Tag: literature in translation

Blog Tour/Book Review: The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan

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I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan, which was published on 4th April 2019 by World Editions, in a new translation by Rachel McNicholl and Sinéad Crowe.  You can read my review below.

Thanks to Julia at Ruth Killick Publicity for inviting me to participate in the tour and to World Editions for my advance review copy of The Storyteller.  The blog tour kicked off yesterday with an extract from the book hosted by Liz Loves Books.

Watch Pierre Jarawan talking about the book here.

The_Storyteller_CoverAbout the Book

Samir leaves the safety and comfort of his family’s adopted home in Germany for volatile Beirut in an attempt to find his missing father. His only clues are an old photo and the bedtime stories his father used to tell him.

The Storyteller follows Samir’s search for Brahim, the father whose heart was always yearning for his homeland, Lebanon. In this moving and gripping novel about family secrets, love, and friendship, Pierre Jarawan does for Lebanon what Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan. He pulls away the curtain of grim facts and figures to reveal the intimate story of an exiled family torn apart by civil war and guilt. In this rich and skilful account, Jarawan proves that he too is a masterful storyteller

Format: Paperback, ebook (468 pp.)    Publisher: World Editions
Published: 4th April 2019   Genre: Literary Fiction, Translated Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Waterstones | Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Storyteller on Goodreads

My Review

Opening with a dramatic and intriguing prologue, the book is structured in three parts, moving between Lebanon and Germany over a period of more than thirty years.   In the first part, the reader experiences firsthand the close relationship between Samir and his father, a man who charmed everyone he met by never forgetting a name, being the life and soul of any party and, most importantly, telling Samir the most wonderful bedtime stories.  Along the way, we learn of the family’s flight from war-torn Beirut to Germany in the 1980s along with many other refugees.

However, one night everything changes seemingly as a result of something as simple as a photograph.  It leads to Samir’s father’s disappearance, an event which will shape the course of Samir’s life.   The dramatic impact of this on young Samir, his mother and sister, Alina, is convincingly conveyed.  Eventually, Samir travels to Beirut in search of his father because it seems to be the only way he can move on in his life and settle down to a career and relationship. What he learns will involve long-buried secrets, the complex political history of Lebanon (there’s a useful short history at the end of the book) and explore questions of national identity.  And Samir comes to realise that perhaps his father’s imaginative and colourful stories hid the truth all along if he’d only known it.

The theme of storytelling pervades the book, whether that’s something as innocent as bedtime stories or the thrill of telling a story to an appreciative audience.  Or the stories that a photograph can reveal, the contested stories a nation tells about itself or the stories of the hidden that don’t get told.

I loved the descriptive writing in the book, skilfully preserved by translators, Rachel McNicholl and Sinéad Crowe.  Like this about young Samir’s new home: ‘The smell of fresh paint drifted like a cheerful tune through the rooms.’  The book contains fascinating information about Lebanon: its culture, food, complex politics, turbulent recent history and, of course, the famed cedars of Lebanon.  In fact, you could say that, at its heart, The Storyteller is a love letter to Lebanon as much as a story about a young man’s search for the truth about his father.  On either count, The Storyteller is a fascinating, intriguing and beautifully written book that I can highly recommend.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, World Editions.

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In three words: Compelling, multi-layered, thought-provoking

Try something similar…The Glass Diplomat by S.R. Wilsher (read my review here)

Pierre_Jarawan_Author_PicAbout the Author

Pierre Jarawan was born in 1985 to a Lebanese father and a German mother and moved to Germany with his family at the age of three. Inspired by his father’s imaginative bedtime stories, he started writing at the age of thirteen. He has won international prizes as a slam poet, and in 2016 was named Literature Star of the Year by the daily newspaper Abendzeitung. Jarawan received a literary scholarship from the City of Munich (the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis) for The Storyteller, which went on to become a bestseller and booksellers’ favourite in Germany and the Netherlands. (Photo credit: Marvin Ruppert)

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Website  ǀ  Twitter  ǀ  Goodreads

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Book Review: The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

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TheSixteenTreesoftheSommeCoverAbout the Book

Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery – he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother.  But he knows that the fate of his grandfather’s brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death – a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all. Edvard’s desperate quest to unlock the family’s tragic secrets takes him on a long journey – from Norway to the Shetlands, and to the battlefields of France – to the discovery of a very unusual inheritance. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is about the love of wood and finding your own self, a beautifully intricate and moving tale that spans an entire century. (Translated from the Norwegian by Paul Russell Garrett.)

