The Devil of the Provinces (2023) by Juan Cardenas

 Book Review

The Devil of the Provinces (2023)

by Juan Cardenas

Translated by Lizzie Davis

   The Devil of the Provinces by Colombian author Juan Cardenas is the fourth book from the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature I've read.  It's also the second book by Juan Cardenas I've tackled- the first was Ornamental (2020).  This book was produced by the same publishes, Coffee House Press, and the same interpreter, Lizzie Davis and generally speaking covers the same literary territory as Ornamental, about a medical researcher who returns from abroad and is recruited to work on a shadowy pharmaceutical project sponsored by either the government, a private corporation or a drug cartel- the lack of clarity is kind of the central thing going on in Ornamental.

  Here, the returning narrator is a biologist, not a chemist, but the plot follows a broadly similar path- the narrator is approached by an ex-girlfriend to work on a problem with the palm fields- which he knows are a highly destructive crop in terms of their environmental impact on their surroundings.  The question becomes, will he take the job or won't he.  Like Ornamental(175 pages), The Devil of the Provinces is brief.  The audiobook version I heard was a little over three hours long. 

   It doesn't seem to me like The Devil of the Provinces is a potential National Book Award winner.  Maybe a finalist?  It seems unlikely.   Once again, I was delighted to see that there was in Audiobook version- too often Translated Literature is book format only, when the delights of a translated Audiobook come in hearing the characters speak with the English language accents of their translated languages.  It doesn't make any sense, if you stop and think about it- characters speaking in translation would have the voice of the translator, not the voice of the original characters. kind of the reverse of the way subtitles vs dubbed audio works in films. 

   The Devil of the Provinces is also a reminder that a character who might be totally insufferable if he was an American can be an interesting fellow in another country.  Impossible to imagine the same plot happening in the USA or Western Europe, let alone what this character WOULD be getting up to in USA/Western Europe that anyone would want to read about.

Beyond the Door of No Return (2023) by David Diop

 

Book Review

Beyond the Door of No Return (2023)

by David Diop

  I really enjoyed French novelist David Diop's first book, At Night All Blood is Black.  It won the Students Prix Goncourt in France, the 2020 LA Times Fiction Book Prize and the 2021 International Booker Prize.  Also, I genuinely enjoyed it- a novel about the experience of an African volunteer in the French army during World War I.   His new book, about the experience of a French naturalist in early 19th century Senegal- then a quasi-French territory but a weak one with many local rulers- was nominated for the National Book Award for Translated Literature (they need to work shop the name of that award!) and I'm sure it will be nominated for the International Booker next year. 

  Diop's 19th century Franco-phone Africa is a nuanced portrayal- we are a century past Conrad and his Heart of Darkness, and Diop's Senegal reflects the more nuanced view of the colonial experience that has percolated through academia in recent decades.  This early in the 19th century, the slave trade was still going full tilt- the first French ban on slavery (within France) didn't come till 1818, and slavery was abolished in French territories in 1845.

  I sensed that the narrator- the French naturalist, isn't really the focus of the book, which consists of a kind of post-mortem revelation of his past to his daughter, years after the experiences described; rather it is Senegal and the rich historical tapestry of the early 19th century at the center of Beyond the Door of No Return.  Presumably, the title of the book refers to the actual Door of No Return in Benin, which is a monument to the experience of the enslaved as they leave Africa for the last time.

  I tore through the book- I just so enjoyed turning each page (figuratively speaking because I read the eBook copy from the Los Angeles Public Library), that I didn't want it to end. I wish it was 500 pages long!