The Passport, by Herta Muller
Although Nadirs and The Land of Green Plums have now been reissued in English, when Herta Muller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in October this year, only The Passport was available for monoglots wishing to gain a flavour of her work. Fortunately, it seems to be a fine example of her recurring themes and sparse prose style. Muller was born in 1953 in a German-speaking village in Western Romania and her work predominantly focuses on the harsh conditions of life in Ceausescu’s Romania and on the persecution of ethnic German Romanians by the occupying Stalinist forces.
The Passport portrays the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu’s regime as experienced by village miller Windisch, an ethnic German who wants to escape life in Romania and so applies for a passport to freedom and the glittering temptations of the West. Drudging through his daily life, never giving up hope but at the same time never truly believing that something better is out there for him, Windisch obsesses over the passing of time and the mundane, cyclical nature of his existence:
‘Each morning, as he cycles alone along the road to the mill, Windisch counts the day. In front of the war memorial he counts the years. By the first poplar tree beyond it, where he always hits the same pot hole, he counts the days. And in the evening, when Windisch locks up the mill, he counts the years and days once again.’
The Rats and the Ruling Sea, by Robert V.S. Redick
All hands on deck for Robert Redick’s excellent follow-up to his debut, The Red Wolf Conspiracy. The setting remains the IMS Chathrand, a truly mammoth sailing ship whose purported mission, to delivery the Treaty Bride to her wedding and thus cement the peace between two rival empires, is merely a cover for the machinations of numerous other parties – the Imperial spymaster Sandor Ott, who hopes to precipitate a civil war that will fatally weaken the Mzithrin empire; the dangerously deranged Captain Rose, who must deliver him; the sorcerer Arunis, who is planning to harness the power of the dreaded Nilstone to some diabolical end; and the tiny Ixchel, who are stowed away in the hold.
Arrayed against these sometimes evil and sometimes just misguided forces are the tarboys Pazel and Neeps, the unwilling Treaty Brize, Thasha, her bodyguard Hercol and the woken (sentient) rat Felthrup. Their success at the end of the first volume in depriving Arunis of both his puppet, the Shaggat Ness, and the Nilstone, has brought no more that a stay of execution – the baddies are still on board, as is the Nilstone, and once Thasha is ingeniously liberated from her obligation to marry a strange prince, the mission, to cross the Ruling Sea and ultimately deliver the Shaggat Ness to where he can foment civil war, continues.
The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard Dawkins
One of the great shames of modern life is that Richard Dawkins is, for the time being, lost to the noise of the intense argument surrounding him. To be fair, he does more than his bit to generate this noise and to some, persuasion has long since given way to antagonism. To these people, even to some liberal agnostics, he is no longer Britain’s communicator in chief of natural wonder but AN Other zealot occupying an entrenched position.
So much so, it may just be that he is now only preaching to the converted, while the other lot have a finger inserted in each ear singing “la la la”. What a pity, because at his fluent best Richard Dawkins is the greatest communicator of complex scientific ideas in living memory.
If he carked it tomorrow, Dawkins’ reputation would probably not rest on this massive contribution to the public understanding of wonder, but on the anti-God stuff. It is true he doesn’t subscribe to the notion religion should be respected merely because lots of people believe in it. Also, his waspishness does not seek accommodation with faith because, according to him, when it comes to how the world came into being and how we came to be what we are, there simply isn’t one to be made. But his real life’s work is dedicated to promoting an evidentially orientated view of the beauty and grandeur of life on Earth.
The Boer War, by Thomas Pakenham
Granted, this is not exactly a new release (it’s almost as old as I am), but being a Bookgeek sometimes means grabbing that book you have been meaning to read for ages and then telling the world about it. Thomas Pakenham made his name writing about the Europeans in Africa, firstly with this volume and then with the ‘prequel’, The Scramble for Africa. As a student of history, I always felt I knew too little about the Boer War, often seen in retrospect as being the first ‘modern’ war and a harbinger of some of the horrors experienced in World War One. I knew Winston Churchill was gallivanting around in South Africa as a journalist, at one point getting captured by the Boers; I knew Baden-Powell, creator of the Scouting movement was involved; I knew there were some sieges (Mafeking, Ladysmith, Kimberley); and I knew that the British invented the concentration camp. Clearly there were some gaps to fill in!
