The Times August 07, 2006
How the world books a break
By John Sutherland
You can tell what countries are thinking by what the people are reading. Some want to take the real world on holiday with them, others just want to escape
THE clichés pop up like mushrooms in the mind: Around the World in 80 Books, A Book at Beachtime, Pages for the Plages. The books which people are reading — given the literally millions of individual choices available at any one time — are the most reliable cultural thermometer we have. Stuck under the collective armpit, or the other place, they tell us what peoples are thinking. Other peoples.
The beaches of the world are a particularly rich hunting ground. What one discerns in this survey by The Times are the two contrary motives in any vacation reading.
The first is the pious intention, with the leisure time one otherwise never has, to get one’s teeth into something “really serious”. The second is quite the opposite — to get the hell away from it all.
For escapists, the summer book is a vacation within a vacation. A bolt hole. How else to explain the fact that Israelis, are taking a Tardis trip back to the land of Oz, the Israel of the simpler 1940s and well out of range of the vile Katyushas? The same patriotic nostalgia appears strong in Turkey, China, and Spain this year. Has there ever been a better summer than 2006 to run away from? The past, as L. P. Hartley told us in The Go Between (has the English summer ever been better described?) is “another country”. Every summer it’s as popular for holiday-makers as any terrestrial destination.
Only the French, Germans, and Americans (dull dogs) are, it would seem, in real world mode. Or possibly their impressive books are carried for show rather than personal edification (A survey last year revealed that this practice is as widespread as one always suspected it was).
Reading about the imaginary jet-set, as their real-life equivalents jet off to much more exotic locations than oneself, has always been a sand-and-sun thing. Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins made careers on it. The vacationing Russians have, apparently, latched on to the self-tormenting pleasures of oligarch-envy (what, one wonders, did they read on the Odessa beaches before 1989?).
Adventure tales, popular in airport departure (crazy-hurry) lounges are rarely popular after arrival on summer vacation. Derring-do is consumed too quickly. It is the slow, days’ long, read one wants. Only Shantaram makes the global sweep as male-action.
Happy holiday, readers of the world. But remember: the world will still be there when you get back.
John Sutherland is a professor of Modern English Literature at University College, London, and chairman of the Man Booker Prize judges.
RUSSIA
Marriage Contract; Or Who is Who by Tayana Ogorodnikova
Those Russians who can’t afford to jet off to St Tropez this summer are seeking comfort in this semi-fictional tale of the terrible problems of being married to an oligarch — the yachts, the fancy cars, the furs and the pain, oh the pain. The author, the ex-wife of a multimillionaire herself, doesn’t spare the details or the constant fear of being traded in for a new, leggier model. She also gives sound and cynical financial advice on how to make sure you leave with some of his money.
GERMANY
We Germans —Why The Others Can Like Us by Matthias Matussek
This homage to the German nation happily coincided with an outpouring of pent-up national pride during the World Cup. Matussek says that he grew to love his country during his years working as a foreign correspondent for Der Spiegel in Brazil, the United States and Britain. His time in Britain fuelled his patriotism because he “constantly had to defend it against cliches and disparagement”.
INDIA
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
The race is on to read this 936-page fictionalised account of the Australian author’s real-life adventures before he is reborn as Johnny Depp in a Hollywood movie. The book charts Roberts’ escape from a 19-year prison sentence for armed robbery to fund a heroin addiction, to his eight-year stopover in Bombay. There, through his free health clinic in the slums and a side business selling drugs to tourists, he forms an unshakeable bond with the city and its underworld.
TURKEY
Latife Hanim by Ipek Calislar
This controversial book, which restores the feisty wife of Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Ataturk, to her rightful place in reformist republican history, has found great favour among readers even though it dares to point out that her revered husband may have been, well, just a man. She is depicted as an intelligent and successful feminist campaigner. Her husband believed in equality, but not necessarily for his wife.
AMERICA
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks
Americans are lining up to pack this thoroughly depressing 496-page take-down of the Bush Administration into their beach bags. Ricks, the Washington Post’s veteran Pentagon reporter, doesn’t flinch from criticising generals or detailing the torture of Iraqis in American detention centres. He calls the Bush Administration’s strategy in Iraq “the worst war plan in American history”.
JAPAN
Kokka no Hinkaku (The dignity of a nation) by Masahiko Fujiwara
Japan’s economy is recovering, but its people are devouring a tract about how the whole country is going to hell in a handcart. This 200-page anti-Western harangue by a university maths professor urges the Japanese to return to their home-grown Bushido samurai spirit. The alternative is for the Land of the rising Sun to become a US-style abomination — a hideous mire of terrorism, economic polarisation and unfettered market capitalism.
