Brazil

I've started 2022 with Brazilian author Julián Fuks' Occupation. Translated by Daniel Hahn and published in 2021 by Charco Press, this short novel was published in its original Portuguese in 2019.

It's a beautiful book in its content, which is intimate, character driven and encourages contemplation. I read this book thoughtfully, pausing often to think about the personalities described and the politics of occupation, of immigration, of family. "My father always had a digressive sort of rhetorical style, based around twisting sentences that then demanded expansive explanations, seeking complexity, the greatest nuance of meanings, in each idea - synthesis was never one of his virtues."

"I wanted to know more about Najati and his relatives, how much he missed the wife he'd left behind, the children in Qatar, where Sumayya, Maria and Noos were now. I understood, instead, that what he missed the most, his greatest pain, if such pains can be measured, was the pain of knowing his city had withered away, no longer possessing body nor soul, in spite of its ambitions and its delusions of permanence."

I expect to return to this book, to read it again and to the future work of Julián Fuks.