If you are interested in the topic and have your own gaps, you can’t beat Pakenham’s account. He covers the politics, the personalities and the military campaigns in impressive detail. The first surprise for me was that the British High Commissioner in South Africa, Alfred Milner, in league with the owners of the lucrative new gold and diamond mines, set out to manufacture a political case for a war that he decided was necessary in order to change the balance of power in Southern Africa. By provoking disagreements with the Boer nation of the Transvaal over the political rights of non-Boer, mostly British immigrants (Uitlanders), and over the rights of coloured British subjects, he got the backing of the British Cabinet – but in the negotiations that followed, he deliberately prevented settlements by moving the goalposts. At the dawn of the age of instant communication, he had a huge amount of power to determine events – and he did indeed get his war, though it did not go remotely as he had imagined it would.
Classic Football Debates Settled Once & For All by Danny Baker & Danny Kelly, and The Have I Got News For You Guide To Modern Britain
The world, it could be argued, is divided into thems that read on the toilet and thems that don’t. To be fair a tendency for throne reading is largely dictated by chromosomes, because this is a battle of the sexes to rank with control of the thermostat and possession of the TV remote. Those on the Y side of the divide know the sort of thing that works in the khazi, i.e. nothing literally or figuratively heavy, books that are easy to dip into, are amusing in short bursts and you don’t mind if they get knocked into the sink, or worse.
Anyway it’s now the run up to Christmas, the time of year when when, like mushrooms in September or mayflies in, er, May, they appear overnight in their millions only to disappear just as quickly once the January sales are done with. These then, are “giftbooks”, as opposed to the book as gift and are almost never consumed by the purchaser. Indeed, the thought of someone buying their own giftbook is a lonely Christmas image to rank with the eating of a ready made turkey dinner for one.
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The Day of the Jack Russell, by Bateman
The Bookseller With No Name is back. Since he put his own first name to rest, Bateman’s quirky, black comedy crime novels, featuring often unwilling protagonists who, much to their indignation, found themselves thrust into all manner of peculiar situations, enjoyed a strong cult following and earned him a great deal of critical praise (the Daily Telegraph voted him to be one of the 50 Crime Writers to Read Before You Die). And then Richard & Judy picked Bateman’s Mystery Man to be a part of their 2009 Summer Read and things went big-time and supermarket friendly fast. Mystery Man introduced the crotchety, severely hypochondriac, generally personality bypassed and still unnamed proprietor of the No Alibis bookshop on Botanic Avenue, Belfast to the crime loving public. The eponymous Mystery Man was struggling to keep Belfast’s best known but least visited mystery bookshop afloat in troubled financial times and so found himself, against his better judgement, taking on cases originally destined for the AWOL private detective with an office next-door in order to stave off financial ruin.
The Day of the Jack Russell finds our favourite consulting Bookseller firmly ensconced back behind his counter. No Alibis still seems to be about as favourable a prospect to Belfast’s reading public as asking to use the restroom at Black Books so the business is once again in the monetary doldrums. Even the local crimes, at least the ones he would be prepared to get involved with, seem to have dried up. Having to run an internationally renowned but criminally overlooked small business is difficult under the best of circumstances but when you factor in the challenges of employing moronic student and Amnesty International devotee Jeff as his (not so) able assistant, his stroke-afflicted harpy of a mother, his inconsiderately pregnant ex-girlfriend Alison and the complete lack of interest from loyal customers in his Christmas Club, it’s no wonder our man’s spastic colon is acting up. And then ‘The Case of the Cock-Headed Man’ walked through the door of No Alibis and into his life.
Why Not Socialism?, by GA Cohen
Why Not Socialism, is the final, essay-length book from GA Cohen, an important Marxist philosopher who died earlier this year. Its size and design suggest that it is a book intended to be carried in a pocket, perhaps on a camping-trip such as the one with which the book opens. The camping trip which Cohen describes functions as a microcosm of a socialist society: chores are divided up according to ability, whilst any benefits, e.g. food caught or found, are shared equally. Cohen argues that just as this is the best way to run a camping trip, it also the best way to run a society.
