World War II | Jaya's blog

Interview with Bulgarian writer Georgi Bardarov

(C) EU

This interview is facilitated by EUPL and funded by the European Union.

I am posting snippets of my correspondence with Georgi as it would give readers an insight into how powerful his writing is.

Thank you for writing the books that you have written. It has not been an easy task reading your writing. I made many false starts. Extraordinarily, I would read the words on the page and none of it would make sense. Then I began reading around it and kept trying at different parts of the day to read your work, hoping I would begin to understand it. Finally, the breakthrough happened. I do not know what it was or was it that simply I had to zone in as a reader into the mind space that you were demanding as a writer. It has been so hard. More so, because you are writing about conflict. Despite your sentences being short and crisp. Descriptions being precise. It is incredibly hard to read the texts at first. It is obvious from the little that I have read of your work in translation that your contribution to contemporary European literature is extremely crucial. It is almost as if it is a sobering reminder that the horrors of conflict wrought upon societies are cyclical, history tends to repeat itself. And with that, the impact on mankind, local societies, triggering migrations, and the spin-off effect upon other communities and nations is a situation that is constantly in flux. Your writing does make the reader pause and reflect. Is any of this conflict worth this suffering and distress? Nevertheless, thank you for what you have written so far. I sincerely wish that there were more of your interviews and conversations available in English on the Internet. I barely found any information except for a quote or two.

Let’s hope we can rectify it.

***

Thank you very much for your frank words about my book and for your interest. Your questions were very meaningful and it was a pleasure to answer them. I am sending them to you as an attachment. I understand that you had a hard time with my books and thank you for being patient and reading them, when I wrote them it was also very hard for me, I have painfully experienced every one of them. I have visited each of the places I write about and talked to people who have experienced or been affected by the conflicts. I heard stories so shocking that some of them I can’t even repeat to my closest person, these stories changed me forever and will stay with me like a wound that will never heal. Yes, there is little information about me in English, but keep in mind that it is almost impossible for a writer from a small country like Bulgaria to be noticed outside his country, that’s why Georgi Gospodinov’s success is spectacular and I am very happy for him.

Warm greetings from cold, winter Bulgaria!

Georgi

***

Georgi Bardarov is a Bulgarian scientist and writer. He is an Associate Professor of Ethno-Religious Conflicts and Demography, a Vice-Dean of the Geology & Geography Department in University of Sofia. He founded and co-hosts the most successful course for the art of public speaking and oratory skills in Bulgaria. A member of the board of the Bulgarian Petanque Federation. He is part of the creative team of the publishing and production company Musagena, which aims to find talented contemporary writers and artists. In 2015, Georgi Bardarov won the first intellectual reality TV show for writers called The Manuscript which awarded him with the publication of his debut novel – I am still counting the days. The book is based on a true story about the love between a Bosnian Muslim and Christian Serb amidst the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.

Georgi Bardarov is the winner of the Pen Club award for his debut novel. The book has also been nominated for novel of the year in Bulgaria. In 2020, his second novel Absolvo Te was published. The novel, inspired by two true stories, explores the abyss between two nations with common origins but have been waging a daily fratricidal war for decades. Georgi Bаrdarov is the winner of the European Prize for Literature for 2021 and the biggest literary prize in Bulgaria – the National Vazova Award for 2022.

Q1 What is the focus area of your work as an academic of Ethno-Religious Conflicts and Demography?

As a specialist in ethno-religious conflict, my main concern is to expose the folly of military conflict. I think there is no cause that is above human life, every war is hidden under the mask of some cause, national, religious, etc., but in fact every war is just a business, a very profitable business for some, while others die thinking they are doing it for the cause. The main thing I want to convey to my students is that all humans are essentially the same and every division, ethnic, religious, even racial, is made for the sole purpose of being manipulated and used. Regarding Demography, I want to break the clichés about the demographic situation in the world because demography follows its logical and natural course and there should be no fear of demographic processes.

Q2 It has been extremely hard, under today’s circumstances of the ongoing conflicts around the world, to read your latest novel Absolve Te (I absolve thee). As far as I have been able to gather, it is based on two true stories – one about World War II and the Holocaust, and the other about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The main characters are a Palestinian, a Jewish man and a Nazi officer. Each of them must forgive and look past each other’s sins. How do you find the mental bandwidth to write about war while there are so many ongoing conflicts around the world? Do you test samples of your work with a trusted circle of readers before publishing the manuscript?

