Purge, by Sofi Oksanen

I’ve recently completed an English translation of Purge (Puhdistus), by Sofi Oksanen, a gripping tale of secrets, shame, and danger, set in Estonia during the Soviet era. The translation will be published by Grove / Atlantic in April, and is available now for pre-order.

Purge is a very sought-after international title this year, and will be published in 25 languages over the next few months. I love the book, and highly recommend it.

Here’s an excerpt:

Silence spread dark around her. The night was thickening. She took a few steps and stopped to stand in the yellow light of the lamp in the yard. Crickets were buzzing, the neighbors’ dogs barked. The white trunks of the birches shone dimly through the dark. She could see the peaceful fields through the chain-link fence, its mesh like tired eyes.
She inhaled so deeply that she felt a stab in her lungs like ice on a tooth. She had been wrong. The relief took her legs out from under her and she fell onto the steps with a thud.

No Pasha, no Lavrenti, no black car.

She turned her face toward the sky. That must be the Big Dipper. The same Big Dipper that you could see over Vladivostok, although this one looked different. Grandmother had looked at the Big Dipper from this same garden when she was young, the Big Dipper that looks like that one. Her grandmother—she had stood in the same place, in front of this same house, on the same stepping stones. The grass that tickled Zara’s foot was her grandmother’s touch and the wind in the apple trees was her grandmother’s whisper, and Zara felt like she was looking at the Big Dipper through her grandmother’s eyes, and when she turned her face back up toward the sky, she felt like her grandmother’s young body stood inside hers, and it ordered her to go back inside, to search for a story that she hadn’t been told.

Zara felt in her pocket. The photograph was still there.

Love Train on Soul Train

I’ve posted the song Love Train before, because it makes me happy. Here’s an extra dose of awesomeness from the audience/dancers showing off their moves in a line dance on Soul Train in 1973.

I like the way some people are just randomly deploying their best moves, while others have rehearsed a special line dance routine. The slo-mo bit is particularly cool.

One fashion note: I vote we bring back the shortie shirt for boys, don’t you?

Found on the always entertaining Everlasting Blört.

Longest Finnish Word?

I mentioned in a previous post that Finland has laid claim to the longest single-word palindrome in the world – with the word saippuakauppias – so you can probably imagine that ordinary words in Finnish, without a requirement that they be spelled the same backward and forward, can get pretty long. According to the 1st International Collection of Tongue Twisters, the longest Finnish word is

järjestelmällistämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän.

As far as I can tell, it seems to mean “You mean, not even (when it’s done) with their (usual) lack of systematization?” Or maybe “Are you telling me they didn’t even use their (trademark) lack of organization?”

Or something like that. Depends on the context. If anyone can use it in a sentence to clarify, please let me know.

I love how one Finnish word equals 9 English words (or 13, depending on how you measure it). It is also an elegant example of how one word can be a sentence in Finnish. Of course, one word can be a sentence in English, too, but it’ll be a lot shorter. Right? Agreed.

As often happens, though, the number of letters is about the same in both languages. We just like to put spaces between ours.

Anybody got a longer word?

Gloria Jones: Heartbeat

Just heard of Gloria Jones for the first time recently, when I learned that it was she who first had a hit with the song Tainted Love. Here she is performing Heartbeat on Shivaree in 1965. Isn’t this an awesome song?

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Just watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie again after many years. It’s always been one of my favorites.

I love the way this movie defies our expectations of the traditional teacher and student story. Every other film on the subject equates charisma with virtue. In this film, as in the real world, charisma can be a dangerous thing.

More War, Just Like We Planned

Afghanistan War orphans by nick rain images

Some people seem surprised that President Obama has decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan – which is weird, since he told us over and over all through his presidential campaign that if he was elected he would escalate the war in Afghanistan. Because he is convinced that we must win this war, for some reason.

Fafblog says it well:

Let us never forget just what’s at stake in the war in Afghanistan: nothing less than the success of the war in Afghanistan. This war may be a mistake, a blood-soaked blunder, an unholy charnel house mindlessly consuming the bodies and souls of untold thousands, an open sore on the pockmarked face of history and an abomination before the sight of God and men, but it is first and foremost a war, and wars must be won. If the United States doesn’t win this war, then will it not lose it?

More at Fafblog.

Techno Chicken

Get down with the techno chicken.

Seattle WTO Protests

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the massive demonstrations that took place during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.

