Tag Archives: Colonialism

Loot: Imperialism Gets a Slap on the Wrist

Tania James’ Loot opens in Srirangapatna, Mysore in 1794. The French are its colonial rulers. Abbas is 17 and a gifted woodcarver. He’s sent to Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace to apprentice with Lucien Du Leze, a brilliant French engineer and watchmaker. They create a wooden automaton depicting a tiger devouring a British soldier. It’s all good fun, and the finished marvel delights Tipu. Du Leze returns to France.

French rule is weak, and Britain’s East India Company invades with its army. The battle is bloody; Tipu is killed; the city destroyed and renamed Seringapatnam; and its precious artifacts are looted. The automaton is awarded to Colonel Selwyn, who sends it to his country estate in England. His wife collects artifacts taken from all the territories the East India Company had conquered.

Abbas has lost everything. He leaves for France, which is a long journey around the African continent. He makes it and discovers Du Leze is dead. Fortunately, Jehanne, Du Leze’s beautiful, half-Indian, adopted daughter, is alive. Romance buds, but they’re poor. Jehanne learns where the automaton is located, so she and Abbas travel to England to steal it and become rich.

Wow, Gladiola, this synopsis makes Loot sound like an exciting global adventure; historical fiction at its best. Yes, it could’ve been, but here’s the problem. James knows all the necessary elements of the hero’s quest. She mechanically checks them off, as if this is an exercise in a graduate-level creative writing program, but she’s created a heartless automaton, which is a shame because the story does have potential.

Abbas travels around Africa in 1802, but the horrors of the slave trade are fleetingly acknowledged. India is being looted, but imperialism’s greed gets a slap on the wrist. Literally. Loot is a card game Jehanne plays with Selwyn’s widow. When Lady Selwyn, who’s surrounded by all the treasures her husband looted, pulls the winning card, Jehanne reflexively slaps her wrist.

Imperialism’s misappropriation of cultural artifacts has been a hot topic globally for decades. Loot was published is 2023, but James barely mentions the issue, which is all the more surprising because Abbas is Indian and Jehanne is half Indian. Loot dutifully marches to its banal happy ending, but the reader is left with a nagging sense that this is a superficial novel full of missed opportunities.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Like Here But Worse

In 2022 Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize for The Seven Moons of Maali Ameida. Hi ho. The book is bizarre in all the best ways.

It’s 1990 in Sri Lanka. Maali Almeida is a photographer, gambler, and self-described slut. He’s also a journalist and homosexual, so he has lots of enemies. And because Sri Lanka is in the middle of a civil war, it’s easy for a photo-journalist to die. It’s also easy for a homosexual to die – but not for the same reasons.

And what do you know? It’s page 1 and Maali is already dead. The after-life is a hellscape filled with demons, ghouls, ghosts, and bureaucrats who claim they want to help you. It’s just like the “living” world only worse.

Maali has no idea who killed him, why, or how he died. He has seven days (or seven moons) to figure it all out. Then he needs to decide what he’ll do next. To paraphrase The Clash: should he stay or should he go? Does his decision matter? Does anything matter? Yes, obviously, The Clash matters. Stay focused.

Seven Moons is impossible to categorize. It’s historical fiction in how it describes the Sri Lankan civil war. It’s a love letter to the Sri Lankan people traumatized by that war. It’s a satire on religion. It’s a parody lampooning people who try to change society through violence. It’s a deadly-serious comedy, and it succeeds regardless of the category you put it in.

But mostly, the story is a delight because, as flawed as Maali is, he is honest when it counts. Even though he lies to nearly everyone, he never lies to himself or the reader. He’s also brave, even when it’s not smart to be. When he is told his photos are gruesome, he responds “then maybe people should stop doing gruesome things.”

