Giorgio Parisi - In A Flight Of Starlings (Allan Lane, 2023) ****

Giorgio Parisi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021 for his “discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

In this short book he describes, explains and muses on complex systems, such as the flight of starlings, which is only the subject of the first chapter. His writing is simple, elegant and accessible, and easy to understand for the lay reader. 

He explains how as a young researcher he was encouraged to focus on just a few subjects instead of "concentrating on a few important ones. On the one hand this was obviously good advice, but on the other it was precisely by studying many things at once that I was able to make connections between different fields, the basis of many later discoveries"(p. 46). Next to starlings, we learn about the boiling of water and phase transitions, spin glasses, quantum physics, metaphors in physics and how ideas are born. Each chapter is worth reading, even if the first chapter on the flight of starlings was why I bought the book. The essence is about Parisi's work in complex system and the interaction of the various elements that they consist of. 

"In the context of physics, 'exchanging information' is equivalent to 'being subject to forces'. But generally speaking - given that the model can be applied to many fields of study, from physics and biology to economics and so on - there are many objects whose behavior depends on the behavior of other objects that are more or less in proximity to them, given that objects that are too far apart from each other cannot exchange information" (p. 47)

Not surprisingly, scientists from other disciplines are not always too happy when experts from other fields intrude in their area of interest. Just like anthropologists and sociologists hated the biologists who started with sociobiology, here the biologists are sometimes not all too happy when physicists come on their turf, when of course this cross-breeding is where the fun is. 

"We defined new standards of investigation in biology by using techniques originated and developed in statistical physics to solve complex and disordered problems. Not all biologists ap­preciated this incursion into their territory: some have shown themselves to be very interested in the results, while others have found our investigations to be too short on biology and top-heavy with math. The work was rejected by various journals that are probably kicking themselves now. After the great success of our first· article, which was cited in almost two thousand scientific publications, many others have followed." (p.17)

 And of course that's also where the value of analysing complex systems comes from. Understanding their workings at a very basic and abstract level, amplifies their use across contexts and areas of interest. 

"The actual world is disordered, and as we said at the start, many situations in the real world can be described as a large number of elementary agents that interact with each other. These interactions can be schematized with simple rules, but the results of their collective action are sometimes really unpredictable. The elementary agents can be spins, atoms or molecules, neurons, cells in general-but also websites, financial traders, stocks and shares, people, animals, components of ecosystems, and so on. 

Not all interactions between elementary agents generate dis­ordered systems. Disorder is born from the fact that certain ele­mentary entities behave differently from others: some spins try to go in opposite directions; certain atoms are different from most others; certain financial actors sell shares that others are buy,ing; some dinner guests actively dislike others who have been invited and want to sit as far away from them as possible. In all these disordered cases, the mathematical and conceptual tool I found is indispensable for tackling the problems associated with them." (p.80)

The book is an easy read, but with a very important topic. 

John Glassie - A Man Of Misconceptions (Riverhead Books, 2012) ****

Several years ago I read Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès novel "Là Où Les Tigres Sont Chez Eux" in which he extensively mentions the 17th Century polymath and jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who was as much a scientist as he was a fantast and con man. For one or the other reason I stumbled upon a biography of the man, which is easy to recommend for anyone interested in the history of science or religion. 

To the man's credit, he was interested in everything, and his arrogant self-confidence made him also belief he was the best at everything, from math over astronomy and physics to medicine and linguistics, and of course also astrology and alchemy. He taught for more than 40 years at the Roman college. He wrote extensive books on many subjects. Some of his contributions were valuable, but for many of them he got away with them because nobody else had any knowledge on the subject. 

His books were read by scientists and philosophers such as Leibniz, Descartes and Christiaan Huygens. Descartes sent the books back with the following comment: "The Jesuit is quite boastful; he is more of a charlatan than a scholar". Leibniz was then much younger and absolutely fascinated by Kircher's writings, even if he already asked for some evidence for the claims made by the Jesuit. 

The Jesuits were at that time among the world leaders in science education and development, and Kircher's role is best placed in this context. 

"Clavius envisioned an elite corps of mathematician priests "distributed in various nations and kingdoms like sparkling gems," serving as "a source of great fear to all enemies" and as "an incredible incitement to make young people flock to us from all the parts of the world." Many of his proposals were put in place. And so while he was rigorously and rather inflex­ibly educated in Aristotelian and Thomist doctrines, Kircher also received private instruction in the very discipline that was beginning to undermine them." (p.34)

Although already at that time, the role of the jesuits was often mocked, and Kircher clearly did not match the description of the ideal jesuit: 

"Recall that for the Jesuits, the path toward Christ was predicated on an effort to achieve humility. It's unclear how well or how often Kircher took a good look at his apparent lack in that regard. But given that hypocrisy is almost requisitely present in human beings, and common among religious, political, and philosophical practices, he surely wasn't the only vain or selfinterested member of the Society of Jesus. As the satirizing sermon by a monk from another order in Rome went, the Jesuits "are the best Men that Live on the Earth. They are as Modest as Angels. They never open their eyes to cast a Look upon the Ladies at Church. They are such great Lovers of Restraint, that you never see them in the Streets. They are so in Love with Poverty, that they Despise and trample upon all the Riches in the World. They never come near Dying Persons or Widows, to importune them to be Remember' d in their last Wills .... They never go among Courts, or mind State Affairs."  (p.209)

Kircher claimed that he could decipher hieroglyphs, and because nobody else had any clue, he was believed in this matter. When a heavy fallen obelisk was found, Kircher even gave the translation of the side that had not been revealed yet because it was still lying on the ground. 

""They in turn marveled at my boldness," Kircher claimed, "and perhaps my lack of temerity, but several decreed that the truth of the matter must be determined by the original on the obelisk itself' After the obelisk had finally been rolled, they compared Kircher's scheme with the newly revealed side. "And when they had discovered that soundly and without error all of my markings were composed as on the original," he recalled, "they were utterly stupefied, those same men who were formerly mocking my interpretations as merely pure conjecture." This left "certain individuals saying that this knowledge had been inspired by the power of God, while several, not without calumny, even asserted that the knowledge had been acquired by some illicit pact with a demon. Some, finally, judged that this type of knowledge, attained by many years of study, was able to be acquired by the strength of a singular intellect." (p.204)

Kircher collected automata and made some himself, such as this wonderful tool that could do almost anything: 

"What is known about Kircher's device comes from an instruc­tional guide he wrote titled Specula Melitensis (Maltese Observatory), which, as one historian says, mostly conveyed Kircher's "enthusiastic capacity for fatiguing detail." The apparatus had "the form and figure of an observatory," or watchtower, hence its name, and it evidently employed the Llullian discs. Beyond that, it's hard to say precisely what this instrument looked like or how it worked. A "universal chronoscope" was on "the first cubical side." A "cosmographic mir­ror" was on the second. A "physico-mathematical mirror" was on the third, and the fourth cubical side was used for "medical-mathematical" purposes. The top of the structure was a pyramid. In all, the device had one hundred twenty-five functions. Among other things, it could be used to determine: 

• the "amount of dusk"
• the "flux and reflux of the seas"
• the astrological houses of the planets
• the signs of disease and "simple medicines for healing"
• the best times to go fishing and to give birth" (p.90)

He was fascinated by everything, often boastful, less competent and scientific than he presented himself, but like with Leibniz, his unbridled interest in everything, and his incredibly productive output on so many topics raised the interest among other, possibly better scientists, to also start investigating the same topics with more success. 

