Oct. 11th, 2020 11:23 am
I always compair novels
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oakfarmI have not been reading a novel in several weeks. I think the problem is too much work and too much internet. Now I'm reading the debut novel by Karina Sainz Borgo (b. 1982) from Venezuela. I couldn’t find the writer on English wikipedia and that was enough for me to give up on finding the English title of the novel. Is it possible she isn’t translated? The novel takes place in today's Venezuela. It reminds me of The black obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970), the later novel takes place in interwar Germany. The similarities being the two novels describe the same type of societies. Hyperinflation, extremist militias, polarisation, food insecurity ...
However the point of this entry is that Sainz Borgo’s novel is much darker than Remarques. Given that we know of what happened in Germany, one could think it was The black obelisk that should be really dark. So what’s the difference? That he wrote about men, she wrote about a woman, and men in tight groups will survive a dysfunctional society much better than a lone woman? That 1920s Germany actually, after all, was more civilized than today's Venezuela? That Remarque wrote his novel when he was an old man, looking back and being nostalgic to his youth in the Weimar Republic? Yeah, my guess it’s mostly the last reason. An additional reason could be not the differences in the books but my own feelings when reading the books. I read The black obelisk in the 1990s when we had the hope the real horrors of history were behind us, that liberal democracy and - acording to some - laissez faire capitalism (being more Adam Smiths than Adam Smith) would create an acceptable society for the whole world. At least it wasn’t such a hopeless time back then as it could be seen now. For that reason I could have been less affected by the hardship in Remarques writing. It was something far back in history.
However the point of this entry is that Sainz Borgo’s novel is much darker than Remarques. Given that we know of what happened in Germany, one could think it was The black obelisk that should be really dark. So what’s the difference? That he wrote about men, she wrote about a woman, and men in tight groups will survive a dysfunctional society much better than a lone woman? That 1920s Germany actually, after all, was more civilized than today's Venezuela? That Remarque wrote his novel when he was an old man, looking back and being nostalgic to his youth in the Weimar Republic? Yeah, my guess it’s mostly the last reason. An additional reason could be not the differences in the books but my own feelings when reading the books. I read The black obelisk in the 1990s when we had the hope the real horrors of history were behind us, that liberal democracy and - acording to some - laissez faire capitalism (being more Adam Smiths than Adam Smith) would create an acceptable society for the whole world. At least it wasn’t such a hopeless time back then as it could be seen now. For that reason I could have been less affected by the hardship in Remarques writing. It was something far back in history.
Tags: