Kamo no Chamo - Hojoki

Hojoko, ("An Account of My Hut" or "The Ten Foot Square Hut") was written in 1212. It shows the diversity of Japanese medieval life. For a book that old it appears very up to date as many of its topics sound all too familiar to modern man: politics, social problems and natural disasters. People faced problems similar to ours today and so we have to ask ourselves: has mankind learned at all?

Hojoki (An Account of My Hut) is one of the most important works of Japanese literature. Its new sino-japanese style became the basis for modern literature in Japan. It is especially well known for his opening:

The current of the flowing river does not cease, and yet the water is not the same water as before. The foam that floats on stagnant pools, now vanishing, now forming, never stays the same for long. So, too, it is with the people and dwellings of the world

Kamo no Chamo was born as Kamo no Nagaakira in 1153 or 1155. His father was head of Shimogamo Jinja, one of the most important Shinto shrines in Kyoto. Therefore the family had a good relationship with the Tenno which brought forward the father's career. Even the boy received a rank at court at the age of seven.
After the 12th century change of regimes the father lost his position in 1170. Soon after that the father died and Kama no Chamo's hope to succeed his father at the shrine vanished.

For the following thirteen years he lived at his family's estate, probably the hut mentioned in the book was placed here. During this period, he focused on music and poetry solely, which was quite typical for the Heian time). In his late twenties he became a student of the famous poet and Buddhist priest Shun'e. He released a collection of 106 poems and established himself among the poets of his time.
After being pretermitted of becoming the head of the Tadasu shrine he was able to become the head of a marginal shrine which provided him with a save income and rank.

From 1204 to 1209 he lived in Ohara, north of Kyoto in an established refuge for lords who were tired of their lives. Here they could rest for a while or step out of their official lives and become monks of the Tendai sect. But Chamo left Ohara in 1209 and retreated to a small hut in the mountains that a friend of the family offered him. Only in 1211 he was ready to leave his life in solitude behind, when he had the possibility to become the poetry teacher of the young Shogun. But negotiations weren't successful and he returned to the mountains where he wrote the following works:

mountains. There in Hino, he wrote his marginal writings.

- 1211 Mumyosho

- 1212 Hojoki

- 1214-1215 Hosshinshu - Collection about religious awaking.

Zoya Pirzad " Things We Left Unsaid"

The novel is placed in Abadan, a town near the Persian Gulf in southwestern Iran. Abadan is home to the world's biggest refinery which the town is town is built around. "Things we left unsaid" is set in 1962.

Clarisse, the novel's protagonist lives with her family in the town's Armenian community. She is the mother of two twin girls and an older teenage son. Her leftist husband works as an engineer and therby provides for a life in safety and moderate wealth.

She has no time time to think about her life, the life she'd like to lead or love. Her days are filled by cleaning the house, preparing meals and looking after the children. But this changes when a new family moves into the neighbourhood: a young widower moves to the house across the street with his daughter and his mother. She gets to know him as man that helps out, listens to her and even likes poetry as much as she does. For the first time she begins questioning the life she lives, her marriage and her own dreams. With her neighbor she actually starts to feel happy for the first time ever. But this happiness is not to last as her neighbor falls in love with a woman his age.
Beyond the personal development of Clarisse the book also is a wonderful introduction to the life and culture of the 60's Persia, a country more colorful and diverse than today's Iran. It shows a past that's almost forgotten, being a totalitarian monarchs but still not as reglemented as today's religious tyranny.

Los Enamoramientos

Javier Marias Los Enamoramientos  (The Infatuations) 2011 

In his latest novel, Los Enamoramientos, Javier Marias chooses a woman's perspective for the first time. The novel focuses on the blindness of love and how it can lead into a moral dilemma. The protagonist, a woman in her mid thirties, visits a coffee shop on a daily basis. And each day, she notices a couple who seem to be in a perfect relationship full of love. One day she learns from the newspaper, that the man has been murdered.

When she meets the woman again, she condoles with her on the tragic loss. She's invited to the woman's home where she meets a friend of the family who soon becomes her lover. Slowly it is revealed that this man could be connected to the murder. The man states that is was a case of assisted suicide as the dead suffered from disease. It remains unclear if this is the truth or if the protagonist's new lover committed a cold blooded murder due to his romantic interest in the deceased's spouse.
Upon realising the possible connection of her love to the killing, the protagonist distance herself from him, emotionally and physically. Even he tries to explain himself to her they end up seperating. In the aftermath, the suspect finally gains his presumed goal and forms a new couple with the dead's former partner.

Los Enamoramientos has been released originally in 2011. The German version has been released in 2012 as "Die sterblich Verliebten". An English released is planned for 2013 as "The Infatuations."

Elie Wiesel and Jorge Semprun

In, 1995 the French-German culture TV programm arte airedoa conversation between Jorge Semprun and Elie Wiesel named "Entretien entre Elie Wiesel et Jorge Semprun". The show's transcript has been published in German (as "Schweigen is unmöglich" – silence is impossible) and French, but not in English.

Jorge Semprun was born in 1923. Prior to being arrested by the German Gestapo he was involved in the restistance against the Spanis Franco-regime as well as in the French Résistance against the German occupiers. Following his arrest in 1943 he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was involved in camp-intern resistance groups that helped liberating the camp in 1945. He spent most of his life in France, returning to his home country after the demise of Franco, serving as culture minister from 1988 to 1991.

