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There is a sense of history from the opening pages of Kressmann Taylor’s Address Unknown (1938), mixing the echoes of the Great War, still vivid in its characters’ memories (”Fourteen years since the war! Did you mark the date? What a long way we have traveled, as peoples, from that bitterness!”), with their deeper personal connection. Told in letters between Jewish American, Eisenstein, and his business partner, the German Schulse, this (very) short novel spans fifteen months in the early 1930s during the Nazi machine’s rise to power.

In the first few exchanges the friends are genial, talking shop, Germany (”the breadth of intellectual freedom, the discussions, the music, the light-hearted comradeship”), and mentioning Griselle, Eistenstein’s headstrong sister and former fling of Schulse, who is traveling Europe as an actress. Liberal politics abound, then darkness descends as Eisenstein asks  (”Who is this Adolf Hitler who seems rising toward power in Germany?”)

What is initially frightening about Address Unknown is how Schulse, privileged in Germany following his economic success in America (”we employ now ten servants for the same wages of our two in the San Francisco home”) makes the rapid volte-face from declaring Hindenburg “a fine liberal whom I much admire” to a scathing attack on liberalism:

A liberal is a man who does not believe in doing anything. He is a talker about the rights of man, but just a talker. He likes to make a big noise about freedom of speech, and what is freedom of speech? Just the chance to sit firmly on the backside and say that whatever is being done by the active men is wrong. What is so futile as the liberal? I know him well because I have been one. He condemns the passive government because it makes no change. But let a powerful man arise, let an active man start to make a change, then where is your liberal? He is against it. To the liberal any change is the wrong one.

The powerful man that arises needs no introduction, and it’s not so much Hitler who features in the novel but the poison that his Fascist tenets instills in a man’s mind. From an early observational capacity Schulse describes him (”the man is like an electric shock, strong as only a great orator and a zealot can be”) but it’s soon obvious that any impartiality is slain by the sword of oratory:

As for the sterm measures that so distress you, I myself did not like them at first, but I have come to see their painful necessity. The Jewish race is a sore spot to any nation that harbors it. I have never hated the individual Jew — yourself I have always cherished as a friend, but you will know that I speak in all honesty when I say I have loved you, not because of your race but in spite of it.

Although the change in relations between the two men seems rapid, with the letters following each other as the pagination insists, its the long gaps between these in the story’s time, often months, that add to the book’s power. We are left to wonder what has been happening in these unwritten periods. How has Schulse allowed himself to secede and convince himself of the efficacy of Hitler’s regime? Have Eisenstein’s nights been sleepless as he anticipates the next reply? And what of their common bond, Griselle, travelling between Vienna and Berlin, especially when her brother notes about the letter he has sent her?

…it has been returned to me, the envelope unopened, marked only address unknown, (Adressant Unbekannt). What a darkness those words carry! How can she be unknown? It is surely a message she has come to harm.

Into its minimal pages Address Unknown packs an incredible wealth of content, describing through one man Germany’s “hysteria of deliverance” under the auspices of a doer —

The whole tide of a people’s life changes in a minute because the man of action has come. And I join him. […] I am a man because I act. Before that I am just a voice. I do not question the ends of our action. It is not necessary. I know it is good because it is so vital. Men are not drawn into bad things with so much joy and eagerness.

— and showing how words are just as much a weapon as armaments, perhaps even more so with their power to control people that will readily renounce who they truly are to follow a crazed destiny they would otherwise never consider. When Schulse talks of German destiny —

If I could show you, if I could make you see — the rebirth of this new Germany under our Gentle Leader! Not for always can the world grind a great people down in subjugation. In defeat for fourteen years we bowed our heads. We ate the bitter bread of shame and drank the thin gruel of poverty. But now we are free men. We rise in our might and hold our heads up before the nations. We purge our bloodstream of its baser elements. We go singing through our valleys with strong muscles tingling for a new work — and from the mountains ring the voices of Wodan and Thor, the old, strong gods of the German race.

