This year (2023)
Previous years: 2022; 2021;
2020; 2019;
2018; 2017;
2016; 2015;
2014; 2013;
2012; 2011;
2010; 2009;
2008; 2007;
2006; 2005
David Mitchell:
The
Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet
Abir
Mukherjee:
A
Rising Man
A Necessary Evil
Ovidia
Yu:
The
Mimosa Tree Mystery
The
Frangipani Tree Mystery
The
Betel Nut Tree Mystery
The
Paper Bark Tree Mystery
James Nestor:
Breath
When the Portuguese arrived in Japan at the end of
the 16th century, besides commerce, they brought numbers of Catholic priests
whose mission it was to convert the natives to Christianity and so to "save"
them.
Soon the Japanese became aware of these subversive
intentions, got rid of those who had become "saved", and eventually cut off
all contact with the Portuguese. A canal was dug across a small peninsula in
Nagasaki Harbor, creating a small island which was named Dejima. It measured only 120 by 75 meters and it was
connected to the mainland by a bridge. After 1641 only Dutch traders were
allowed to use Dejima, and except for special purposes - paying yearly
homage to the Shogun in Edo - they were not allowed to set foot on Japanese
soil. The bridge was guarded night and day. The Dutch traders were not
allowed to learn the Japanese language. Instead there were official Japanese
translators. Everything on the island was under strict Japanese control.
Dutch ships came perhaps once each year, sailing up from Batavia, hopefully
not to be lost in a Typhoon or taken by pirates or enemy ships. Before
setting foot on Dejima the Dutch traders or officials were required to
surrender all books or objects having anything to do with Christianity, to
be stored away by Japanese officials until the time they left. All Christian
ceremony was strictly banned on the island.
The book is a novel set against this background. The
author also wrote Cloud Atlas, a book I read a few years ago and
which was made into a movie staring Tom Hanks. As we could thus expect, the
story involves unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things. I suppose
David Mitchell has studied the history of Dejima to such an extent that much
of the detail must be true to life. After all, imagine what it must have
been like confined in such a small space for years at a time, uncertain
about the fate of the next possible Dutch ship that might arrive in a year
or two.
The protagonist is Jacob De Zoet, a book keeper who has
been sent by the Dutch East India Company to investigate possible corruption
on the island. It turns out that the most corrupt person is his own
supervisor. And then we have a story about the abbot of a monastery up on a
mountain near Nagasaki containing monks and "sisters" who have been saved
from prostitution, or something. They are impregnated by the monks, and the
resulting babies are sacrificed in some sort of ritual aimed at prolonging
the life of the abbot, or perhaps also some of the chosen monks. We are not
told whether the monastery was devoted to Buddhism, Shintoism, or some other
religion. Surely all of this is rather far-fetched. Could the author be
telling us about some strange aspects of ancient Japanese culture? In the
midst of all of this an English frigate cruises into Nagasaki Harbor and
takes a few pot shots at Dejima, blowing up the buildings before sailing
away. Judging from the Cloud Atlas, such stories must be a typical device of
the author. In the end we have an unfulfilled, distant love story of De Zoet
and Ogawa Uzaemon, an angelic Japanese woman.
This is a murder mystery taking place in India in
the early 1920s. But who could write such a book? An English person would be
accused of romanticizing English colonialism, the "Raj", and an Indian
person would become lost in transcendental philosophical thoughts on the
mysteries of India.
As his name implies, the author is of Indian descent, yet
he grew up in Scotland and lives in England. And so he can write stories
about the India of those days as he sees it, unburdened by all of this
politically correct baggage. The protagonist is Captain Sam Wyndham, an
Englishman who has spent four years in France in the Great War, in the
trenches, but also in military intelligence under Lord Taggert who is now
Commissioner of Police in Calcutta. Wyndham was a policeman before and after
the war with Scotland Yard, and so Taggert has asked him to come to India to
take up a position with the Indian Imperial Police. Wyndham's sidekick is
Sargent Banerjee, whose forename is Surendranath, something which the
British find to be unpronounceable, and so he has been called
"Surrender-not" ever since he joined the imperial police. Surrender-not is
of the Brahman caste and his family lives in a huge palace-like mansion
somewhere in Calcutta. But they have disowned him, owing to his connections
with the British. The author has written a whole series of novels based on
these characters, and this is the first in the series.