To demonstrate this point, Cohen goes on to describe a camping trip organised in the same way as Western society, i.e. capitalism. Predictably it is an unattractive vision. The question then is: why is such an appealing system so reviled on the larger scale of social organisation? Cohen’s conclusion is that we are simply not yet ready. For it to work, enough people need to both belief in its desirability and act in the ways required to make this belief a reality. A simple enough suggestion, but one that currently seems insurmountable. For Cohen, one of the main principals of Socialism is equality of opportunity. It is on this point that I think the problems of Socialism hinge. Whilst on a camping trip the opportunities to which all are equally entitled are relatively small, in the larger and more varied groups in which we actually live such opportunities are far greater. It seems inevitable that there will always be those willing and able to exploit such opportunities, moving us in a very short time back to a diverse, unequal society.
To Ride a Rathorn, by P.C. Hodgell
Those lucky enough to have already found P.C. Hodgell’s books have followed Jame through fire, flood, earthquake, and collapse. They have watched as she struggled to find her place in her people, the Kencyrath, and felt every bruise as she fell down (yet another) flight of stairs. Now, in To Ride a Rathorn, we follow Jame to the heart of the Kencyrath, to the halls of Tentir, the randon’s college where the fighters that her race is famous for are forged.
Jame, of course, does not enter Tentir as a regular cadet. Sent by the Highlord, her brother Tori, she walks into a place where the little protection her brother can offer is gone, where she must prove herself against those who have spent a lifetime preparing for the tests of Tentir, and where, by her very nature, she will drive out the secrets that threaten her house, and fight those who seek to weaken the nearly shattered Kencyrath.
Her first step, completely in character, is to light her assigned quarters on fire, not entirely on purpose. The mitigating factors of an unwanted, venomous house-guest and her brother’s need for her support, at least give Jame sufficient reason for her first act of destruction at Tentir, but once her brother has left, she is alone and must rely on her wits to keep out of trouble and alive until her time at Tentir is done. For the first time, she feels that she is somewhere where she could excel, where her unusual past will be an asset, and where her talent for destruction, and her habit of revealing the darkest secrets of her race, will find a place to belong. Read more
The Wisdom of Dead Men, by Oisin McGann
Set in an alternative Victorian Steampunk world, Oisin McGann’s The Wisdom of Dead Men is the second thrilling instalment in his Wildenstern family saga. The first Wildenstern novel, Ancient Appetites, introduced a world where Queen Victoria is still present and correct and reigning over Britain and Ireland, but powerful business empires, one of the most important of which is based in Ireland and run by the Wildenstern family, have taken the place of the British Empire as the world’s most influential power structures. Aside from this change in global influence, perhaps the most important addition to the world which the Wildensterns inhabit is the inclusion of Engimals, creatures that are part animal and part machine that serve as helpers for humanity. Ancient Appetites saw eighteen-year-old Nate Wildenstern return home to the family empire after nearly two years away only to find his world shattered by the murder of his eldest brother. Since the family’s Rules of Ascension allow for the murder of one male family member by another, Nate is blamed for his brother’s death. Aided by his sister-in-law Daisy and his cousin Gerald, Nate sets out to discover the identity of the real murderer and ends up finding out more dark secrets about his family than he ever thought possible.
In The Wisdom of Dead Men, Nate has seemingly given up on his dreams of avoiding a life spent working for the family firm and had instead devoted himself to protecting his disabled brother Berto from the evil machinations of other family members. As the eldest surviving brother, Berto has been installed as the head of the Wildenstern family and so is in ultimate control of the family’s huge business empire. Unfortunately for Berto, “behind every great man is another man waiting to stab him in the back”. While the Wildenstern family are generally unhappy, dissatisfied and out to kill or maim each other, they are even more riled up than usual over Berto since, heavily influenced by his wife Daisy, he wants to change the way the family does business so that they no longer strive to spread misery and profit from the misfortunes of others. Keen for things to remain the way they are, there are many among the Wildensterns who will do whatever it takes to dispose of Berto and so Nate has set himself an incredibly difficult task in attempting to keep his brother safe.