Format: ebook Publisher: MacLehose Press Pages: 480
Publication: 10th Aug 2017 Genre: Literary Fiction    

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Waterstones UK
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Sixteen Trees of the Somme on Goodreads

My Review

The death of Edvard’s grandfather, Bestefar, and the facts that come to light as a result, change everything for Edvard. They see him embark on a journey that will take him away from the isolated Nowegian farm where he has grown up to the Shetlands and France as he searches for the truth about the cause of his parents’ death and the four days afterwards when he was missing. It also stirs up vague fragments of memories – a scent, the sound of a voice, the texture of a fabric, a discarded toy – that don’t make any sense but convince Edvard that he needs to find out more about his parents’ death.

‘Because there was something about Mamma and Pappa’s story that was stirring, quietly, like a viper in the grass.’

As is often the case when unearthing secrets from the past, Edvard is forced to confront unwelcome possibilities and make agonising choices. Edvard’s search reaches back in time to WW1 and WW2, bringing to light painful facts from the past – death, injury, separation and betrayal – but also revealing stories of courage, determination and devotion.  It provokes questions such as whether it is better sometimes not to know the truth, to be careful what you wish for, that actions have consequences even if unintended, and the fulfilment you seek may be closer to home than you think.

I found the story absolutely enthralling and I loved the fantastic sense of place created in each location. From the author’s beautiful, heartfelt descriptions, I felt as if I could look out my own window and see the farm in Norway laid out before me.

‘Redcurrant bushes dense with berries, the flag-stoned path leading to the swimming hole at the river, the creek which cut through the potato fields and disappeared from sight behind the barn. The fruit trees, the pea pods that dangled like half moons when we got close to them, so plentiful that we could fill up on them without taking a step. The dark-blue fruit of the plum trees, the sagging raspberry bushes just waiting for us to quickly fill two small plates and fetch some caster sugar and cream.’

In particular, I loved the way the author captured the remote beauty of the Shetlands and the sense of a community where everyone knows what goes on, who’s arrived on the ferry, whose car has just passed them on the road. The author roots the various parts of the story each in their distinct time, in particular, using popular music as the background to Edvard’s journey. (I get the impression the author is a bit of a music fan, perhaps attracted at some point in his life to a girl by the way she browses in a record shop.)

At times, Edvard feels as if he has come to a dead-end in his search but still he continues searching for clues, motivated by curiosity but also by a sense of obligation to the dead – those known to him and those victims of two world wars unknown to him: ‘I wanted to be someone the dead could rely on.’

As the author of the left-field hit, Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way (now also an activity book), it’s no surprise that wood is at the heart of the story. It is part of the plot in a number of ways – in fact, more and more ways as the story progresses – but it is also celebrated in the book for its form, history and beauty. Similarly, there is real regard for the craftsmanship that can fashion a piece of wood into an object of beauty, utility or religious symbolism.

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme has a compelling, enthralling story line with wonderfully atmospheric settings and well-developed characters. I was completely immersed in Edvard’s search for the truth about his parents’ death; like him, all the time fearing the dark secrets he might uncover but compelled to find out nonetheless.   A fantastic book, highly recommended.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers Quercus Books/MacLehose Press in return for an honest review.

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In three words: Enthralling, dramatic, compelling

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LarsMyttingAbout the Author

Lars Mytting, a novelist and journalist, was born in Fåvang, Norway, in 1968. His novel The Sixteen Trees of the Somme was awarded the Norwegian National Booksellers’ Award and has been bought for film. Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way has become an international bestseller and was the Bookseller Industry Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2016.

Connect with Lars

Website ǀ Goodreads