Loot (2023) by Tania James

Author Tania James

 

Book Review

Loot (2023)

by Tania James

  Loot was a National Book Book longlist title this year and the description caught my eye, I'm just cut and pasting from Penguin Random House promo copy here,  "A spellbinding historical novel set in the eighteenth century: a hero’s quest, a love story, the story of a young artist coming of age, and an exuberant heist adventure that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across two continents and fifty years."

   The story starts in pre-British rule India (James is an American author of Indian decent) and makes its way to late 18th century England and France.  Abbas, who starts Loot as a child in the Sultanate/Kingdom of Mysore, is the main character- he has a .talent for carving that leads him to apprentice to Lucien de Leze, a French clockmaker who is in favor at the court of Sultan Tipu.  Anyway, if you look at James' publishing history you can see a familiar trajectory- a first novel that is a multi-generational family saga from the perspective of an immigrant to America (or their children), which is well received critically but doesn't land with a mainstream audience (58 amazon reviews), a follow-up book of short stories.  A second novel (written from the perspective of a rampaging Elephant) which is interesting but again, not a huge seller (239 amazon reviews).   And now Loot, which seems designed to contain both adventure, sophisticated cultural commentary on 18th century colonialism and a love story!

 I'm here for it- looking forward to the film or tv version.  Would certainly read another by Tania James but unlikely to go backwards and check out the catalog titles.

    

Tremor (2023) by Teju Cole

 Book Review

Tremor (2023)

by Teju Cole

  I'm a big Teju Cole fan- I like the way he mixes up fiction, art criticism and biographical detail in a way that reminds me of W.G. Sebald- one of my favorites.  The New York Times reviewer agreed:

He has written admiringly about, and frequently been compared to, the German writer W.G. Sebald; they share among other things a capacity to tunnel back from a single image or artifact to scenes of historical barbarism. (I almost wrote that Cole seems like a postcolonial version of Sebald — but Sebald is already the postcolonial Sebald.)

  

  There are quite a few Sebaldian takes in Tremor, notably the initial chapter where Tunde, a Nigerian-American professor who serves as the Teju Cole figure, and his Japanese wife, go antiquing in Southern Maine and come across a poorly maintained African artifact.  Later there is a chapter length "lecture" on the JMW Turner painting, "Slave Ship," which depicts a historical episode where the captain of a slave ship through his human cargo overboard in an attempt to save his vessel during a storm.

   There are also some non-Sebaldian features in Tremors, like the part in the middle where he voices 24 different people who live in Lagos, Nigeria. All of it is very entertaining to readers interested in the kind of art criticism/fiction pioneered by Sebald, but perhaps less so to those unfamiliar with that world.