This is a cause for me, well beyond books and novels. But after two novels about wars, I feel infinitely exhausted and don’t want to write about war anymore. I am often asked in Europe if I will write a book about the war now in Ukraine? I answer no, everything I had to say about wars I have said everything in my two books, nothing new to add, everything is painfully repetitive, the protagonists change, the territory of the conflict changes, but the violence is essentially the same and it doesn’t matter when or where the war is! Yes, there are some very close people I discuss my manuscripts with, and I have a wonderful editor, Hristo Karastoyanov.

Q3 How do you find your entry point in writing these narratives about the war? How do you fix a text in time so as to be able to write it?

First there has to be a true story that has touched me emotionally and I want to tell it to people. Second I do a lot of serious research with books, archival documents, people’s stories and third I absolutely go to the places I write about, do fieldwork so I can feel the energy of the place and then convey it authentically in the novel!

Q4 In some senses, your expertise as an ethno-religious conflict comes to the fore while writing these books. How much of this is historical fiction and how much of it is based on reality and empirical evidence? What is the purpose of writing conflict-based fiction? Does it give you the space to ask questions as well?

All my books are based on true stories, there is of course a lot of fiction, it’s hard to judge which is more, maybe 50/50. And my goal is for people to start asking themselves questions and not accept the easy answers and stay vigilant against manipulation.

Q5 What triggered your interest in conflict studies? What have you discovered over the years about mankind, conflict, and survival? Or am I missing something critical altogether?

I have a favorite thought, “Only the wisest and the stupidest never change.” Unfortunately, humanity is not one of the first. All the mistakes we’ve made as a human race we repeat them again, and again, and again.

Q6 You are a part of the creative team at Musagena when your mss was submitted for consideration. There is an imprint in your name on the website. Why did you feel the need to self-publish (if you can call it that) your debut novel? Is the topic too sensitive and controversial?

Yes, I am part of Musagenа. Our idea to create this publishing house was to be able to promote my books outside Bulgaria, because the traditional Bulgarian publishers work almost exclusively for the small Bulgarian market. Otherwise the subjects of my books are popular, albeit sensitive, both in Bulgaria and elsewhere in Europe.

Q7 What has been the response to your books? Do readers understand or are they as bewildered as the children in your stories are about what they are shown? Are readers receptive to books that are ostensibly set in the past but in reality, are about geographies that are currently in the news?

At the same time, my books are very well received, but readers are also shocked when they read them, because our idea is that such atrocities cannot happen today, that they have been left in the past. That is why I present war in all its ugliness and cruelty, so that people can feel that there is nothing more terrible than war, I believe that a war cannot be presented lightly or even “heroized”.

Q8 Is the experience of writing in any way cathartic for you? How do your academic pursuits influence your fictional writing and vice versa?

Yes, I experience my own personal catharsis when I write my novels and develop my characters, I experience it with them. I wrote Absolvo Te because there are things I can’t forgive myself for in my own life, and with the catharsis of my three main characters, I experienced my own personal one. My academic career helps me do a lot of serious research for my stories; I do it more as a scholar than as a writer.

Q9 Who are the writers you admire?

Of course, except Georgi Gospodinov, who is already world famous, I like very much Ivo Ivanov, who lives in the USA and writes very strong stories about the strength of the human spirit, Radko Penev, who is a naval officer, but his books are charged with a lot of humanism and beauty, the incredible poet Petya Dubarova and my editor Hristo Karastoyanov, who is also a wonderful writer.

Disclaimer: This paper was written under the European Union Policy & Outreach Partnerships Initiative with the view to promote European Union Prize for Literature awardees. The publication was funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Book Post 36: 21 April – 19 May 2019 / Childlit and Yalit list

20 05 , 2019 No Comments

Book Post 36 focuses on childlit and yalit.

20 May 2019

“Kitty’s War”

05 02 , 2019 No Comments

At Jaipur Literature Festival 2019, I was in conversation with author Daman Singh about her novel Kitty’s War at Jaipur Literature Festival 2019. It is historical fiction set within a railway colony at the time of World War II. It is about the Anglo-Indian community told through the eyes and experiences of Katherine Riddle or Kitty, as she is more popularly referred to.

5 Feb 2019

“The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life”

27 09 , 2017 No Comments

Ann Burack-Weiss’s The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life is a slim volume where she explores through women writer’s prose what it means to them getting old. For decades she herself has been a social work practitioner who focused from day one of her career on the caregiving of the elderly. It was unusual when she chose this vocation in the 1960s but four decades later it is not. ” I became a social worker with the aged because I was afraid for my life.” It gives her a perspective and an understanding in a particular phase of a woman’s life when she is inevitably relegated to grandparent duties whereas continuity theory states that as people age they do not change their patterns of thought or action but continue to approach life in the same way as they always have.

