Review: War and Peace – by Leo Tolstoy

‘War and Peace’ needs no introduction. It holds its place in the minds of contemporary society as a literary classic. One cannot pick up a newspaper article on great books without a passing mention of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Like other classical works such as the Bible, I think that their obvious fame means and their influence on society and heir survival into modern times means that at the very least if you happen to pick up and read one of these rare works you will rarely face disappointment. Indeed, without further ado, I confess that ‘War and Peace’ is one of the very best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Critics compare it to Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. I’d say it outflanks them. Firstly, it is a marathon read. If you’re looking on Amazon for value for money on pence per word you can’t go far wrong with Tolstoy. For about £9 you get 1400 pages. But don’t get fooled into thinking the epic will keep you going for months on end as the pages turn fast. The story is quite entrancing and addictive. I suppose one of the beauties of writing such a huge tome for an author, is that it gives you a big canvas on which to develop your story fully and also to really define your novel’s characters. ‘War and Peace, covers a timespan of about 20 years at the start of the nineteenth century, a time when enlightenment thinking and imperial nationalism had produced great changes across all of European society, including Russia. The French Revolution spread like a virus with its new emancipation ideas and politics was actively changing the shape of entire societies. Of course the guillotines of post 1789 France soon gave way to the ‘little Corsican’ to emerge and of course our hero / antihero ‘old Boney” Napoleon Bonaparte himself does play a leading role in the book. The main war is Napoleon’s initial successful attack on mother Russia followed by his ultimate failure to seize power and the retreat of his army and destruction of the Grande Armée as it backed out of a burning Moscow and headed back down through the harsh winter roads leading back to Europe where virtually his entire corps perished, famously eating their horses to dodge starvation. Of course, closer to our own times a future diminutive European dictator, Adolf Hitler, failed to learn from the mistake of Napoleon and didn’t even make it to Moscow getting his whole World War 2 campaign totally written off by the Red Army following the counterpoint of the battle of Stalingrad which swung Nazi victory away from the latest grandiose empire-builder, daring to challenge the might of the Rus Steppes. Napoleon’s enemy is Tsar Alexander I and it is warming to see the love of the Tsar demonstrated by his people, the army and the characters at peace. These were pre-Leninist times for an aristocratic Russia, still with serfs, a society directed towards the salons of Paris for its artistic and cultural influence, yet close enough to the European mainstream to be sucking in some of the candidness of enlightenment authors such as Voltaire or Rousseau with their revolutionary ideologies that would reshape modern man’s destiny. We are in an age of excitement, an age of hope, a changing world, a globalised society. Tolstoy, a novelist with direct experience of conflict, being a veteran of the Crimean War, was very eccentric in his real life, seeing much of the excesses of society, living both as a hedonist and a monk. He was a gambling philanderer, but also a loyal Russian subject with obvious amazing talent for observation and writing. Undoubtedly ‘War and Peace’ is a masterpiece and is cited as the pinnacle of Russian literary culture. Its beauty, perhaps, is in its uniqueness. The critics had no idea how to categorise it. It is such an original, creative masterpiece. Is it history, is it fiction, is it romance, is it war? Is it philosophy? The answer is that it is all. A variety of all ingredients chucked deep in with the rest of the Borsch in the pot and delivered in a unravelling exciting journey alternating between the peaceful salons of St Petersburg and the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. In researching the novel, Tolstoy actually visited several battle sites just to be fully consistent in his given detail – indeed the accuracy of the book’s battle scenes has been highly lauded by military historians.
The characters (and there are over 500 throughout the book) are centred around three main aristocratic families: Thee Bezukhovs, The Bolkonskys and the Rostovs. Count Pierre Bezukhov, a wild young man, accidentally inherits a fortune and his quest for morality and happiness is an inward journey in many ways despite the outward appearance of such material wealth. Prince Andrei Nikolayovich Bolkonsky is the real military hero of the novel and fares the best out of the central characters in the fight against Napoleon. He also manages to land the love of the most delicate and fragrant female character the dainty, youthful Natalya Rostov, although her romantic life is quite meandering throughout her courting adventures. Andrei has a sister Maria and her fraught relationship with her father’s growingly irrational discipline is an interesting familial relationship. Nikolai Rostov is a hussar in the war and although perhaps not reaching the ranking heights of Prince Andrei with his more diplomatic movements in high military circles, he is yet a formidable warrior in touch with the rank and file soldiers of the Tsar.It is Nikolai Rostov’s officer friend and comrade, Denisov who steals the show for me and is my favourite character in the novel. His speech impediment, so faithfully portrayed by the English translators gives his often haphazard movements throughput the novel a genuine comedy value and to me he is the warmest and most interesting of the stars of the show. The journey moves through family life and the early scenes include salons and ballrooms where conversation and polite society in the drawing rooms of Moscow and St Petersburg reflect upon all of society’s concerns. There isa genuine nostalgia for times gone by and to see Russian high society in full flow is a forgotten world now. Oligarchs way have been the bastard children of the collapse of the Soviet Union but they are no replacement for the aristocracy who with all wealth and down to every element of the bourgeoisie, from Count to Kulak, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al, destroyed these societal elements completely with the Bolshevik communist revolution. The later years of Soviet Russia I think make Tolstoy even more important as an historical work in that he genuinely, even if working primarily with historical characters, captures the mood and feelings of a society in mutatis.
There is genuine love and romance and the female characters hold their own. I’m not so soppy myself and prefer the war stuff like any good redblooded bloke but it’s hard not to notice the sweet feminine grace and womanly charm of some wonderful women who do seduce and distract the gaze of our male protagonists.
Tolstoy has it all and ‘War and Peace’ is a wonderful experience from which everyone should benefit at some stage in their life. Dostoyevsky used to be my favourite Russian author but I think Tolstoy now trumps him and I’m in a mad panic to see just how many words per pence Anna Karenina contains so I can drain my piggy bank from some of my shiny rubles.