Elie Wiesel was born into a Romanian orthodox jewish family in 1928. In 1944 he was deported to Ausschwitz with his entire family. Later he was deported to Buchenwald Consentration Camp where he was held captive until the camp was liberated by American troops on April 11th 1945.
liberated the camp on the 11.  April 1945.
After world war two he went to Strassbourg to learn french. After this he went to Paris to studied at
the Sorbonne. In 1955 he moved to the United States where he lives today. He is the author of a great number of books and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Semprun and Wiesel discuss similarities and differences of their expierence as prisoners in the German death camps. Both emphasize importance and difficulty of keeping and sharing the memories the horror they both have endured. Of course, a small book of a mere 40 pages can't serve  with a wide or deep view on the matter. Instead it provides a very personal conversation between two men who have endured barbarism and have dedicated their lives to the strive to never let such barbarism happen again.

Kenzaburo Oe - Price Stock

Kenzaburo Oe's novella "Shiiku" (engl. "The Catch or "Price Stock") was published and earned him Japan's most prestigious literature price, Akutagawa. The story is placed near the end of World War two on Shikoku, the island in Japan's south east Oe grew up on.
The story is narrated by a boy living in a small and isolated rural village. He lives with his father and younger brother in a small room in the community barn. His father makes their living through hunting. Due to the school being closed the village's children live a life of liberty, mostly caring about their own business, seperate form the adult's dayly routine. The kids' life is organised in a own pecking order, marked by cruelty towards each other as well as by early sexual expierences.
Mostly, the war seems to be quite distand except for enemy planes flying through the sky. One day, however, a plane crashes near the village. The men left for the crash site and returned after several hours, bringing their catch – an African American soldier who is the only surivior of a crew of three.
This was by far the most exciting event ever to have happened to the children who fear the captured enemy might be shot. His color of skin is totally unfamiliar and they are unsure if he's man or an animal. This strentghens their wish for the man to live. The village residents decide to keep the American captured, jailing him in the barn's basement, keeping his feet tied by a catch bolt. The news is brought to the authorities in the next city and the villagers start to await orders.
Soon, the narrator is included in the daily routine, giving the prisoner food and emptying his chamber pot. First, the narrator's father guarded him with his gun pointed at the enemy but soon enough he stopped doing so. The boy meeting the prisoner alone made him rise in the other kids' eyes. Watching him through the basement window he becomes their hero. One day he brings his brother and friend. Now the kids think of the American rather as pet then an wild animal.
When the catch bolt breaks, the kids bring the village's collection of tools with which the prisoner repairs it. When the city clerk arrives, he breaks his leg prothesis which the american fixes as well.
This leads to a bette mood for everyone until the clerks receives order to bring the captured man to the city. The narrotar fears for the prisoner, trying to warn him. The Amercian however seizes the opportunity and gets ahold of the boy, dragging him into the basement and locking the door with the catch bolt.
After some time of discussing, the adults start to break the door open and finally the boy's father attacks and kills the American with his axe. Hereby the boy's arm is serverly injured. After sleeping through three nights and days the boy awakes. After the boy has talked to the clerk, the clerk dies in an accident. The boy realizes how much he has changed. A feels alienated from the adults who have  risked his life to overcome the enemy. But after witnessing the death of two men he doesn't feel as child anymore as well.

Patrick McGuiness - The Last Hundred Days

Only one hundred days before the downfall of Ceausescu's remige the book's protagonist arrives in Bucharest to start working at the local university. While following his fate the reader gets to know a country in change. The regime is still swinging the iron fist in a society of corruption and fear. Dissidents are in constant danger of the Securitate, Ceausescu's secret police, that casts a cold shadow over Romania. He gets to know both sides of society: gim poverty is contrasted by the luxurious life of those privileged who are able to get everything they desire. Meanwhile, the shops for ordinary people are empty and the city is scarred by the demolition caused by Ceausescu's gangs. The protagonist, protected by his status as a foreign lecturer, is able to learn of all aspects of the late Romania. He gets to know dissidents as well as stallwarts of Ceausescu, poor as well as those privileged.

In his semi-biographic novel Patrick McGuinnes manages to describe the doomed society lively and enables his readers to travel a city and a country that no longer exist. He telly a story that still isn't familar with many in the western world.

A.L. Kennedy: Day

Kennedy's 2007 novel "Day" is a story about a young man playing war, after he survived the second world war.

Despite the brutality and terror of war, it gave Alfred Day a meaning of life for the first time. As a soldier, he felt as a part of something. After a lonesome childhood marked by a brutal father and loving but wek mother, he experienced being a member of a crew that liked them and accepted him as the person he was. During his service he was with the airforce and participated in the bombing of national socialist Germany. One day his aeroplane was shot down. As the only crew member to live he was imprisoned by the Germans.

After war he tried to lead a normal life and to forget the shadows of the past: the loss of his crew and the loss of the love he found during war. Working in a London book shop, he tried to shake off his past, but he couldn´t.

During his time in London he heard about the project of making a motion picture on the second world war. As a member of the film's cast he got back to Germany. He became an extra, portraying a prisoner of war. Each day he staid longer in this film camp, remembering more and more of his past, living through the situation for a second time. This experience helped him to finally move on with his life.

This book portrays a man that has to expiernce war twice to cope with life.