International literature explored the world of Zinedine Zidane and brought us new works by Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel.
Ho New/Reuters
The posters on the wall of the Paris bookshop say it all: a photograph of a floodlit football pitch, empty except for a ball resting forlornly on the penalty spot. Underneath are emblazoned the words "La Mélancolie de Zidane". Whereas, this side of the Channel, we make do with Wayne Rooney: my story so far, in November France was treated to a philosophical tract on Zinédine Zidane's World Cup disaster by the Belgian writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint.
Published in an elegant slimline volume by the highbrow imprint Les Éditions de Minuit, La Mélancolie de Zidane is a 17-page reflection on that fateful moment when the player head-butted an opponent during the World Cup final and was sent off, dashing France's hopes of victory. When interviewed by 'Équipe magazine, Toussaint declared that, although Zidane had broken the rules of fair play, the head-butt itself was "novelistic in its ambiguity". Four months on, it is a measure of how painful the event was to the French national psyche that the arrival of Toussaint's book has been treated with awed reverence.
Across the border in Germany, painful memories of an altogether different sort were dredged up this year. Günter Grass, the Nobel Prize-winning author, confessed that he had served in the Waffen SS during the Second World War. The revelation shocked those who knew Grass as an outspoken peace activist, and came ahead of the publication of the latest volume of his memoirs, Peeling the Onion (published in the UK by Harvill Secker next June). Grass, many of whose novels deal with Germany's wartime past, said that he had been recruited aged 17 into an SS tank division, and though he had not felt ashamed at the time, his silence over the years "weighed" upon him.
Reactions to the news were mixed. The head of Germany's main Jewish organisation said that it reduced Grass's earlier anti-war statements to "absurdities", and the former Polish president Lech Walesa said that he should hand back his honorary citizenship of Gdansk. Other writers, including Salman Rushdie and John Irving, defended Grass, while others claimed that the revelation had been timed to boost sales of his new book.
Two of Latin America's best-known authors provoked controversy by writing novels that cast the era of the conquistadors in a new light. The Chilean author Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel from Mexico both published novels about women who collaborated with the Spanish colonisers. Allende's Inés of My Soul (HarperCollins) tells the story of Inés Suárez, a Spanish seamstress who became the lover of the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, while Esquivel's Malinche (Simon & Schuster) tells the story of an Aztec woman who changed sides and helped the Spanish conquer Mexico. Both authors hope that their characters will be seen as misunderstood heroines, but reviewers have complained that their books ignore the slaughter of indigenous peoples.
At least Allende and Esquivel could say what they liked about their countries' histories without fear of persecution. In Turkey, the novelist Elif Shafak became the latest in a long line of writers, editors and academics to be tried under a law that forbids citizens from "insulting Turkishness". Many of these cases revolve around the massacre of Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman empire, an event that Turkey's government refuses to accept was genocide.
In Shafak's case, there was an added twist, in that the disputed comments were made not directly by her, but by characters in her latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul (Viking). Shafak was unable to appear in court because she had just given birth, but thankfully the judges decided against sending a mother with a newborn baby to prison for comments made by people who didn't exist. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, welcomed the verdict, but the law still stands and other writers are facing trial.
Finally, while Iranian authors have been finding themselves writing in an ever-more restrictive climate - the latest development being the blacklisting of dozens of bestsellers - the Iranian-born graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi has used her émigré status to produce works that show a different side to Islam and Iranian culture from the western media stereotype.
Her latest book, Chicken With Plums (Jonathan Cape), follows the story of Nasser Ali Khan, a real-life musician whose heart breaks when his favourite instrument gets smashed. Nothing will shake him from this depression - not even his favourite meal, from which the book takes its title - and Nasser Ali Khan is haunted by memories and visions, communing with Sufi mystics, the spirit of his late mother and even the Angel of Death.
Beautifully drawn, and written with humour and humanity, Chicken With Plums is one of the year's finest books and should be on your wish-list if you don't have a copy already.
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