A highly placed British civil servant is found stabbed to
death outside a brothel in Black Town, the slum to the north of Calcutta,
separated from White Town where the mansions and palaces of the British and
the wealthy Indian population live. Was it a gang of terrorists whose aim
was to achieve independence for India? Wyndham's assistant, Digby, has an
informer who leads him to Sen, a terrorist who has been on the run for
years. But Sen tells Wyndham that he has become a disciple of Gandhi. He now
rejects violence and seeks independence through peaceful means. He is
quickly whisked away by Military Intelligence to be hanged a day or two
later, satisfying the general opinion of White Town. Nevertheless Wyndham
and Banerjee investigate further, eventually coming to the truth of the
matter in the highest places.
Taking a look at the map of India as it was in 1920, we see that at least a
third of it was made up of princely states, or kingdoms, some of which were
larger than England itself. We are told that at the time of Independence in
1947, there were 565 of them. The story in this book concerns Sambalpore, an
imaginary and extremely rich princely state with extensive diamond mines.
Our intrepid pair, Captain Sam Wyndham and Sargent Banerjee, are riding in a
Rolls Royce with the Crown Prince of Sambalpore in Calcutta. Suddenly a man
in traditional Indian clothing with his face covered with ash and whatever
else it is jumps in front of the car and shoots the Crown Prince with a
revolver. Wyndham is able to follow him and the assassin points the gun at
his own head, pulls the trigger and commits suicide.
And so Wyndham and Banerjee travel to Sambalpore to find
out who was responsible. As a friend of the Crown Prince in his days as a
schoolboy in England, Banerjee is invited to attend the funeral. And Wyndham
takes a holiday to accompany him. After all, they cannot violate the
sovereignty of Sambalpore by conducting their own investigation.
Nevertheless, the Maharaja does ask them to do all they can to find the
murderers. The British Ambassador has cabled the Viceroy, and has been
instructed to tell Wyndham and Banerjee to leave Sambalpore immediately and
report back to Calcutta. They ignore this and so we have a story of palace
intrigues, a harem 120 strong producing well over two hundred progeny of the
Maharaja, besides his three official Maharanis and only two official sons.
Was it that other prince who was behind the murder? What of the young
English woman who was scandalously in love with the Crown Prince? Was it the
head eunuch? Was it the Prime Minister cooking the books on diamond sales?
We ride about the place in all those Rolls Royces, and especially in a Mercedes Simplex, following the investigation.
The author is a native of Singapore and is writing
about Singapore. The story begins with the narrator, Su Lin, together with
everybody else in her house and also all the neighbors being forced at
gunpoint out into a field to stand for hours, waiting for something horrible
to happen. It is 1943 or so and the Japanese Gestapo, or kenpeitai, are rounding people up to transport them to
their torture chambers. Su Lin's uncle is taken away. A hooded informer with
loose clothes and a small slit for the eyes to remain anonymous, points at
random people. Suddenly Su Lin recognizes the way the figure is walking and
calls out who it is, saying that the woman informer is only pointing at
people for personal reasons of revenge. Rather than being shot or slammed in
the face with a rifle butt, the commanding officer of the kenpeitai, Hideki
Tagawa, steps out from behind a truck and takes Su Lin aside, speaking to
her. It seems he knows her, and he takes her to the main headquarters of the
Japanese Occupation of Singapore where she agrees to work for them as a
translator. One of the neighbors, a man of Arab descent living in an
expansive mansion, has been murdered. Su Lin comes from the neighborhood.
Her family is an important and powerful Chinese clan, the Chens, controlling
much of the business of the island, and she speaks Japanese, English, Malay,
and some sort of Chinese dialect as well, fluently. It is agreed that Su
Lin's uncle will be freed if she is able to find out who the murderer was.
As we get into the story it seems that the Japanese would
like to take on the role of the English who had been driven from Sngapore.
The Japanese are no longer mindlessly killing people, throwing them into
concentration camps. Now they would like to pacify the population, establish
reliable systems of government.
The plot of the story is derived from the real-life Operation Jaywick. A group of 14 commandos took a
small Japanese
fishing boat and sailed from Western Australia to Singapore, disguised
as Japanese fishermen. In the night they attached magnetic explosive mines
to the hulls of seven small ships. They were cargo and tanker ships. No
warships. Three were sunk, but one of those was salvaged; the other four
ships only had relatively minor damage. The commandos then sailed back to
Australia to be greeted as heroes. Things were not so happy in Singapore.
The Japanese could not believe that such an attack could be mounted from so
far away. It must have been "terrorists" in the local population. Hundreds
of people were rounded up and horribly tortured and killed. Extremes of
suffering for such minor, even meaningless results.
The story of the book changes these details. Most of the
ships have become warships. The one exception is a cargo ship containing
some sort of treasure being transported to the Japanese motherland, and the
murdered Arabian had something to do with stealing it. In the end it turns
out that the supreme Japanese commander on the island was behind everything.
But more than this, Hideki Tagawa asserts that Su Lin is
his cousin. Her mother (both her parents are long since dead) was Tagawa's
long lost sister. Su Lin hates him and she hates the Japanese. Surely this
is just an absurd story he has made up to manipulate her. But he shows her a
photo taken when he was a child and his sister was a young woman. She
recognizes him in the photo and sees herself in the image of the sister.
Was the picture "photo-shopped" using whatever means they
had in those days for cutting and pasting photographic film? If so, who was
the model in the photo looking so like Su Lin? On the other hand, although
this book was advertised in amazon as the "Su Lin Series Book 1", it seems
that it is not really the first book of the series. In fact the first book
is "The Frangipani Tree Mystery" which is supposed to be the "Crown Colony
Book 1" of the author. I have now read that book and it is clear that it
gives much of the background to the present story. But one thing does remain
a mystery. In the Crown Colony Book 1 it is mentioned in passing something
about Su Lin's various aunts on her mother's side. It is certainly not said
that they are all Japanese women. Also it is not implied that they are the
Japanese prostitutes which are mentioned in the Betel Nut Tree Mystery
(Crown Colony Book 2). No. It is implied that they are part of the Chinese
community. I suspect that this is an unintended mystery, and if it were to
be pointed out to the author she would tell us that it of no importance.
The
Frangipani Tree Mystery
This is the first book in the series. It is 1936
and Su Lin has finished school, having passed an exam to obtain the General
Cambridge Certificate. Su Lin's family expect her to marry and become a part
of the Chen clan, having children, cooking, cleaning. But she wants other
things. Perhaps to become a reporter or at least a secretary. The sister of
the Governor, Miss Vanessa Palin, is more or less in charge of the school.
She also believes that women can do more than simply sit at home and so she
arranges a possible job for Su Lin as a housekeeper for Chief Inspector Le
Froy, the head of the police in Singapore, possibly leading to further
opportunities. But suddenly the interview with Le Froy is interrupted with
the news that Charity Byrne, a young woman who had been brought over from
Ireland to look after the mentally retarded daughter of the Governor, has
fallen from a balcony of the Governor's mansion, killing herself. Le Froy
drives quickly to the scene together with Su Lin. It is soon established
that the body of Charity has a knife wound in its side.
Unusually for a "native", Su Lin is allowed to enter the
inner rooms of the mansion along with Le Froy. She wanders out and finds the
daughter who has retreated somewhere into the forest, establishes a rapport
with the retarded young woman and ends up living in the house for weeks,
looking after her. And so she is able to observe things from the inside. The
seemingly idle, useless Governor's son. The always correct Miss Vanessa. The
Governor's wife who has grown fat, angry with everything, especially the
"black" natives and the tropics in general, and the Governor himself who
does more than simply admire attractive young women.
All of this leads to an explosive end which Su Lin
survives to become the valued assistant of Chief Inspector Le Froy.
The
Betel Nut Tree Mystery
King Edward VIII abdicated from the throne of England at
the end of 1936 in order to marry the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson.