"Peiresc put it very mildly when he said that Kircher's ambitions were "a little grander than the ordinary goals of his colleagues." This led to a lack of restraint as well as other problems, including a certain flexibility with the truth. But for Kircher there were greater truths and lesser ones; there were different measures of truth, metaphors, and-multiple meanings, things for which fact-based modern science has no place. Progress required another kind of split, between the literal and the literary. But that was not a split Kircher ever would have been able to abide. And it makes sense that as his scientific reputation diminished, his work continued to capture and to fuel the creative imagination. (p. 269)

This biography is well-documented, well-written and offers a fascinating view on the century when science was still in its early infancy. That some did not make great inventions such as Kircher, is inevitable. His broad interests, his assured self-confidence and his deliberate fabrications make this a wonderful read. 

Sarah Bernstein - Study For Obedience (Granta, 2023) ***

In "Study for Obedience", the anonymous narrator tells how she dropped everything after his brother's marriage broke up, in order to serve him. The brother lives lavishly in an old mansion in a remote mountain village. Once her brother leaves on business, she remains alone in the house, trying to connect with the villagers who seem to avoid or even reject her. She is at the full service of her brother, as the youngest child in the family and "trained" for this role of obedience and servitude. Bernstein's narrator is quite elliptical in her description of her situation. You can expect abuse or even incest by her brother, although it's never explicitly mentioned. You can expect the villagers to act as they do because she and her brother are jewish, or rich, or intruders, or all of those, but without clear explanation. The narrator tries her best to fold in, even volunteering to help with farming, but all in vain. 

Bernstein manages to create a very coherent narrative, both in content and style, an unusual book, written with precision and elegance, shimmering with unsaid emotions, by a main character who appears a little naive, simple and of course docile, and allows life to unroll without too much intervening, and when she does, tiny problems and frictions seem to arise. So her safety spot is just to do what others want. 

As a reader, you cannot but sympathise with her predicament, and even if - I think - my personality is the complete opposite of the narrator, Bernstein brings her to life in such a way that anyone will relate to her. 

 

Hanya Yanagihara - The People In The Trees (Picador, 2013) ***

 

I have rarely been so disappointed by the denouement of a book as with this one. Hanya Yanagihara writes a truly excellent book, with a brilliant style, a slow and careful build-up, only to make it end with a rather immature element that she kept hidden from the readers all along. It's a cheap trick that the book and the quality of her writing does not deserve. Sorry for this harsh judgment, given with mixed feelings. 

It's the story about a young doctor, Norton Perina, working in a laboratory who gets the opportunity to accompany Paul Tallent, an anthropologist, to look for an unknown tribe on an island in the Pacific. Apparently, among this tribe some people live for hundreds of years, but increasingly senile. Perina uncovers the reason for their longevity and eventually gets the Nobel Prize for his work, but that's not how the book ends of course. 

As said, Yanagihara's writing is excellent. Here are some examples. 

"Labs at that time were not like the ones today. Not that I cared a terrible amount about my colleagues' lives, the things they were interested in outside of the office, but there was at work a kind of conservatism, a fixation on neatness, that I found difficult and dispiriting. In those days science considered itself the realm of gentlemen. This was the era, after all, of Linus Pauling and J. Robert Oppenheimer, both of them exceptional, of course, but not exempt from having to dress a certain way, or from being able to perform at cocktail parties, or from pursuing romance. Genius was no excuse for social ineptitude, the way it is today, when a certain refusal to acquire the most basic social skills or an inability to dress properly or feed oneself is generously perceived as evidence of one's intellectual purity and commitment to the life of the mind." (p58)

The experience of the explorers on the remote island completely desintegrates the author from all things known and familiar to him. 

"And yet-and this was even more frightening still - I could also feel something within me come undone. Even today, all these decades later, I cannot explain it with any greater accuracy. I found myself suddenly imagining a long, fat, chalked line stretching across a flat burned earth. To one side was what I had known, a neat-bricked city of windowless structures, the stuff and facts I knew to be true (I thought, unbidden, of my staircase, its names of those wiser than I, and was at once embarrassed for myself, for finding myself in this situation, in speechless thrall to an anthropologist). And on the other side was Tallent's world, the shape of which I could not see, for it was obscured by a fog, one that thinned and thickened in unpredictable movements, so that I could discern, occasionally, glimpses of what lay behind it: nothing more than colors and movements, no real shapes; but there was something irresistible there, I knew it, and the fear of succumbing to it was finally less awful than never knowing what lay beyond that fog, never exploring what I might never again have the opportunity to explore.  And so I closed my eyes; I forgot my senses; and I stepped over the line." (p. 94)

or :  

"We slept then, all of us, even the guides, and when I woke and saw the others' still bodies, I thought for a minute that they were dead and I was alone in this strange, sunlit place, surrounded by trees I did not know the names of and birds I could hear but could not see, and that no one would ever know I was here or remember I had ever existed or would ever find me. The sensation was fleeting, but what I would remember is how quickly, like a breath, I moved from despair to resignation, how well equipped the human mind is to readjust to its realities, to soothe oneself of one's deepest fears. And then I felt proud, I suppose, of my very humanness, and briefly invincible, and sure that I would be greeted with nothing in the next day that I could not bear." (p. 102)

Both excerpts demonstrate the unsettling, uncanny, unheimlich situation a person can be in when all known elements - rationality, familiarity, logic - have to be given up to get a full grasp of what is happening or to be part of something that you have no ideas what it is. The novels and especially the writing style of H.P. Lovecraft often come to mind, as you can deduct from the above. 

My negative comment at the beginning may scare you off. I still think it's a novel worth reading. I did not read her other novels yet: "A Little Life" and "To Paradise". Based on her writing skills, I assume they are still on my reading list. 

Ignaas Devisch - Een Kleine Filosofie Van Grote Emoties (Pelckmans, 2023) ***

In dit korte en frisje boekje schrijft filosoof Ignaas Devisch over het belang van onze 'grote emoties'. En dit kunnen vele soorten emoties zijn: als iets wat je raakt als individu, als iets dat je kan delen met anderen, als een sterkte om je te kunnen uitdrukken. Hij wijs echter ook op de gevaren van het gebruik van emoties op de juiste plaats en het juiste moment. Het moet relevant en authentiek zijn, en geen vorm van zelfzuchtige zelfpromotie.

