Safe Return Doubtful

It’s the announcement of the International Booker Longlist on Tuesday (25th), a literary highlight of the year (for me at least). I usually post about it a few days before, and make a few predictions, which are usually wrong… It’s really difficult to predict I think, and that’s part of the fun of it.

This year I’ve read 34 books that are eligible. Four that I hope might make the longlist are..

Dealing With The Dead by Alain Mabanckou translated by Helen Stevenson. DR Congo.

Liwa Ekimakingaï is dead at just 24, and trapped with the ghosts of other dead in the Frère Lachaise cemetery wandering aimlessly listening to the many tales of woe and regret. As he gets to grips with his situation he deciphers the over-riding message of his fellow residents, beware of returning to Pointe-Noire, his hometown, where he intends to visit one final time, to visit his grandmother who raised him and find out what led to his demise. Unwisely, he ignores them. He is unable to ignore the disturbing rumours swirling amongst his own jumbled memories. Back in Pointe-Noire, he discovers its darker side; corruption, double-dealing, violence and murder within the political administration of the country.

Last Days in El Zapotal by Mateo Garcia Elizondo translated by Robin Myers. Mexico.

A heroin addict seems to have run out of hope, and in accepting his circumstance journeys to an almost deserted Mexican village to die. He rents a room in this seedy backwater and prepares one last fix, but is haunted by memories of his past that won’t let go. He becomes stuck in limbo among the bums of El Zapotal and the ghosts of his past so that neither he, nor we as readers, can tell them apart.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang translated by Paige Aniyah Morris. South Korea.

Kyungha, a writer suffering from migraines and stomach aches, receives an urgent communication from her friend, Inseon, who recently left her career as a documentary film maker to become a woodworker. Inseon has been hospitalised due to an injury at work, and asks Kyungha if she will go to her house on Jeju Island to look after her pet birds. On route, a snowstorm slows Kyungha’s travel, but her eventual arrival brings her face to face with a dark and often forgotten period of Korean history.

The Son of Man by Jean Baptiste del Amo translated by Frank Wynne. France

A French family, father, mother and 9 year old son, are making their way to their father’s old house in the mountains of the Jura, but this is no holiday. We get a drip feed through flashbacks of the situation they are in and the image of a mountain cabin idyll soon disappears. The mother is an alcoholic, addicted to painkillers and spends her time reading romance novels; she also turns out to be pregnant. The father has included a gun in his backpack, he is moody and behaves irrationally, reflecting on life with his own father. Maybe the mysterious Uncle Tony will arrive. Much of this is seen through the eyes of the young son, to whom the motives of the adults are incomprehensible.

Five I think have the best chance are..

Han Kang’s We Do Not Part– South Korea
Jean Baptiste del Amo’s Son of Man – France
Yuri Herrera’s Season of the Swamp – Mexico
Solvej Balle’s On The Calculation of Volume – Denmark
Olga Tokaczuk’s The Empusium – Poland

and five outsiders..

Uketsu’s Strange Pictures – Japan
Sara Mesa’s Un Amor – France
Claudia Piñeiro’s Time of the Flies – Argentina
Alia Trabucco Zerán’s Clean – Chile
Sacha Naspini’s The Bishop’s Villa – Italy