Review: The Power of Babel – A Natural History of Language – by John McWhorter

On Amazon Prime Great Courses Signature Collection I watched author John McWhorter present a course on World Language Families and this drew my attention to this literary work. McWhorter is a very intelligent polyglot and makes the study of global languages an interesting and fun-filled adventure. In this book we look at the vast array of human languages across the world – the 6000 or so tongues that are still in existence. We look at how these languages have evolved, the dialects that they morph into, the differences between language and dialect and also try to reconstruct the original global language of Adam and Eve. The examples of linguistic use are wide-ranging, from global super-tongues such as English, French and German, through to obscure languages such as Marathi, Tok Pisin, Cornish and Somali. Throughout the book McWhorter introduces anecdotes of popular culture to lighten the mood, from South Park to McDonalds adverts. The book has enough detail to satisfy the most learned linguist and equally is general enough to be accessible to a non-specialist lay reader. It stands out as a great work and leaves a lasting memory and for such a vast subject material McWhorter covers it well and also succinctly. I will endeavour to seek out more of the author’s work on world languages and would recommend this book to anyone with the remotest interest in our planet’s communication.

Review: Behind The Enigma – The Authorised History of GCHQ – Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – by John Ferris

This is a weighty tome (800 plus pages) and the authoritative history of perhaps the least glamorous of the U.K.’s principal security services. However, the facts illustrated in this book clearly demonstrates the critical role GCHQ plays in national security and perhaps one could argue is more relevant and more important than its more glamorous siblings, MI5 and MI6. From its incept in the early twentieth century we see the heights reached by Bletchley Park, the immediate forerunner to the (renaming) creation of GCHQ. The success of cracking the Nazi Germany Enigma code by computer-creating cryptographer heroes such as the now famous Alan Turing, is perhaps the height of the glamour. Post WW2 Bletchley Park staff were transferred over to a permanent base in rural Gloucestershire. Cheltenham later housed the service in the legendary doughnut, a purpose built facility that can rival James Bond’s flash new Thames-side MI6 HQ. The main division of labour at GCHQ falls into two branches – SIGINT and COMINT. Mathematicians are well sought for their crypto-analytic skills and GCHQ also encourages linguistically skilled talent. Most workers tend to stay in the organisation until retirement although the pay rates can be rather low and promotion opportunities thin on the ground. However, job satisfaction exists with interesting, varied, intellectually stimulating and critically important jobs. As well as skilled university recruits, a lot of workers are recruited in the administrative divisions and women have always been treated on a more or less level par with their male colleagues.