If Karunatilaka resembles any writer, it’s Kurt Vonnegut. At one time people read him. Maybe, with Seven Moons‘ deserved success, people will start reading Vonnegut again. If so, that would be another great thing about Maali Almeida.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Planter’s Punch

I’m rich because I don’t like to pay for things – like taxes. And because I’m rich, I don’t have to. Take, for example, vacations. I can afford to pay top dollar and stay at an exclusive resort in a wealthy country. But why would I do that when it is so much cheaper to stay at an exquisite resort in a poor country?

I know what you’re thinking. But, Knowgood, will you be safe? With all the intense pressure you are under everyday as a powerful hotel magnate, how will you relax? We’re worried about you.

Don’t worry. Vacationing in poor countries is remarkably fun and safe. You land at the airport and people are everywhere desperate to help you out for a small fee. It’s as if their lives depend on it. But what’s best is you can haggle. That small fee then becomes paltry.

I hear you. That does sound like fun, Knowgood, but do you ever get a chance to relax?

Sure you do – at the posh resort drinking Planter’s Punch and smoking Cuban cigars while pissing in the colonial blue waters. You can relax because you are perfectly safe. That’s what the men armed with assault weapons make sure of. At least I think they’re men. It’s hard to say because they’re wearing camo with Kevlar vests – and balaclavas, so all you can see is their angry eyes.

It’s impossible not to relax.

Knowgood Carp, Owner of All the Hotels on Block Island (and Some in Connecticut)

The Committed – Much Ado About Nothing

The Committed is Viet Thanh Nguyen’s sequel to the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer. And while there is much to like, the book is unlikely to garner Mr. Nguyen a second Pulitzer – though we do expect it to land on several “Best Books of the Year, Dammit” lists.

The book picks up where The Sympathizer left off – at the end of the Vietnamese civil war in the 1970s. The narrator, Vo Danh (meaning nameless), and Bon (meaning good) have been released from a Vietnamese reeducation camp, where they have been tortured by Man (meaning man). Man is literally faceless, so Vo Danh does not realize he is being tortured by his blood brother, until Man finally reveals his true identity. Vo Danh never tells Bon, the third blood brother in this sexless three-way (truly, the worst kind of three-way), about Man’s true identity. Why? As we learn, the answer to that question is always “why not” or, better yet, “why the hell not.” So, Vo Danh is nameless; Man is faceless; and Bon is good – at killing people. There, we are all caught up.

Vo Danh and Bon land in France in the early 1980s. “Like most refugees we barely had any material belongings, even if our bags were packed with dreams and fantasies, trauma and pain, sorrow and loss, and, of course, ghosts. Since ghosts were weightless, we could carry an infinite number of them.” And Vo Danh does. Having no prospects, they join a gang that sells Heaven (drugs and prostitutes) to the French elite. Before long, Man shows up in Paris. Why? Why the hell not! Bon plans to kill him. And Vo Danh is caught in the middle – leaving him no choice but to snort tons of cocaine.

The Committed works well on many levels. It is a drug-fueled page turner filled with gangland violence and narrow escapes. It is a Candide-like satire that eviscerates European colonialism and any pretense that white people brought civilization and culture to anyone. At its best, it is a political/philosophical treatise on the folly of believing in anything that ends with an “ism” – such as capitalism, communism, socialism, Catholicism, and idealism. The only thing worth believing in is nothing. Just as, the only thing more powerful than words is silence. In this book, nothing is more powerful than nothing. In fact, nothing is sacred.

The Committed suffers from the same problems that afflict many sequels. All of the primary characters already appeared in The Sympathizer, which is a brilliant decimation of American culture and its “civilizing” effects. These characters were new and interesting in that book. Like my neighbors when I first moved into my neighborhood. Now they are familiar and less interesting. Like my neighbors now. They don’t have much to say that is new. Additionally, The Committed re-hashes many of the same themes, such as “nothing is more important than nothing.” But it is still an enjoyable read. It is humorous and serious and sad. It is intellectual and grotesque. It is full of contradictions. But as Mr. Nguyen says at the beginning – “Ah, contradiction! The perpetual body odor of humanity!”

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor