The Village on the Edge of the World

Hello Gentle Reader,

The prevailing advice granted to young and aspiring writers for decades now has been: write what you know. Authenticity and intimacy have dominated literary values for years. This explains the abundance of narratives merrily marching into the swamp of solipsism. Few novels produced today have the same sense of curiosity, playfulness and sense of style as their predecessors, who were by far, more daring. Though it is not all indulgent excess and portraits of an artist as a young narcissist. In the case of Annie Ernaux, the paradoxical notion of autofiction (that literary alchemical abomination; a chimeric combination, soldering the candor of autobiography with the illusionary narrative of fiction), is intrinsically linked to her bibliography and literary style. By all accounts, Ernaux is often credited as one of the progenitors of the literary genre, and if not a progenitor, then Ernaux is elevated to the heights of grand dame of the form, its most recognizable practitioner. Personal anecdote, memory and experience when stripped back of sentimentality, become the objective and intimate metrics in which a life can be measured, evaluated and assessed within a larger sociopolitical and historical context. In order to accomplish this state of objective evaluation, Ernaux flenses, prunes and renders experience down to its baseline marrow. All of this splaying, peeling, pairing and flaying is done without concern for emotional indulgences. Rather, the objective is to completely erratic the semblance of sentimentality or sensationalism. This can only be achieved by reducing and boiling the excess away. In awarding Annie Ernaux the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy highlighted and praised the “clinical acuity,” of Ernaux’s work. The scalpel style literary language, carving out and cutting away. Slicing and sliding through the fleshiness of memory and experience with steel exactitude. Ernaux referrers to the process itself as scraping the language clean. A reductionist method of literary subtraction reaching completion, when only the essential elements remain. The foundational baseline of utilitarian components. Any semblance of an emotional posturing or lingering corpulent embellishment will need to be carved away. This otherwise blanc stye ensures the veracity of the subject matter is maintained through the sterility of the testimony reflected in pristine and crystalline language preserving what is otherwise raw authenticity. Ernaux has maintained the objective of her work is to inevitably survey the intersection between individual experience and memory in relation to and consequence of larger sociological phenomena and collective memory. The intrapersonal introspection operates as the nodal point of perspective. Memories provide the furnishings, texture. While sociopolitical events and history twist, twine and lace through it all, providing the context and momentum for narrative. Annie Ernaux’s work routinely surveys and cartographs the juncture between personal recollection and public record, and despite distancing her narratives by employing third person or collective voices, Ernaux remains the lodestone of the narrative. The experiences, observations, memories all refined, distilled and channeled through Ernaux. When it comes to Herta Müller, however, biography and lived experience are treated as scaffolding for narrative. Rough outlines and sketches. Dark wells in which the writer pulls from the unflinching and unsettling details to depict with pointillistic precision the landscape of the dispossessed.

Where Annie Ernaux employes objectivity and distance to ward off the accusations of tabloid voyeuristic sensationalism. Silence is prevalent in Herta Müller’s novels. While Müller’s style is renowned and recognized for its sensory sharpness capturing the dehumanising absurdities encompassing the obscenities of daily life in Ceaușescu’s communist Romania. Biographical elements are reworked and reimagined as evidential details giving weight to the surreal cruelty defining life behind the Iron Curtain. These included a village closed off within itself, a microcosm of a depraved dictatorship in its smallness; an unforgivable betrayal of a friend; a friend’s murder staged as suicide by the state, or, a close friend pushed to the point of paranoid psychosis and eventual suicide; a mother’s displacement to a forced labour camp in Siberia, and the silence upon the return; a fox pelt rug gradually being mutilated and then decapitated. Then there is the general poverty. The endless and relentless demoralising ugliness of life being strangled by the state’s chokehold. Enforced and facilitated further by the secret service (the Securitate) who engineered a torrent of terror onto the populace, through surveillance, informants, betrayals and interrogations. Through it all, however, Müller as the point of biography or character is polished to the point of transparency. Narrative structures are abandoned, replaced by the free falling and wheeling illogical association of language attempting to capture the inarticulate sensation of life within a state of constant and persistent fear. Its anxious and unnerving, leaving individuals jostling and jumping against one another, attempting to hold themselves together, while conforming to a state of agreeable acceptance, to avoid detection or attention. As Müller writes in “The Land of Green Plums,”:

“We laughed a lot, to hide it from each other. But fear always finds an out. If you control your face, it slips into your voice. If you manage to keep a grip on your face and your voice, as if they were dead wood, it will slip out through your fingers. It will pass through your skin and lie there. You can see it lying around on objects close by.”