Ann Burack-Weiss has been fascinated with the memoir/ autobiography or the essentials of life-writing experience. It encompasses a range of forms such as the transcribed interview, dictation, journal, letter and auto-fiction. According to her since the 1960s feminist scholars have been explored the woman’s “agency” ( the ability to speak and act on her own behalf) or the lack thereof. “They note that, through the ages, most of the writing about women, in fiction and nonfiction, has been by men, and that the male lens inevitably leads to distortion.” But as she discovers that many of her quoted authors in the book — Colette, Fisher, Sarton, Florida Scott-Maxwell– had published compelling life writing well before the editors determined what was worthy of inclusion in their collections. “The only possible explanation for their exclusion is that the editors themselves had little interest in what the old women had to say.”

The writers included in this book are categorised according to arbitrary time divisions:

1862-1909 (Fin de Siecle) — Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, M.F.K. Fisher, Anai Nin, Florida Scott-Maxwell, Eudora Welty, Edith Wharton

1910-1929 (Progressive Era) — Diana Athill, Maya Angelou, Marguerite Duras, Marilyn French, Doris Grumbach, Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Madeline L’Engle, Gerda Lerner, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, May Sarton

1930-1943 (Great Depression- World War II) — Isabel Allende, Mary Catherine Bateson, Joan Didion, Margaret Drabble, Annie Ernaux, Vivian Gornick, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Edna O’Brien, Mary Oliver, Marge Piercy, Anne Ropihe, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Alix Kates Shulman

1944-1960 (Baby Boomers) — Diane Ackerman, Alison Bechdel, Terry Castle, Mary Gordon, Kay Redfield Jamison, Nancy Mairs, Nancy K. Miller, Alice Walker

It is interesting Ann Burack-Weiss chooses to quote Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize for Literature ( 2002) acceptance speech where Morrison focuses on “word-work” and being an old woman. Toni Morrison’s last novel God Help the Child ( 2015) which began life as a memoir but transformed into a slim novel explores these very themes. It reflects upon the cycle of life from the perspective of an older writer. What truly struck me at the end of 2015 was that none of the “Best of 2015” lists included this novel even though it was “Toni Morrison”. Perhaps old age is too stark a reminder of one’s mortality.

It is a slim volume but gives one much to think about.

Ann Burack-Weiss The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life Columbia University Press, New York, 2015. Pb. pp.190

27 Sept 2017

Teresa Rehman “The Mothers of Manipur: Twelve Women Who Made History”

12 04 , 2017 No Comments

On 15 July 2004, Imphal ( Manipur), twelve women strip in front of Kangla Fort, the headquarters of the Assam Rifles, a unit of the Indian army. Soldiers and officers watched aghast as the women, all in their sixties and seventies, positioned themselves in front of the gates and then, one by one, stripped themselves naked. The imas, the mothers of Manipur, are in a cold fury, protesting the custodial rape and murder, by the army, of Thangjam Manorama, a 32-year-old woman suspected of being a militant. The women hold aloft banners and shout, ‘Indian Army Rape Us’, ‘Take Our Flesh’. Never has this happened before: the army is appalled.

Award-winning journalist Teresa Rehman’s The Mothers of Manipur is about the mothers and grandmothers who protested boldly. The trigger was the abduction and murder of Manorama but it was also against the Armed Forces ( Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) which gives the army extraordinary powers. Manorama, a weaver, was known in the local community for being a hardworking woman who had been supporting her family ever since her father had died while she was a young teenager. She had chosen not to marry but on 10 July 2004 troops of the 17th Assam Rifles barged into her home, accusing her of being a militant, questioned her and then took her away. The next morning her body was found. She had been raped, her vagina stuffed with cloth and bullets riddled into her genitals. Yet the army said she was shot while attempting to run away but there was no evidence to prove it.

Angered by this incident some of the local women who were also active members of the Meira Paibis (women torch bearers of Manipur) movement decided to do something about it. Some of the women had visited the morgue to see Manorama’s body. They were horrified by what they witnessed. Hurriedly and yet secretly the women put together a plan to disrobe at Kangla Fort. They had two banners painted ( the painter was sworn to secrecy) displaying the words “Indian Army Rape Us”. On the morning of 15 July 2004 they removed their undergarments but wore their phanek ( sarong) and shawls. Once at the gates of the fort they stripped and shouted. It immediately caused a stir. Within hours curfew had been clamped and there was a blackout across television channels. At the time the incident made headlines and was covered extensively but years later too it is viewed as a seminal form of protest by women in a conflict zone as in this BBC report ( March 2017).

