One of my treasured discoveries this year was Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life. Originally published in German in 2014, and translated by Charlotte Collins, this is a short novel told with apparent artlessness, but from the very first page you know it’s about to rearrange your mental universe. It is a breathtaking, heartbreaking story that encapsulates a universe of change, loss, resilience — in about 24,000 words.
A Whole Life is, quite literally, the whole life of taciturn, hard-working Andreas Egger, from the day he comes to the mountain village as an orphan with a leather pouch of money around his neck, to his death many decades later. He is by turn a laborer, a soldier, a guide to the mountains, and through the course of his life modernity comes to his village in the form of electricity, machine guns, and tourists. He is crushed by forces of both nature and man that are beyond his control — a world war, an avalanche, an uncle who cripples him as a child.
Despite the devastating tragedies and hardship, Andreas Egger’s sensitivity to every whisper and rustle in the natural world and the depth of his love for his wife endows his life with a beauty and tenderness that make the novel profound and moving. In this it reminded me of a film by the Chinese director Zhang Yimou called The Road Home, which tells a similarly moving story of a village schoolteacher and the girl who falls in love with him. At the end of the film, there was not a dry eye in the auditorium although it was hard to explain why: all we had seen was the story of a man and woman falling in love, being separated for a while by the revolution, marrying, having children, growing old together. Eventually, as in life, one of them died. That is — on the face of it — is all that happens in the film.
The other book that swept me off my feet was Yasmin Khan’s The Raj at War, a scholarly history of the Second World War as it played out in India. When Armistice Days and Veteran Days come around annually, few in the West remember the millions of colonized people who suffered and sacrificed in a war they did not choose. I hardly knew anything about it myself. Yasmin Khan gives us a deeply knowledgeable account of a country in turmoil, where half the population was fighting to preserve the British Empire and the other half was fighting to be free of it.
Over 2.5 million Indians fought in the Second World War, in places as far away from home as the Mediterranean and North Africa. Landlocked peasants became seamen, farmers were forced away to disease-ridden jungles in conditions of slavery to carve roads from swamps and mountains. Military imperatives led to lands seized, village boats destroyed, people starving in a famine that killed millions. Yasmin Khan’s detailed and analytical account includes prisoners of war, politicians, generals, laborers, prostitutes, road gangs, industrialists, nationalists, nurses, airmen. She consults a mind-boggling array of sources, from letters home to government communiques, memoirs, news reports, and so on, and yet, uncharacteristically for an academic book, this is a compelling, accessible narrative. A related book I read and learned from was Raghu Karnad’s Farthest Field, in which he tells the story of the Second World War in India through the lives of three ancestors, one of them his maternal grandfather. Conceived on a smaller, more intimate scale, Karnad’s book provides a different yet gripping view of the same war.
My final discovery was the enchanting Plumdog, a graphic novel by Emma Chichester Clark. It sounds cutesy, the diary of a dog in words and pictures. It is anything but that. This book could only have been made by someone who knows and loves dogs enough to notice their every little foible. It is beautifully illustrated, funny and sweet, and guaranteed to make you happy. I only wish I could read it to my dogs.
More from A Year in Reading 2016
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Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
Truman by David McCullough
The best books I’ve read all year have, for the most part, been translations: The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi, Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge, Independent People by Halldor Laxness, and The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. And one non-translation–George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I just can’t narrow it down to one. Oh, I almost forgot–A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis.
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
The best books I read this year were the Europa translations of Elena Ferrantes novels, Rock Island Line by David Rhodes, and The Armies by Evelio Rosero.
Best novel “rediscovered” this year was A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry.
Happy holidays to the Millions contributors, and look forward to reading you in 2010!
American Rust by Philipp Meyer and The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno
Not done with it yet, but Margaret Atwood’s Payback is turning out to be the most interesting book I’ve read this year. The historical, literary, anthropological, sociological, and psychological analysis of debt in essentially every meaning of the word is thought-provoking and ingenious.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell was a close second.
I am new to this blog but yet would like to post my read novels and books which I completed in the year 2009….The latest being John Grisham’s Ford County, I am happy to have ended with a thrilling short story collection…I am not a passionate reader but now with my most of the time getting consumed up on net, i prefer reading ebooks directly online from store like A1Books and purchase physical books rarely. But reading blogs like these has really aroused an interest. I hope to read more of them in the coming year 2010.