In “The Village on the Edge of the World,” Herta Müller pulls back the curtains of silence within her novels. The same silence which provides the staging ground to showcase Müller’s idiosyncratic literary language, which has been incubated and mutated by surviving an authoritarian government. What is revealed is an unadulterated refuse of a society, impoverished and corrupted by an ideology imposed on it by a corrupt incompetent government and state buckling under the megalomania of a dictator who is untethered from reality. “The Village on the Edge of the World,” is frank as it is austere in its unflinching recollection of a life not so much lived, but endured. Herta Müller’s biography is now fleshed out with devasting detail.

“Ugliness was ubiquitous; it was the only true form of equality under Socialism. And it was intentional; it was part of the dictatorship’s agenda. The objects produced under Socialism ensured you grew tired of life: concrete buildings, furniture, curtains, tableware, the flowerbeds in the parks, posters, monuments, shop windows. As if everything material, whether it was cement, wood, glass, porcelain, even the branches of the trees, were in of itself brutal and vulgar, as if you couldn’t possibly turn into anything more beautiful. As if, in this country, matter sprang of its own accord into the will of the regime. This ugly equality pressed on you, made you apathetic and undemanding; this was what the State wanted. For Socialism, our heady minds were ideal – a lust for life makes you spontaneous, and therefore unpredictable. Misery makes you ugly. Instead of meat, the State gave us offal: pigs’ feet, which had long claw were referred to as ‘sports shoes;’ or chicken feet with talons; or chicken heads in water that had been frozen together into heavy, blue-red blocks of ice, and which would be hacked apart into portions with a hatchet before being weighed. People would carry the frozen chicken heads home with their bare hands: in this sate of misery, even a handkerchief was of no use. On your way home the ice would drip steadily, as if the dogs were marking their territory with bloody urine. And everyone queued for hours for this offal.”

There is no room for nostalgia. Perhaps because there is no driftwood to cling to in this abyssal sea. When reviewing her own childhood, Herta Müller remains candid in her assessment. The alienating emptiness of the open prairies, where Müller was left as a child to tend to the cattle. She describes the countryside as such:

“I used to experience Nature as physical harassment.”

Then there is the insufferable smallness of the village with its refusal to distance itself from its supportive past of the Nazis. Müller recalls the frequency of the men getting drunk and singing their old war songs. Müller’s own father was a member of the Waffen-SS during the war and was later a prisoner of war. These facts of parenteral accomplice and guilt weigh heavily on her own conscious. Mixed amongst this is the childlike logic and beliefs. How plants and trees would uproot in the middle of the night and move around. The same with household furniture. Yet, where this may be seen as whimsy and the imaginings of a child with fairytale delight, this too was tainted for Müller by the never-ending nightmare of waking reality, complete with daily beatings and corporal punishments. If childhood is the idyll for many, then for Müller and others, it was the genesis and training ground for a life of sustained continued hardship. From there, what follows are the established facts and events. The translation job in the factory, followed by the cataclysmic catastrophic event when the Securitate come to recruit Herta Müller as an informer, who declines. Then it’s a saga of harassment, torment, aggravation, indignation and humiliation. Having refused to cooperate with the secret police, Müller would lose her desk and office, but needed to persist in working at the factory, in the stairwell on her handkerchief. Word spread (by the secret police) that Müller was an informer and soon everyone distanced and ostracised her in the factory, before she was dismissed. Then came hard scrabble years, of working as a tutor or a school teacher. Each one would never last before the employers or the families were forced to disassociate due to political pressure.  

“The Village on the Edge of the World,” revealed many of the personal consequences of life in communist Romania. The relentless campaign of harassment and humiliation the Securitate waged against Herta Müller and her friends. Fun fact, the flat (apartment) beneath Müller’s was entirely occupied by the secret police, surveilling and eavesdropping. The book also reveals the deeply personal tragedy and betrayal by her friend Jenny, which is reimagined in “The Land of Green Plums.” Their parting in Romania was grief stricken and stained with tears, but their reunion in Germany was shattered and ended in a grievous act duplicity, where Jenny had recorded Müller’s movements during their visit and had a key cut of the apartment. All of which was to be returned to the Securitate to continue their crusade of cruelty and torment even from behind the Iron Curtain. Afterall, Herta Müller was now a free agent and her uncensored and unapologetic criticism of Ceaușescu was surely making its way back. Jenny was then found to be in in a relationship with one of the cruelest members of the secret police. Jenny would later develop cancer and die. This event only proved how diabolical and deranged the state was in its need for total control. The two never reconciled, and this remains for Müller, a substantial wound and scar.

One of the most effective and devious attacks and acts of sabotage, however, the Securitate did against Herta Müller was when she was finally allowed to emigrant, they stamped her papers as February 29, 1987. Where in actuality 1987 was not a leap year, and this ‘clerical error,’ would do nothing but halt the bureaucratic gears going forward. The fastidiousness of the Germans difficult to please, (I’m sure) at the best of times.

“The Village on the Edge of the World,” succeeds at most in providing a panoramic view of the personal anecdotes and experiences of Herta Müller. One particular scene was when Müller meets with her western editor supporting the publication of “Nadirs,” in the early 80’s. The two retreat to some mountain resort under the guise of a skiing holiday. And while initially her editor is suspicious of the comings and goings, she soon flirts with extraordinary political danger when a delegate of Asian technocrats (be it Chinese or North Korean) arrive with their Romanian escorts. Suddenly, caution is tossed to the wind and she wants to drink and dance with the men. The previous paranoia of adject rooms and wiretaps in the hotel, prove to be delusions to this naïve editor, who when confronted with real danger, looks at it as an exotic experience. Here again, it was Herta Müller who had to exercise survivalist restraint to maintain their safety. Other anecdotes describe the depravity of the regime. Its desire for complete subjugation and control:

“The regime maned to control even the most private matters. Intimacy was nationalised. Women were forcibly examined using insidious methods: for example, they needed a certificate from the gynecologist in order to get access to dental treatment.”  

While another merely recounts the vampiric leeching proclivities of the state:

“Whenever I went into a clothes shop, I was seized by a sense of grief and repugnance. Everything looked like it sent – and it smelt of stolen life. 

For those who think salvation and sanctuary would arrive through emigration, it never quite lands correctly. The insidious irony is not lost on Herta Müller either, who remarked: in Romania I was the German; in Germany I am the Romanian. The sense of foreignness and displacement is constant companion and reality. Even upon arrival in then West Germany, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst, or German intelligence) were convinced Herta Müller was an operative working for the Securitate, delaying her citizenship.

“The Village on the Edge of the World,” is an engaging and engrossing companion piece to reflect on in tandem with the rest of Herta Müller’s bibliography. Originally, I was under the impression, “The Village on the Edge of the World,” was a collection of new essays, as the author has stopped writing and publishing since 2009 with publication of “The Hunger Angel,” and winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Instead, it is a curated transcript of conversations and lectures Müller had given over a decade prior. I was initially disappointed by this, however, came around as Herta Müller’s candor and detail exhumed the depravity of Ceaușescu’s Romania, but also brought to the forefront the complications Romania now faces with regards to acknowledging its own history. There has been no reconciliation of the past and it is theorised if not confirmed with an official acknowledgement, the current intelligence service is compromised of former Securitate agents. Justice and redemption are lovely ideas, but often fail to come into practise. Ceaușescu may have been executed. The Iron Curtain fallen along with the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Union collapsed. But as Putin is staunch reminder from this cold ugly era, the corruption, the violence, the depravity remains. Having never been brought forward, accounted for and prosecuted. “The Village on the Edge of the World,” provides the biographical context that has shaped all of Herta Müller’s literary oeuvre, while splintering off into discussions of the language influencing the world, as viewed between German and Romanian:

“[. . .] take the pheasant, for instance: it is a bird that can’t fly very well, it gets ensnarled in the undergrowth is easy prey. All of this is contained in the Romanian expression: ‘Man is a great pheasant in the world.’ Man, too, is easy prey: he can’t assert himself, he overpays, he is no match for life. However, in German the pheasant is a braggart. The German language has made a saying out of the bird appearance, while the Romanian saying is based on its character. I feel closer to the sad Romanian pheasant. This is why one of my books is titled Man is a Great Pheasant in the World^*.”