This is a link to the first video in a five-part series put together by Deep Dish TV using footage from numerous independent media sources. The video was taken during the many workshops and meetings that were held before the conference and the large protests began.  It gives a good picture of the excitement that was in the air here in Seattle leading up to the WTO conference, and the way that it brought people from all walks of life into the workshops and marches – teen environmentalists in turtle suits, steelworkers, members of congress, young rappers, church members rallying for third world debt relief, and, of course, hippies with puppets.

(Click image for video page)

Kakslauttanen Igloo Village

What do you think, would you like to stay at the Kakslauttanen Igloo Village in Lapland? It looks awfully cold. But their “glass igloos” are very picturesque.

And they have an ice chapel and ice restaurant.

There are virtual tours here.

Photos courtesy of youngrobv, gwendraith, and the Kakskauttanen web site.

Joke

A vulture boards an airplane carrying two dead racoons.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the flight attendant says. “You’re only allowed one carrion.”

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you have plenty.

Don’t forget that Friday is Buy Nothing Day.

Low Anthem: Charlie Darwin

Low Anthem singing the title track from their album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

 

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose

There’s been a lot of discussion in the news about the Justice Department decision to try Kuwaiti terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York federal court. Mohammed is charged with 2,973 counts of Murder, one for every person killed in the World Trade Center attacks.

A known suspect in the attacks, he was captured in 2003, at the age of 39, after a search by Pakistani forces, probably with the aid of the U.S. military. He has been imprisoned since then without trial. Attorney General Eric Holder has expressed confidence that the evidence against Mohammed is so strong that the fact that he was tortured and illegally detained will not prevent the prosecution from obtaining a conviction. Here is a widely-circulated photo of Mohammed, taken by U.S. forces just after he was taken prisoner:

There is less discussion in the U.S. media of Omar Khadr. Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was captured in 2002 at the age of 15, when he was found wounded following a firefight with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where he had been travelling with his father, a militant Islamist. Khadr has been in U.S. custody since his capture – he has in fact, spent one-third of his life in U.S. detention without trial. His mistreatment during his imprisonment is well-documented and most of the evidence against him is circumstantial.

Instead of trying Khadr in federal court, the Justice Department has decided to try him in a military tribunal, which has less stringent rules regarding admissible evidence than those required in an normal court of law. He is to be charged with one count each of Murder by an Unprivileged Belligerent, Attempted Murder by an Unprivileged Belligerent, Aiding the Enemy, and Conspiracy. Though not as famous as the above photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, here is a photo of Omar Khadr being treated for gunshot wounds at the time of his capture:

In addition to the use of the federal courts for suspects with a strong case against them and military tribunals for those whose guilt is less obvious, there is a potential third category of prisoners who will, according to the plan laid out by President Obama earlier this year, never be tried at all. They will simply be held without charges as long as the government wants to keep them. The Justice Department has also stated that if defendants should by some fluke be acquitted even after this careful choosing of venues to insure that they be found guilty, the government reserves the right to keep them locked up anyway.

This three-tiered plan of heads we win, tails you lose justice in which defendants are guilty until proven guilty and guilty even after they’ve been proven innocent is exactly the same plan instituted by the Bush Justice Department and vehemently opposed by all self-respecting Democrats from 2003 to 2008.

Glen Greenwald breaks it down thoroughly on his blog:

Giving trials to people only when you know for sure, in advance, that you’ll get convictions is not due process.  Those are called “show trials.”

For more about Khadr and other detainees, see previous posts.

Jimmie Rodgers: T for Texas

Just got back from Texas. In honor of that state, here is one of Jimmie Rodgers’ most disturbing songs.

Autumn Under the Boulevard Trees, by Eeva Liisa Manner

Autumn Under the Boulevard Trees
by Eeva Liisa Manner

Everything’s mysteriously missing:
the evening as if in a dream is drifting,
The rain is sleeping in the street in puddles.

The rain is sleeping. The rain is listening
as leaves are scattered, scattered, everything…
And shadows swish and murmur in the maples.

Slowly into darkness the trees drift.
The houses sink and disappear like ships.
In the puddles, mysterious lamps turn on.

The evening, too, is scattered to the ground.
It falls into the water, dimmed and drowned.
The lamps swim off. And everything is gone.

(trans. Lola Rogers)

This is one of my favorite Eeva Liisa Manner poems, from a collection I translated several years ago. It seems to capture that strange light in autumn as darkness falls.

Here is the original poem in Finnish. It’s from the collection Kuin tuuli tai pilvi (Like Wind or Cloud).