— the words of the Nazi doctrine are evident, for this is a man who has lived comfortably in the United States, and never suffered the hardship of post-war Germany.

If the compact nature of Address Unknown is powerful itself for Schulse’s journey, Taylor strengthens it further by working the idea of words’ power to a wonderful twist that plays on the paranoid, censorious nature of the regime it successfully lambasts. Taylor could not have known what horrors were yet to come from Nazi aggression, but in this tale she rallies against its rise, and the results, when they arrive, are both satisfying, abrupt, and apt.

It’s called Scotland’s shame, the sectarianism that has attached itself to Scottish society and festers therein. The absorption of Ireland’s exiles in the nineteenth century saw Catholicism take steps into the country, much to the chagrin of the Protestant ‘indigènes’, and the rest, as they say, is history. Although it’s not history per se as the divide created then is still very much alive today, most prominently masquerading around within the national sport: football.

Des Dillon’s play, Singin I’m No A Billy He’s A Tim (2005) tackles sectarianism head on. Since its initial performance at the Edinburgh Festival, the play has gone on to tour both Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it was even used by the then Scottish Executive to tackle the issue of bigotry at school level. By turning the spotlight on two football fans — Tim and Billy, immediately defined by their heavy brush stroke of a name –  supporting a team on either side of the divide, Dillon creates a dialogue that explores sectarianism.

Tim, in the green and white, is a Glasgow Celtic fan., and therefore of Catholic stock. It’s not long before Billy is calling him on singing a song about the Irish revolutionary Michael Collins:

Billy: I wish you lot would shut up wi that shite.

Tim: It’s my heritage.

Billy: Yer heritage!

Tim: There’s nothin wrong wi rememberin yer heritage.

Billy: I bet ye’ve never even been in Ireland. (Beat as Tim squirms) Have ye?

Tim: I’m not tellin you where I’ve been an where I’ve not.

A beat, then:

Billy: Ye’ve never been have ye? (Tim ignores him) Answer me then.

Tim: So! What if I haven’t?

Billy: Yees’re aw the same — rattlin oan aboot a place ye’ve never been. If I had my way I’d send yees aw back to fuckin tattie land.

In the dialogue between the two, there’s underlying irony to be had with Billy (”Ma heritage goes straight as a die to Ulster.”), a Glasgow Rangers fan, and therefore Protestant. Situations in real life are, of course, more complicated, but Billy and Tim prove adequate mouthpieces through which the fallacies and the hatred that lie at the heart of the problem can be aired. History, politics, religion, and institutions are all paid a visit for their role in the sectarianism of today.

The scene is a Glasgow jail, on match day. Not just any match day, but the clash of the Old Firm: Rangers and Celtic. Both Billy and Tim, however, have landed themselves in the cells. In such a confined space, there’s little more they can do than talk and take broad swipes at each other, unleashing the vitriol as it comes pouring out, and each eager to take the upper hand. While they are able to trot out all the cliches, the moronic arguments that have seen nothing but a stalemate lasting decades, their own ignorance and naivete in getting caught up in the cycle of bigotry reveals itself, from songs sung in the name of sport –

Billy: Hello — Hello — we are the Billy boys, Hello — Hello — you’ll know us by our noise, We’re up to our knees in Fenion blood…

– through outright insulting –

 Tim: …into these (rhythm of the old Coke advert) Orange-Mason-hand-shakin-Ulster-lovin-finger-ticklin-Tim-hatin-goat-buckin-Proddy-fuckin-bastards.

As the invective becomes exhausted, it seems the only way forward is for reconciliation, and in an ideal world this is what would happen. Dillon’s play explores this ideal world, becoming one along the way, as the notions of how to solve the problems of sectarianism manifests itself within the two players. In truth it happens all too easily, but the characters do come to it via logical means.

