A voice in my head demands books from far away places. The less I know of the place, the better. The story becomes the peephole into another human experience. Supposedly different, if not alien to my own. Reading Soyinka or maybe Maupassant started it.
The experiences are not always fun. Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” terrifies me. To this day, I’m too scared to read The Castle or The Trial. The synopsises are chilling enough. If you are a third world darkie who underwent any immigration ritual in the first world, you know what I mean. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are blessed.
Despite the initial alienness, I find familiar sensations in either the worlds or the people in the stories. It can seep in years later. A classic example is Lagerkvist’s book “The Dwarf”. It reminds me of the general mindset I “felt” while serving time in Sri Lanka’s education gulag. Perhaps such sentiments is the fog of time thickening over memory. That’s what reading random WW2 Danish novels can do to you.
The latest read is The General of the Dead Army by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Chamira mentioned him to me years ago, and I forgot. Luckily I stumbled on Kadare on my own a decade later!.
From the bits I’ve read, he’s mentioned – in the same tones people use when referring to Martin Wikramasighe or Orhan Pamuk. The “feel” of the story has echoes of Noon Tide Toll’s first story. In general, there are strong post-war Sri Lankan themes. War. Digging up the war dead. Graves marked, unmarked, mis-marked and the messy politics involved.
I have a fascination with Albania (let’s stop calling that odd). So I’m familiar with the diabolical tragedies of its history. Again, it’s impossible not to see the similar absurdities to the madness called Sri Lankan history.
I confess my reading of stories lacks the educated mind of the literary critic. Mine is the experience of the literary peasant. I toil through seemingly dull passages and harvest deeply personal realisations. Yet what I pull out is inexplicable and irrelevant on the stage of literary theory and criticism.
The voice in my head doesn’t care. As long as I keep it fed, it leaves me in peace—a classic win-win.
How do you experience stories from far away?
Cerno 