Graceling, by Kristin Cashore
Krisitin Cashore’s novel, Graceling, takes place in the world she wrote of in Fire. The seven kingdoms are existing in a precariously balanced peace, one that owes more to the fact that any action could be fatal than any really commitment to peace, and Katsa has a Grace that is both formidable and frightening. Katsa’s Grace, her talent, is for fighting. She is faster, stronger, more skilled, and she is her king’s weapon. For all that he is her uncle, he uses her as a threat, a danger sent to terrify others, with little regard for her feelings or for the loneliness she feels as a weapon-made-human.
Cashore has a deft touch with her heroines. Like Fire, Katsa constantly questions and searches for meaning and connections in her life. She is isolated in her role as enforcer, but she has begun to stretch out, to form cautious alliances, and to make decisions that directly compete with the goals of her king. She leads a secret group that searches for ways to keep the peace, ways that would protect the innocent people in the seven kingdoms from the impulses of their rulers.
Inherent in these struggles for identity is complication, and Katsa is a complicated character. Her king’s use of her Grace has separated her from the rest of the court and left her with few friends. She struggles with the fear she inspires in others, and she has begun to chafe against the orders her king gives. Unhappy with the idea that she has been used as a petty enforcer, she begins to devise a plan that would allow her to leave the court behind and make her own decisions. Her need to discover who she really is will set her on a journey that will have repercussions throughout the seven kingdoms and reveal the truth of Katsa’s Grace and strength. Read more
Flashforward, by Robert J. Sawyer
Let me begin with the spoiler alert. A serialised television adaptation of this novel has recently been aired in the United States and is currently airing in the United Kingdom (and possibly other locations). However, I do not think fans of the series will find it spoiled for them either by reading this review or the book itself. Many of the details and several of the characters have been radically changed for the TV series and that story diverges greatly from the original novel.
Robert J. Sawyer poses a very simple question at the beginning of his novel: what would happen if the entirety of humanity were able to briefly glimpse their world in the future? The answer, on the other hand, is as complex as humanity itself. Some will welcome this chance to have a peek at days to come and it will change their lives, others will reflect deeply on the course their lives will take and either try to change the future or prevent it from happening.
Written in 1999 and aptly set in the then future of 2009 – the TV series having been brought to our screens this year – the novel begins with Lloyd Simcoe, a scientist at CERN (The European Organisation for Nuclear Research), performing an experiment on the Large Hadron Collider. When he hits the button to begin the experiment he suddenly finds himself having an out-of-body experience, although, it is probably more accurate to describe it as an inner-body experience as he can see through his own eyes twenty one years in the future.
Strange Days Indeed, by Francis Wheen, and When The Lights Went Out, by Andy Beckett
Strange Days Indeed is follow up to How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World, the book that explored, hilariously, how the modern world is under the sway of multi-form unreason, from homeopathy to conspiracy. It was the story of a world as it is thirty years after the twin Year Zero revolutions started by Thatcher and Khomeni in 1979. That we have strayed into unreason is, according to Wheen, a given, and Strange Days Indeed tells how the paranoid urge that came to dominate the 1970s got us here.
Strange Days Indeed is then, a selected highlights history of the 1970s told in support of a unifying thesis. The history part comes via self-contained examples of creeping paranoia, ranging from the obvious (Nixon; the last days of Harold Wilson), through to slightly less well trodden, or perhaps slightly overlooked or forgotten paths (Idi Amin; Chairman and Madame Mao). This being Francis Wheen, these potted histories are told with precision and a great sense of the absurd and are entertainingly and thought-provokingly fresh, witty and insightful.
The connecting thesis that once the sheen of 60s optimism wore off, hidden depths of cynicism and paranoia revealed themselves as the last knockings of an exhausted system. Again because this is Francis Wheen, the argument is logical, clear, convincing and above all, entertaining. This is history designed to shed light on the time in which it is written and is all the better for it.
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Do you feel lucky? Enter to win Clint Eastwood. Icon [closed]
Courtesy of publisher Titan Books, we have three copies of Clint Eastwood. Icon: The Essential Film Art Collection available to win.
Clint Eastwood is not just a man; he is a nameless vigilante, a detective, bare-knuckle boxer, Secret Service agent, and Academy Award-winning director. His laconic one-liners can be heard in numerous languages, preceding the demise of another villain.
Clint Eastwood Icon paints a fascinating portrait of its subject through the art for his films. With more than 400 unique pieces, this trove gathers posters, lobby cards, studio ads, original art, and esoteric film memorabilia from around the world.
