Primeval and Other Times – An Intense & Deeply Poetic Fiction

“God sees. Time escapes. Death pursues. Eternity waits.”

On the outset, Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s Primeval and Other Times (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) looks like a historical novel, chronicling the turbulent century of war and political transition in the Polish countryside. But after relishing few pages of Tokarczuk’s prose, one filled with deftness and lyrical grace, it would be natural to hail the novel as a complex parable of human condition on the whole. The novel’s mystical note very much resides in the title ‘Primeval’. This imaginary village is described to exist near the Poland-Czech border and the tale spans between the World War I period (1914) and the beginning of Solidarity Movement (in 1980s). Yet the village name ‘Primeval’ and the early description of its surroundings bring up a sacred, mythical feeling as if the place itself stands outside the constraints of time and space. The borders of the provincial village are said to be guarded by the four archangels Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel, and two rivers – Black and White River – flow through the village, which remains as a symbol of dichotomy that preoccupies human existence (joy & sorrow, masculine & feminine, light & darkness, etc).

Primeval describes the trials and tribulations of three generations of Polish families in a morally, socially, and physically transitioning landscape of the Polish countryside. The story consists of numerous characters and each chapter unfurls from the perspective of these different individuals. Each characters showcase how the bucolic lives of the people of Primeval was tainted by the First and the Second World War, the Nazi and Russian occupation. The collective voices reflect the complex reality as the fate of one individual narrator is casually expressed in the words of another narrator and so on. Niebieski & Boski families occupy a prominent place in the narrative. Nevertheless, even spirits and objects turn into omniscient narrators, telling us their observation of humans. All chapters start with the word ‘The Time of…..’ which conveys the limitations and unfettered desires of people with respect to time. But after reading the lives of these different generations of people portrayed within 200 plus pages, we get a sense of timelessness; almost as if the events of past, present, and future exists in the same plane and the people repeatedly gets torn part by the malevolent forces of history.  

 Olga Tokarczuk

While the experiences of the peasants, squires, Jews, Catholics, children, etc are captivating, what sets it apart is Tokarczuk's inquisitory language, her magnificent metaphors, her wealth of imagination, which rejects many of the conventional traits of historical and cultural narratives. The author's whimsical and rueful prose reminds us of the magical realist techniques of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and dirtiest, distorted-realism of Laszlo Krasznahorkai. With one beguiling episode after another, 'Primeval' interestingly re-imagines history, ruminates on the cyclical nature of time, man's relationship with God, and death's inevitability.

Originally published in 1996, Primeval was translated to English in 2009 (by Twisted Spoon Press). The release immediately established Tokarczuk’s international reputation, which is bound to soar higher after the recent Man Booker International Prize (for ‘Flights’, shared with translator Jennifer Croft). In 2014, the author published an epic novel ‘Ksiegi jakubowe’ (‘The Book of Jacob'), which despite receiving acclaims and awards also attracted hostile reactions from Polish national-conservative groups. Amidst controversies, hate mails, and death threats, the craving for Olga Tokarczuk’s novels among readers around the world has increased substantially. Primeval is my introduction to the author’s mythical tone of writing and has initiated a fixation to hunt down for all of her translated works and read it as soon as possible. Overall, Primeval and Other Times (248 pages) is a pretty mesmerizing novel which withholds the nuggets of historical and existential truths.

 

The Thirteenth Tale – A Well-Written but an Emotionally Unsatisfying Gothic Mystery

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

British author Diane Setterfield’s debut novel The Thirteenth Tale (published September 2006) has an interesting set-up that would appeal to the book-lovers. Margaret Lea, a woman so besotted with reading that she makes sure she is sitting down, or else would fall over and hurt herself while plunging deep into the story. Margaret works in her father’s humble bookshop near Cambridge. She spends time at the store, meticulously arranging the books, studying worn-out long forgotten volumes, do research in order to write biographies on obscure literary and historical figures, and attends to small number of visitors. When Margaret is not working, she retreats back to her abode above the bookshop, and gets engulfed in the world of words, lighting her reading space with circle of candles. Just when we start to wonder how one could sustain a life-style with such an economically inadequate arrangement, Margaret tells us about her father’s antiquarian book-dealer job. As she says, the bookshop is her father’s slightly expensive indulgence.

These opening passages mesmerizingly guides us deep into the world of a book-lover, her ruminations on the joy of reading, inhaling the smell of old books, her preference of books over people, all such ingrained thought-process a solitude-loving bibliophile could easily relate to. Diane Setterfield perfectly uses this hook to establish her Gothic suspense narration. Despite living the life of a hermit, an outsider reaches Margaret in the form of a letter. The letter is from Miss Vida Winters, a celebrated author whose novels have bewitched readers across the world for decades. Unfortunately, Margaret hasn’t read one of her novels. How could she be a book-lover and not read the book of a renowned contemporary author? Margaret has an answer for that too: she only reads the works of 19^th century works (“There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere”). Nevertheless, Winters’ prose in the letter enamors Margaret so much that she hunts through her father’s treasured collection and starts reading Winters’ debut work; a collection of short stories titled ‘The Thirteen Tales’.