"Een gesprek met een journalist of een bekende per­soon gaat al gauw over de mens achter de functie en hoe die in het leven staat, welke donkere pe­riodes die heeft meegemaakt en wat hem of haar drijft. Niet hoe de wereld is staat centraal, maar hoe we die ervaren en met die ervaring naar bui­ten komen. En het is maar de vraag of we hier niet doorslaan en stilaan terecht zijn gekomen in een opbod aan getuigenissen." (blz 31)

Of nog:  

"De Nederlandse filosoof Theo de Wit het stelt kan slachtofferschap een aantrekkelijke manier wor­den om jezelf op de kaart te zetten en aandacht te eisen, maar gaat die aandacht gepaard met een ranzig kantje. Zeker 'in een postideologische wereld waar 'waar­heid' vooral gevoelsmatig beleefde waarheid aan het worden is. Respect voor anderen is dan vooral respect voor andermans beleving van de waarheid. De kritische vraag naar de feiten achter die beleving kan dan als uiterst ongewenst worden ervaren; over gevoelens is het namelijk moeilijk discussieren.' Wanneer emoties een wapen worden om ons ge­drag niet langer ter discussie voor te willen leg­gen, wordt het lastig om met elkaar samen te leven. Zoals Plato dacht dat je emoties kan uit­schakelen om goed te kunnen nadenken, zo pro­beert men hier het omgekeerde: de gevoelens worden aan het gesprek of het debat onttrokken zodat ze de status van vastliggende waarheid ver­krijgen en anderen er geen toegang of zelfs geen verhouding tot hebben." (blz 73)

Als iemand die de belangen van patiënten behartigt, kan ik het alleen maar eens zijn met volgende paragraaf: de mens is meer dan een klinisch gegeven, en behandelingen zijn meestal pas succesvol als ze echt rekening houden met de volledige mens. 

"Wie daarentegen met mensen omgaat - denk aan artsen die patiënten ontmoeten - heeft wel de­gelijk andere kennis nodig dan alleen klinische gegevens. Weten hoe iemand eraan toe is en wat een ingreep met hem of haar doet, is allemaal bij­zonder relevant en noodzakelijk voor een goeie omgang met elkaar. Dan gaat het vaak om erva­ringskennis waar emoties een grote rol in spelen, en minder het louter cijfermatige of in formules om te zetten data. " (blz 56)

 Niet alle emoties komen evenveel aan bod, en misschien is emotie als drijfveer tot handelen misschien de grootste misbedeelde in dit overzicht. We doen wat we doen omdat we ergens door gepassioneerd zijn, nieuwsgierig zijn, moreel geschokt zijn. Deze diepe emotie dat de wereld beter kan zijn, lukt enkel dankzij de energie die deze emoties tot stand brengen. Als Plato zijn figuurlijke paarden met de ratio in bedwang denkt te houden en de emoties naar de achtergrond wil brengen, dan stopt hij ook het draaien van onze wereld. Zelfs de grootste wetenschapper - die uiteraard geen persoonlijke gevoelens in haar methode toelaat -  doet haar onderzoek gedreven door een diepe persoonlijke overtuiging en emotie. 

Maar ik kan het iedereen aanraden. Denken over emoties met Devisch als gids, biedt veel inzichten en stof tot nadenken. Het is geen wetenschappelijk werk uiteraard, maar een persoonlijke mijmering die zeer laagdrempelig en zelfs een tikje persoonlijk. 

Douglas R. Hofstadter - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Basic Books, 1979) *****

This fascinating and genial book was published in 1979, when I was at university. It was a kind of a hype among my fellow-students, and even if I did not understand (or read) half of it, it opened a world, or rather a universe of thinking, while at the same time presenting it in an incredibly creative way. Earlier this year, I decided to read it in full and buy a copy. Fourty-five years later, it is still as enthralling as it was then. Hofstadter explores the boundaries of our thinking, where reason and logic meet their limits in paradoxes, contradictions, self-references and loops. The subject is about cognitive science, logic and computer sciences (and Artificial Intelligence), and he learns us how meaning and meaninglessness exist and how they come to life (or not) in abstract systems, including the human mind and the perception or delusion of the self or the "I". 

I do not think the book would have so much resonated with larger audiences or with us at that time, if it were not for the extensive illustrations of Dutch artist M.C. Escher and his impossible drawings, or the long dialogues between Achilles and the Tortoise, occasionally joined by the Crab, and further illustrated by analysing the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, and their inherent structural elements of self-reference and loops, as in the sentence sequence: 

"The following sentence is false

The preceding sentence is true"

The starting point of course are the theorems of German mathematician Kurt Gödel: "The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure(i.e. an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system" (Wikipedia)

On top of this, Hofstadter develops dozens of new ways of looking at familiar or less familiar problems of logic and computation. He creates his own different logical systems in the book to illustrate his points, to take the reader without knowledge of mathematics or the formal language of computer scientists by the hand, and explain whatever elements he wants to demonstrate. 

He describes it as follows: 

"Here one runs up against a seeming paradox. Computers by their very nature are the most inflexible, desireless, rule-following of beasts. Fast though they may be, they are nonetheless the epitome of unconsciousness. How, then, can intelligent behavior be programmed? Isn't this the most blatant of contradictions in terms? One of the major theses of this book is that it is not a contradiction at all. One of the major purposes of this book is to urge each reader to confront the apparent contradiction head on, to savor it, to turn it over, to take it apart, to wallow in it, so that in the end the reader might emerge with new insights into the seemingly unbreachable gulf between the formal and the informal, the animate and the inanimate, the flexible and the inflexible.  This is what Artificial Intelligence (AI) research is all about." (p.26)

or:  

"No one knows where the borderline between non-intelligent behavior and intelligent behavior lies; in fact, to suggest that a sharp borderline exists is probably silly. But essential abilities for intelligence are certainly:

• to respond to situations very flexibly; 
• to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances; 
• to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages; 
• to recognize the relative importance of different elements of a situation; 
• to find similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them; 
• to draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them; 
• to synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them together in new ways; 
• to come up with ideas which are novel. "

"This little debate shows the difficulty of trying to use logic and reasoning to defend themselves. At some point, you reach rock bottom, and there is no defense except loudly shouting, "I know I'm right!" Once again, we are up against the issue which Lewis Carroll so sharply set forth in his Dialogue: you can't go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over." (p. 192)

On the origin of life:  

"A natural and fundamental question to ask, on learning of these incredibly intricately interlocking pieces of software and hardware is: "How did ever get started in the first place?" It is truly a baffling thing. One has to imagine some sort of a bootstrap process occurring, somewhat like that which is used in the development of new computer languages - but bootstrap from simple molecules to entire cells is almost beyond our power to imagine. There are various theories on the origin of life. The run aground on this most central of all central questions: "How did Genetic Code, along with the mechanisms for its translation (ribosome_ tRNA molecules), originate?" For the moment, we will have to content ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than with an answer and perhaps experiencing that sense of wonder and awe is more satisfying than having an answer-at least for a while". (p. 548)

 Or using nice examples to make the reading easier to digest: 

"Here is a well-known children's joke which illustrates the open-endedness of real-life situations: 

• A man took a ride in an airplane. 
• Unfortunately, he fell out. 
• Fortunately, he had a parachute on. 
• Unfortunately, it didn't work. 
• Fortunately, there was a haystack below him. 
• Unfortunately, there was a pitchfork sticking out of it. Fortunately, he missed the pitchfork. 
• Unfortunately, he missed the haystack. 