Although the skin of the play wraps around bigotry in Scotland, the bones are far more generic, for sectarianism is an issue that affects far flung areas of the world, like the tit-for-tat between Israel and Palestine or the genocide of the Balkan conflict — all disputes that have no end in sight. Dillon’s play works on the basis that common ground needs to be found between the sparring parties and from there, mutual understanding can be fostered, goalposts set, and favourable results achieved. It’s a simplistic enough idea, and hardly revolutionary, but it works in the context of opening up dialogue on the subject.

Tim: Look — I think everybody’s a bigot. We’ve all got bigotry. Every single person’s got bigotry for somethin.

The closing stage, where a symbolic unification occurs is poignant, for gone are the bilious songs that characterised both men and their upbringing, and in comes one that represents Scotland as a whole, the bigotry driven out.

The merits of the play would be best experienced in a theatre rather than on the page, as, given the subject matter, it’s a narrative that could bring people to the theatre who would never think to otherwise. While it’s laudable that it could be used to dispell myths, quash rumours, and educate people on the sectarian divide, its downside is that the casual banter and reheated arguments, especially to those who have heard them all before, become more of a novelty than a criticism. Sectarianism is Scotland’s ‘elephant in the room’ and more literature should seek to attack it. Singin I’m No A Billy He’s A Tim opens up dialogue, and entertains in doing so.

It’s thanks to a slurry of comments on Chilean literature in my review of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, that I come to Ana María del Río’s Carmen’s Rust (1986). The main recommendation was to read Diamela Eltit’s Sacred Cow, who, incidentally, provides an afterword to this slim volume, but nico’s comment that del Río was also “an important writer”, in light of Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, piqued my interest.

In reading Carmen’s Rust, I was reminded of my experience reading Ismail Kadare’s Agamemnon’s Daugher, where much passed me by due to a lack of knowledge of the subject. Reading up on Enver Hoxha’s Albania solidified my appreciation of the book, so having read this novel once, it seemed right that I understand the subtexts, and return ready to spot the allusions to the Pinochet era. Where Agamemnon’s Daughter was quite explicit, Carmen’s Rust takes a more allegorical approach, namely Pinochet in a dress.

The novel distances itself from its contemporary regime, uncomfortably setting itself in the 1950s, during another dictatorship, represented by the confines of a huge house with seemingly endless rooms, and other nooks and crannies. At the beginning, the narrator’s Aunt Malva, having been abandoned by her husband, comes to live in the upstairs of the Grandmother’s house, where the matriarchs rule supreme and the great room is often opened for “celebrations that abounded with turkeys, truffles, wine, and senators.”

It took her a week to move in. We watched as she penetrated the house like a fateful tempest of black trunks and brown paper packages tied up with strong rope - ropes that were like invisible nooses being slipped over our little heads.

Others living in the house include Carlitos, Malva’s son, nicknamed President of the Republic; the eponymous Carmen, the narrator’s half-sister - same father, different mothers -; and Meche, the maid with a dictatorial streak not unlike her mistress’. That only covers those given, to some degree, free reign to move around as, in order to save face, this bourgeoisie household hides a few secrets of its own. Tucked away in a back room is Carmen’s mother, a woman of lower social standing, stolen away and “cloistered for life”. In another room is Uncle Ascanio - “that stupid dimwit, as Aunt Malva would say” - who has never worked, probably because he’s been mentally worn down to the point of lobotomy:

Uncle Ascanio lived in what he and Grandmother called his Bird Store. In reality, his room had all the trapping, as well as the smells, of a primitive henhouse. Apparently Uncle Ascanio began by collecting baby chicks in his room - future egg-layers - with the intention of raising them to lay eggs for sale. He was never able to convince them though; and later, his mother, never one to give up, and praying upon the family’s coat-of-arms, brought him eggs arranged in a multitude of purple cartons. But the capital quickly turned rancid because Uncle Ascanio never sold anything. He just filed his nails endlessly, staring straight ahead, mesmerized by everything, as though an invisible door were about to open.