Something which was considered a scandal. The story of this book imagines a
more or less analogous business taking place in Singapore. We have the son
of an aristocratic English family arriving with his American divorcee
fiancee, together with her small son and a further retinue of various
characters. The prospective groom laughs and plays practical jokes,
inconveniencing other people. Suddenly he is found dead in the hotel. And so
we are introduced to a strange collection of unpleasant people. The fiancee
is extremely, offensively egocentric. There is the best friend of the
murdered man who is perhaps in love with the fiancee. And then the best
friend of Su Lin falls in love with that best friend. Eventually he also
dies. The father-in-law of the prospective bride seems to be only concerned
with his grandson. But is it really his grandson? Some of the scenes in the
hotel resemble a slap-stick comedy. I began to wonder why I am reading this,
but I did read through to the end. It was a diversion.
The
Paper Bark Tree Mystery
It is now one or two years later. The Japanese have
invaded China and are reported to be committing atrocities. Yet the English
administration of Singapore forbids any criticism of Japan for fear of
offending the Japanese. Le Froy has been trying to keep track of suspicious
Japanese activities in Malaya, but he has been disciplined for doing this.
He has lost his position. Various administrators have been brought in from
India. They are only concerned with putting down the Indian "terrorists" who
are seeking Indian independence. All Indians in Singapore are considered
potential terrorists and are arrested, or at least brought in for
questioning. The person who has replaced Le Froy has fired Su Lin, saying
that no natives are to be trusted. But then he is found one morning murdered
in the "shack" where the police records are kept...
Why am I reading this stuff?
Reading a novel transports us out of ourselves into an
imaginary story, a dream, showing us what life might be like in a different
world. This might be pure diversion, especially if it's a nice story. Or we
might think of problems with life which we hadn't thought about before. And
then we might find real life to be not so pleasant and hope for a story
which brings us out of this real world.
And so I'm not really in the mood for a story which is
depressing or just plain frivolous and silly.
The German Foreign Minister - that seemingly immature,
thoughtless woman, Annalena Baerbock - has announced to the world in the
forum of the European Parliament that Germany is at war with Russia. German
battle tanks are to be rolling through Ukraine again in the direction of
Stalingrad (or Volgograd) as if we are in a time-warp of 80 years; it is
January 1943 and the Wehrmacht is on the move, led on by a modern-day
goddess of victory, Germania, saving the Earth, if not from carbon dioxide,
at least from the scourge of Slavic hoards. No thought is given to how this
war has been provoked over the last 15 or 20 years; about the deceptions of
that woman before her, Mrs. Merkel, pretending to guarantee the Minsk
agreements. And so hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are being sacrificed
for nothing. The newspapers, television, radio in Germany are saturated with
a single, unified clamor for more war, more weapons, aircraft, rockets,
longer range. Blow those Russians to smithereens!
As more and more longer range rockets are thrown into the
fight we can imagine what will happen as the salvos increase. How are the
Russians to distinguish a salvo of "conventional" rockets from a salvo of
atomic bombs in a massive "first strike"? After all, various elements in
Washington have been openly fantasizing about how wonderful such a thing
would be. There are hundreds of American atomic bombs stationed in Germany.
Heaven knows how many are in Poland and the Baltic countries. The Russians
would only have 2 or 3 minutes to decide whether or not to quickly launch
their counter-strike before it would be hit by the incoming atomic bombs.
There is no time. The launch decision will be decided automatically by
computer remote control. Life has become a absurd theater of horror. Will we
survive this madness?
Breath, by
James Nestor
After all those thoughts this book is a breath of
fresh air. What can we say about breathing? We all do it. Otherwise we
wouldn't be alive. It's trivial. As far as medicine is concerned (according
to the book, and I can well believe it is true) it doesn't matter how you
breathe: through the nose, the mouth, through a tube, it's all the same.
Just draw air into the lungs and blow it out. Nothing could be simpler.
