Damian Kelleher - Literary reviews and essays

The latest addition to the website is my review of Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz' novel, Adrift on the Nile.

Adrift on the Nile is a stoner comedy without the stoner, and it's missing a lot of the comedy. Instead, Mahfouz has fashioned a melancholic and rambunctious (an odd combination, yes) tale of intellectuals who are unhappy with their lives, but unwilling to change them. They smoke, they laugh, they live, and they - well, that's it. A deeply existential novel, Adrift on the Nile cuts to the bone of the easy conceit of the intellectual that their life is better simply because they think. Mahfouz shows this is not the case, and in his careful deconstruction, everything is game and everything is attacked. Another genre in which Mahfouz shows himself a master.

You can read the review here.

Other titles by Mahfouz also under review:
---Before the Throne
---The Thief and the Dogs
---The Time and the Place

The latest addition to the website is my review of Polish author Paweł Huelle's novel, Castorp.

Castorp is a prequel to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, taking up a few lines from Mann's masterpiece and turning it into a novel. As an idea, it is fantastic, and Huelle mostly succeeds in his endeavour. He captures accurately the tone and style of Mann's writing, and does what he can with the small amount of background Mann provided for Castorp in The Magic Mountain. Less successful, however, is the fact that Huelle really can't do much with his character. The important events of Hans Castorp's life all happened atop the mountain, which means Huelle is unable to add any significant additions to the character's life. This makes for a somewhat tame, predictable affair, but nonetheless, what's here is very good.

You can read the review here.

The Nestbury Tree is a story of logic and reason struggling against emotion and evil. It is the story of stoicism and stability fighting change and chance. Or, it's the story of a family struggling against an increasingly ambitious church Shepherd. Your choice.

You can read the review here.

Other titles in the African Roar series include:
---Tshuma, Novuyo Rosa - Big Pieces, Little Pieces
---Tubosun, Kola - Behind the Door
---Musodza, Masimba - Yesterday's Dog

The Nestbury Tree by Nigerian author Ayodele Morocco-Clarke is a short story from StoryTime publication, African Roar (edited by Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor W. Hartmann).

The latest addition to my website is my review of Nigerian author Su'eddie Vershima Agema's short story, Awaiting, which was recently published in Issue 3 of Sentinel Nigeria.

Awaiting tells the story of Oche, who is confidently expecting good news from his wife, who is giving birth in a Nigerian hospital. Time drags on, and Oche begins to question the legitimacy of the Nigerian government's handling of feminine health, but also, and most importantly, his own stoicism as a man. Awaiting is generally very successful, but the ending doesn't hold up to the rest of the story. But don't let that stop you.

You can read the review here.

I encourage you to read the story online, which is available here.

The latest addition to the website is my review of Serbian author Srdjan Valjarević's novel, Lake Como.

Lake Como is a disorderly adventure in the life of the close-but-not-quite alcoholic narrator, who has received a month's scholarship at a prestigious intellectual retreat on Lake Como, in Italy. Valjarević offers a carefully clever tale of a writer who cannot writer, a drunkard who always drinks, a man who is more at home amongst the true and honest 'common folk' than he is within the bosom the of the world's intellectual elite, and, on top of that, a neat metaphorical examination of Serbia's place in the world post its separation from Yugoslavia. It should be a mess, but it's not, the pieces dovetailing together to create a seamless experience that is as deep, or as light, as you choose.

You can read the review here.

Titles that fall within the Geopoetika Serbian prose in Translation series under review include:
---Ognjenović, Vida - Adulterers

The latest addition to my website is my review of Nigerian author Sylva Nze Ifedigbo's short story, The Lunch on Good Friday, which was recently published in Issue 7 of the Maple Tree Literary Supplement.

The Lunch on Good Friday is a young girl's tense and sensitive recollection of a significant event in the life of her very unhappy family. Ifedigbo's handling of the girl's perspective is excellent, and the tension remains understated and deep, without resorting to flash and bang for affect.

You can read the review here.

Other works by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo under review:
---Death on Gimbiya Street

I encourage you to read the story online, which is available here.

Yesterday's Dog is a violent story of revenge and potentially redemption, twisted neatly to show the recurrent nature of savagery and evil in the lives of men. Musodza handles the terror of the torture scenes well, though at times his two primary characters seem a little colourless. The ending is magnificent, and makes of the story a much deeper critique of man than would at first be expected.

You can read the review here.

Other titles in the African Roar series include:
---Tshuma, Novuyo Rosa - Big Pieces, Little Pieces
---Tubosun, Kola - Behind the Door

Yesterday's Dog by Zimbabwean author Masimba Musodza is a short story from StoryTime publication, African Roar (edited by Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor W. Hartmann).

Foreign Women by Estonian author Elo Viiding is a short story from The Dalkey Archive Press publication, Best European Fiction 2010 (edited by Aleksandar Hemon). This review is part of a series intending to examine each story from the collection, in an effort to broaden awareness of both the project itself, and the excellent array of authors contained within.

Foreign Women is a hilariously satirical view of Soviet women, their husbands, and the foreign women whose visits bring so much chaos. It is a story of comparisons, and nobody is let off easily, particularly the men-folk, who are like scuttling bugs in the wake of the more dominent women. Quotes don't do this short story justice; it really is worth seeking out and reading in its entirety.

You can read the review here.

Other titles under review from the Best European Fiction 2010 anthology include:
---Belgium: Toussaint, Jean-Phillipe - Zidane's Melancholy
---Bosnian: Štiks, Igor - At the Sarajevo Market
---Bulgarian: Gospodinov, Georgi - And All Turned Moon
---Croatian: Ušumović, Neven – Vereš
---Danish: Aidt, Naja Marie - Bulbjerg

The latest addition to the website is my review of Japanese author Meisei Goto's novel, Shot by Both Sides.

Shot by Both Sides is a literary adventure, a wander through a vacillating man's memories, a journey down the crooked path of Japan's psyche post-World War II, and an extended essay on Gogol's Overcoat. Oh, and it's very good.

You can read the review here.

Behind the Door is a quiet, sad, and starkly normal story of one man as he waits to find out the results from a HIV test. Kola Tubosun captures the oddly ordinary nature of such an event, and couples it with a narrator whose inner life, when we briefly glimpse it, is far more volcanic than his outward calm would indicate. There's no denying that Africa as a continent has a problem with AIDS, and it is stories such as these that show how endemic the illness has become.

You can read the review here.

Other titles in the African Roar series include:
---Tshuma, Novuyo Rosa - Big Pieces, Little Pieces

Behind the Door by Nigerian author Kola Tubosun is a short story from StoryTime publication, African Roar (edited by Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor W. Hartmann).