The main focus of the novel is the days when the narrator and Carmen became dissidents within the house.  While the matriarchs would oversee their activities and try to control them in every way, to ensure their way of life continues as it always has been. Where there are cracks, these are papered over with fixes, but the rebellious nature of the young ones ultimately reveals them once more. Piano lessons, for example, by the best teacher in the region see the teacher seduced by the Carmen’s burgeoning sexuality, “his ceremonious kisses deposited in deep cavities - kisses that lasted longer than the silence of a domestic servant.”

Carmen’s attentions also extend to her half-brother, a relationship which blossoms through the novel, with repeated attempts to stamp it out from the powers that be.

To spice up our lives a little in that huge house, a few games would be left sitting on top of Grandmother’s green tablecloth just after lunch, although by that time we were already making overtures under the table - rolling up napkins and playing footsie.

The problem faced when living in such an atmosphere is the danger of being watched. Here, in the Grandmother’s house, eyes are everywhere and careless actions eventually lead to unjust punishments. The shock of the novel is the utter hopelessness of whichever path one takes through such rule. Where Carmen fails to be shaped and controlled by the regime, the narrator all too readily submits, leaving neither with a happy ending.

What’s good about Carmen’s Rust is how little the author has to offer to get her story across. Small details reveal larger implications and what goes unsaid tends to give away more than anything that can be said. The cover of the book, in declaring this economy, also makes note of the “searing humour”, which failed to materialise, although such humour is no doubt reserved for those better able to recognise the brutal absurdity of the novel’s situations.

In his heart, the narrator carries the memories of Carmen, a source of delight in bringing back those days, but also a painful reminder that he is no longer with her. (”She was my love, my only love, my ever-deepening, hellish sadness. She was everything to me.”). The psychological cost of having loved and lost remains with him, and in never letting her memory die out, he opens it up, airs it - to remember once more, to let it rust.

Linda Grant comes to this year’s Booker longlist following on from her longlisting for this year’s Orange Prize, an accolade she won in 2000 with her second novel, When I Lived In Modern Times. Her third novel, Still Here, flirted with the Booker back in 2002, but never made it to the shortlist. The Clothes On Their Backs (2008), her fourth novel, might yet see her take one step further to the Booker, especially in a year where, judging by the discussions on the Booker site, the field seems average.

Although Grant’s family history is lodged in a distant Russian-Polish background, The Clothes On Their Backs imagines a Jewish Hungarian one.  And the Hungarian connection is here in force, with poet and translator Georges Szirtes appearing three times over: in the dedication, the acknowledgements, and an epigraph. Call it a three piece suit, which is fitting as The Clothes On Their Backs is a novel all about clothes and what it means to wear them.

The clothes you wear are a metamorphosis. They change you from the outside in. We are all trapped with these thick calves or pendulous breasts, our sunken chests, our dropping jowls. A million imperfections mar us. …So the most you can do is put on a new dress, a different tie. We are forever turning into someone else, and should never forget that someone else is always looking.

Putting on a new dress is Vivian Kovacs, the English born child of Hungarian immigrants. When she was growing up there was a wardrobe full of hand-me-down clothes in her parents’ house. Now, thinking back, there are no family photographs showing she ever wore them. (”As far as I knew, no evidence existed that I was ever a child.”) Denying Vivien a record of her past isn’t all they are guilty of - they deny her their past too.

Because my parents never answered any questions about the past - that’s finished, it’s over and done with, here you are in England, that other place has nothing to do with you, stop bothering your head with this rubbish, no, no, no - I learned to stop asking, and eventually I forgot all about wanting to ask. Suddenly, a treasure chest had opened out and spilled all these precious objects.