Cheers to readers!!!
Machine by Peter Adolphsen
Militant Modernism by Owen Hatherly
Impotent by Matthew Roberson
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
But The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters deserves a special mention.
The best new book I read this year was either “lowboy” by John Wray or “Chronic City” by Jonathan Lethem.
The best book I read this year was hands down Amy Hempel’s Collected Stories. I haven’t gotten to too many new releases yet but Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor was also a great treat.
The best “new” books (new to me, at least) that I read this year include:
Mariette in Ecstasy — Ron Hansen
The Transit of Venus — Shirley Hazzard
In the Skin of a Lion — Michael Ondaatje
Also, this was the year of James Salter. Why did it take me so long to discover his work? Dusk, Last Night, Light Years, and A Sport and a Pasttime — enthralling books, every one.
Tender Is The Night.
hear, hear, Chad!
Blame by Michelle Huneven. I’m checking out the rest of her work pronto.
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth, definitely the most beautiful novel I’ve read in a long time and one that more people should know about.
Mike, I remember in the 60s when Call it Sleep got rediscovered. Time for another rediscovery.
I want to list my best books but I am away and my book list is in my computer at home. My poor memory frustrates me, maybe this thread will still be going in a few days. Elegance of the Hedgehog, The Housekeeper and the Professor, early Coetzee (Waiting for the Barbarians and Life and Times of Michael K), rereading Natalia Ginzburg, went on an immigrant short story journey (binge)–Ha Jin, David Bezmozgis, Jumpa Lahiri, Andrei Codrescu, Isaac Rosenfeld and others.
– “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates.
– “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami
– “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
– “The Master and the Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov
– “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy
– “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
“Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen was the best page turner I read this year.
I alos discovered “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith and thought it was a lovely book.
But my favorite that I read this year, and one that had a great impact on me, was “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson.
Ugh, it’s impossible to pick just one book in a year in which I discovered Roberto Bolaño, Richard Yates and Hans Fallada.
Best books I read this year
Kurt Vonnegut – “Slaughterhouse V”
George R.R. Martin – “Game of Thrones”
Stephen Fry – “Moab is my Washpot”
“Everything Matters!” by Ron Currie, Jr. Followed closely by “The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” by Reif Larsen.
I concur on the Henry Roth book, Call It Sleep. I read this in the early 80’s. It is a truly beautiful book. Another book I read about the same time–equally stunning and unforgettable–is Harriette Arnow’s masterpiece The Dollmaker. The Dollmaker is on a list that looks very intriguing–along with one of my favorites of the year (as well as being one of the best books I’ve ever read) Enchi’s The Waiting Years. The list is 500 Great Books by Women. Others included are Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Olive Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm. Those four alone are pretty high-calibre books. I’m sure the rest are just as wonderful.
“The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery.
Favorite book was “The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and also, “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. Both were so good, I wanted to leave parties to go home and read!
The best books I read all year:
— By Night in Chile, para Bolano
— Death in Spring, Rodoreda
— Les Fiancailles de M. Hire, par Simenon
— Henderson the Rain King, by Bellow (a name which should always be capitalized)
— The Kingdom of This World, by Carpentier
Best books I read all year:
two fiction works come to mind:
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
AND Jose Saramago’s Death with Interruptions.
Nonfiction: Richard Wolffe’s book Renegade on the Obama campaign;
Ted Kennedy’s memoir
Javier Marias, Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear
W.G. Sebald, Vertigo
Cesar Aira, Ghosts
Vic Glover, Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Max Geert, Europa
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Homer, The Odyssey (Fagles translation)
Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius
Oops, that’s more than one.
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurtson
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay, a Canadian writer. Won the ScotiaBank Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award. I’ve also read her novels A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs. Elizabeth Hay ranks right up there with Alice Munro. Gave a copy of LNOA to a friend for Christmas–she thought the writing was first-rate.
Forgive me everyone. I am starting Best of 2010 because I just finished the most brilliant amazing enthralling book: The Humans who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We survived by Clive Finlayson. I am reeling.
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Peace by Gene Wolfe
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Best Re-Read: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Two standouts in 2009 — The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden.