands together to disrupt our narrator’s efforts for ‘social integration’.

What unsettles the San Cristobalites is the arrival of thirty-two mendicant children of both sexes, aged between nine and thirteen, and speaking a strange language. The narrator discusses various theories related to the children’s identity, but they remain elusive figures till the end. Initially, the children scavenge in groups and commit minor thefts. When the children’s mischief offends the San Cristobal adults, they decide to take drastic actions. And the turmoil gradually leads to 1995 Dakota Supermarket incident, culminating in a savage attack as the pack of gutter kids kills two and grievously injures three.

The city’s inhabitants, feeling besieged, sets out to apprehend the little marauders, but they all disappear into the jungle. Soon, the Dakota event becomes a national sensation as it captures the imagination of media, academicians, and the general public. The mystery behind the thirty-two’s origin and disappearance deeply impacts the psyche of San Cristobalites that soon the city’s children vanish into the jungle to join the young fugitives. Hyperbolized by fairy-tales and uncanny theories, the thirty-two’s alleged viciousness and power over the San Critstobalites extends beyond the sum of their actions. It all leads to more violence and deaths. Moreover, the fate of the thirty-two is made clear in the slim novel’s first sentence: “When I’m asked about the thirty-two children who lost their lives in San Cristóbal, my response varies depending on the age of my interlocutor.”

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Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba

Named as the Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists by Granta magazine, Andres Barba's simple prose relies on evocative and rich aphorisms. The narrator telling the events, with the benefit of hindsight, imparts a philosophical depth to emotions and actions (“Love and fear have one thing in common: they are both states in which we allow ourselves to be fooled and guided, we entrust another person to control our beliefs and, what’s more, our destiny”). Mr. Barba is not interested in creating conflicts or sustaining expectations. By attuning the story in the post-truth context, the author offers the choice to get lost in the narrator’s metaphors-filled world which eventually bestows a strange allegorical dimension to the behavior of ‘bad-seed’ children.

Two things about the thirty-two unsettle the narrator and the San Cristobal people: the lack of hierarchy and the language they speak. Both corroborate the ‘otherness’ of the children. The dichotomy pushes us to draw our own allegories equating the anxieties of adult society with the capitalist structure while the thirty-two representing the anarchy as well as the beauty of an alternate society. Beneath the stoicism and violence of the thirty-two, there seems to be space for lyricism in their divergence, closely glimpsed in the literal subterranean walk during the novel’s final chapters. Even without striving to pluck out allegories from the story, A Luminous Republic deftly explores fascinating themes such as humanity’s penchant for violence, the innocence myth of childhood, and social conformity. It’s a tale of social destabilization that sounds more eerie and haunting in the wake of the pandemic.

The Tidal Zone – A Mesmerizingly Written Novel about Contemporary Parenthood

“Civilization, after all, survives on repression: probably all marriages, all families, require the silencing of words that, once spoken, could not be unsaid.”

Few pages into English writer Sarah Moss’ The Tidal Zone (published in 2016), I was thoroughly engrossed by the beauty of the author’s prose and the deeper truths it discloses. Moss brilliantly decodes human emotions in a way that immediately makes us recognize, understand, and empathize with the characters she has sketched. This is my first Sarah Moss novel and although the synopsis didn’t seem that interesting, I’m glad to have had the determination to give it a try. The Tidal Zone is an exploration of 21^st century family life and parenthood, which opens with a rather gloomy incident, pushing a middle-class English family to look beyond the drudgery and bliss of their domestic life. It sounds like something director Michael Haneke could make, even though Moss’ tender observations and intimate point-of-view narrative isn’t saddled with misanthropy.

Sarah Moss’ fifth novel unfurls from the perspective Adam Goldschmidt, a stay-at-home dad who does a bit of hourly-paid teaching at the local university. He also spends his free time researching on the postwar rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. However, Adam’s biggest joy is being the primary caregiver to his two lovely daughters: bookish and assertive 15-year-old Miriam and the precocious 8-year-old Rose. Adam is married to Emma, a workaholic GP with no talent for domestic duties, but greatly qualified to be the family’s sole breadwinner. There’s neither a sneering commentary on how children are affected when the parental roles are reversed nor unbridled scorn is reserved for the mom who ‘chooses’ career over children. Frustrations are expressed over Adam-Emma’s increasingly distant married life, sans the usual cliched message of motherhood.