The initial post-WW2 focus on the agency was for targeting Russia, with linguists retraining and as much as 90% of the interceptions being directed to behind the Iron Curtain. GCHQ had success against the Soviet Union to a degree much more than HUMINT counterparts. MI5 and MI6 were often left lagging in comparison with KGB master spies. GCHQ has developed and is almost totally integrated with the American equivalent of signals intelligence, the NSA (National Security Agency) in the United States of America. Intelligence sharing in the secret UKUSA handshake agreement allowed all but the most politically sensitive data between the two nations to be completely shared. Five Eyes (including Commonwealth partners, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) is also important as is co-working with NATO allies but the USA with its larger budget and technological dominance has really been an asset to GCHQ development and from their point of view the NSA appreciates the skilled dedication of more traditional and experienced British siginters. As the twentieth century progressed, the digital age continued to rapidly develop on a global scale. GCHQ has to constantly adapt and master new communications technologies and acquire the latest state of the art equipment, necessary to maintain Britain’s post-imperial role as a primary global power. Enemies also change and Germans have given way to Soviets, the collapse of the USSR after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading towards an internet dominated age where Islamic Salafi Jihadists strike terror in Western democracies and rising China sends an unleashed horde of cyberattackers, their quest to steal Western technology and disrupt libertarian values in their global competitors.

The internet is a revolution and there is a demand for the public to be protected. In recent years GCHQ has emerged from the shadows and reluctantly revealed some of its clandestine secrets and the Directors of the present day have a need to be media savvy as well as being able to cloak and dagger brief the politicians and its foreign office and military masters. I found the details of the trade union problems in the 1970s to be surprising and interesting and can understand why unionisation was banned at GCHQ as a result of protecting national security. The most memorable chapter of the book was the case studies on Palestine (Israel), Konfrontasi (Indonesia) and Falklands conflict (Argentina). Being a linguist experienced in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic and Russian, someone who is techwise and also keen on protecting the nation and Commonwealth and allies of the U.K., and with the doughnut being half hour train ride away, I have written to them on multiple occasions, seeking some form of mutually beneficial employment but alas, the door is firmly closed and I have not heard but a peep emanating from the elusive GCHQ. Interesting book though, and well-researched and written in detail. Recommend.

Review: Unrestricted Warfare – Wake Up, America! China’s Master Plan to Destroy America

Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui are from a new generation of Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers. They have mused upon the situation of modern military affairs and developed this theoretical book on war to describe the status quo as it was around the turn of the Millenium. The book is a translation of the original Mandarin Chinese and on occasion the translation, especially due to cultural references can be a little difficult to successfully grasp. The dominance of the USA in terms of a modern technologically savvy military that is the most powerful in the world is the theme of this book and I can imagine that in terms of theory it would be a very useful strategic read to any potential advocates of the US Military. America with its technological prowess is redefining modern warfare and a general theme that runs through the book is that whereas America often introduces new tech and ideas to military actions, often it fails to fully capitalise on its dominance and although the book was written prior to 9/11 and the war on Terror, I think it does show a glimpse of these future conflicts through its careful studied analysis. The authors draw on plenty of famous historical figures and events from the past in a variety of cultures to give examples of how their philosophy has developed – King Wu, Don Quixote, Alexander the Great. There is a close focus on American actions in the first Gulf War which seemingly holds the authors in awe as a new paradigm shift in modern military tactics has been produced. The range of theories cover not just pure military actions but also economic warfare that is a sign of the modern world. The book is a very good analysis of the key factors that shape military victory and details the full scope of possibilities. I think it’s otherness in coming from China leads a certain exotic and outside the box perspective to readers who may be used to more standard military analyses from the West. I enjoyed the book and although it’s quite dated now and much has changed since it was written, I do believe that it is relevant to military theorists and should happily sit on the bookshelves alongside Sun Tzu and Clausewitz

