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RECOMMENDED READING compiled by Alessandro Giulio Midlarz
Yulia Latynina
Il richiamo dell’onore
Diane Ducret
Le donne dei dittatori
Reviewed by Elena Murdaca
Reviewed by Marina Gersony
Marco Tropea Editore / 324 pagine / 17,00 €
Y
ulia Latynina’s novel, now available in
Italian, focuses on the twisted relationships that govern economic and political life in the imaginary North Dargo
Republic of Avaria, with Dargo a thinly
veiled named for Latynina’s native Dagestan. Life in North Dargo is weighed down
by Islamic terrorism, guerrillas that play
off both sides against the middle, corrupt
Russian officials, illegal oil traffic, blackmail, the discovery of mass graves, and a
host of kidnappings for ransom.
The Kremlin is drawn up as incompetent and indifferent; chronically unable to
take advantage of the potential human
and natural environment the region has
to offer. In the backdrop is the madness
of Chechen wars. The republics of the
north Caucuses are fraught with dysfunction. Latynina, a Moscow talk show host
a prolific writer of novels, focuses on the
“clan” dimension of social and economic
life. She creates a family dynasty headed
by a president and his two sons who unscrupulously plunder the country with
Moscow’s consent. Hers is a government
that lacks all electoral legitimacy and
popular support, a fiction that is sadly
close to reality. Following the 2004
Beslan massacre (380 people died in the
North Ossetia school terrorist attack),
Moscow dismissed elections and began
appointing its own regional governors.
Her clan structure is impenetrable from
the outside. They respond defensively to
all challenges. Daring an “Averian,” Chechen or Dagestan man is to provoke the
wrath of entire cabals. People on their
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own, Russians mostly, are easy targets
for crime and violence. Single-family units are isolated and vulnerable. This explains the Russian exodus, often wrongly attributed to ethnic resentment, which
preceded the outbreak of the Chechen
War. The illicit oil trade and raking in the
spoils is the common denominator that
unites terrorists and anti-terrorists. But
it’s in this barbaric and primitive world
that words devoid on meaning in the
Western world, honor, respect, solidarity, sacrifice, faith, determination, come
back to life.
The novel’s romanticized and unlikely
protagonist is Vladislav Pankov, the president’s plenipotentiary minister. He’s a
man who embodies the weakness and futility of good intentions. All that Pankov
seeks to do he’s unable to follow through
with fully, undermining his original intentions. He’s aRussian “good guy” fascinated by the lure of the Caucasus and eager
to restore the rule of justice and of law. He
has a strong, critical mind and knows how
to operate independently.
But the Caucasus requires complete
and total sacrifice in exchange for salvation, with no compromises allowed.
Pankov lacks both the courage and the
will to make such compromises. Disappointment runs deep, and when he falls,
he falls hard.
Amruta Patil
Nel cuore di Smog City
Reviewed by Paola Tassi
Garzanti / 408 pagine / 22,60 €
F
rench philosopher Diane Ducret puts
all the lovers of 20th century tyrants
under a journalistic and historical magnifying glass. She studies the personalities,
love letters, intimate strategies and political destinies of Clara, Nadia, Magda, Felismina, Jiang Qing, Helen, Catherine and
Mira, women who at one time or another
were linked to Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin,
Salazar, Bokassa, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu. Hers is a portrait of the relationship
between sex and power as applied to
men who scarred nearly 100 years of
modern history. Ducret goes well outside
the lines of chronology and ideology to
paint a portrait of these women and their
secrets. A mixed picture emerges. Some
were wives, others mistresses, muses
and admirers. Most perceived the violent
and tyrannical men they fell in love with
as handsome, charming, and powerful.
At times they persuaded them to exercise
restraint and limit their cruelty. Some
were betrayed and deceived, others actually managed to exercise a ferocious
kind of dominance. The book that reads
like a novel, probing intertwined lives
from a unique perspective.
east . europe and asia strategies
Carlo Buldrini
Lontano dal Tibet
Storie da una nazione in esilio
Reviewed by Claudia Astarita
Lindau / 272 pagine / 22,00 €
Metropoli d’Asia / 124 pagine / 12,50 €
T
he first graphic novel out of India, the
surprising and successful “Kari” (recently published in Italian as “Nel cuore
di Smog City”) is the brainchild of Amruta Patil, an Indian author and illustrator
who grew up in Goa and studied at the
Boston School of Fine Arts. It tells of young Kari, who works in a PR firm, and her
soulmate Ruth, who manages to flee the
city. The focus then shifts to Kari’s grey
and smoky Mumbai, where the water is
viscous. Patil’s graphics do a fine job rendering the city, deftly alternating black
and white with color.
Beyond Kari, the story’s centerpiece is
really the Indian “megalopolis.” The city
is a dark and squalid place teeming with
swamps that nonetheless offer up immense human riches. It’s a modern city
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that’s going through vertiginous, ineluctable change, in keeping with the whole of Indian society.
Kari shares her apartment with other
girls and their respective boyfriends. She
survives on love, solitude, fear and alienation. Her work gives her access to all
kinds of people, including Angel, who has
terminal cancer. Death comes up as a
story line, but absent fears, taboos and
the veils of silence that the West tends to
erect when forced to confront mortality.
Patil has an angular vision of the world,
the lines evident in Kari’s face. Her
strokes, at times descriptive, at other
times dreamy, bring to mind Marjane
Satrapi, Dave McKean and Art Spiegelman, but also Frida Kahlo, evoked in the
early going with all her deep disquiet and
capacity to transform
reality.
uldrini has lived in India for three
decades and has a profound knowledge of the Tibetan Diaspora, digging
through the cities where they’ve managed to find asylum, included Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj. Here he tells some
of their stories.
His narrations begins on Oct. 7, 1950,
when 40,000 Chinese troops attacked
the eastern Tibet city of Chamdo from
eight directions, crushing the country’s small army and beginning of the Chinese
occupation that endured today. Buldrini
astutely portrays a country imprisoned
within itself, which China’s 80 percent tax
on wheat production forcing tens of thousands to starvation.
Buldrini roams far and wide to bring Tibet’s 60-year ordeal to light, examining
Tibetan medicine; the story of Choekyi
Gyaltsen, the 10th Panchen Lama, and his
mysterious 1989 death, allegedly of a
hear attack; recording
the life and times of
Thupten Ngodup, a resistance martyr who set
himself ablaze in New
Delhi, and interviewing
the Dalai Lama. Buldrini
also examines the history of dissent and infighting within the refugee
communities.
Released in 2005 by
India Research Press under the title “A Long Way
from Tibet,” the book
was a best seller in India.
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