What’s primarily interesting about The Tidal Zone is the inner monologue of an anxious Adam. He thinks (and worries) a lot, but like every one of us, he endlessly edits his inner flow of words to offer the allegedly prompt replies. As an unemployed PhD, Adam provides insights on range of themes: from post-World War II England to healthcare politics and the design of corporate housing estates. His insights about his family members are equally interesting, particularly his concern for his rebellious elder daughter, who says “patriarchy and hegemony and neoliberalism, several times a day”. And through his perceptions, we can discern the kind of person Adam is: a caring, generous, absurdly anxious, and an imperfect husband and dad. Adam’s existential malaise is stoked when Miriam, at school, goes into anaphylactic cardiac arrest. For some unknown reasons, Miriam heart has stopped. But thanks to CPR performed by a teacher and perfect timing of the paramedics, Miriam is saved.

Nevertheless, the family’s life and dynamics is transformed irrevocably. The sudden discernment of his daughter’s mortality evokes great fear within Adam. He has to face the hardships of the domestic life in the wake of this, while also enduring the fears about his children’s future. An incident from the past makes Adam wonder whether Miriam’s situation is genetic. But he curbs his anxieties and holds the family together. He still takes Rosie to school, who can’t easily fathom the reasons behind her sister slacking off at hospital, watching TV. He puts up with Emma, who approaches the crisis in a very GP-like manner (offering diagnosis rather than acknowledge the chasm of uncertainty). But we understand this is Emma’s coping mechanism. And although we might be far removed -- culturally or socially -- from the Goldschimdt family, the emotional unrest described here could be understood and easily related with. From capturing the boredom, desperation, and joys of family life to the silent horror of hospital environment, Sarah Moss’ has written a very 21^st century story with admirable clarity and depth.

The Tidal Zone, however, seems to fall a bit short of greatness since  I began to lose interest in the story in the middle-portions. I can understand that the novel is a character study and an exploration of contemporary English life. Yet the historical aspects of the novel (Coventry Church) and the story of Adam’s hippie father’s journey in chase of American dream weren’t as absorbing. It brings a sort of thematic depth to the tale, which I didn’t care for much (from an emotional viewpoint). The most intriguing aspect of the novel was Adam’s attempts to connect with Miriam, once after learning the fears and restrictions she has to put up with. These father-daughter conversations not only reach emotional depths without a bit of sentimentality, but also contain a fine dose of caustic wit (Miriam says, “If it happens again and I don’t survive, burn me, OK? It’s better for environment; there isn’t room for everyone to be buried”, to which Adam remarks, “It can’t be better for the environment. Burning requires energy and generates smoke. Burial’s just entropy.”) Moreover, everything about Adam and Miriam’s relationship is beautifully depicted; the father who is very proud of his daughter’s bold assertions even though he publicly plays the role of typical dad (“You can’t speak like that” he says to curtail her declamations). And you get the sense of how Miriam is both frustrated and moved by her father’s overwhelming attention. Overall, The Tidal Zone despite its minor structural flaws is a poignant and extraordinary novel about parental love.   

 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – A Significant and Subversive Classic of Modern Soviet Literature

“Rejoice that you are in prison. Here you can think of your soul”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (published November 1962) is a slender book, telling us a very simple story in a simple format. It’s easy to finish it in a single sitting (and I’d recommend that to have an immersive reading experience). Yet Solzhenitsyn’s story tells us something deep about history, inhumane political system, and human dignity which fat historical textbooks utterly fail to convey. Early in the novel, the titular character Ivan Denisovich Shukhov wonders, “Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?” Solzhenitsyn’s austere yet powerful narration serves as a bridge of empathy, transporting us into a cold, inhumane world to feel the hunger, humiliation, hopelessness, powerlessness, and also small delights of one gulag prisoner.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is enriched by Solzhenitsyn’s sharp realism, devoid of sentimentality or strong emotions. The emotions are a luxury, only we readers could afford. Because the man living in the earth-bound hell can only focus on how to get through the day which involves avoiding punishment, fighting the cold, and overcoming the hunger. It’s a document of human suffering although it’s chiseled with words that are fundamentally life-affirming. In the midst of an unbelievably cruel reality, a man survives keeping his dignity intact. It’s what makes Solzhenitsyn’s novel one of the finest literature; not just a book for history students interested in gulags and Stalinist era.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published nearly a decade after Stalin’s death, the publication sanctioned by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in an effort to debunk Stalin's personality cult (the ‘thaw’ went on for a brief period). The novel’s description of life inside the forced labor camps naturally shook the Soviet Union. Although after Khruschev’s removal from power in 1964, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn faced numerous threats, he released his masterwork ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ – a three-volume literary-historical account of the vast ‘slave labor economy’ – in the year 1973. Before that in 1970, Solzhenitsyn received Nobel Prize [the Soviet disinformation campaign against the writer only escalated after Nobel Prize and publication of Gulag Archipelago].