^* The English translation of the novel “Man is a Great Pheasant in the World,” is “The Passport.” The original German title with the Romanian saying, provides greater reflection on the circumstances and character of Windisch, who becomes the pheasant from the adage. Continually at the mercy of the authorities and officials delaying his passport application, requiring more tithes. More tolls. More services. More sacrifices.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The Booker Prize Longlist 2026

Hello Gentle Reader,

For a while now, the Booker Prize has become less interesting. Even before its doors were open to American writers, the Booker Prize had often slid into a cycle of awarding and recognizing previous winners or well established, lauded and honoured writers, often pushing out or squeezing up and coming writers from the table. Which is ironic, considering the prizes ability to circumvent and defy expectations; Anita Brookner’s win remains one of those stellar moments of pulling the rug out beneath the literary establishment’s feet. This year, however, was perhaps the first time in a very long time that I saw potential in quite a few publications coming out, and hoped they would at least be acknowledged on this year’s longlist. Sadly, they did not cut the mark. Before the lamentations though, here is this years Booker Prize Longlist (in no particular order):

            Marlon James – “The Disappears,”
            Gwendoline Riley – “The Palm House,”
            Djamel White – “All Them Dogs,”
            Makenna Goodman – “Helen of Nowhere,”
            Luke Kennard – “Black Bag,”
            M. John Harrison – “The End of Everything,”
            Elizabeth Strout – “The Things We Never Say,”
            Kenan Orhan – “The Renovation,”
            Rebecca Perry – “May We Feed the King,”
            Chloe Aridjis – “The Shadow of the Object,”
            Emma Cline – “Switzy,”
            Missouri Williams – “The Vivisectors,”
            Douglas Stuart – “John of John,”

Included on this year’s longlist are two previous winners, Marlon James and Douglas Stuart. If either writer wins again, they would join a small cohort of writers who have won the Booker Prize twice, whose ranks include: J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood. There is no surprise in finding Elizabeth Strout nominated once again, after having previously been nominated twice before. This time, however, Strout provides a survey of the contemporary American society, one infected and infested with the rhetoric and antics of a president whose boisterous demeanor is equally matched by his demented demagoguery, which is further parroted by his sycophant acolytes insulating his echo chamber of insularity.

The inclusion of M. John Harrison and his novel “The End of Everything,” is both baffling and praiseworthy. As if the Booker Prize is slowly rehabilitating its image from the connoisseurs of literary snobbery that it is known for. Even their website pushed back against the term ‘literary fiction,’ in attempt to come across as egalitarian in scope. This is where M. John Harrison would raise a few eyebrows, as the author is a staunch science fiction writer, and the novel “The End of Everything,” is a dystopian vision which does not dilute its otherworldly perspective in the slightest. What M. John Harrison succeeds at, however, is crafting a novel that does not behave like the typical dystopian fiction. Rather than autopsying a world in ruin, Harrison provides a guided tour and meditation of what the end really looks like in the obsolesce of time and the erosion of memory and events. “The End of Everything,” may be read as a parable of the sustained and quiet disintegration of now. Bleak and unflinching in its dreamlike exposition. Whether or not the novel reaches the shortlist like Alan Garners oddity of a gem “Treacle Walker,” or remains sanctioned to the longlist like Susanna Clarke’s regency postmodern fantasy “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,” is yet to be seen.

For a prize that is renowned for being asphyxiatingly closed off at times, it is always a delight to find debut writers receiving some acknowledgement for their efforts. Especially in the case of Djamel White and his novel “All Them Dogs,” which has become a word-of-mouth sensation. A sleek noir gangster thriller laced through with eroticism, which runs counter to the hypermasculine and violent world that gangs and gangers inhabit. Certainly, an interesting inductee on this year’s longlist. Hopefully “All Them Dogs,” is included on the shortlist.

