Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008)

There's a special joy in finding a really good book by a new novelist. I mean, not new to me, but new to the world. It's especially joyful when I haven't heard anything about the book, but picked it up more or less at random (actually, it was a gift but the person who chose it, my mum, also hadn't heard anything about it beforehand). It did win the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, Europe and South Asia category, which is certainly something, but I am increasingly of the opinion that even prizes like the Booker don't predict much, quality wise. So, I wasn't expecting much when I opened it, because I'm getting awfully used to disappointing novels and this one didn't come with a recommendation. And I disliked (and still dislike) the title. A Case of Exploding Mangoes gave me a feeling that maybe the book was playing on some kind of facile exoticism. But it is not facile in any way. It is sensitive and poetic and also tough and violent and grapples with grand political historical narrative. It nestles itself within the events of final days of Pakistan's sixth president, General Zia-ul-Haq, who died in 1988 in a plane crash. Apparently the circumstances of the plane crash were never fully discovered, so the book has a lot of room to play with.

I say it nestles itself, it lives in that narrative, but it is both about the historical events and not about them. The main character is the son of a famous Pakistani general who committed suicide, and who is now a young man in the army himself. He becomes friends with a young man quite different from himself, one not at all used to military customs. Every scene leads you one step further along into the logic of the conclusion, in which the plane comes down, but it's always clear that the protagonist's inner (fictional) life is more important, for these pages, than is the fate of the government.

The literary establishment seems, at best, suspicious about historical novels, I guess because they seem conceptually so close to genre writing, what with their interest in plot and events and capitalizing on names and fascinations already present in the reader's consciousness. I think I like historical fiction about as often as I like non-historical fiction. I really enjoyed reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009; winner of the Man Booker prize) but that was more fast-paced and plot driven. It showed an amazing amount of imagination, but the imaginative bits were interstitial, inventions about what Thomas Cromwell might have been thinking the day before he arrested Thomas More, or some other historically verifiable event. Here, the connection to plot is less central. The events, though they are capital-H History and recent, to boot, are only a small part of the life of a novel. I'm not advocating for one type or the other, and I loved reading both of them, but they are very different. Wolf Hall is more of a page turner, and A Case of Exploding Mangoes is more emotionally affecting.

Quote of the Day

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

From The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot

I love the lady of situations. I'm memorizing The Waste Land and am delighted at how memorization improves understanding and appreciation. I've never been a big poetry memorizer before, at least not since I was seven and my best friend Naomi convinced me to join in memorizing Shakespeare soliloquies on the verandah of the Far Cottage at Petawawa Lake.

Poem of the day

Love Is Not All
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by need and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.



Troublingly, I've looked at five different versions of this poem online and cannot find a consensus on the correct version (Pinned down by pain or need? well may or may well? also, two "can not"s instead of "cannot"s, which seemed v unlikely). Until I consult a paper copy, this is my best guess.

What is so strong here, for me, is the duality of the acceptance of the terrible realities of torture and want and at the same time the rejection of the human condition as struggle for basic survival. It's not taking some ridiculous position that, of course, we can all follow our passions all the time and those who don't like bread can eat cake. But it is saying there is a way, without judging others, without putting our heads in the sand, to say that we hope to adhere to a way of living that does prioritize the non-material, the truly beautiful aspects of humanity.

Quote of the Day

I felt fear, tininess and hunger. I decided the only way to become as big as the Big People was to begin eating.

In the infinite coffee shop, my eyes struggled to take in the polyptych menu and its thousand offerings. Eggs with legs, friendly forks and spoons marched across it. GOOD MORNING! Barnyard Suggestions . . . What! I thought. Wanna meet this chicken in the hayloft in half an hour, fella? But these were not that kind of barnyard suggestion. Here in Big People Land, land-o-lotsa wholesomeness, they were suggesting I eat the following: (1) 3 strips of bacon, 2 pancakes, 2 eggs (any style), 2 sausages, juice, toast and coffee; (2) 6 strips of bacon, 5 pancakes, 4 eggs (any style), 3 sausages, juice, toast and coffee; or (3) 12 strips of bacon, 9 pancakes, 7 eggs (any style), 1 1/2 gallons of juice, 3 lbs of toast and a 'Bottomless Pit' (which I took to be a typographical error for 'Pot') of coffee. Thus emptying any barnyard I could imagine of all life. Again I was lost. I felt I was visiting Karnak. I pleaded for half an order of toast, eight pieces.

Todd McEwen, "They Tell Me You Are Big" in The Best of Granta Travel (1991).
I'm not always a fan of this kind of verbal equivalent of slapstick, but this is hilarious.