From his early roles as the nameless gunslinger in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, to his directorial roles and latest films, this book captures the timeless image of Eastwood in the parts that made him cinema’s archetype for the American anti-hero.
To win one of these lovely books, worth £30 each, simply answer the following question:
Which of the following three films did Clint Eastwood NOT win an Academy Award for:
a. Dirty Harry
b. Unforgiven
c. Million Dollar Baby
Generation A, by Douglas Coupland
Generation X, a tale of youth in revolt against an increasingly consumerist society, was Douglas Coupland’s hugely successful first novel and he has returned, with moderate success, to the same style of framed narrative for his most recent offering, Generation A. Generation X had such a massive cultural impact that its title became a much bandied about moniker for several generations but, just as society seemed to the central characters in the novel itself, the phrase “Generation X” quickly seemed false, predictable and unsatisfactory. In this spirit, during a commencement address he was giving at Syracuse University in 1994, Kurt Vonnegut commented: “Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all tremendous favours when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago”. So it is almost with a sense of rebellion against Generation X that Coupland named Generation A.
Generation A is set in the not too distant future, approximately 2020 it seems, where things are pretty much the same as they are now save for the fact that bees are presumed to be extinct. While the major implication of such a rapid extinction may well seem clear, Coupland also focuses on the minor effects. When a group of meth addicts are encountered by one of the characters, it is remarked that they would once have been heroin addicts but of course “poppies require bees”. Aside from the absence of bees, the secondary difference to contemporary society is that the majority of the world’s population are addicted to Solon, a narcotic that “mimics the solitude one feels when reading a good book”. Given the supposed downturn in the number of people who regularly read books, it’s quite surprising that a drug with such an effect caught on really.
Halfway To Hollywood, by Michael Palin, and My Shit Life So Far, by Frankie Boyle
Can the human mind conceive of two more disparate comedic performers than Frankie Boyle and Michael Palin? One, a psychotic motormouth at perma risk of being banned for some monstrous overstepping of the mark. The other, the epitome of the most underrated of middle class virtues, enthusiasm and decency. My Shit Life So Far vs Michael Palin’s second volume of Diaries, Halfway To Hollywood. Scabrous Glaswegian misanthropy vs gentle Yorkshire via Suffolk niceness. What could be clearer? Yet as ever the surface doesn’t tell the whole story.
Like lots of supposedly outre comedians Frankie Boyle’s brand of vitriol betrays a fierce moral streak. His comedy is a constant reminder for us to do better, combined with a recognition that, you know what, we probably won’t. Permanantly pushing the taste boundaries, he occupies the space where laughs jockey for position with a sharp intake of breath. It’s true that on occasion his act trips over into the merely shocking but for the most part Frankie Boyle comes across as an underpriveleged Scottish misanthrope in the vein of Gerry Sadowitz and Rab C Nesbitt. His considered and consistent world view is equal parts amusement in, and disgust of, his own background and surroundings. It might all be shite but it’s my shite. And by the way your shite is just as bad.
Notwithstanding, by Louis de Bernieres
Miss Marple always maintained that her phenomenal capacity for solving complex crimes was down to the fact that she lived in a village; being in close proximity to a fairly small group of people in an insular community apparently having provided her with seemingly infinite examples of the negative side of human nature. No matter what crime she became embroiled in, Miss Marple was always reminded of some parallel incident from her own past living in the delightful yet unexpectedly fraught St. Mary Mead. This idea that anything can, and probably will, happen in an English village populated by an eccentric cast of oddballs and outcasts has been embraced wholeheartedly by Louis de Bernieres in his most recent book, Notwithstanding. After a French friend of his pointed out that Britain is like “an immense lunatic asylum”, de Bernieres cast his mind back to his youth and to the village in Surrey where he grew up in the 60s and 70s. Although Notwithstanding is clearly fiction rather than autobiography, de Bernieres drew upon his memories of village life and the eclectic mix of characters that lived in the vicinity to write this delightful collection of stories about an England he believes to have all but vanished.
