I started Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire that Never Was thanks to Mark Slutsky's Barely a Book Club. I started both the earlier selections for the non-club this year as well, but Kalpa Imperial is the only one I finished. I almost don't know what to say about it. It was fantastic and strange; not at all what I was expecting. Each chapter is its own tale, mostly describing a ruler and how she or he came to power. Sometimes en entire dynasty is included, sometimes an anecdote that gives you a sense of the climate, so to speak, of a particular leader. As a reader it's easy to find yourself lost: Where do these stories take place – are we on earth or somewhere else? Is this the past or the future? How many thousands of years does the book span? There are many gaps – we rarely know what has taken place between the chapters.
As I was finishing Kalpa Imperial yesterday, Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities came to mind. It's been two decades since I read it (something I should remedy!), but I remember the basic construct: dozens of cities are described, but each description is, in the end, a description of Venice with all her different facets. I had this sense with Kalpa Imperial – that each of the distinct stories was actually a story about the same thing. I feel I would benefit from rereading it now that I have seen the whole.
I picked up Domenico Starnone's Trust (not to be confused with the Hernan Diaz book of the same title that came out last year) when I was out gift shopping last week. I've really enjoyed the other two Starnone books I've read – and that it was translated by Jhumpa Lahiri only added to my interest. Starnone's books are pleasantly slim, but not light. It's been nearly 5 years since I read the last one, so it's mostly a vague feeling that I remember. When I started Trust what immediately came to mind was Javier Marías. When the book opens, the narrator is describing a relationship from his early adulthood that has an intensity that I tend to think of as only possible in early adulthood. The relationship comes to an end quite soon, but it continues to hang over the rest of the narrator's life, with unexpected results. In any case, there was something about the character and his relationship with women that reminded me of Marías. I sometimes wonder why I'm so drawn to Marías when he writes from a perspective of what could reasonably be called toxic masculinity. There's something of this in the Starnone character, but also a self-awareness (and also a lack of it, which we the readers are made to see). Trust drew me in immediately, and my reaction on finishing it was that it was very much my thing, but with a lingering question of why these kinds of books are "my thing."