Miss Vida Winters’ personal life and past have always been a mystery to the reporters and her fans. Twenty two biographers have tried to tell the story of Winters’ life but totally failed. Moreover, being a storyteller, Miss Winters herself spins different stories about her past and feeds it to journalists (in one she is aristocrat, in another a poor orphan, and so on). But now in her 70s, Winters has asked Margaret Lea to pen the veritable biography. While Margaret instantly falls in love with the way Miss Winters conjures words like a sorcerer, she wonders why would the famous writer chose her – the obscure biography author – to tell the truth. Nevertheless, Margaret decides to travel and meet-up with Winters as mentioned in the letter. Even before meeting the great writer, Margaret discovers an oddity about her first book.

 Veteran British actress Vanessa Redgrave played Miss Vida Winters and Olivia Colman played Margaret Lea in the TV movie based on the novel

Though titled as ‘Thirteen Tales’, there’s only 12 stories in the book. In the latter, well-publicized editions, the title has been changed to ‘Tales of Change and Desperation’. The stories were profound retelling of classic fairy tales, which Margaret terms it as ‘'brutal, sharp and heartbreaking’. Connoisseurs of Miss Winters’ stories have long speculated that the missing thirteenth tale may contain clue to the writer’s cryptic past. Subsequently, Margaret arrives at the designated Gothic mansion and immerses herself into the mystery of who Vida Winter is. She is irresistibly drawn to the Angelfield house at Yorkshire, home to generations of patricians and where Miss Winter supposedly grown-up with her identical twin sister. And as the tale unfolds, constantly interspersed with Margaret’s thoughts, the Angelfield house’ nasty, chilling secrets slowly comes to light. Furthermore, Margaret’s troubled life and her own family secret she bears like a scar, persistently haunts her.

Diana Setterfield tries to incorporate Victorian themes of sibling relationships, liberation, and identity. The story of Miss Winters contains clear parallels to the classic gothic novels: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Turn of the Screw, etc. Sudden twists, intriguing mystery, hint of perverse behavior, rambunctious children, and emotionally-broken adults, the novel has all the atmosphere and elements to deftly unravel the threads and provide the answers. Yet something feels amiss in the story-telling; something which keeps us at a distance, rendering the developments in the middle portions either uninteresting or tedious. Although Setterfield teases us with the spectacle of haunting, there’s no eerie, uncomfortable feeling. The initially fascinating premise becomes repetitive in certain areas (especially when it comes to explaining the twin sibling relationship and Margaret’s deep sense of loss).

Setterfield bestows information from different points and even includes a damaged diary towards the end to closely scrutinize Miss Winters’ truth. But for all the information carefully spread throughout the book, the ending seems a bit rushed and the twist remains very thin (irrespective of its credibility). It’s a smart decision to keep us guessing the time period Miss Winters’ tale is set, but Setterfield’s writing somewhat lacks the real Victorian or Edwardian feel, which was elegantly brought out by contemporary writers like Sarah Waters and A.S. Byatt. Nevertheless, the author’s lively prose kept me engrossed, even when I was emotionally detached from the characters. There are quite a few quote-worthy excerpts, championing the pleasure of reading and the power of story-telling. Altogether, The Thirteenth Tale has an interesting premise and it is beautifully written, whilst I wasn’t thoroughly swept up by the gothic atmosphere and dubious character sketches.  

Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy – A Mind-Blowing Science-Fiction Epic

“It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?”

 

“Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is”

The English translation of Chinese author Cixin Liu’s SF series, collectively known as ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’ – comprising ‘The Three-Body Problem’, ‘Dark Forest’ & ‘Death’s End’ – is purported as a milestone in the history of sci-fi literature. The Three-Body Problem (translated by Ken Liu) became the first non-English novel to win the Hugo Award (for best sci-fi). Soon, everyone from Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama to established authors like George R.R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson heaped praise on the Cixin Liu for masterfully weaving a complex web of science, philosophy, and history. The three books were published in China between 2008 ad 2010 and its English-translated counterparts were released between 2014 and 2016 (Ken Liu translated the 1^st & 3^rd books, while Joel Martinsen translated the middle part, and all 3 books published by Tor Books).

Cixin Liu’s multi-layered novels are exactly the kind of books that immerses its readers into the highly imaginative, confounding issues of galaxies and cosmos that our very reality and suffering becomes a trifling matter during that time. It was a torturous nine days for me, because I had to count the passing of hours and minutes dedicated to fulfill the day-to-day obligations, before getting the chance to sit peacefully and read the riveting SF epic. I got chills from going through many of the spectacular, pull-the-rug-from-under kind of moments. It’s important to note that the trilogy is a tragedy of epic proportions. The tone alternates between lyricism, somberness, hope, passion, and despair. The foremost question of the books has been asked for many decades by people of science: Will humanity reach for the stars or face ruthless decimation by confining itself to home-planet? The answer Liu provides is by turns terrifying and subversive. Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy presents a dazzlingly complex scenario to postulate on the future of humanity, solar system and even the cosmos. Despite the vast, macro scale of issues dealt in the novels, Cixin Liu elegantly guides into this imaginary realm, contextualizing high-end, theoretical physics for readers only armed with basic scientific knowledge.