It can be extended indefinitely. To represent this silly story in a frame­based system would be extremely complex, involving jointly activating frames for the concepts of man, airplane, exit, parachute, falling, etc., etc." (p. 675)

His ultimate endeavour is to link the world of abstract logic with the physical reality we live in, and of course especially our brain and its capacity to for abstract thought, to cross the levels set by scientific disciplines and to come to an more holistic understanding of the interactions. 

"My belief is that the explanations of "emergent" phenomena in our brains-for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will-are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level. In other words, a self-reinforcing "resonance" between dif­ferent levels-quite like the Henkin sentence which, by merely asserting its own provability, actually becomes provable. The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself. 

 This should not be taken as an antireductionist position. It just implies that a reductionistic explanation of a mind, in order to be comprehensible, must ring in "soft" concepts such as levels, mappings, and meanings. In princi­ple, I have no doubt that a totally reductionistic but incomprehensible explanation of the brain exists; the problem is how to translate it into a language we ourselves can fathom. Surely we don't want a description in terms of positions and momenta of particles; we want a description which relates neural activity to "signals" (intermediate-level phenomena)-and which relates signals, in turn, to "symbols" and "subsystems", including the presumed-to-exist "self-symbol". This act of translation from low-level physical hardware to high-level psychological software is analogous to the translation of number-theoretical statements into metamathematical state­ments. Recall that the level-crossing which takes place at this exact transla­jon point is what creates Gödel's incompleteness and the self-proving character of Henkin's sentence. I postulate that a similar level-crossing is what creates our nearly unanalyzable feelings of self. In order to deal with the full richness of the brain/mind system, we will have to be able to slip between levels comfortably. Moreover, we will have to admit various types of "causality": ways in which an event at one level of description can "cause" events at other levels to happen. Sometimes event A will be said to "cause" event B simply for the reason that the one is a translation, on another level of description, of the other. Sometimes 'cause" will have its usual meaning: physical causality. Both types of causality-and perhaps some more-will have to be admitted in any expla­nation of mind, for we will have to admit causes that propagate both upwards and downwards" (p. 709)

And of course also the existence of free will. Are we the consequence of algorithms (historical/cultural/social/genetic/contextual/...) or not. 

"One way to gain some perspective on the free-will question is to replace it by what I believe is an equivalent question, but one which involves less loaded terms. Instead of asking, "Does system X have free will?" we ask "Does system X make choices?" By carefully groping for what we really mean when we choose to describe a system - mechanical or biological - as being capable of making "choices", I think we can shed much light on free will." (p. 711)

We will come back to this topic when reading Robert Sapolsky's "Determined". 

Even if in some respects the book is a little dated, especially when describing Artificial Intelligence or genetics, it remains one of the milestone books on cognitive science and logic, absolutely unique in terms of content and form, incredibly complex yet fun to read, even if it is impossible to understand everything, as most readers such as myself will have to confess. 

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt - L'Evangile Selon Pilate (Albin Michel, 2000) **

Because I had read all the books I brought with me on a rainy holiday, I took this book from a 'book swap box' on a street somewhere in France. It describes the doubts of Jesus the day before his crucifixion in the first part, and in the second part Pontius Pilate starts his search for the missing body of Jesus. Schmitt is certainly not the first to re-imagine and re-write with a more modern perspective the stories of the New Testament. It's always an interesting exercise, especially when it's presented as here as a police investigation. Schmitt leaves many aspects hanging in a veil of uncertainty. Pilate remains doubtful, yet his wife Claudia is convinced and becomes a Christian. 

Schmitt presents the story with style, but in my opinion with little conviction. Pilate does not ask the right questions in my opinion. Many aspects remain untouched, as if Schmitt wants to use doubt as a possibility that the resurrection actually occured as described in the later gospels (of Matthew, Luke and John), but not in the earliest gospel of Mark, in which the tomb is just empty. And for reference, none of the four evangelists actually ever met Jesus. It is all based on hearsay. 

Many of the modernised versions of the bible have only one goal: to convert the doubtful to christianity, in the hope that the language and style of today might be more effective than the real scriptures. I think Schmitt's book does not fall into this category. It has literary merits. 

Daniel C. Dennett - Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Penguin, 1995) ****

Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett passed away earlier this year. He is one the four riders of the apocalypse, together with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, called like that for their outspoken and often militant atheism. This was a good reason to read one of Dennett's initial books on Darwin's theory of evolution. 

Thirty years after publication, the book is somewhat outdated, luckily, but unfortunately also very actual. Many of his references about genetics, quantum physics and artificial intelligence are of course no longer entirely correct, and would have been presented in a very different way today, considering the incredible progress that was made in the last decade and years. But the essence of what he writes is still valid. The idea that life is the result of random chance events, with some basic rules that continue to be subjected to chance, and the organsism's fitness to survive in an often hostile environment, is something that - my guess - roughly 90% of the world's population would still reject today. 

"Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe. 

Right from the beginning, the cost of doing something is running the risk of doing it wrong; of making a mistake. Our slogan could be: No taking without mistaking. The first error that ever was made was a typographical error, a copying mistake that then became the opportunity for creating a new task environment (or fitness landscape) with a new criterion of right and wrong, better and worse. A copying error "counts" as an error here only because there is a cost to getting it wrong: termination of the reproductive line at worst, or a diminution in the capacity to replicate. These are all objective matters, differences that are there whether or not we look at them, or care about them, but they bring in their train a new perspective. Before that moment, no opportunity for error existed. However things went, they went neither right nor wrong. Before that moment, there was no stable, predictive way of exercising the option of adopting the perspective from which errors might be discerned, and every mistake anybody or any­thing has ever made since is dependent on that original error-making pro­cess. In fact, there is strong selection pressure for making the genetic copying process as high-fidelity as possible, minimizing the likelihood of error. Fortunately, it cannot quite achieve perfection, for if it did, evolution would grind to a halt. This is Original Sin, in scientifically respectable guise. Like the Biblical version, it purports to explain something: the emergence of a new level of phenomena with special characteristics ( meaners in one case, sinners in the other). Unlike the Biblical version, it provides an explanation that makes sense; it does not proclaim itself to be a mysterious fact that one has to take on faith, and it has testable implications. (p. 203)

This core idea cannot be repeated enough. It's a message of humility. It's a message that requires collaboration and pragmatic solutions among people for the complex problemas that we are confronted with, instead of relying on age-old and unworkable rigid ethical concepts. 

A large part of the book consists in refuting concepts of other academics whose writings and viewpoints are no longer a point of discussion today. If you can live with this, the book is still easy to recommend, and Dennett's knowledge of various scientific disciplines and the rigour of his approach are an absolute pleasure to read. 

Our world has lost a great mind. 

Paul Harding - This Other Eden (Penguin, 2023) ****½

In "This Other Eden", Paul Harding fictionalises a historical event, the removal of a few families from Malaga Island, located in the New Meadows River in Maine, United States. 

Harding is known for his exquisite penmanship, which is also the case here. With a deep tenderness and lyricism he describes the lives of the people living on the island, originally outcasts who developed their own secluded little world, as a kind of metaphor of this world, with its horror and beauty, its humanity and its cruelty. 

