It has been a tough April, and I am among the fortunate ones. I know from the extraordinary people around me, how difficult and dire the conditions have been for many people.
Looking at my notes, I see that I had spent most of the time Teaching online (a topic for another post), Attending to young children, and worrying about family/health. However, it seems to me that I do not know where the decade of April 2020 went.
The word “Quarantine”, comes to English through French, originating from Italian quarantina which literally means “forty days”. We are approaching 40 days of staying in several places, and the end looks nowhere in sight.
Stay well, dear reader!
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Here are my pandemic recommendations. Some light, some heavy. Some funny, some serious. Instead of reviewing them fully, I recall the associative memories from reading experience that came back to me, as I thumbed through these copies.
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- Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. (Italian. Trans. By GH McWilliam).
My first recommendation is a light hearted version. 10 of rich noble ladies and gentlemen tell each other funny, ribald stories when they were quarantined away from Florence. My distinct memory is a funny one. An undergrad student who always came early to class, spent 15 minutes before class, reading The Decameron — she probably had to finish a story. (I didn’t think that she was reading the book under the desk during class). Great kid — and we discussed that it was great that she was reading Decameron. Pasolini made a movie, but that film is not even close to riotous abandon in the book. Read it and find joy, even among disaster.
- A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.
During my undergrad years, I went through a phase of Defoe in the library — Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and this diary. Although published in 1722, his “diary” of the year of the plague is quite vivid. Most now agree that the descriptions are closer to history than fiction. I have to admit that when I read it in Mumbai’s heat, I did not feel the grip of the pandemic chill. I now recall it with a shiver.
- The Plague by Albert Camus. (French. Trans. Stuart Gilbert).
Of course, highly recommended. Read it in an Amtrak train across Pennsylvania, sunken in my seat, glancing at the gentle snow coating the woods like a dream, in the periphery.
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.
Beautiful, sensitive book beginning with a pandemic — freighters in ocean twilight, sketches in a notebook by twilight, Shakespearean traveling drama troop — A perfect little book with a touching narrative very much like The Remains of the Day.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr.
Read it during an Indian monsoon, distant from the parched lands of Southwestern US. No SF book covers religion, science and post-apocalyptic desolation like Miller Jr. In fact, one of my top 10 Favorite Science Fiction books. Never a better time to read the book.
- Zama by Antonio di Benedetto. (Trans from Spanish by Esther Allen).
A book I wrote about in one of my earliest posts on this blog. Story of an amoral, unscrupulous Don Diego de Zama is posted in a remote outpost of Asuncion, Paraguay in the late 18th century, separated from his family and the civilized society of Buenos Aires where he aspires to be instead. The writing weaves between spare descriptions in daily journals and stark ruminations of savage potency. The language is rich, and yet sparse — dramatic short bursts interspersed in decades of languid loneliness — Zama clocks in at a concise 198 pages.
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
A Gentleman in Moscow is a study in contrast, while tackling similar themes as Zama. Zama is an isolation in remoteness, while A Gentleman in Moscow is about quarantine in culture. Unlike Zama, the Count is an educated, affable, and worldwise man, who has been sanctioned to spend the rest of his life in an attic of a luxury hotel, making worldly observations. A beautifully crafted book.
- Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (Trans. Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally).
Nothing underlines the ultimate impermanence of the pandemic, like an epic long read. This is a novel set in 14th century Norway that tracks the innermost thoughts of a complicated woman Kristin — Her dad, her marriage, her men and her children. An exploration of faith, sin and redemption, as Black Death arrives in the late stages of the book. With its universal canvas, it is like Brothers Karamazov but with a singular, female character. Perfect for slow rumination.
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
“History failed us, but no matter”. Another epic novel on my list, because it is going to be important to brace for a long recovery. A tale of four generations of Korean immigrants in Japan, and their dreams and aspirations from multiple points of view. Their lives holding on to their hopes, in recovery in the aftermath of lost war, is a great lesson of hope and persistence. Despite its length, a breezy read.
- Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 by Laura Wilder.
One eminently readable historical non-fiction to round off the list. Wilder builds an extensive non-linear narrative structure arguing how the Spanish Flu changed the world irrevocably. Some parallel lessons for the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. (Italian. Trans. By GH McWilliam).
That’s it. 4 Translations. 4 woman authors, and 2 non-fiction. Some long and some short. Let me know if you have more suggestions. My media consumption has been far less erudite, balancing out the list.
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