The brilliance of the novel lies in the character Solzhenitsyn chooses to narrate his single day. Unlike the writer, who himself spent 8 years of his life in such camps (between 1945 and 1953), Ivan Denisovich Shukhov isn’t an intellectual, constantly predisposed to philosophical thinking. Solzhenitsyn doesn’t extrapolate his ego to create Shukhov. This distance or removal was what makes it an ingenious literary work, and not simply a memoir-turned-novel. Comrade Shukhov or convict SHCHA-854 belongs to the 104^th gang of the gulag’s 9^th hut. The gulag was one of the cold-blooded schemes designed by Soviet Supreme leader – the Red Tsar -- to meet the needs of both Soviet industry and economy. Zek is the word used in the novel to describe a gulag inmate. When the novel opens in 1951, Shukhov has already spent 8 out of his 10 year prison-term. He is a decent man who like the majority of members in the camp did nothing wrong to deserve the harsh sentence. He wants to take one day at a time, starting his day by getting up from his sawdust-filled mattress in which he hides a small daily ration of bread.

Shukhov goes through the day by circumventing web of invisible snares – from punishing climate, furious guards to fellow wrathful inmates – and hopes to finish it in the same sawdust-filled mattress, nibbling the black, stale bread. Shukhov takes us through the unwritten rules that must be followed to survive a typical work-day in the camps. Apart from the things Shukhov must do to keep himself warm in order to gain extra mouthful of soup or a bite of bread, we get a sense of the zek’s palpable fear, boredom plus small victories and joys (“That bowl of soup—it was dearer than freedom, dearer than life itself, past, present, and future”). Solzhenitsyn’s unadorned prose not only allows us to attune to Shukhov’s emotionality, but also to his sensory experiences. Even if I had never smoked in my life, I could feel the warmth Shukhov receives after taking a puff from the cigarette or the way he counts his bread makes us share his sense of triumph (“…got four hundred grams of bread, and another two hundred, and at least two hundred in his mattress…. He was really living it up!”). The description of hunger and the feelings recounted by the meager nourishment really gets to you (“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow”, Shukhov wryly observes).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Soviet journalist and writer Vitaly Korotich has remarked, “We were absolutely isolated from information, and he [Solzhenitsyn] started to open our eyes………. The Soviet Union was destroyed by information, only information. And this wave started from Solzhenitsyn's One Day.” Even though the power ‘One Day’ held in Soviet slowly waned, while the Stalinist policies are continuing to be embraced and championed by the contemporary Russian establishment, the novel remains as much more than a damning indictment on the staggering injustices of Stalinism. It’s a celebration of human dignity, and the power of the human ability to adapt and empathize. Overall, it’s a study of the spark of humanity that survives through subhuman condition.

P.S.: Please read H. T. Willetts’ translation, the one translated from canonical Russian text and authorized by the author himself.

 

Lilith’s Brood –A Thought-Provoking Alien-Intervention Story

“Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient.”

Lilith’s Brood (earlier referred to as ‘Xenogenesis’) was the trilogy of science fiction novels written by Octavia E. Butler, one of the very few African-American female writers of sci-fi. The books (published between 1987 and 1989) is set in a world ravaged by nuclear holocaust and the survivors of human species are abducted by the grotesque, tentacled, and slightly humanoid alien higher beings known as Oankali. The first book Dawn unfolds from the perspective of a young black woman named Lilith Iyapo. She is awakened 250 years after the nuclear holocaust on an enormous ship orbiting earth. Over the years, in brief sessions (that lasts over few days to few months), Lilith’s behavioral patterns were scrutinized by her captors and now she is deemed fit for the ‘task’ at hand.

Lilith is initially revolted by the English-speaking Oankalis’ visage and bizarre physicality, but she gets used to them during her stay with the alien family. Dawn is obviously the most intense book in the trilogy, since we stumble upon this strange new world populated with mysterious sentient beings. The Oankali possesses natural-born talent for genetic engineering. They had already genetically modified Lilith to free her body from the cancer cells (furthermore, her ageing is lessened and healing powers are stepped-up). Another unique aspect of Oankali is their family unit, which consists of a male, female, and a third gender called as ‘Ooloi’. Oolois are sexless, whose job is to accept genetic materials from the parents, add its own, and then impregnate the female. Oankali receive sexual pleasure only through their Ooloi whose sensory tentacles serve this purpose (among other complex fuctions). While the Oankali on the whole are a race of natural healers and gene modifiers, the oolois are specifically trained for these things and are pivotal to search the cosmos for continuing their tradition of making successful ‘trades’.

