very much the kind of book i came to expect from lindqvist: using literature and personal anecdotes to paint a picture & teach the reader some hi3.5 ☆
very much the kind of book i came to expect from lindqvist: using literature and personal anecdotes to paint a picture & teach the reader some history, rather posing questions than answering them. it's the kind of book that is designed to make you think for yourself, so i wouldn't recommend going into it expecting to simply go out on the other end with fully-formed views. the idea of using a sort of "choose your own adventure" type of narrative was interesting, letting one physically feel how all the events are intertwined: the fragments are put together in chronological order, but you're reading them according to the author's instructions.
numerous times he uses isntreali thinkers & authors to showcase a point, which i absolutely wasn't a fan of. especially when it's describing a very specific point of view on warfare without a mention how it clearly stems from the zionist idea of violence....more
absolutely feels like the other side of the coin of "exterminate all the brutes", and i highly recommend reading them both close together. personally,absolutely feels like the other side of the coin of "exterminate all the brutes", and i highly recommend reading them both close together. personally, i think this one is better, which seems to be putting me in the minority of reviewers.
focuses heavily on the anthropology side of things. and anyone who spent any time studying that field knows that the forefathers were all ridiculous racist white men who didn't so much try to learn about other societies, as prove their own theories on said societies, which they mostly based on, i don't know, vibes. lindqvist does a great job of showing us all the big names of early anthro & their ideas, and then undermining them in a few succinct sentences.
it's definitely a book on genocide, with all the questions that brings. is genocide carried out only by direct violence? what about bringing new diseases, striping the peoples of their culture & resources, brainwashing them into hating their very roots?...more
rep: Peruvian queer mc in a polyam relationship, Peruvian characters, Spanish sapphic character, sapphic characers of color tw: racism, mentions of suirep: Peruvian queer mc in a polyam relationship, Peruvian characters, Spanish sapphic character, sapphic characers of color tw: racism, mentions of suicide
this sure was an unexpected last book of the year. it's tiny, but packs a lot. it's about literally learning about your very roots (in this case, white colonialist-discoverer), and learning and caring for your heritage. about discovering those whom history forgotten. about listening to those who are still around you. about not assuming anything, but also maybe trusting yourself more than strangers. about desire; oh it is so deeply about desire, and how it complicates your life, how it makes it rich....more
like the characters themselves, you will move through this novel not being able to distinguish dream from reality. it's about the pain & struggle of llike the characters themselves, you will move through this novel not being able to distinguish dream from reality. it's about the pain & struggle of loosing connections, both in the literal sense, be it by death, by fighting, by moving away, and in the more abstract sense of not being able to connect. it's visible in the plot lines, in the characters loosing their senses, and finally in the writing itself - it's often disjointed, hazy like the man's eyesight, quiet & unnerving like the woman's voicelessness. and still, the book manages to be beautiful and lyrical, and to underline how there's always some way to connect.
rep: Korean mcs, Indian side character tw: hospitals, death, mentions of abortion...more
you could fill oceans with resilience and humanity of the palestinian people.
required reading, i think. absolutely gorgeous writing, poetry really; gorgeous idea, gorgeous execution. so this is the kind of art that living among martyrs makes people create!
of course, it's devastating, it puts to page all the horrors you see in videos from palestinian journalists, both almost as an after-thought and as the most important thing that has ever happened in human history. such a clever little book....more
a history book that feels a lot like an essay from an aspiring poet. extremely readable, but also disjointed. not really enough to radicalise you3.5 ☆
a history book that feels a lot like an essay from an aspiring poet. extremely readable, but also disjointed. not really enough to radicalise you, which is what one would expect from a book on such a subject.
first half, if not more, is heavily focused on conrad's heart of darkness (where the title comes from), on conrad himself and his friendships with other writers, and things he might have read that influenced him. then there's a sudden switch to a focus on theories of "evolution", which is really just a fancy way of saying: the origins of european genocide. a lot of examples of how we used super convoluted ideas to excuse horrible massacres. (and i mean a lot, name after name, sometimes hard to keep track of.) and in the last ten pages the author remembers conrad, and tries to quickly tie it all together.
so it's not a history of european genocide in the sense that it outlines one after another the catastrophes we've caused, but rather an overview of our destroying nations & cultures & peoples. mainly examples most eerily similar to scenes from conrad's book & a look into all the explanations we've come up with for colonialism. with a neverending refrain of "exterminate all the brutes". about lindqvist's own journey into africa we just learn a few details (uncomfortable buses, heat, sand), weird childhood memories and even weirder dreams.
i started by calling this a history book but in all fairness, it doesn’t really try to teach us history. it even states that we already know the history, we’ve always known it, but it’s simply not enough. the problem has never been our lack of knowledge....more
"Again, he thought he must be asleep. He looked in the mirror once more and said: ‘That’s me.’ He listened to the latest news report. No new killings "Again, he thought he must be asleep. He looked in the mirror once more and said: ‘That’s me.’ He listened to the latest news report. No new killings anywhere. He was delighted by this peculiar morning. His delight led him to the writing desk, with one line in his head: ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain.’ He was filled with a passionate desire to make poetry, because of a crystal clarity that had descended upon him from some distant place: from the place where he was now! When he sat at the writing desk he found the line ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain,’ written on a blank sheet of paper. This time he didn’t just think he was asleep. He was sure of it."...more
so many words just to say that men only think with their dicks! as if we didn't know.
listen, i love the idea for this book but for the love of god, u gotta make it gripping? u gotta flesh the characters out, outside of their macho persona? yes, they all think women are brainless & only useful as sex toys, it's disgusting, but it could still work as a good novel!
also no offence to almost everyone in the reviews' section, but where the fuck is this book funny?...more
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