The few dozen characters all have their own personal story, their strong personalities and special traits, some of them with special and unique talents, but also with their problems and issues, which makes their interaction even more powerful. They are partly descendants of a freed slave and are of different complexions, in the words of a visitor to the island:  "There was white Negroes and coloured white people. Some of them were grey. Some of them pink, like they were raw or something. And some of them were yellow, like waxy cracked old piano keys."

Despite the poverty, the malnutrition, the bugs on the island and the lack of prospects of its inhabitants, you fill sympathy for them, and especially when the bureaucratic outside world of politics and religion starts to intervene. Harding's book has been criticised for not being truthful to what actually happened, or for using elements that come more from myths around the island than from fact. I do not think that this matters to appreciate the novel. Harding has written a beautiful, heart-rending and lyrical novel that juxtaposes different communities, both with their strengths and weaknesses, without actually judging about right and wrong. Even if the bureaucrats and the teacher are clumsy and disrespectful, their intentions - and especially at that time in history - are somewhat understandable. 

It's a nice piece of literature. 

Teju Cole - Tremor (Faber & Faber, 2023) ****

A political and poetic view on our modern day world, its art, its wars, its people is presented as a kaleidoscopic narrative consisting of little fragments that allow the reader to co-create the story. 

The lead character, Tunde, is a West-African photography professor, who walks into an antiques shop at the beginning of the book, identifies African masks, a native American story, and then reflects on art and links Bach's cello suites to some modern day television series. But it also has to do with his relationship with his wife and daughter, with the professionals colleagues he meets around the world.  

"They were sitting on the sofa during this conversation. He came closer to her and held her as she tried to find her words. At first she was startled, unable to trust his sudden alertness, but soon she eased herself into the knowledge that the things between the words were being heard. No there was no language yet for the little despairs nipping at her heels but now she knew he could receive that inarticulacy. His earnestness, his determination now to be better, felt like warmth." (p.65) 

It is about racism, it is about art, it is about politics, in the United States, Africa, Asia, the Middle East. But above all it is literature of a very high level, without being too preachy about his own opinions, but like a good novel does, to even deeper levels, that are usually absent from any other work of art. 

"The work I do takes me to places where I am received as a guest of honor, places where I try to think and speak and where I try to avoid speechifying. All of this is true but none of it is where reality is. There is another reality, the personal one. And then there's the secret one that is as dark as the blood beating in my veins, a cold river flowing undetected far from view, a place of uncertainty and premonition. Some­thing is moving there that does not need me for its movement and that is taking me where I cannot imagine. A darkness to which the eyes can never become adjusted. (p.230)

Throughout the book, art works are described as part of the plot almost, like characters adding perspective and background, often linked to historical events: the Benin bronzes, expressing the 1897 massacre by the British army, Turner’s "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying" and the Flemish master Herri Met De Bles’s mysterious "Landscape With Burning City", amongst others, and the French series he describes on the pages 202 and 203 but doesn't mention by name is "Bureau Des Légendes", on the espionage and politics in the Middle-East. 

Cole mixes all these kaleidoscopics snippets of information, the personal stories, the art, the human horror into a meditative, at times even poetic and coherent narrative that is trembling with heartfelt emotions, both tender and loving on the one hand, and shocked and disgusted on the other. The tension between both creates the tremor, I assume. 

Martin Amis - Einstein's Monsters (Vintage, 2003) ***

As a completist for some authors (Roberto Bolaño, Milan Kundera, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Haruki Murakami, Thomas Pynchon, George Perec, Philip Roth, ...) this little book by Martin Amis was still missing. It was originally published in 1987 and brings us five stories that are all related to nuclear power and the consequences of the arms race. We were in full Cold War at that time, and  with Reagan as president, he wanted to play it hard. Not that Reagan features in Amis's stories, but nuclear  destruction of the world was then very high on everybody's agenda. 

The stories are more a kind of exploration of different situations, narrated with power and stylistic try-outs. Not everything works, possibly because at times the plot development is a little immature ("The Immortals"), or silly ("The Puppy That Could"). It lacks the acid cynicism and deep humanism that pervades his later work, but because it's Amis, the end result is still above the average. 

Ignaas Devisch - En Nog Een Goede Gezondheid (VUBPress, 2023) ***½

Het is altijd verfrissend om filosofen een diepgaandere analyse te maken van de zaken waar we dagelijks mee bezig zijn, in mijn geval de belangen van patiënten te behartigen. 

Hij probeert volgende twee vragen te beantwoorden in dit ongeveer tachtig bladzijden dikke boekje: 

1. Welk gezondheidsbegrip overheerst in onze samenleving en hoe bepaalt dat ons individuele handelen? 
2. Hoe kunnen we de relaties begrijpen tussen dat gezondheidsbegrip, politieke macht en de individuele verantwoordelijkheid in deze context? 

Hij analyseert het spanningsveld en de vele paradoxen die er zijn in de context van onze gezondheid, zoals het belang van preventie kennen, maar er niet naar handelen, of gezondheid zo belangrijk vinden dat het een prestatiegericht doel wordt, of de maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid en financiële bijdrage van iemand die rookt versus iemand die zijn been breekt bij het sporten, of nog het verschil in toegankelijkheid en gelijkheid. Hij brengt ons, met de hulp van vele andere filosofen, van Aristoteles over Nietzsche tot meer hedendaagse denkers, tot de grenzen van onze gezondheidsvraag. 

Hij legt fijn uit hoe het concept van gezondheid 'vloeibaar' is, en wat we nu belangrijk vinden verschilt doorheen de tijd en dat we binnen vijf jaar waarschijnlijk al weer een heel andere maatstaf gaan hebben. 

Gelukkig hebben we vandaag - en dat is mijn mening - een sociaal en solidair systeem vanuit de organisatie van de zorg, toegankelijk voor iedereen, dat tegelijk ook zeer liberaal is, want iedereen heeft de vrijheid van handelen en keuzes te maken (burger, patiënt, arts, ...). Deze beide peilers behouden lijkt me essentieel. Het is wel nodig om de patiënten meer en beter te wapenen om hun keuzes te maken. 

Niemand kiest ervoor om ziek te worden. Ziekte is dus iets waar mensen niet mee bezig willen zijn en liefst zo weinig mogelijk geld aan willen besteden, dit in tegenstelling tot zaken die hen wel onmiddellijk genot of aanzien verschaffen. Ook daar kan mijn inziens een verschuiving plaatsvinden. 

Martin Amis - The Zone Of Interest (2) (Vintage, 2014) ****½

After watching the movie with the same title, I read a review that mentioned it was inspired by Martin Amis's novel. Since the plot of the movie did not immediately resonate with me, I bought the book, only to realise that 1. the movie is not entirely faithful to the novel and 2. that I had already read the novel, which proved to be true, ten years ago, in 2014. This is my earlier review of "The Zone of Interest" in Dutch. Here is a translation of my review at that time. 