Lilith Iyapo is told that she has been chosen, trained and genetically modified in order to awaken other humans (first batch of 40 English-speaking members) so that they all can return to earth. Yes, the Oankali promises to restore earth, but there’s a catch (to make it sound less threatening, the aliens call it ‘a trade’): the new Earth will only be home to the Oankali-Human hybrid race (the oolois would replace the touch-based sexual proclivities of human race with their own ways). The new children, born to five parents (male-female Oankalis, male-female humans, and a ooloi) will inherit the earth until the time the hybrid species makes their own voyage into space to forge fresh ‘trades’. There’s an added benefit to this the Oankali says, i.e., the humans’ destructive impulses and hierarchical tendencies would be ‘cured’ (“We will moderate your hierarchical problems and you will lessen our physical limitations”, says a ooloi to Lilith). And let's not forget that the new humans and their offsprings will live for a long period (without any fear of terminal diseases).

Although Lilith makes friends with a young ooloi named Nikanj and her adoptive Oankali family, she is conflicted by what she sees as a betrayal to humanity. She feels the only possible way to free themselves from the Oankali is to break away from them, the instance they are set on earth to colonize. As she fears, Lilith is considered the ‘Judas’ by surviving human race and she’s never able to distance herself from oankali and ooloi mates. The humans who get away from the aliens live in different small to medium-sized colonies and are known as ‘resisters’. Since all of these ‘resisters’ come from the space ship, the Oankali has genetically modified them for a prolonged life. However, they have also seen to it that the humans are sterilized, making the complex three-way genetic exchange(via an ooloi) the only choice of reproduction.

The 2^nd book in the trilogy, Adulthood Rites, tells the story of Lilith’s first-born male ‘construct’ – the term for Oankali-Human hybrids. He is named Akin, who is mostly human. Akin is kidnapped and sold to a ‘resister’ village. He grows up understanding his human side and speaks for human-rights which the Oankali has so far dismissed dispassionately. The third book, Imago follows Jodahs, also Lilith’s child who becomes the first ‘construct’ Ooloi. Adulthood Rites and Imago certainly lacks the complexity (and feels boringly repetitive). Moreover, the 2^nd& 3^rd book offers us characters that are so distant and uninteresting when compared with Lilith (and her deeply conflicted stance).

Octavia Butler

Lilith’s Brood chiefly excels in the characterizations of oankali and human race. The oankali has perfectly understood the fundamental flaw in humanity: its predisposition to hierarchy. Despite intelligence, this tendency leads humans to create divisions and set up limits for ‘normalcy’ amongst themselves. Anyone, who falls outside the limits or obscure the divisions receives punishment and gets ostracized. The oankali puts forth inter-breeding as the only way to eradicate this human ‘problem’. On the outset, oankalis are benevolent, they never believe in violence, and are also environmentally responsible. So the aliens might change humanity for better, right? Nevertheless, like Lilith we feel conflicted in seeing these higher intelligent beings as saviors. For one, oankalis’ violation of human race reflects the worst of human behaviors in history: internment camps, colonialism, slavery, etc. Despite calling their society egalitarian, a form of hierarchy exists between the three genders within the family unit. Oankalis certainly don’t lie, but they withhold significant information from humans (that are as devastating as lies). Eventually, the most distressing aspect of oankali is their forced interbreeding techniques (the coercion and manipulation of Lilith is particularly fury-inducing). Of course, the humans of post-apocalyptic world don’t prove wrong the alien species’ discourse. The resisters live in small, scattered groups, and continue to threaten each other with violence and rape. Within few decades, they make guns and men trade materials to gain female sex-slaves. Autonomy seems limited within both species although the oankali promises transformation for better (which human race can’t).

Apart from avoiding simple characterizations (of both human and alien race), Lilith’s Brood is fascinating to read because of its spellbinding meditations on race, sexuality and gendered identity. A lot of analysis has seen oankali as the allegorical representation of the 'benevolent' masters of new world who owned slaves without remorse (some have compared the extra-terrestrial interference with cultural appropriation that’s rampant in the era of globalization). The fear over genetic manipulation is yet another significant theme that permeates the story. Octavia Butler’s writing is definitely adequate and engaging even if readers are less inclined to make allegorical readings. Dawn pretty much comes across as a body horror with Lilith slowly coming to terms with the oankalis’ gift for gene trading and particularly oolois’ role in reproduction. Interestingly, Butler cleverly leaves out feelings of titillation in her descriptions of inter-species sex. The idea of human-oankali interbreeding perhaps remains the most grimly fascinating aspect of Lilith’s brood, which thankfully doesn’t leave us with images of sleazy, uninventive images of tentacle-sex. The novels may also sound pessimistic and misanthropic, but you can surely find rays of hope. Even though Butler doesn’t provide a clear-cut resolution, she does hint at the possibility of affirmative transformation in humans. And the supreme gene-traders are also changed by their contact with humans. Overall, Lilith’s Brood talks of a new humanity in the future, which as Butler posits doesn’t need to have ‘alien’ origins, but can naturally arise from our predilection to examine and metamorphose the human genome.