The treasure chest is Vivien’s uncle, Sándor, a refugee from the Hungarian revolution who has set himself up as a slum landlord, based on Peter Rachman. Back in 1977, when she knew him, Sándor paid her to write up his memoirs, as he talked about growing up in Hungary, and the horrors faced there, the likes of which not even her father had experienced. In these recollections, her uncle deflects any responsibility to himself arguing that his actions, regardless of their immorality, were necessary. That he can face up to his actions and move on them puts him in direct opposition to Vivien’s father:

My father was terrified of change. When change was in the air anything could happen, and he already suffered from an anxiety: that any small disturbance in his circumstances would bring everything down - the flat, the wife, the job, the new daughter, London itself, then England, and he would slide down the map of the world, back to Hungary, clinging on uselessly, ridiculously, with his fingers clutching the smooth, rolling surface of the globe.

Something that could bring down everything down are events in 1977. Having escaped to England to escape fascism, the rise of the National Front provides worrying echoes of home. The uniformed goons that patrol the streets further add to the novel’s exploration of what clothes mean to the person wearing them. But, all extraneous characters aside, the novel’s main focus is the relationships between the members of the Kovacs family, and these are without doubt the most interesting parts of The Clothes On Their Back.

Sadly, Grant adds other touches to Vivien’s life - all verging on the ridiculous; all pertaining to equally doomed relationships - that detract from the story’s potential. Plus, while the flavour of her immigrants’ speech is speckled with the occasional grasp for a word, sometimes the words in their mouth come across feeling strained:

‘Vivien, I feel I am in that programme Perry Mason and you are the lawyer and I am the accused. What do you call it, cross-examination. I wish you would stop.’

But cross-examination may just be what The Clothes On Their Backs needs. The first chapter offers up many discussion points that don’t become clear until the book has unravelled its events and themes. Then, a passing mention of the London bombings, hints again at clothes and the pigeonholing of people in the interests of persecution. It’s a wardrobe of words made all the more interesting for the skeletons in its closet, although the experience for its narrator, recounted thirty years on, comes across as little more than second hand.

For the rest of the world, who had been waiting over ten years for Díaz’s first novel, following on from his short story collection, Drown, I hope the wait was worth it. For me, having never heard of Díaz until his book, The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2007) took the 2008 Pulitzer Prize there was no weight of expectation hanging around, waiting to confirm him as a genius or to wallow in what could have been. And were it not for the Pulitzer I would probably have remained ignorant of it as the cover is…well, ugly. Not something I’d pick up, never mind read.

Wao being a distortion of Wilde, used to ridicule him, the Oscar of the title is actually Oscar de León, an overweight nerd of Dominican heritage living in the United States who, unlike his skirt chasing contemporaries, is more into sci-fi, fantasy, role-playing games, and writing novels. Not that he doesn’t attempt some skirt chasing himself, it’s just that his lines, along with the rest of him, need a bit of work:

Anywhere else his triple-zero batting average with the ladies might have passed without comment, but this is a Dominican kid we’re talking about, in a Dominican family: dude was supposed to have Atomic Level G, was supposed to be pulling in the bitches with both hands. Everybody noticed his lack of game and because they were Dominican everybody talked about it.

Dominicans talking is nothing new - it’s in their history. And the history of the Dominican Republic plays a large role in The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. While the idea of Oscar’s bad luck, to some, is something to be skeptical about, it could possibly be attributed to a curse in the family, referred to as  fukú:

But the fukú ain’t just ancient history, a ghost story from the past with no power to scare. In my parent’s day the fukú was real as shit, something your everyday person could believe in…But in those elder days, fukú had it good; it even had a hypeman of sorts, a high priest you could say. Our then dictator for life Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina.

The life of Trujillo, whose reign was one of the 20th Century’s bloodiest, and lasted over thirty year, mixes with the history of Oscar’s mother and grandfather and ties them neatly together.  And with a narrator -who doesn’t reveal himself until late into the novel - that wasn’t actually there at the events he relates, there’s much filling in of the blanks. There’s footnotes, too - loads of them - providing further history about Trujillo and the Dominican Republic, and it’s an unsettling experience, being dragged between narrative and notes, that soon becomes annoying.