Author Cixin Liu

The three novels are best read without getting acquainted with great number of its plot details. Even divulging what Three-Body Problem is about would somehow affect the thrilling reading experience. Those who’d like to receive maximum thrills from a hard sci-fi could just skip any reviews (including this one) and even avoid reading the blurb at the back of the book or in wikipedia, goodreads pages. ‘The Three-Body Problem’ purports a grimly fascinating scenario, already familiarized by Hollywood high-budget features: Alien Invasion. But the book doesn’t open straightly from the threat. It rather commences from the era of China’s merciless Cultural Revolution (between 1966 and 1976, following the ‘Great Leap Forward’). Cixin Liu brings us to witness one cruel moment in the Cultural Revolution: a distinguished physicist and university professor is tortured and humiliated by Red Guards in front of his family and delirious mass of students. Ye Wenjie, the scientist’s daughter, watches her father’s persecution and death at close range. Skeptical of Ye Wenjie’s political stance, Mao’s China ostracizes her to a remote rural mountain region to do hard labor. The rapid deforestation she sees there alongside the government’s stringent economic, political policies totally erodes Ye Wenjie’s hope in humanity.

Nevertheless, chain of events allows her to join a secret science project. It’s similar to America’s SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) institute, although the Chinese heavily lack in terms of technology and proper knowledge. Ye Wenjie’s recruitment renews the project’s scope for development and the political prohibition placed upon her is easily bypassed. Using her knowledge and newly-gained power, Wenjie craftily sends a message, announcing human existence, to perfectly reach into the distant corners of universe, unlike the usual radio-wave messages. To her surprise, eight years later, Wenjie receives a message back, which starts: “Do not answer! Do not answer! Do not answer!”. An alien pacifist warns her about reaching out to other intelligent life in the universe. But Wenjie’s complete loss of faith in humanity makes her ignore the warning and to send another clear-cut message into space. What follows is utter chaos and forces Earth civilization to comprehend the darkest rules driving the cosmic civilization at large.

Cixin Liu’s narration is RR Martin-esque, especially in the way he wipes out little rays of hope through sudden onslaught of unpredictable dark turns (and of course, he kills off large number of characters). Apart from efficiently presenting complex scientific theories, some of Liu’s speculations seem scientifically plausible. He also excels in portraying the reality of political machinations that would plague and distort human societies forever. The foremost joy in reading the trilogy rests in the clever depiction of series of ideas that would even amaze seasoned sci-fi readers. Cixin Liu’s narration is unparalleled when it comes to delivering the big, unprecedented ideas about life's expansion in cosmos. He also conveys a sound macro picture so as to explore how human civilization would contract and expand, in the face of disorder.  In fact, the trilogy of novels is all about mesmerizing large-scale ideas, whereas the character realizations are mostly uninteresting or blank.

Of the three protagonists in the three novels, I only liked Luo Ji, who despite his hedonistic and nihilistic streak stays as a complex human being till the end. His despair, dilemma, and craftiness raises acute philosophical questions . Ye Wenjie & Wang Miao in ‘Three-Body Problem’ and Cheng Xin in ‘Death’s end’ don’t have much of a personality (Liu’s ideas about gender has attracted many criticisms too). At times, they seem to be just there to acclimatize readers to each ‘New Age’ and confounding scientific theories. The sensitive and lovely Cheng Xin is the blandest central character in the series (of course, the worst decision-maker in the whole universe), making us experience her leap through time only from an emotionally detached point. However, as I mentioned earlier, it’s the brilliant ideas that drive the three novels. I liked ‘Dark Forest’ – middle book – the most. It swiftly escalates the complexity of the scenario developed in ‘Three-Body Problem’. Particularly, the last third of Dark Forest is not only one of the best segments in the series, but in the whole of SF literature. Starting from the international star fleet’s rapid annihilation to Luo Ji’s spine-chilling delivery of ‘dark forest theory’, I was suspended on a state of unease and tension. The game universe in ‘Three-Body Problem’ and the space-fleet crew members’ trip into the fourth dimension in ‘Death’s End’ are some of the other spectacular portions to originate from Cixin Liu’s superior imagination.   

I didn’t much enjoy the conclusive chapters in Death’s End. The ideas were ambitious but it also felt over-stuffed. The light-speed travel, Black Domain, Universe 647, etc were all immense in terms of scope and conception, but it didn’t possess a shred of emotional underpinning, found in the ending portions of the first two novels. Eventually, the author attempts to not only tell the whole story of humanity’s future, but also travels across billions of years to envision the future of cosmos, which unexpectedly feels a bit frivolous and tedious (I had the same feeling while reading the final part of Neal Stephenson’s thought-provoking hard sci-fi ‘Seveneves’). But even after taking all its flaws into account, Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy is a great spectacle, which couldn’t be easily outmatched in terms of narrative magnitude and scientific notions. Amazon’s $1 billion dollar TV adaption might hopefully release this year, but books are generally the better choice.