Reading for pleasure

The Tree of the Toraja

Philippe Claudel, tr Euan Cameron (Maclehose Press: £14.99)

It is hard to imagine this book being written by anyone other than a Frenchman. No other nationality could combine existentialist musings with the gentle eroticism of a love story or two. M Claudel is both a film director and a professor of literature. He has paired both of his métiers to produce this exquisite work.

The titular Toraja tree is a bit of a red herring. In a remote Indonesian tribe the bodies of children who die very young are interred in the trunks of a special tree. In time, the tree completely envelopes the corpse, continuing to grow regardless. We learn of it at the outset as an inspiration for the musings which follow.

The central character, a middle-aged film director (it has just dawned on me that we never learn his name), is contemplating this on his return to France, determined to share the story with his producer and best friend, Eugène. His thoughts and perceptions are altered again by his friend’s diagnosis with, and death from, cancer.

The short book is a subtle intertwining of the relationship between the two men, thoughts on life and death, and love affairs, past and present. It is prose of a quality seldom encountered. The book has its share of sadness, but none greater than that of the reader when he comes to its end. One hopes that the students of M Claudel realise they are in the presence of greatness. This work gives the lie to the fatuous statement that those who can’t do, teach.

Maclehose Press has begun a new section, Read the World, an international library of literature in translation. If anything else in that collection is one quarter as good as this, they should all be best sellers.

On Germany

Giles MacDonogh (Hurst: £20)

Mr MacDonogh certainly knows his stuff! Travel, food and wine writer, as well as international wine competition judge; to which add historian. It is hard to imagine someone better placed to guide you (indeed take you by the hand and lead you) through the history, culture, people and landscape of Germany.

The author has clearly lived in the country for some years, is fluent in the language (he references many conferences at which he has spoken), and knows people of significance whom he has encountered largely through his research on writing on German history. Indeed, he even met Heinrich Böll. This is an insightful and delightful book. It is bang up to date and accurately records the Germans and Germany of today: the fears and anxieties together with pressures they face, whether it be the increasing cost of rent (important in a society where most people rent) to the fears created by the rise of the right in the form of the AfD.

The delight comes from the clear passion the author has for the country. The book opens with a brief history of Germany, and follows with more detailed and enlightening discussion on post-war politics, the 1960s when German society faced up to the past, before telling us the lighter aspects such as the wine, beer and schnapps areas which define the Länder, as well as the places he has visited (much on the capital). There is something for everyone, even for those of us who think we know the country. Part travelogue, part history. A delightful mix.