Stravinsky posted:

It is so much easier to satirise and say that the last regime was bad then it is too be critical of the current one. Mo Yan already toes a very fine line and does not want to end up on the wrong side of the party. He gets flack for it though, but its really easy to be critical of these things when its not your life on the line. Remember that Master and Margarita was published well after Bulgakov's death.

JuniperCake posted:

Yeah, China still cracks down hard on dissidents. Between surveillance, threats of physical violence and disappearing people, it's not a safe place. Ai Weiwei, who is an artist of enough renown that the government commissioned him to help design the national stadium for the Olympics, was imprisoned for 81 days without any charges being filed. The government later downplayed the whole thing as "some kind of tax fraud matter". If they'd do that to an artist who is that much in the public eye, there is no chance for anyone else if they decide to be too direct in their criticism. Given that, I don't blame anyone for being careful over there.

homewrecker posted:

I'm pretty sure Blindness was written and published way before Saramago's death (it was originally published in 1995 and he passed away in 2010).

hope and vaseline posted:

Not quite as out and out magical realism as Garcia Marquez is, but Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum, I'd say is a must-read in a similar way. It's essentially a collection of tall tales set in pre and post WWII Germany, and the magical realism used is distorted in bizarre and awful ways to reflect those times. It's told through the eyes of the ultimate unreliable narrator, a boy named Oskar who has chosen of his own will to stop growing at the age of three and observe the world of adults in a facade of innocent boyhood, armed with a glass-slaying voice and a drum capable of recalling a lifetime's worth of memories.

If you're looking for something more in the vein of an author that's a direct influence of Marquez, check out Jorge Luis Borges, the grandfather of magic realism.

WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:

If you are interested in Camus himself, check out A Life Worth Living by Robert Zaretsky. It goes over his philosophies and frames it against his life and work in French Algeria and is very interesting, engaging, and well written. It's less biographical and more analytical. I felt like it kind of played up a Camus vs. Sartre thing a bit more than it should have (and is obviously very pro-Camus) but was good nonetheless.

One disappointment I had with the book was the complete lack of Frantz Fanon outside of a footnote since he and Camus were so far apart ideologically while fighting for similar things.

And obviously read Camus's stuff, which I'm sure you know all of.

Stravinsky posted:

The Moon Monster posted:

and it's constantly dwelling on the budding breasts of 13 year old girls.

Colonel Taint posted:

Finished a few books in the past few months:

Moby Dick - I was taken in by the first hundred pages or so, but getting through the whaling chapters felt like a slog at times. I don't know that I can add much to the discussion of this book. I was surprised by the suddenness of the ending. For most of the book, I failed to see Ahab as any sort of villain character, despite reading about the character often described as such.

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (Author), Naveed Noori (Translator) - Translation of a Persian novel. The shortness and pacing of this was a welcome change after reading through Moby Dick. A good amount of the thin paperback consists of notes from the translator, which I found interesting. I don't know anything really about Farsi or much about the culture of Iran, so I'm glad the translator offered some insight into his process. The story itself is on the surreal side as they go. I don't recall too much of the plot details, but I do remember feeling like the contents of a fever dream or opium dream were being conveyed through the author's hand. I also found some of the lore around the book itself to be of interest. The book was banned from Iran at some point with the reasoning that it reportedly drove some readers towards suicide. I can't say I remotely felt moved in such a way.

Musashi by Sadegh Hedayat (Author), Naveed Noori (Translator). The dramatized story of Japanese warrior and artist Miyamoto Musashi. Just finished this just a few minutes ago. It's been a while since I enjoyed a whole book so thoroughly. I was a bit afraid at the beginning that I'd be lost with all the Japanese names and places, but I think I managed pretty well to keep them straight in my head. This book was originally brought to my attention through the podcast of Jock Willink, who spoke highly of it and dedicated an episode to it. I decided to go in blind and read the novel before listening to the pod episode. The growth of the characters throughout was enjoyable. Also enjoyable was the way Japanese culture of the time bled through. It took me some time to get through the whole book (900+ pages), and I feel at the moment a bit sad that it's over. I may go back and re-read this book at some point.