And when it comes to annoying, The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao has another ace up its sleeve in the use of ghetto Spanglish. It’s understandable why Díaz has done this, given that it’s his narrator’s voice and to not do so would lessen its power but the Spanish is sometimes laid on so thick that, save taking time out to look up words and phrases, the context sheds no light. Reading this was reminiscent of the white boy in the wrong neighbourhood stereotype. However, I didn’t feel too fussed by the peppering of sci-fi and fantasy references, mostly alien too, because they seemed more like texture, whereas the Spanish felt important.

Yet, even when it annoys, the novel has an energy to its prose the likes of which I’ve not enjoyed for a while. It picks you up, and carries you along, to the end. Personally, I found the sections detailing Oscar’s relatives’ lives the least engaging, perhaps because of the distance between the narrator and the tales, whereas the Oscar sections flow with warmth, love, and humour. That they do is a pity because Oscar’s role, despite being the titular character, is minimal on the surface, with Díaz using him as a way in to writing about his political interests in the Dominican Republic.

I know I’ve approached the novel from the wrong angle - or at least, not that which Díaz likely intended - but when the book became a lost cause for me, I relied on the sections about Oscar to get me through. Who couldn’t love the nerd, even if some of his interests….well, you know:

Could write in Elvish, could speak Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role-playing fanatic…Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens. Couldn’t have passed for normal if he’d wanted to.

While he may not pass for normal, Oscar certainly makes an interesting character and it’s a shame that, for all the interesting history and story there, I couldn’t enjoy the book, except for the brief and wondrous pages of Oscar Wao.

On my regular visits to book shops there has been one book that I’ve picked up on each visit, pondered it awhile, and returned to the shelves. Not because it didn’t interest me, but because other books I picked up interested me more. However, having seen a positive review elsewhere, I decided that the next time I picked it up I wouldn’t put it down until I’d read it. So, it came to be that I read Secret (2004), by Philippe Grimbert, winner of notable French literary prizes. And besides, it’s always fun to be part of a secret.

Grimbert is by trade a psychoanalyst and it appears that for his second novel he has decided to sit himself on the couch and delve into his own family history, providing a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in post-war France. Fiction and reality are almost inseparable here as the narrator is Grimbert himself and the events are real. Secret, then, is an attempt by the author to flesh out his family history prior to his own birth, in which an unearthed secret is hidden:

Of athletic parents, Grimbert is a child of “thinness and sickly pallor”, and begins by talking of how he invented an imaginary brother, someone older and stronger, someone he’d never become, a brother “who would burden [him] with the full force of his weight”, to fill the hole in his world:

I always felt envious when I went to stay with a friend and a similar-looking boy walked in. The same dishevelled hair and lopsided grin would be introduced with two words: ‘My brother’. An enigma, this intruder with whom everything must be shared, even love. A real brother. Someone in whose face you discovered like features: a persistently straying lock of hair, a pointy tooth… A room-mate of whom you knew the most intimate things: moods, tastes, weaknesses, smell. Exotic for me who reigned alone over the empire of my family’s four room flat.

What follows then is the realisation that buried deep in his mind, the imaginary brother has his roots in a half-brother who died before Philippe was born. The novel proceeds to tell a version of Grimbert’s family history, imagined from the bones of what he knows:

For a long time I was a young boy who dreamed of having a perfect family. I used the rare glimpses they gave me to build a picture of how my parents had met. A few incidental words about their childhood, snippets of information about their youth, their love… I pounced on these fragments to create my unlikely tale. In my own way I unwound the tangle of their lives and, much as I had invented myself a brother, created from scratch the meeting of the two bodies from which I was born, as if I were writing a novel.

By doing this he learns how his father’s first marriage spawned the half-brother, despite having always had eyes for the woman who became Grimbert’s mother. But it goes deeper than that, for after his fifteenth birthday Philippe learns “what [he] had always known”: that his past is Jewish. His father, by deed poll, had changed their name from Grinberg to Grimbert, thus allowing him to “plant roots deep in French soil.” Confronted on the truth he replies that “we’ve always had that name”. And so the true nature of the Grimbert history comes to light as the author imagines what it would have been like to live in occupied France, as a Jew:

The yellow stain distinguished them to others but also allowed them to recognise each other, binding together a community that, because it was hiding itself, had sometimes not realised its own existence.

