Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

En compagnie des hommes

2017; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 91; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2017.0008

1945-8134

Sarah Davies Cordova,

Military, Security, and Education Studies

As provocative as the events in the novel are, the style Szabó employs is also worthy of our attention. The novel itself can be confusing until the reader discovers that it is not told in a linear sequence. This confusion adds to the overall atmosphere of the novel, an atmosphere that is heavy with foreboding. The disruptive manner of the novel’s beginning highlights the coming storm that the Germans, and later the Soviets, are bringing to Hungary. Moreover, each chapter in the “Moments and Episodes” section switches between third person and first, which is told from Irén’s point of view, thereby juxtaposing a detached and intimate point of view. There are moments in Katalin Street when one is strongly reminded of Harry Mulisch’s The Assault. Both novels deal with German occupation and the culpability of unlikely individuals and communities . Both novels are powerful testaments to the human spirit in the wake of occupation . Szabó’s novel also delves deeply into the meaning of home or what it means to be at home in a world where the concept nearly collapses in on itself. Len Rix’s translation is easy to read and thoughtful enough to slide into the background. Katalin Street is not quite the masterpiece The Door is, but it is a brightly shining star in the Szabó universe, offering us a glimpse of Eastern Europe at a time when we need to be reminded of what happened there more than ever. Andrew Martino Southern New Hampshire University Véronique Tadjo. En compagnie des hommes. Paris. Don Quichotte éditions. 2017. 166 pages. With En compagnie des hommes, Véronique Tadjo brings the 2014–2016 Ebola crisis into sharp focus, reminding us that it is still very much a threat to the future of humanity. The award-winning Franco-Ivorian poet, novelist, and painter intertwines facts, well-known songs, legends, poems, fictionalized testimonials, and documentary prose in the stirring orality of this novel to give voice to the humanitarian disaster and to interrogate Ebola’s historical and biospheric currency. The novel opens dramatically with a father instructing his daughter to go to her aunt in the capital and not mention the deaths in the village. Narratively, her silencing gives the floor to nine other characters who, chapter by chapter, recount their encounter, infection, and engagement with Ebola. Anonymous as in the tradition of oral legends, some seem familiar , recognizable from news coverage of the outbreak. They stand in as the doctor , nurse, gravedigger, mother, daughter, local government representative, foreign NGO volunteer, grandmother, fiancé, and the Congolese researcher who discovered Ebola. There are survivors and victims, those treating and preventing the disease’s spread, and those turning to traditional healers. Framing these autobiographies are the personified discourses of the arbre à paroles, the ancestral Baobab, who has spread his branches wide to hear these accounts of living with Ebola; the voice of Ebola explaining his viral capacities and railing against the human race for letting him travel out of the forest; and the response of Bat denying her responsibility in the spread of the disease, who affirms her hybridity as half mammal, half bird by recounting how she was born from the love story of a dove and a fox. With no typographical speech markers, the first-person discourse of the characters melts fluidly into descriptive, narrative, poetic, and factual texts. Realistic, painterly, and poetic, the impeccably structured polyvocal novel registers the urgency, despair, commitment, dedication, and solidarity Tomoyuki Hoshino Me Trans. Charles De Wolf Akashic Books A cell phone stolen on a whim turns into a full-blown scam when Hitoshi pretends to be someone else to line his own pockets, but he quickly finds his deception is unnecessary—everybody, even his own mother, sees him as the man whose identity he stole. In this reflective novel, Tomoyuki Hoshino explores the nature of identity while providing commentary on Japanese society as a whole. Gaute Heivoll Across the China Sea Trans. Nadia Christensen Graywolf Press A man goes back to his childhood home in the rural south of Norway to clean it out after his parents’deaths. In the process, he dusts off the memories of his unconventional...