FRANCE
Temoignage (Testimony) by Nicolas Sarkozy
This unlikely bestseller has no suspense, little sex and much lecturing about what is wrong with France. It is a mix of manifesto and memoir by the pint-sized politician who has a good chance of being elected President next spring. M Sarkozy's musings have sold 275,000 copies in France within a month. He was not only the top choice of ideal holiday partner for conservative voters but also for five per cent of leftwing voters.
SPAIN
La Catedral del Mar by Ildefonso Falcones
Medieval Spain seems an unlikely setting for this summer’s must-read beach tome, but Falcones has injected enough passion, violence and intrigue into the building of the Santa Maria del Mar, a beautiful Barcelona church, that he is being compared to Ken Follett. Falcones, like many Spanish writers is Catalan but has had to write in Spanish to get published. The church around which the book is based is well-known to British tourists, as it is in the heart of the old town of Barcelona.
ISRAEL
Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
As Israel pursues its war against Hezbollah, its citizens are losing themselves in this sweeping memoir about growing up in Israel in the 1940s and 1950s as the country was forged out of conflict. Oz tells of his immigrant parents’ rejection by Europe and their quest for refuge among the Arabs of Palestine in the fading days of the British Mandate.
CHINA
Savouring the Three Kingdoms by Yi Zhongtian
It hardly sounds like a page turner, but the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing Group printed a record first run of 550,000 copies of this unorthodox commentary on the characters and plot of a 14th century tale — part history, part novel — entitled The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mr Yi compares one warrior to a modern-day deputy police chief and another to a Chief Executive Officer head-hunted by a would-be king.
ITALY
La Fine e Il Mio Inizio (The End is My Beginning) by Tiziano Terzani
Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress tops the bestsellers but close behind is these reflections on a search for meaning. Three months before his death Terzani sat under a tree in the Apennines and recorded a final conversation with his son. He recalls his origins in Florence, his law studies, his contact with Asian and Oriental spirituality. But mostly he recounts his search for a cure for the sickness which afflicts us all: mortality
CANADA
The Birth House by Ami McKay
Perhaps it’s because of the heat wave (in Canada?), or maybe they want to escape news of their troops being killed in Afghanistan, but Canadians are opting for fiction over fact this summer. High on the list is this novel about a traditional mid-wife in remote Nova Scotia between the wars who comes up against a doctor determined to put her out of business with his modern methods
timesonline.co.uk
How the world books a break
By John Sutherland
You can tell what countries are thinking by what the people are reading. Some want to take the real world on holiday with them, others just want to escape
THE clichés pop up like mushrooms in the mind: Around the World in 80 Books, A Book at Beachtime, Pages for the Plages. The books which people are reading — given the literally millions of individual choices available at any one time — are the most reliable cultural thermometer we have. Stuck under the collective armpit, or the other place, they tell us what peoples are thinking. Other peoples.
The beaches of the world are a particularly rich hunting ground. What one discerns in this survey by The Times are the two contrary motives in any vacation reading.
The first is the pious intention, with the leisure time one otherwise never has, to get one’s teeth into something “really serious”. The second is quite the opposite — to get the hell away from it all.
For escapists, the summer book is a vacation within a vacation. A bolt hole. How else to explain the fact that Israelis, are taking a Tardis trip back to the land of Oz, the Israel of the simpler 1940s and well out of range of the vile Katyushas? The same patriotic nostalgia appears strong in Turkey, China, and Spain this year. Has there ever been a better summer than 2006 to run away from? The past, as L. P. Hartley told us in The Go Between (has the English summer ever been better described?) is “another country”. Every summer it’s as popular for holiday-makers as any terrestrial destination.
Only the French, Germans, and Americans (dull dogs) are, it would seem, in real world mode. Or possibly their impressive books are carried for show rather than personal edification (A survey last year revealed that this practice is as widespread as one always suspected it was).
Reading about the imaginary jet-set, as their real-life equivalents jet off to much more exotic locations than oneself, has always been a sand-and-sun thing. Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins made careers on it. The vacationing Russians have, apparently, latched on to the self-tormenting pleasures of oligarch-envy (what, one wonders, did they read on the Odessa beaches before 1989?).
Adventure tales, popular in airport departure (crazy-hurry) lounges are rarely popular after arrival on summer vacation. Derring-do is consumed too quickly. It is the slow, days’ long, read one wants. Only Shantaram makes the global sweep as male-action.
Happy holiday, readers of the world. But remember: the world will still be there when you get back.
John Sutherland is a professor of Modern English Literature at University College, London, and chairman of the Man Booker Prize judges.