More than a decade later Teresa Rehman decided to interview these women of whom all save one survived. What emerges from the interviews is that though these women were mostly from an impoverished background they were strong and had a firm idea of justice. The anger of the older women in the group was fuelled by their childhood memories of the occupation of Manipur by Japanese forces during World War II. At the time too the unannounced arrival of Japanese soldiers at their homes asking for young girls, particularly at night, made their families anxious. The imposition of AFSPA in Manipur decades later brought back those very same feelings of anxiety and fear for their daughters. During the course of the interviews it becomes evident that the women in July 2004 were only concerned with how to display their anger and frustration at the Indian Army and the inexplicable irrational violence it perpetrated upon the locals. Not a single woman thought of the consequences. Years later it becomes apparent that the twelve women had diverse experiences. From being shunned by their families to being idolised by their community. Yet the common factor amongst them all was the anxiety and fear had not abated and now they worried about the safety of their daughters and granddaughters.

The Mothers of Manipur documents the role of these women in an active conflict zone and the consequences of their actions. Yet it comes across as a book that is also a testimony of Teresa Rehman’s own growth as a feminist journalist. She does the balancing act well of being sensitive to the women and their issues without being an over zealous journalist who pries too much into the personal lives of their subjects. It also inadvertantly becomes a part-memoir of Teresa Rehman as she visits Manipur regularly from the neighbouring state of Assam.

Undoubtedly it is a gripping book to read but there is also some dissatisfaction. The fact is mothers forming groups to work within conflict zones or in fragile societies being reconstructed after war is a part of gender and conflict studies. The role of women in conflict zones across geographies is well-documented. Also it has been discovered that these groups share many characteristics. Though there is a competent introduction by renowned journalist Pamela Philipose giving the background to AFSPA and Meira Paibis there is little context given either by her or Teresa Rahman to the Kangla Fort incident in gender and conflict narratives. It has to be extrapolated from the various interviews included. For a newcomer to gender and conflict the book would be fascinating to read but they would miss completely the cues of sisterhood which form in war zones. For now these details are scattered through the interviews. An overarching essay that explained the methodology of how these oral history interviews were conducted, contextualising the action in the women’s movement and the active role mothers/women play in conflict zones would have definitely enriched the book.

Despite its shortcomings The Mothers of Manipur will be referred to for a long time as it not only documents the shocking incident of 15 July 2004 at Kangla Fort but also neatly encapsulates the troubled history of conflict-torn Manipur particularly since World War II.

Teresa Rehman The Mothers of Manipur: Twelve Women who Made History Zubaan, New Delhi, 2017. Pb. pp. 152 Rs. 325

“The Photographer” by Meike Zeirvogel

13 03 , 2017 No Comments

In the wagon there is no space to sit. There are air holes running along the top of the train’s sides. Everyone has turned their face upwards in the hope of catching a fresh breeze. The train jolts and shakes but there is no space to fall. The only thing that is shoved around at their feet is the metal bucket. Initially no one uses it – after all, the journey should only take a couple of hours – but then the train halts for ages in open fields. The doors remain closed in case it begins to move again. First the children use the bucket, afterwards the men and eventually the women too, peeing into it while standing. To begin with Trude is still trying to think of what they will do once they reach Berlin. And she hopes they will return soon: she doesn’t want Albert coming home to an empty place. But even these thoughts eventually stop and all she wants is for them just to endure the journey. Every now and again she quietly asks, ‘Mum?’ Agatha replies with a ‘Hm.’ Peter is standing between the two women, his cheek against his mother’s stomach. Trude feels him breathing. A couple of times she nearly dozes off, but then with a start she regains consciousness. ‘Mum?’ ‘Hm.’ And she feels the breathing of her son.

And so it was that Agatha, Trude and Peter became part of the 11 million Germans who were fleeing westward in the 75 winter of 1945. None of them knew where they were heading. But they all hoped to return home soon. Little did they know that the world was changing behind them and borders were being redrawn. Their homes now belonged to others and they were crossing into a foreign land.