"Finally another Martin Amis novel that is good. Paul Doll is the boss of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, and dissatisfied with the orders and bureaucracy of his leaders, married to Hannah who is no longer to have anything to do with him (and whose first love, a communist, has disappeared off the face of the earth). They live in a beautiful villa a long way from the camp, along with their two young daughters. Hannah is courted by Gollo Thompsen, the Aryan, Nazi and protégé of his Uncle Bormann. Finally, there is Szmul, a Jewish prisoner who must help the Germans do their jobs.

The story is told from the perspective of the four characters, and Amis succeeds wonderfully in giving each of them their own voice and approach, and this is Amis at his best, slightly overplaying the tone each time, to emphasize the characters a bit more, as well as their views on Nazism and camp activities. All four of them are "ordinary" people, in the sense that they are in a system that they can't really get out of, and so just go along with it, without really also being one hundred percent behind it, without also questioning it very strongly.

Amis is a satirist, a stunning stylist who dips his pen deep into vitriol to expose the folly of men. And he does just that here, and exceptionally well at that. It is easier to write sarcastically about third parties. Here the sarcasm is ingrained in the four narrators' own accounts, without them really being aware of it. They present their own pettiness on a leaf. These trivialities, and their petty desires and frustrations are juxtaposed against the greatest horror humanity has ever known, and yet deemed more important.

Amis' image of humanity is not softened by it. The "Zone of Interest," then, is not just the place where Jews are gassed. So the "zone of interest" is indeed the "me, me and myself" of the petty citizen who thinks only of himself.

A strong novel."

J.M. Coetzee - The Pole (and other stories) (Harvill Seckers, 2023) ****

Coetzee keeps amazing us with his generous mind, his stylistic skills and his sense of balance in telling a story. The central story in this novella is Beatriz, a Spanish woman in her late fourties, who invites a 70-year old Polish pianist for a recital in Barcelona. An unlikely relationship buids up, including a joint holiday, and a trip to Poland. Things turn a little awkward - it actually was from the start - yet human and tender at the same time. There is something paradoxical in their relationship: tender and distant, adventurous and cautious, shameful and irresistible, selfish and altruist ... the ideal field of tension for a great novelist to thrive in. There is no real narrator, but the distant author himself, who literally enumerates - yes, with numbered paragraphs - in a very descriptive way what is happening, as if he is observing his characters from a distance. 

"4. Where do they come from, the tall Polish pianist and the elegant woman with the gliding walk, the banker's wife who occupies her days in good works? All year they have been knocking at the door, wanting to be let in or else dismissed and laid to rest. Now, at last, has their time come?"

The "other stories" in the book are all about Coetzee's Elisabeth Costello, whom we of course know from the novel with the same name. The fact that she is also a woman with adult children gives a sense of coherence to the entire book. 

Easy to recommend. 

 

Gabriel García Márquez - Until August (Viking 2024) ***

Would I recommend this book if it was not written by the grandmaster? I'm not so sure. Is it good that the book is published, even when some claim that Garcia Marquez never wanted it to be published? I guess it is. The story is about a woman with adult children, a workaholic husband and the opportunity to meet a man on the island where her mother his buried, and that she visits every year in August. The island and the month become her annual escape from the predictability of her life. 

It's a story of loneliness, freedom and the lack of it, of adventure and routine. It's a nice enough book and well enough written. And anything Garcia Marquez has written is above the average. This is further explained in the note at the end of the book, written by the editor and summarising the discussions he had with Garcia Marquez on the different versions and reviews of this book. 

It's short and good. Give it a try. 

Amanda Svensson - A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding (Scribe, 2023) ***½

This was for me a great novel to read during the holidays. With its more than 500 pages, and its interesting  and carefully developing plot, it pushes the reader to keep reading out of curiosity and sympathy with the lead characters. The novel balances the stories of adult triplets, who all three have different lives and personalities. Sebastian works as a cognitive scientist in a mysterious research lab in London. Clara has left Europe for Easter Island to report on a group of people (a cult?) who prepare the end of the world as a result of global warming, and Matilda lives in Berlin and is in a relationship with a stepson.

The relationship between the three siblings is far from ideal, they have grown apart, but the disappearance of their father forces them to connect again. More and older family secrets become known as they dig deeper. I will not disclose them to avoid spoiling the fun of reading. 

Svensson's novel is well balanced, with bizarre happenings at time, exotic issues that arise, and a plot development that makes you want to keep reading. 

On the back cover we read: "A joyful family saga about free will, forgiveness, and how we are all interconnected". I wonder whether the publishing company actually read the book because it is anything but this description. It is dark, dealing with issues such as depression, alienation, dysfunction, ethically questionable research, the feeling of doom that will end our world, or at least humanity. It is written in an easy-to-read way, but that does not make it less dark. 

Munir Hachemi - Living Things (Fitzcarraldo, 2024) ****

 

Four students from Madrid travel to France during the summer holidays to work in the vineyards to harvest grapes. Things do not go as planned. They get different jobs from the same agency, working on chicken farms and feed farms. The four friends behave like young men do outside of the control of society and their parents: drinking, smoking weed, quarelling, making noise and litter in the camping where they stay, while at the same time discussing literature, philosophy and societal issues. 

Hachemi's style is very direct, and as he himself writes: there are no metaphors or symbols. It says what it is and what it does. He refers to Borges for the philosophical aspects, to Roberto Bolaño for the literary style, which is close to the reading experience of the latter's "Savage Detectives", while at the same reflecting on the value of writing and the relationship between reality and its written reflection. 

"I always assumed telling the story of what actually hap­pened would be easier than writing fiction (after all, reality is more painstaking than even the most exhaus­tive inventions), but I'm beginning to notice that's not the case. Reality is under no obligation to be interesting - neither is memory - while literature is. I can't seem to clear enough room in my memories to make space for mystery and surprise. True, I could shutlle them around, but doing so would be untruthful in its own way. I believe Borges followed a similar thought process when he wrote 'Funes the Memorious', a short story about a guy who can't forget and therefore can't think (let alone invent). Borges's story - like all good fantasy stories - isn't con­cerned with rigour. A while ago I tried my hand at fixing 'Funes the Memorious' and wrote a piece of flash fiction called 'Ireneo's Memory', which later won a prize."

Here is a litter paragraph, just to illustrate his writing style. 

"In fairness, the campground owner is right. Toss a couple of syringes on the ground, snap a photo, and you could use the image in one of those 'Say no to drugs' pam­phlets the state hands out all over Madrid. Our campsite looks like a settlement in Las Barranquillas. We've got into the habit of drinking late into the night (around here any hour after midnight is considered late, even though the heat keeps us from doing much until sundown) and leaving beer cans strewn all over. There are also a few cig­arette butts on the ground and the remnants of a campfire we could swear we didn't light. On top of that, our books are scattered all over the site: La saga/fuga de J. B., a vol­ume ofJuan Gelman's complete poetry, and Ender's Game. We've gone from boredom to despair in the space of a single day, and only now does it cross our minds that pissing on the side of a tree night after night in lieu of walking 30 metres to the toilet might not have been the brightest idea. Darkness, as we know, magnifies distance. The smell doesn't bother us because our clothes still reek of chicken - damp chicken now - overriding the stink of piss. We hang our clothes up to dry and sit down for another coffee. Too embarrassed to go topless, I decide to throw something on, but the others remain half-dressed. It's 9.30 a.m., the other campers have started to rise, and flash us looks of hatred, revulsion and disbelief. Guess we must be ruining their holidays."

The reading is fun and fast, because of the self-reflection and self-criticism of the writer's voice, his economic use of language and action while at the same time often trying to explain the psychology of what is happening, like Bolaño often using alternatives or even complete paradoxes, as if the manifestation in reality is the result of conflicting or vague internal drivers, or at least hard to fathom for outsiders. This questioning of society also happens when they are actually inside the corporate world with its bizarre self-laudatory jargon and self-esteem, suspected to cover up practices that should not be known to the external world. While touching on all these subjects, Hachemi is sufficiently smart not to give answers of clear-cut messages or opinions, but rather to stay with the question, assuming this is already a sufficient platform for the reader to make up his or her own mind. 

Easy to recommend, and great that it's translated. 

Robert Sapolsky - Determined - Life Without Free Will (The Bodley Head, 2023) ****½

After I read neurologist and biologist Robert Sapolsky's brilliant "Behave" some years ago about all the aspects that determine our behaviour, his new book "Determined - Life Without Free Will" presented itself to me. It got ordered and shipped to me. It was lying on the shelf for a few months, waiting to make me sufficiently interested and with sufficient time to start reading it, which happened when the holidays decided it was time to start. The book is a real sequel to "Behave", and the words, paragraphs and chapters filled my brain with their insights and facts. 

Did I at any point take a decision to buy or read this book? Not if you believe Sapolsky, who claims with an incredible amount of facts and study results that free will does not exist and that everything we do is the result of our neurons and other aspects of our brain, our body, our life, our culture, our history co-determining what we do and when we do it. Intuitively I could agree with him, in the sense that our body creates an illusion of self, which we call 'I', the agent that determines our choices and actions. If you accept this, then obviously 'free will' is also an illusion. Sapolsky reasons that the concept of 'free will' is by definition impossible, since there is no immaterial agent that intervenes in all the aspects of our behaviour, but the exact opposite, our hormones, neurons, determine the choices we make, and hence create the illusion of free will. 

He gives a lot - hundreds of studies - at each level of our possible influence. Here are two examples. 

 "Stick a volunteer in a brain scanner and flash up pictures of faces. And in a depressing, well-replicated finding, flash up the face of someone of another race and in about 75 percent of subjects, there is activation of the amygdala, the brain region central to fear, anxiety and aggression" (p.97)

or: 

"What happens when the dlPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) is silenced is really informative. This can be done experimentally with an immensely cool technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which a strong magnetic pulse to the scalp can temporarily activate or inactivate the small patch of cortex just below. Activate the dlPFC this way, and subjects become more utilitarian in deciding to sacrifice one to save many. Inactivate the dlPFC, and subjects become more impulsive: they rate a lousy offer in an economic game as unfair but lack the self-control needed to hold out for a better reward. This is all about sociality - manipulating the dlPFC has no effect if subjects think their opponent is a computer." (p. 101)

His arguments and evidence are more than convincing, but as a reader and human being, I often wondered whether this is all a matter of semantics? My illusion of the "I" helps me function in this world, and the decisions made by my neurons are made by "my" neurons, based on "my" experiences, and "my" physiology, and "my" education, and "my" culture. This broad base that I call "me", is also "me" for all practical purposes and dialogue, and all the decisions is the result of my will. 

In the last part of the book, Sapolsky takes his findings a step further, and implying that if there is no free will, people cannot be held moraly and legally responsible for the actions of their bodies. Again, he gives a lot of convincing arguments, and interesting case studies that shed an unexpected light on both judgment and punishment. 

Interestingly enough, at the very end of the book, Sapolsky gives a long explanation of his own personal abhorrence for antisemitism. 

"I was once asked if I would take on that role working on the case of a White supremacist who, a month after attempting to burn down a mosque, had invaded a synagogue and used an assault rifle to shoot four people, killing one. "Whoa," I thought. "WTF, I'm supposed to help out with this?" Members of my family died in Hitler's camps. When I was a kid, our synagogue was ar­soned; my father, an architect, rebuilt it, and I had to spend hours holding one end of a tape measure for him amid the scorched, acrid ruins while he railed on in a near-altered state about the history of anti-Semitism. When my wife directed a production of Cabaret, with me assisting, I had to ac­tively force myself to touch the swastika armbands when distributing cos­tumes. Given all that, I'm supposed to help out with this trial? I said yes-if I believed any of this shit I've been spouting, I had to. And then I subtly proved to myself how far I still had to go". (p. 383). 

I can accept that our "will" is the choices made by our body and brain based on everything we've been conditioned to do. I can accept that "I", my consciousness is an awareness of things that were decided microseconds before by my brain, and I can accept that despite the conditioning and determinisms, the word "free" means that you are entitled to your own thoughts and actions (as compared to being the robot in somebody else's power), and I do believe that the concept of "free will" is still for all practical purposes a useful term. Just like Sapolsky himself does in the excerpt above. Whether you want to or not, we humans are driven by emotions yet we have to accept that a huge number of elements come into play when our brains make decisions. 

The whole essential question revolves around the study by Benjamin Libet from 1983, in which study subjects only became aware of their choices after their brain gave the signal of their choice. I fully agree with Sapolsky that there is no immaterial agent at work. We are not passengers in our own bodies. But the question is whether our consciousness (an effect of our brain's activity) and our choices (an effect of our brain's activity) coincide, precede or follow each other. For sure, we do many things that we are not conscious of, and life would be unmanagable if we were, but it could still be that the neurons in our brain consciously weigh options before making a choice.

Things that I found missing in this book is the loop that is possible between different parts of our brain. Even if free will does not exist, our brain has the incredible capacity for self-reflection, improvement in thought processes, acquiring the skill to evaluate options based on increased knowledge and the like. How are the changes in our brain steered? 

Like Sam Harris's opinion about the absence of "free will", Sapolsky takes it a level further, less philosophical but more scientific. The subject is counter-intuitive yet there is much to say for their view. Even if you are not convinced, as I was when I started to read, I can only recommend that you read it too. The quality and the passion of the writing, the many real-life examples will at least make you think and will make you doubt. And that's possibly already a great achievement. 

Sorj Chalandon - L'Enragé (Grasset, 2023) ****

 Sorj Chalandon has had a very tough youth, especially in relationship with his father, a theme that comes up in almost all his novels. "L'Enragé" (the enraged), is based on the real story of Jules Bonneau, one of the 55 adolescents who escape a prison for juvenile delinquents in 1934 on an island near the coast of Brittany in France. The boys, whose guilt is questionable and who are mostly from a poor background, orphans, or with parents unable to raise them properly, revolt against the harsh discipline and abuse they suffer at the hands of the directors, teachers and staff in their 'institute'. 

All inhabitants of the island are recruited to catch the boys and return them to their jail for the round price of 20 French francs, which is so lucrative that even tourists engage in the hunt. The story is also the inspiration for the poem "Chasse à L'Enfant" (The hunt for the child) of French poet Jacques Prévert. 