RUSSIA
Marriage Contract; Or Who is Who by Tayana Ogorodnikova
Those Russians who can’t afford to jet off to St Tropez this summer are seeking comfort in this semi-fictional tale of the terrible problems of being married to an oligarch — the yachts, the fancy cars, the furs and the pain, oh the pain. The author, the ex-wife of a multimillionaire herself, doesn’t spare the details or the constant fear of being traded in for a new, leggier model. She also gives sound and cynical financial advice on how to make sure you leave with some of his money.
GERMANY
We Germans —Why The Others Can Like Us by Matthias Matussek
This homage to the German nation happily coincided with an outpouring of pent-up national pride during the World Cup. Matussek says that he grew to love his country during his years working as a foreign correspondent for Der Spiegel in Brazil, the United States and Britain. His time in Britain fuelled his patriotism because he “constantly had to defend it against cliches and disparagement”.
INDIA
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
The race is on to read this 936-page fictionalised account of the Australian author’s real-life adventures before he is reborn as Johnny Depp in a Hollywood movie. The book charts Roberts’ escape from a 19-year prison sentence for armed robbery to fund a heroin addiction, to his eight-year stopover in Bombay. There, through his free health clinic in the slums and a side business selling drugs to tourists, he forms an unshakeable bond with the city and its underworld.
TURKEY
Latife Hanim by Ipek Calislar
This controversial book, which restores the feisty wife of Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Ataturk, to her rightful place in reformist republican history, has found great favour among readers even though it dares to point out that her revered husband may have been, well, just a man. She is depicted as an intelligent and successful feminist campaigner. Her husband believed in equality, but not necessarily for his wife.
AMERICA
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks
Americans are lining up to pack this thoroughly depressing 496-page take-down of the Bush Administration into their beach bags. Ricks, the Washington Post’s veteran Pentagon reporter, doesn’t flinch from criticising generals or detailing the torture of Iraqis in American detention centres. He calls the Bush Administration’s strategy in Iraq “the worst war plan in American history”.
JAPAN
Kokka no Hinkaku (The dignity of a nation) by Masahiko Fujiwara
Japan’s economy is recovering, but its people are devouring a tract about how the whole country is going to hell in a handcart. This 200-page anti-Western harangue by a university maths professor urges the Japanese to return to their home-grown Bushido samurai spirit. The alternative is for the Land of the rising Sun to become a US-style abomination — a hideous mire of terrorism, economic polarisation and unfettered market capitalism.
FRANCE
Temoignage (Testimony) by Nicolas Sarkozy
This unlikely bestseller has no suspense, little sex and much lecturing about what is wrong with France. It is a mix of manifesto and memoir by the pint-sized politician who has a good chance of being elected President next spring. M Sarkozy's musings have sold 275,000 copies in France within a month. He was not only the top choice of ideal holiday partner for conservative voters but also for five per cent of leftwing voters.
SPAIN
La Catedral del Mar by Ildefonso Falcones
Medieval Spain seems an unlikely setting for this summer’s must-read beach tome, but Falcones has injected enough passion, violence and intrigue into the building of the Santa Maria del Mar, a beautiful Barcelona church, that he is being compared to Ken Follett. Falcones, like many Spanish writers is Catalan but has had to write in Spanish to get published. The church around which the book is based is well-known to British tourists, as it is in the heart of the old town of Barcelona.
ISRAEL
Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
As Israel pursues its war against Hezbollah, its citizens are losing themselves in this sweeping memoir about growing up in Israel in the 1940s and 1950s as the country was forged out of conflict. Oz tells of his immigrant parents’ rejection by Europe and their quest for refuge among the Arabs of Palestine in the fading days of the British Mandate.
CHINA
Savouring the Three Kingdoms by Yi Zhongtian
It hardly sounds like a page turner, but the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing Group printed a record first run of 550,000 copies of this unorthodox commentary on the characters and plot of a 14th century tale — part history, part novel — entitled The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mr Yi compares one warrior to a modern-day deputy police chief and another to a Chief Executive Officer head-hunted by a would-be king.
ITALY
La Fine e Il Mio Inizio (The End is My Beginning) by Tiziano Terzani
Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress tops the bestsellers but close behind is these reflections on a search for meaning. Three months before his death Terzani sat under a tree in the Apennines and recorded a final conversation with his son. He recalls his origins in Florence, his law studies, his contact with Asian and Oriental spirituality. But mostly he recounts his search for a cure for the sickness which afflicts us all: mortality
CANADA
The Birth House by Ami McKay
Perhaps it’s because of the heat wave (in Canada?), or maybe they want to escape news of their troops being killed in Afghanistan, but Canadians are opting for fiction over fact this summer. High on the list is this novel about a traditional mid-wife in remote Nova Scotia between the wars who comes up against a doctor determined to put her out of business with his modern methods
timesonline.co.uk