For every longlisted writer, there are always others who have been left out in the cold. It came as quite a surprise to see many potential writers denied their spot on the longlist. Deborah Levy, the dark horse of contemporary English literature, returns with her new novel “My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein.” Deborah Levy is no mere breath of fresh air, but a bolt from a blue. The resuscitating jolt to kickstart a literary industry that is not only flatlined and stagnate but anemic. Seeing Levy shortchanged from the longlist, perpetuates and confirms the literary worlds resignation to remain in a state of disrepair. Which is why it is equally infuriating to see Ali Smith also denied a seat on the longlist with her novel “Glyph,” as Smith is yet another titan of playful experimentation who appears to be left shouldering the weight of keeping English language literature interesting, beyond the flattened uniform prose of todays generation of writers. It is difficult to imagine a contemporary writer who has been as daring and playful as Ali Smith, whose equally as engaged with the immediate concerns of today. Another writer, many expected to see on this year’s longlist was the previous winner Yann Martell with his postmodernist novel “Son of Nobody,” which recounts an academic working on deciphering a fictional ancient poem recounting and documenting the Trojan War, while surveying his own heartbreak and martial breakdown. Despite being called ‘structurally problematic,’ many expected to see what has been called one of this year’s more daring novels highlighted on the Booker’s longlist.

The one that annoyed me the most for not being included is Melissa Harrisons novel “The Given World.” Having first learned about Melissa Harrison via other nature writers such as John Lewis-Stempel, I’ve grown increasingly curious about her, and her celebration of the English countryside in a vein that is reminiscent of Ronald Blythe and J.L. Carr (via a “A Month in the Country,”), but Melissa Harrison doesn’t just celebrate the wonder and beauty of this perceived and propagated idyll, her attention has turned towards the mounting evidence of a human created climate catastrophe, which is only just starting to ramp up in extreme weather events and ecological disasters. “The Given World,” was heralded as a modern day “Under Milk Wood,” by critics, and I looked forward to seeing this polyphonic novel included on the longlist (at minimum). Sadly, much like “Helm,” by Sarah Hall last year, Melissa Harrison was snubbed this year, and I find myself gnashing my teeth together in a fury. Regardless, I look forward to purchasing “The Given World,” and reading it, after I get through my current overdue pile of books to read. To Melissa Harrison, keep the faith, by all accounts what I have read so far is “The Given World,” is a generous warm and engaging read capturing a world subtly in flux and teetering on the brink of ecological adjustment and irreversible change.

It is, however, disheartening and disappointing to see Howard Jacobson’s novel “Howl,” sidestepped for the award, though not surprising. Say what you may say regarding the current conflict in the Middle East, the rise of antisemitism in the world is as palpable and as suffocating as the wildfire smoke choking out the sky. “Howl,” is a novel of nuance and complexity, doing what great literature should do, which is grappling with complex atrocities, social perspectives and personal perspectives. “Howl,” is a deeply uncomfortable novel, which will ultimately outrage and inflame the youth of today, whose ignitable indignation is tinder dry and always waiting on standby for the newest spark to unleash their explosive righteousness. The novels depiction of a man living in maddening times of virulent extremism, decried as being a coward one minute and a supporter of genocide the next. What saves it from wading into the septic ruins of a political novel, is Jacobson has always a maintained distance via a dark comedic wit, “Howl,” is no different. The notion of Jewishness is more complicated now then it has in the postwar period. Though it does more then that, perhaps Jacobson grapples with the political volatility of what is best described as: now. The onslaught of madness. The pantomime of political theatre of everything. The basic virtues of decency and goodness, now commodified like a carnival token to win a cheap prize. Shrinking away from these works and their discussions is not only an act of cowardice, but endorsing de facto self-censorship in order to placate social cohesion. Literature and literary awards should never shrink away from controversy because it may upset someone else.