The central character in Notwithstanding is the village itself, a village where “strange things happen from time to time”. While on the surface the village might seem like a pleasant, tranquil place to live, the threat of destruction that hangs over the countryside and the ever present incidents of death that are found wherever the presence of man intrudes upon nature fills the pages. As de Bernieres notes, the roads in and out of the village are “scarlet with gory pancakes that had once been rabbits, kittens and hedgehogs”. However, despite the flaws that exist in the village, there is an undeniable heart and warmth to the community that draws the reader into the lives of the villagers immediately.
The Burning Land, by Bernard Cornwell
With The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell’s tale of the forging of England by King Alfred of Wessex enters its fifth volume, and readers of the series will have a good idea of what to expect. There are few deviations from Cornwell’s traditional approach here: no-nonsense Viking-raised Saxon warrior Uhtred is still caught between two camps – the pious, Christian-dominated court of Alfred, and the Vikings with who his heart lies. More than ever, he wants to leave Alfred and recapture the ancestral fortress that his uncle stole from him at the beginning of his tale, Bebbanburg, so he can settle down and leave war, and Alfred, behind him.
But, he can’t, not yet. The reason the land is burning is because marauding Vikings keep setting fire to things, rampaging across Wessex. Uhtred, Alfred’s reluctant warlord still, oath-sworn to a man he respects but doesn’t like, must neutralise one band of invaders through bribery, and defeat the others in battle, which he does, at Fearnhamme (Farnham, in Surrey). It’s a great victory, the most comprehensive ever achieved over the invaders, but Alfred, ever uneasy with Uhtred’s pagan beliefs, allows a situation to develop that leaves Uhtred no choice – he must abandon the king and the court that he has done so much to defend, and join his Viking brothers in the north.
Wake, by Lisa McMann
People often look their most peaceful when asleep. Whatever the dream that is going on within them, outwardly peace and contentment often reign. What, though, if you could see what they were dreaming? What if you experienced the dreams, nightmares, and kaleidoscopes of desires and fears along with the dreamer? And what if there was no way you could stop or control it?
These are the sort of questions that Lisa McMann’s Wake asks. Seventeen-year-old Janie has spent most of her life being unwillingly subject to others’ dreams, forced to experience them along with the dreamer. And, although, Janie has slowly learned to put enough distance between herself and others that she can sleep at home, school is a minefield of napping teenagers, falling nightmares, and the ever popular naked-in-front-of-the-entire-school dream. Even school field-trips are a danger, for what bus is ever without at least one sleeping student?
Although a nuisance, and often vaguely unsettling, Janie has not felt in real danger until driving by a dark house on a quiet street, and there:
she is in a strange house. In a dirty kitchen. A huge, young monster-man with knives for fingers approaches…He pulls a vinyl-seated chair across the kitchen floor, picks it up, and whirls it around above his head…But there is no one else. No one else but the monster-man with finger-knives, and Janie… Read more
2666, by Roberto Bolano
What’s in a name? While a rose by any other name may well smell as sweet, the title of a book is most frequently inextricably linked to the nature and quality of the story contained within. Not necessary so with 2666. As the final novel written by one time poetic enfant terrible and literary supremo Roberto Bolano, 2666 has received a great deal of commentary, investigation and well-deserved praise but there has been no consensus among readers or critics as to the origin nor the importance of the title. Since the number fails to crop up in the novel itself, the nearest available reference for it from Bolano himself comes from his earlier novel Amulet where a road in Mexico City is said to look like ‘a cemetery in the year 2666’. That doesn’t really clear things up much. An alternative suggestion has it that the origins of 2666 are found in the Biblical exodus of the Jews from Egypt, an event which apparently occurred 2,666 years after the creation. That might be stretching things a bit too. Maybe Bolano just liked to keep people guessing? Nevertheless, whatever the reasoning behind its title, the delightful story that is spread across its 898 pages ensures that 2666 is truly a beautiful behemoth of a book.
2666 is comprised of five parts, Bolano having intended to have them published as five separate novellas although his literary executors took the wise decision to publish a single mammoth novel, that weave together to convey the invisibility of the poor and to emphasise their lack of representation and recognition as well as their enhanced likelihood of experiences violence and victimisation. The stories and voices of a multitude of characters, both living and dead, are drawn together in a vibrant yet brutal fashion to convey the magnitude to the terror that can hold a community in its grip and rip apart any individual unfortunate enough to cross its path. 2666 is not always an easy novel to read. Read more
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