But how can some people hold their breath for 10 minutes,
or free dive in the ocean for minutes at a time? The book doesn't tell us
how they do this. But it does tell us about the one very basic thing which
many people no longer do. Namely:
SHUT YOUR MOUTH
Beginning in 1830, the painter George Catlin traveled among the Indians - or Native
Americans - living with different tribes throughout the Americas. He admired
their perfect physiques, the symmetry of their faces and their general
physical health. And everywhere he was told that this was due to breathing
through the nose, not the mouth. Breathing through the mouth leads to
congestion throughout the head and all sorts of different consequences which
are explained in the book.
Some time ago I did look at a video of someone giving a
talk about the Buteyko
method which also emphasized the importance of breathing through the
nose. But it also involved stopping breathing for as many seconds as
possible, holding the breath until it became uncomfortable. Something about
carbon dioxide. The instructor said that mouth breathing causes crooked
teeth, asthma, colds, and all sorts of other things. But the remedy with all
that breath holding seemed so unpleasant. I've now made it to 75 years old
and I'm still Ok with breathing the way I always have, so why bother?
James Nestor gives a much broader view of all of this.
Not breathing properly through the nose might have much to do with it, but
crooked teeth also result from soft, mushy, overly processed food and no
chewing. Perhaps processed sugar not only ruins the teeth but distorts much
else of the body's metabolism. As the facial bones degenerate, becoming
smaller and thinner, the eyes sag, become baggy. The jaw recedes.
We are then told of the mechanism the body has for
distributing oxygen throughout the system. It is regulated by carbon
dioxide. This is the Bohr
effect. If there is not enough carbon dioxide in the blood then the
amount of oxygen being transported to the cells of the body decreases.
Therefore we should breath slowly through the nose allowing the carbon
dioxide in the blood to reach a healthy level. The example of athletes being
tested on an ergometer - an exercise machine - is described. In the first
test they breathed "normally", gasping for breath through the mouth as well
as the nose. Then the test was repeated with only nose breathing and they
were astonished to find that they then performed better.
I found this difficult to believe. I usually jog about 5
or 6 kilometers, which I run a couple of times each week. In the middle is a
little hill and I'm always totally out of breath after climbing it. I have
to walk for a few minutes to get my breath back, breathing heavily, before
continuing to run. And so, inspired by the book, I decided to see how far I
could get by only breathing through the nose. It is winter here, cold, wet,
so the eyes water, going through the nasolacrimal duct to the nose, restricting nose
breathing even more than is otherwise the case. I had expected to have to
gasp for breath after only a hundred meters or so, like trying to hold my
breath for a minute or more. But no! I was probably jogging a little slower
than usual, and my lungs were missing that cold hit which the air when
quickly inhaled through the mouth provides. There was even a minor feeling
of suffocation from the increased carbon dioxide and the effort of inhaling
through the nose. Yet I could keep on going without stopping, and I even
jogged up the hill more easily that usual. I was able to complete the whole
workout without once opening my mouth. Afterwards the muscles felt less
tired than usual. So there you are! I have decided to become like an
American Indian and keep my mouth closed.
The book also tells us to often breath deeply. It has
been found that the size of the lungs is decisive for health. The larger the
lungs, the more healthy you are and the longer you live. And so I thought to
bring out my favorite flute and just enjoy breathing into it, playing
through a few of the pieces I used to play before taking up the viol in
retirement. But in order not to interrupt the flow of the music it seems
impossible to avoid quickly inhaling through the mouth as well as the nose.
Oh well... Nothing is perfect. People say that there is an analogy between
the flute and bowed stringed instruments. The breath flowing over the far
edge of the embouchure hole is like the bow being drawn across the string,
and then the lungs and the spaces in the nose and the sinuses are like the
resonant body of the viol.
The second half of the book is titled "Breathing+". All
those things about Buddhist monks and their extreme endurance. The
techniques of Wim
Hof. This involves the opposite of the breathing technique which was
described in the first part of the book. Hyperventilating. Subjecting the
body into a directed stress. The traditional technique of the peoples of the
Himalayas is known as Tummo. There is a YouTube video of a young man who is a teacher of
Tummo. I can imagine that he might be an American Indian. An ideal young
man. A wonderfully proportioned face and body, in harmony with himself and
the world. A model of good breathing.