Meike Zeirvogel’s latest novel The Photographer is on the surface of it about Albert, his wife Trude, their son Peter and his mother-in-law Agatha, a seamstress. It is a quietly told tale which opens in 1920 but most of the action is set during the second world war. It revolves around this tiny family which is managing to live peacefully despite the raging war when suddenly Albert is picked up by the police and whisked away. For a while his wife Trude is mystified at his arrest and cannot understand what the matter is till she realises after seeing her ransacked home they were after the hidden radio. Albert and Trude used it to listen to music and dance every night. But to possess a radio during the war was considered a serious offence and Albert is taken away. Agatha had always disapproved of Trude’s marriage to Albert so had conspired to tell the local police. For a long time Trude is unable to fathom who let on to their little secret till she deduces it was her mother.

The Photographer is a seemingly deceptive simple story but is also complicated for the many layers to it. The relationship between the mother and daughter is worse than any imprisonment. It is living with the horrible truth about the mother’s distaste for Albert with Trude caught between that is like a slow death. Ironically it is the wisdom of the mother ( and her savings) that leads Trude and Peter to safety. The saving grace in the hostile environment of the family is Peter who is loved by all the adults in their own way and for whom they will do anything. Meanwhile Peter too has to figure out a way of surviving particularly when his father returns home with his own archaic expectations of how a young boy should behave. Later while setting up a business that slowly begins to flourish Agatha persuades Trude to join her as a seamstress.

Like with any conflict the second world war too was disruptive especially for the family. If people were fortunate to survive they did so with many hidden scars and learned to exist with new arrangements to their established relationships. There were subtle shifts and these hard-to-define transformations that occurred in families is exactly the grey area which Meike Zeirvogel explores. The war torn landscape may be a useful backdrop to the story providing immediate explanations for changing family dynamics. But at another level the war and the changing borders can function as a metaphor for the fluid changes that are constantly happening within a family unit at any point of time — like a slow dance. As Albert discovered as a professional photographer “Taking photographs of families is pretty straightforward – they all look the same, want to look the same.” And yet it is not.

Curiously this slim book lingers in one’s imagination long after one is done with it.

Read it.

The Photographer is published by Salt Publishing, 2017.

13 March 2017

“Mr Mojo: A biography of Jim Morrison” by Dylan Jones

21 05 , 2015 No Comments

Morrison was the sexiest bookworm to ever pick up a microphone, he was an inspired lyricist and one of the most celebrated pop icons of the sixties. But he was also a wilfully enigmatic, pretentious loud-mouth, a self-proclaimed poet who wore the mask of the drunk. He was the impotent alcoholic, the scarred idol. He was the King of Corn, the consummate showman, the petulant clown. He was too clever for his own good, and often too stupid to care. Masochist, emotional sadist, incurable romantic — Morrison was all of these things. But the T-shirts don’t have room for any of them, instead promoting only the image of the gaunt, all-conquering sex beast, the Crawling King Snake, the Killer on the Road, the Lord of the Dance, the Lizard King, Mr Mojo Risin’.

( p.164)

Jim Morrison belongs to the club of super-talented legendary musicians who died at 27. The others being Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and most recently, Amy Winehouse. In a short span he had made his mark as a musician, a stage performer and for a wild life offstage. There are no dearth of books on the man. From authorised biographies to unofficial accounts to fantastic picture books documenting Jim Morrison’s performances and his life. The classic image conjured up in one’s mind is of this tall, thin, lean singer wearing a black leather outfit, holding onto the microphone with both his hands and singing. His band members seem to be also expressionless and doing their work, but the music that they were producing was extraordinary and decades later continues to sound so fresh.

New generations continue to be fascinated by Jim Morrison. Many continue to make their pilgrimage to his grave in Paris’s Pere-Lachaise cemetery. New fans need to be acquainted with the music, style, origins and antics of this larger-than-life musician. Along with The Doors, Jim Morrison has been a huge influence on subsequent generations of musicians. But producing older books for a new generation of readers does not always work, so to have a new biography written by award-winning and seasoned journalist, Dylan Jones makes ample sense. This new biography is a slim volume, a zippy and raw account of Jim Morrison’s life, his stage antics, including a long conversation with his former partner, Patricia Kennealy. She was a rock critic who as editor-in-chief of Jazz and Pop interviewed Jim Morrison in January 1969. Later Jim Morrison and she became lovers and “wed” on Midsummer’s Night 1970, at 10:30 pm. It was a Wicca wedding, a ceremony based on ‘white’ witchcraft. Kennealy was a practising member of a New York coven, and the ceremony was conducted by its founders, a high priest and priestess. Jim Morrison too addressed her as “Patricia, my wife” but they were not “legally” wed. Yet after his death she changed her name to “Kennealy-Morrison”. For the first time Dylan Jones interviews her.