Other omitted titles that raised a few eyebrows included Ben Lerner’s novel “Transcription,” which recently won the George Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and has recently been praised as one of the best novels of the year. “The Correspondent,” by Virginia Evans was equally rumoured to be a potential longlisted title after winning the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Another novel that became a success through word of mouth amongst readers. What makes “The Correspondent,” even more unique is it returns to the epistolary form. After the original snub of “Hamnet,” in 2020 and its glowing Oscar reception of its film adaption, many expected the Booker Prize to induct Maggie O'Farrell onto the longlist with her recent novel “Land,” recounting the story of a surveyor and his son, capturing the cartography of an Ireland prior to The Great Hunger and the devastation left in the famines wake. It has been praised as a poignant well-researched and personal novel, which tackles themes of the historical injustices perpetrated of an imperial and colonial age, which are très à la mode today. The ironic consequence and rationale, as to why these writers and their novels may not have been included, can be speculated to be the reasoning of predictability. Afterall, Lerner’s novel “Transcription,” has already been declared one of the year’s best, and is speculated to be a Pulitzer candidate next year; while, “The Correspondent,” already won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and can the Booker Prize really compete with the afterglow of an Oscar win of a film adaption? This, however, is just pure speculation and satire on my part. Regardless of the reasons, the judges inevitably have to compromise with one another and this will always mean trade offs and exchanges. A game of accountancy. One book at the cost of two, until finally it’s a begrudgingly agreeable list of 13.

There it is though, this year’s longlist for the Booker Prize. Congratulations to this year’s writers, it’s certainly an interesting list, which seeks to placate the established and rise up the new. Pity, some great novels and writers didn’t quite pass the butcher’s block.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– LIV –

Austerity as economic policy is merely a financier's notion of lingerie.

Shahrnush Parsipur Dies Aged 80

Hello Gentle Reader,

In todays continued relentless news cycle, it is difficult to avoid any mention, comment, analysis or any lengthy commentary on Iran. Specifically, within the context of the aggression between the United States of America and Israel, with the continued on and off again ceasefire, or any negotiations to open the Strait of Hormuz, which is impacting the worlds economy and inflationary measures.  To hear the news, however, the Iranian writer and iconoclast Shahrnush Parsipur has died at the age of 80, was a change of pace, of what can only be sumarised as the endless reportage of a series of Neanderthalic nations, engaged in a ritual of state of chest pounding to prove themselves the bigger man. Its not only juvenile, its downright pathetic. Shahrnush Parsipur’s death marks the end of a writer who has persistently and continually pushed against the political limitations of Iran, having been imprisoned four times throughout her life, both in the current theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran of today, but also of the previous Shah regime. Parsipur’s “Prison Memoir,” is set to make its debut in English in full in 2027. Despite having lived in exile in the United States since the early 90’s, Shahrnush Parsipur has not been readily available in English. The monumental novel “Women Without Men,” first published in 1989 (and subsequently banned), was finally translated and published in 2026 and was later longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. The novel traces the intersecting lives and destinies of five women during the coup d'état in 1953, who come to live in a garden on the outskirts of Tehran. The novel traces the defining feminist themes which were the hallmark and defining legacy of Shahrnush Parsipur. The novels discussion and discourse on female sexuality caused a scandal in the socially conservative and theocratically tightly controlled Islamic society, which once again saw the author imprisoned. While the novel was also deeply critical of the prevailing misogynistic and socially engineered principles to subjugate, demean, oppress and control women. Over the past few years, the world has seen Iranian women surge as political agents and revolutionary forces in Iran and the Arabic/Islamic world, pushing back against their limited social agency and prospects in addition to religious dress codes thrusted and enforced on them by doctrine or law. The death of Mahsa Amini was considered by many to be a catalyst in a wave of social outrage and change that would sweep through Iran. The late, Shahrnush Parsipur held this belief as well, believing that substantial revolutionary change and a call to political freedom for all, would not come from men, but from the women. While the current hostilities have all but thwarted these burning needs for change, they are hopefully not extinguished, and will reignite, whereby the Iranian people can manifest their own destiny, away from the clerics and the geopolitical machinations of a impetuous and imperialist United States of America.

Rest in Peace, Shahrnush Parsipur

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary
 

For Further Reading: The Guardian: "Shahrnush Parsipur, Iranian author of Women Without Men, dies at 80,"