So it continues that Grimbert pieces together his family history during and after the war, taking what is known and supposing the rest, finding in his fictions reasons for why events happened as they did. And as the author works through the memory of his characters, the great secret that lies at the heart of the family is aired and the burden they represent cast aside, leading to final tragic circumstances.

Grimbert’s prose is terse, mildy poetic at times, and, along with its notion of imagining one’s family’s past, is reminiscent of Anne Enright’s The Gathering, only more optimistic, interesting, and enjoyable. At no point does the author brood on the past, each short section being a delicate meditation or revelation, culminating in the harrowing aftermath of one family’s life during wartime that is ultimately poignant in the telling. In sharing the secret of his brother Grimbert no longer needs to invent, for with the secret aired he is no longer alone.

Secret is published as Memory in the US.

When it comes to choosing a book there are all manner of things that can - and do - influence my choices. An interesting cover is one such way to grab my attention, as is an alluring title. And then there’s the matter of my ongoing mission to discover new writers. Of those three, Arto Paasilinna’s The Howling Miller (1981) ticks each box - and so it was a dead cert to be read. And the sooner the better.

Set in post-war Finland, a man named Gunnar Huttunen (”as lean as he was tall”) arrives in a rural village and takes control of the local mill, rundown due to the war, and restores it to past glories. For this the villagers are happy to have him and, of an evening, he proves great company with his ability to mimic animals - cranes, bears, elks - but this all changes when, prone to mood swings, he finds a release in howling “from dusk until the early hours and, if it were carried on the wind, every dog for miles around would answer his desolate cry.”

And this is just the opening pages, to which the villagers react by deciding that, since he won’t conform with their wishes, he must be mad. It’s not long, then, before the local doctor has officially certified him and he’s transferred to “the loony bin” from which, with the help of an inmate, he soon escapes. What then plays out is an extraordinary conflict between Huttunen and the people of the village as they try to out him from the woods in which he hides in order to return him to the asylum. As the hunt for Huttenun escalates in scale, all he has to side with him are the local postman - also the local drunk - and Sanelma Käyrämö, his girlfriend who, because of his madness, isn’t quite willing to settle down lest they “have a baby, the mad child of a mad man.”

It’s a riotous novel, full of deadpan humour told in a comic style that, as the opening paragraph suggests, comes across like a fable, throwing in some period references:

Soon after the wars, a tall fellow appeared in the canton who said his name was Gunnar Huttunen. unlike most of the drifters who came up from the south, he didn’t go to the forestry department looking for work digging ditches, but bought the old mill on the Suukoski rapids of the Kemijoki River. This was judged to be a hare-brained scheme, since, having stood idle since the 1930s, the mill had fallen into a state of extreme dilapidation.

If I were to have any complaint of The Howling Miller it’s only that the translation felt adequate and nothing more, coming as it did from Finnish via a French translation, an approach I felt similarly lacking in Ismail Kadare’s Spring Flowers, Spring Frost. There’s always that sense something gets lost in translation, but one wonders what gets lost in translation of the translation. Certainly not the humour or the tone, in this case. But Paasilinna’s other novel currently translated to English, The Year Of The Hare is direct from Finnish. So why not this?

But that’s a small grumble as the gist of the novel is still there and it’s enjoyable, maintaining interest all the way through, the narrative never waning, as it winds its way through themes of persecution, corruption, and madness with more subtle content concerning agrarian principles, demonstrating Paasilinna’s seeming love of nature. The Howling Miller, as a read, has worthwhile concerns to explore but here there are no answers - or attempts to assert opinion - here; just a straightforward tale that may just have you howling too.