Kennealy developed something of a reputation with the band and Morrison’s record company, and she had a reputation for being a practicing white witch, so for years after Morrison’s death no one would go near her. As no one had ever interviewed her before — they appeared to be too scared — I began looking for her in New York. I spoke with Elektra Records, and with the thirty or so people I interviewed for this book, in London, New York and Los Angeles, but not only could none of them point me in the right direction, some advised me to steer clear of her completely. ‘She’s dangerous,’ I was told. ‘She’ll eat you alive.’ In the end it took me about forty minutes to track her down, simply by looking through the New York phone directory. And she was charm personified.

(p.127)

Mr Mojo is a biography for a new generation who are discovering a legendary musician for them for the first time. It is a fascinating account that there is no need for any pictures to be tipped into the book — there are none. It is a balanced profile of Jim Morrison contextualising it well, spanning a period from World War II when he was born in 1943, his father a Naval officer went off to the war to the wild sixties, his family cutting him off to his untimely death in Paris in 1970. It is a well-written book primarily because it is not hagiography, a trap many books about successful musicians fall into. This is a class apart.

Read it.

Dylan Jones Mr Mojo: A biography of Jim Morrison Bloomsbury, London, 2015. Pb. pp. 190 Rs 199

(Note: All images are off the Internet. I do not hold the copyright to any of these. If you do know who the rightful owner is, please let me know. I would gladly acknowledge them in this post. )

21 May 2015

Naomi Wood, “Mrs. Hemingway”

06 03 , 2014 No Comments

One afternoon she finds a copy of Ernest’s tribute to the president.

Ernest had greeted the request from Washington with something close to cold fright. For too long, now, he’s been an unhappy writer. To lose his ability to write was to have lost the ability to clear his mind of itself. To write was to come into a wonderful house: a clean well-lighted place where the light fell in large white blocks on the good wooden floors. To write was to be at home, to be able to see well.

The request was for a few handwritten lines for Mr. Kennedy. That week in February Ernest sat in his study, looking with nervousness over the barrel of his stomach. Misery hovered close. She had often wondered why he couldn’t give up on this wretched business. They had enough money from royalties, film options, magzine deals. If he could send off the Paris stories and then put himself to the work of hunting or fishing, he might have a better chance of happiness. But writers and their woes: they couldn’t be parted. Not for anything.

( p.245 Mrs. Hemingway )

Naomi Wood’s second novel, Mrs. Hemingway is about Ernest Heminway’s four wives — Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer or “Fife”, Martha Gellhorn and Mary Welsh. The book is divided into four parts: each part focused upon a Mrs Hemingway with Ernest Hemingway a strong presence but not the centre of attention. The story flows smoothly with the structure of each section devoted to the current Mrs Hemingway, their lifestyle — parties, gossip among friends, children, and marks the entry of the next Mrs Hemingway. Each section is imbued with the distinct personality of each wife, whether it is the practical and hardworking Hadley; the comfortable lifestyle that Fife could provide for Hemingway, giving him the leisure to write without any financial worries; a common passion shared by Martha Gellhorn and her husband for journalism, writing and reporting World War II; and finally Mary Welsh, who unlike her immediate predecessor, was happy with her life of a writer’s wife. Unfortunately it fell apart with the sudden death of her husband.

There are details about Hemingway and his wives life that are authentic. The meticulous research shows but only sufficiently to create a rich backdrop to the story, a personal one of within a family, the torment the wives experience with the appearance of another woman in their lives, the ensuing divorce and surprisingly how some of them, like Fife and Hadley, remain good friends. The author was given a three-year doctoral grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She did her research at the JFK Library in Boston, Beinecke Library at Yale University and at the Hemingway heritage homes in Oak Park, Chicago; Key West, Florida; and San Francisco de Paula in Cuba. The best description of this novel would be to call it “bio-fic”, a term coined by David Lodge. In 2014, when there will be deluge of literature being published focused upon the centenary of World War I Mrs. Hemingway sets a high benchmark for fiction set during this period. This group biography maybe “a work of imagination” as asserted by Naomi Wood, but it is so deftly done–it is a pleasure to read.

Naomi Wood Mrs. Hemingway Picador, London, 2014. Pb. pp. 330 Rs. 599

6 March 2014

World War II Posts