Death and the Dervish, by Meša Selimović

I've finally finished the great Bosnian novel that I had to set aside for far too long while reading other books for other reasons. I started Death and the Dervish in late August and finished part one in early September. I returned to it last Sunday and picked through it over the course of the week, but read the bulk of part two yesterday and today. This wasn't the first Selimović book I'd read; back in 2016 I read The Fortress, which I gather is something of a sequel to this book (or book two of what he intended to be a trilogy). I gave away my copy of The Fortress after reading it, but now I wish I hadn't. I don't remember it well -- I was glad to see I had written about it, because pieces come back as I read what I wrote then -- but I do remember the impression it left on me. The feelings Death and the Dervish aroused were similar, or if anything, more intense. This book was gorgeous. I've marked more pages in it than in any book I've read in recent memory. I broke my own rule of not writing in books for this book, something I do only when I know there are passages I'll want to return to again and again. 

The book spans roughly a year in the midlife of a dervish, Nuruddin, in 18th century Sarajevo. He's a respected religious leader who believes in the justness of God and the state, until his younger brother is arrested, taken to the fortress, and killed. The book follows his awakening, in a sense, to human corruption and human connection, both of which have been outside his notice in his conscribed religious life. Nuruddin walks us through the stages of grief, as it were, as he processes what has happened to his brother and the betrayal by one of his own close connections that led to his brother's arrest. As the narrative progresses, he perpetually thinks he is above earthly concerns or in control of them, and yet never -- until the very end -- understands how he is caught up in them. As he learns hate, he unleashes what he believes will be the most terrible revenge for his brother's murder, bringing down all who were responsible for it. And it works: the judge who condemned his brother is killed; the district leader is forced to flee. But the result is that Nuruddin himself is appointed as the new judge. He is put at the center of the political intrigue, and finds that he's no better than those who he brought down.

There's so much more to this book than what I've said here, and I thought I would write more, but I don't think I can do it justice. The first page I marked in this book was page 109. It's a pivotal moment in the book, when we first begin to understand what Nuruddin is grappling with. His friend, Hassan, has come to him to help him hatch a plan to free his brother from the Fortress, but Nuruddin still believes so strongly in the justness of the world that he can't bear to think of trying to break his brother out of prison. Hassan, Nuruddin tells us, "was trying to save a man, while I was trying to save an idea." By the end of the book, Nuruddin is a different man: he knows that the world is unjust; but he is not a better man. Maybe that's the most heartbreaking thing of all.

Disoriental, by Négar Djavadi

Disoriental was the third book I've read with my Idlewild Books Women in Translation Book Club. I read it in fits and starts. Lately, I haven't been much in the mood for reading, or maybe I haven't been able to find the time. With the sun rising later, I sleep later, and with my crosswords and Italian practice each morning, I'm not left with much reading time before I have to start work. And I'm never good about reading in the evening. And then I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed with book club books -- like I wasn't reading anything I had chosen to read. (Of course, choosing participate in the book club was my decision, so I do realize it's on me. One of my qualities, but also my faults, is that I have a strong -- sometimes overly so -- sense of obligation.) I started the wonderful Bosnian novel, Death and the Dervish back in late August, and ended up setting it aside for four weeks while I read three consecutive books for book clubs (for three different book clubs, I should point out -- again, this is all my own fault). Anyway, maybe this sense of obligation and that Disoriental was keeping me from Death and the Dervish biased me against it somewhat.

I did enjoy Disoriental, or at least several aspects of it. The narrative is divided between the present and past, jumping back and forth within each chapter as the narrator tells us her memories. Early on, these memories go back even before her birth and her parents' births, as she recounts family stories that have been passed down through the generations. Later they are her own memories of her childhood in Tehran, her escape as a young girl, with her mother and two sisters, from Iran over the border into Turkey and eventually onward to France. And finally some memories of her time living in France and elsewhere in Europe, bringing the reader up to the present day. I found the portions from the past to be much more engaging than the portions from the present day (and, fortunately, those make up much more of the book). But the story felt incomplete, particularly as it got nearer to the present. The period from the narrator's paternal grandmother's birth up to the narrator's arrival in Paris is told in great detail. The period from the arrival in Paris to the present day is summed up in a few capsules. It left me feeling like there were gaping holes in the narrator's story, things that might have better explained her present-day self.