Chalandon writes in his typical style, direct, action-focused, emotional, rich. The main character tells his story and his challenges to control his emotions, and we can understand his anger, his revolt, his rebellious attitude when you have been humiliated, punished, disciplined for no reason at all. Like all other young boys, he tries to lay low, not to show is fear or uncertainty. You have to be tough to survive. 

"Jamais de ma vie je n'avais pensé au mot ami. Jamais je ne l'avais employé pour personne. Je suis né sans proches, ni parents ni amis. Ni les baisers d'une mère, ni les ordres d'un père. Pas non plus d' enfant à mes côtés, de copain à l'école, de camarade aux jeux. A peine un voleur de pelle, un compagnon de fugue, un incendiaire, quelques garçons rendus mauvais. A la colonie, je me suis isolé. Je n' ai voulu aucun autre que moi dans mes pas. Seul, Bonneau. Seule, La Teigne. Encaisser les coups, les rendre, tenir jusqu'à demain. Et surtout, ne pas se mêler de la souffrance des autres. Ne pas la provoquer, ne pas l'apaiser non plus."

 Or with deepl translation:  

“Never in my life had I thought of the word friend. I had never used it for anyone. I was born without loved ones, parents or friends. No mother's kisses, no father's orders. No child by my side, no friend at school, no playmate. Hardly a shovel thief, a runaway companion, an arsonist, a few boys made bad. At camp, I isolated myself. I wanted no one but myself in my footsteps. Alone, Bonneau. Alone, The Moth (nickname). Take the blows, give them back, hold out until tomorrow. And above all, not to interfere in the suffering of others. Don't provoke it, don't soothe it either.”

Luckily he is the only one to escape, thanks to the luck of being welcomed by a fisherman. The boy has trouble to adjust but the fisherman luckily has a very generous and lenient nature, which is an absolute eye-opener to the boy who now encounters totally different ways of human interaction. 

Like other books by Chalandon, you cannot but feel incredible sympathy for the predicament of the powerless boy in a brutal and unjust world. 

Excellent. 

Witold Gombrowicz - The Possessed (Fitzcarraldo, 2023) ***½

I have become a true fan of the Fitzcarraldo publishing company. Almost without fail they have been able to translate and publish excellent literature that would otherwise never have been known outside of the borders of the original language. "The Possessed" by Witold Gombrowicz fits well in this category. Originally published in 1939, it tells the bizarre story of a young tennis coach who accepts to train a young female tennis talent, who lives with her wealthy parents in a castle in rural Poland. 

Then everything spins out of control and we are in the middle of a gothic novel, with ghostlike events, a closed castle, doubtful characters, mysteries and evil. Gombrowicz has fun in writing his story, and in mixing different genres into a new literary tapestry. 

It is a unique and very memorable novel, even if some aspects are a little outdated, and his knowledge of tennis is clearly subpar, but that should not keep you from reading it. Pleasure is guaranteed. 

Paul Lynch - Prophet Song (One World, 2023) ***½

This is one of the most dystopian possible scenarios that I have read in many years. Paul Lynch describes how an extreme right political party won the Irish elections, and it turns the democracy within a very short term into a dictatorship, with fully controlled media, a ban on any organisation that does reflect the state ideology, the intolerance to other opinions, and a strong police enforcement of the new rules. 

Lynch illustrates this dystopia through the eyes of Eilish Stack, mother of four children (adolescents and baby), whose husband - a trade unionist - suddenly disappears. Nobody can give her answers, no official government agency can help or is willing to help and she receives the signal to stop asking. 

In this context she is trying to keep her family together, even this is an incredible challenge, and to keep functioning in a society where you no longer know who you can trust. The whole novel is written in the simple present, as if you as the reader is actively witnessing the action first-hand, and without too many paragraph breaks which gives it also a sense of urgency. 

You can read the novel on two levels (or maybe more), but at least as a perspective change to make us, readers in the Western world experience what it actually means to live in a country like Syria or Afghanistan. Anybody living in those conditions would flee and emigrate to safer and democratic places (Canada in the novel), helping us to have a better sense of empathy with the people who are in this situation today. The second level is of course how fragile our democratic systems are, and once extremists get in power, they will use the democratic system to turn it into a totalitarian autocracy. 

The vision is dark, gloomy, but realistic. To me this threat of anti-democratic powers in our societies is the biggest potential problem to our world. If we see what is happening in the United States, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia ... we are near the tipping point to turn our world into full-fledged totalitarianism led by Russia and China. The novel never goes into these larger current geopolitical power plays, but it helps us reflect that his scenario is not impossible, even in a democratic country like the Republic of Ireland. 

Bart Van Loo - De Bourgondiërs (De Bezige Bij, 2022)

Wat een klepper! Al die bekende namen uit onze geschiedenislessen, zoals Filips De Goede, Karel De Stoute, Maria van Bourgondië, Filips De Schone komen in dit ongelooflijk goed gedocumenteerd boek weer tot leven, en uiteraard veel menselijker en beter gekaderd dan ooit op school mogelijk was geweest. Voor mij was die sterke verwevenheid tussen Vlaanderen en de Lage Landen enerzijds, en het huis van Bourgondië anderzijds nieuw, en zeker het feit dat vele van deze heersers zich in Vlaanderen ophielden, of hier opgroeiden en zelfs soms onze taal spraken. 

Wat ik wel wist, maar niet in deze mate, was de grote rivaliteit tussen de steden Gent en Brugge die elkaar naar de kroon staken als rijkste plekken van Europa. Ook het politiek opportunisme van de Bourgondiërs om bondgenootschappen te sluiten met wie het hen op dat moment het best uitkwam - Frankrijk, Engeland, de Habsburgers - en hiervoor soms duizenden mensenlevens vergooiden in oorlogen en veldslagen om dan plots hun kap te draaien en weer bevriend te worden met de vijand, ongeacht de horror die de gewone mens hiervoor moest ondergaan. Hetzelfde geldt voor hun feesten. Het kon niet groot en uitbundig en rijk en extreem genoeg zijn. Van Loo geeft tot in het kleinste detail een overzicht van alle gerechten, gerechtsculpturen en vertier dat bij deze zwelgpartijen voor honderden genodigden plaatsvonden, niet voor het genot zelf, maar vooral om rijkdom en macht te tonen aan de buitenwereld. 

Van Loo geeft ook een heel knap beeld van de kwaliteit van onze Vlaamse en Hollandse kunstenaars van die tijd en de meesterwerken die ze op vraag van de Bourgondiërs maakten, uiteraard schilderijen in de eerste plaats, maar ook graftombes, beeldhouwwerken en andere wandtapijten met sterke tips waar je die kan gaan bezoeken. 

Het is een meesterlijk boek, goed geschreven, grondig gedocumenteerd, met veel oog voor de menselijke kant van de zaak en met een duidelijk perspectief naar de context van vandaag. Het enige euvel is mijn eigen geheugen dat worstelt om al die stortvloed aan informatie te blijven bewaren. Het is veel, heel veel, maar gelukkig kan ik altijd terug grijpen naar dit exemplaar. 

Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat u er evenveel leesplezier en kennisverrijking aan zal hebben als ik.