The Dinner

Abstract

Shani Boianjiu The People of Forever Are Not Afraid Hogarth Shani Boianjiu’s gripping debut novel illustrates the lives of three Israeli girls who grow up together after they are conscripted into the army. Their distinct experiences of military life dictate their progress toward adulthood, and they must come to terms with the typical concerns of youth while confronting the constant threat of disruption and change. Mutlu Konuk Blasing Nâzım Hikmet: The Life and Times of Turkey’s World Poet Persea Books This biography tells the dynamic story of Turkey’s most acclaimed twentieth-century poet. His artistic growth is outlined along with his patriotism, his leftism, and his long-term rejection by the country he loved. Blasing is a prolific translator of Hikmet’s work, and she incorporates elements of literary scholarship into her investigation of his life. Nota Bene and a diamond-dealing admirer. In Washington, DC, she lands a series of jobs and rises to enjoy a fashionable, black, international social life. The story begins and ends in Africa and offers memorable characters from the US and Caribbean. From the young girl’s perspective, we discover a world filled with wonder and also unpredictable violence—female circumcision, tribal tension, and war. These test her and affect her deeply, but as in Huck Finn, they lie outside the main story, which is the struggle to survive, find love and strength, and learn to stand on one’s truth. In Finaba’s case, the idea of truth involves keeping faith. Her name means storyteller, and her grandmother—a traditional leader of women—says Finaba will “show our people the way” forward since they have “strayed from the path.” For a long time, Finaba seems unable to rise to this calling. Her female initiation ritual is ruptured; she and her family are driven from their village ; her father dies in the city; she endures beatings in a foster family. At college she endures ethnic slurs and is sexually assaulted by a professor . Traumatized, she fails to graduate . But she is a survivor. Once in the US, she gains a green card, lands jobs, and falls in love with a wealthy, successful young doctor from Trinidad . The war in Sierra Leone draws her back to her native land to seek her grandmother; when this proves impossible, she stays to assist and adopt traumatized female survivors, in essence adopting a grandmother and young girl and opening a new path for them. The novel is framed with a quotation from the late Chinua Achebe, whose themes of tradition and change prevail; the overall structure is that of a bildungsroman. At times, though, it almost becomes picaresque , and this is a strength—unexpected turns allow the writer to dwell on extremely different settings and give them close-grained treatment. Hollist excels at social interaction, dialogue, clothing, economic detail, and depictions of social gatherings, whether at elite Crowder College or a lavish wedding in Washington, DC. The characterizations and dialogue are strong and often funny: African and African American friends debate the existence of an African “diaspora complex,” and women bond in seeking “BMWs” (Black Males Working ). Fresh figures of speech encode the hybrid future of Finaba and her transcultural society. The novel helps keep the path alive and welcomes new readers into this hybrid world in the process of its creation. (Editorial note: On the basis of his short story “Foreign Aid,” Hollist was just shortlisted for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing.) Kathryn VanSpanckeren University of Tampa Herman Koch. The Dinner. Sam Garrett, tr. New York. Hogarth. 2012. isbn 9780770437855 Not since watching the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover has bearing witness to others’ fine dining been so voyeuristically uncomfortable as reading Dutch author Herman Koch’s newly translated novel The Dinner (Het diner, 2010). The story is centered around a dreaded meal at an unnamed and highly elite restaurant in Amsterdam, September–October 2013 • 57 58 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews in which the narrator, Paul Lohman, and his wife, Claire, are to meet and dine with Paul’s brother, Serge (a famous politician running for prime minister, no less), and his wife, Babette. As the...