Vietnam in den 1970er-Jahren: Huʾoʾng, liebevoll auch „Guave“ genannt, wächst bei ihrer Großmutter Diêu Lan auf, mitten im Krieg. Der Vater wird vermisst, die Mutter ist auf der Suche nach ihm. An langen Abenden erzählt die Großmutter ihrer Enkelin die Geschichte ihrer Familie, von Flucht und Vertreibung, aber auch von starken Frauen, die dem Schicksal eine lebenswerte Zukunft abtrotzen möchten…

„Der Gesang der Berge“ ist ein Roman von Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai.

Meine Meinung:
Der Roman besteht aus 16 unterschiedlich langen Kapiteln. Die Handlung umfasst die Jahre 1972 bis 2017 und spielt an verschiedenen Schauplätzen. Einheitliche Orts- und Zeitangaben zu Beginn der Kapitel erleichtern die Orientierung. Erzählt wird - mit Zeitsprüngen - in der Ich-Perspektive aus der Sicht von Huʾoʾng. Zudem gibt es eine Geschichte in der Geschichte, nämlich dann, wenn die Großmutter ihre Erlebnisse schildert. Der Aufbau ist etwas komplex, aber funktioniert gut.

Der Schreibstil ist bildstark, atmosphärisch und eindringlich. Es tauchen immer wieder Begriffe und Sätze in der Landessprache auf, die jedoch übersetzt werden.

Im Mittelpunkt stehen mehrere Generationen der Familie Trân. Die vielen fremden Namen sind am Anfang etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig. Allerdings ist vorne im Roman der Stammbaum abgedruckt, was das Verständnis einfacher macht. Huʾoʾng und ihre Großmutter, zwei sympathische Charaktere, nehmen am meisten Raum ein.

Thematisch geht es einerseits um die Geschichte der Familie Trân und andererseits um den Vietnamkrieg. Inhaltlich ist der Roman keine leichte Kost. Kriegerische Auseinandersetzungen, Leid, Tod und Armut spielen eine große Rolle.

Dabei basiert der Roman auf den persönlichen Erlebnissen der Autorin und den Erzählungen ihrer Verwandten, wie unter anderem in der „Danksagung“ zu erfahren ist. Das schafft eine Menge Authentizität und macht die Lektüre umso berührender. Auf mehr als 400 Seiten konnte mich die Geschichte fesseln und auch mehrfach überraschen.

Der deutsche Titel klingt sehr poetisch und ist stark an das englischsprachige Original („The Mountains Sing“) angelehnt. Auch das hübsche Cover, das nicht immer zum manchmal düsteren Inhalt passt, wurde übernommen.

Mein Fazit:
Mit „Der Gesang der Berge“ ist Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai ein sehr bewegender und packender Roman gelungen. Ein eindrucksvolles und aufwühlendes Buch, das ich wärmstens empfehlen kann.

Scarlet Song is quite different from Mariama Bâ’s other novel So long a Letter and while I thoroughly enjoyed the latter, I have some issues with this one.

But first things first. Scarlet Song is set in Dakar around the 1960’s and it is the love story between Mireille, the daughter of a French diplomat, and Ousman, son to a poor Senegalese family. One is a man, one a is woman, one is black, one is white, one comes from a rich family, one comes from a very poor family, one was raised according to European standards and norms, the other one to Wolof traditions. Both families resent this interracial relationship for different reasons, but as you can see, there is a lot of potential for conflict.

But surprisingly this is not so much the story of Mireille and Ousman, but of Ousman and especially his mother Yaye Khady. Although the novel shows, that racism goes both ways, Bâ definitely did not write for a European audience since you need at least some basic knowledge of Senegalese / Wolof culture and society (although the translator was kind enough to add some footnotes). The characters (all but Mireille) go back and forth between love, racism, prejudices, tradition and religion, additionally, the novel is sometimes strangely focused on motherhood (since Bâ raised nine children herself, I guess this was a big issue for her).

My main problem with this text was probably that only Yaye Khady as the hellish mother-in-law was believable as a character. Ousmans behaviour in the second and in the third part of the book was quite out of character and completely contradictory to the first part. While his close bonds with his family are understandable, his treatment of Mireille doesn’t make any sense. Mireille on the other hand feels like the embodiment of how Bâ as an African writer imagines a European/French woman to be. For example: it is said a couple of times, that she is rather rational, intelligent and proud, yet she never acts like that, but is only shown as someone who has fallen in love head over heels (once you go black, you never go back, I guess) and who struggles to fit in.

After all, Scarlet Song doesn’t really deal with the issues of an interracial marriage, but with the problems of an intercultural one. While Ousman and Mireille overcome racism and prejudices seemingly without any hassle, religion and traditions set them further and further apart. Again, it just felt less like a story about an actual marriage and more like a tale of Bâ’s idea of such a relationship.

All, 

As I am currently packing my bags to return to Edinburgh for a long weekend, it occurs to me that there are only 8 days left in August!

8!!!!

I know that 8 days is far too long a wait until Halloween Bingo kicks off, but equally, 8 days is not a lot of time to clear my currently reading shelf for the Bingo activities. (And you know that Moonlight Murder loves messing with the start date...)

So, even tho it is unfortunate that I won't be able to meet up and explore the city with a BL friend again this weekend (Lillelara, last Saturday was such a fun day. Thank you!), I am looking forward to getting some designated reading time on the train, which will help with finishing the brilliant Woza Shakespeare!

Then I'll try and find some time in between shows - most of the ones I have tickets for are part of Stephen Fry's 3-part marathon of Gods, Heroes, Men - to finish the two re-tellings of Greek myths Der Gesang der Wellen and Circe. 

Now, back to packing my bag of essentials...which inevitably includes taking an empty bag for essential raids on the Edinburgh bookshops. 

...fuenfzehn Jahre zuvor

war der Lehrer Odysseus Adsuara

nach Circea gekommen,

einem kleinen Kuestenort,

wo er lernte, Seeigel zu essen,

deren Aroma sein ganzes Wissen

von den Klassikern ueberfluessig 

machte...

 

I don't know why exactly, but I love this passage, even tho I would probably not be able to agree or come to the same conclusion in Odysseus' shoes. 

 

I'm not going to even try and translate this.

The subtext of love and lust being equated with disease continues.

In which context, incidentally, Spanish allows the author to create nuances and allusions that are pretty much untranslatable into English or German (or even French or Italian, for that matter), by dint of the sole fact that "to love" and "to want, to desire" (in both a physical sense and otherwise) are the same word -- querer.  And he doesn't even have to use it all the time, either.

On a separate note, the German translator is skipping parts of the original text.  In chapter 3 it was only one sentence (and I did such a double take there that I reread the paragraph in question a couple of times in both Spanish and German because I initially thought I'd just missed it -- but nope, it really wasn't me), but in chapter 4 it's an entire fragment of dialogue.  In both cases, the gist of the missing stuff is incorporated (by the author himself, mind you) into another statement in close proximity, but Vicent clearly considered the extra sentence / dialogue important nevertheless, otherwise he wouldn't have included them -- so who is the translator to decide they don't merit being included in the translation?  It's one thing not to translate literally, and to play with punctuation and sentence flow in order to better convey a sense of the original.  It's another thing entirely to decide part of the text doesn't need to be translated to begin with!