Review: Prison Writing of Latin America by Joey Whitfield

Joey is a teacher of mine at MLANG in Cardiff University. This is his first book. It explores prison writing in Latin America and looks at abolitionism of the penal system and draws on some really rather delicate themes that expose the dark brutality of prisons in a developing continent where sometimes human rights can be totally thrown out of the window. There is a schism in the penal code between political prisoners and criminals and Joey looks at how these two groups affect each other’s progress through the system. Often it is the poorest and racially discriminated against that suffer the worst fates in the prison system. Poor, indigenous women victims of Reagan’s War on Drugs when Latin American governments need to satisfy captivity quotas in order to get their dollar funding are the ones which are locked away as they are easy targets for a corrupt police force. The first chapter looks at political writing within the prison system. I was totally blown away by the imprisoned Costa Rican author José León Sánchez. This man was a true victim of the system and was wrongly given a life imprisonment term on the barren prison island colony of San Lucas, condemned to carrying a ball and chain around with him whilst manacled all day. In the face of adversity, Sánchez became literate and his work ‘La isla de los hombres solos’ catapulted him into national and international fame, his original work confounding all the critics. Chapter 2 of Whitfield is very dark and difficult to read. It explores homosexual love in the prison system, from rape through to desperate displays of machisimo. The men turn to each other in a way of confronting the system. This chapter looks mainly at imprisoned Cubans. Chapter 3 is brutal in the way it describes the prison massacres of Senderoso Luminosa captives who fight wars with the Peruvian authorities from behind the door, all in defence of their leftist communist ideologies. Some of the worst prison massacres in history occurred in Peru during the 1980s at the peak of the Senedero resistance guerrilla war with the state. Chapter 4 is about the War on Drugs where the Reagan administration turns its Southern hemisphere politics away from leftist insurgents and criminalises the narcotics industry, creating a new criminal class. Comando Vermelho (Red Command) is Brasil are a drug-trafficking criminal gang that originate in prisons and go on to seize control of the urban favelas in Brasil and based on resitance tactics and influence from political prisoners their command structure do a lot for prisoner rights within South America. There are interesting references to the decadent tourist industry in La Paz where the Bolivian prison system has been opened up by a UK prisoner’s book (Marching Powder) which glamourises the capitalist excesses of the jail there.
I found Whitfield’s book to be neat and compact, well-researched, with clear translations from the author when excerpts of Spanish or Portuguese texts were required. There is a shock element to the book and it is hard to imagine what life is really like for these prisoners. Through literature they have discovered a means of dealing with their suffering and I think that one of the main points that Joey makes is that this prison literature is important if we wish to develop more progressive ideas about how to deal with this marginalised element of society. There is sympathy there but also we see excesses of the banality of evil that lurks in these bins of society and this is often mirrored in real life in the criminal enterprises that originally give birth to the prison.

Review: Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas – by Elijah Wald

Whilst planning to do a university translation dissertation on some aspect of narcoculture I was drawn to this work (in English – also simultaneously released bilingually with a Spanish version) by American author and folk musician, Elijah Wald. Having been introduced and hooked on the sounds of Los Tigres Del Norte for years, the Narcocorrido is a music form that particularly interests me. The Spanish word ‘Correr’ = to run, gives way to the Corrido form of music, a Mexican musical ballad, originally historically done as the spoken word, but more recently with Mexican folk music of accordions, guitars and harps added. It is a form of Norteño / Ranchera / Mariachi music, very spicy in rhythm, with neatly rhyming lyrics, telling a popular story. A lively, popular music artform, where masculinity and hyper-masculinity can flourish. The traditional Corrido has been superseded by the Narcocorrido, which tells the stories of Mexican and Latin American drug lords and their conquests – their crossborder trafficking, their grisly assassinations, their lovelife, their organisations. The Corrido is an alternative form of news and corridistas may cover any political event, with some controversial writers documenting political scandals and guerrilla uprisings. Elijah Wald takes us on an interesting personal journey as he hitchhikes and buses across every conceivable region in Mexico and also dips into the Corrido communities of North America. We meet the stars of the genre, the well known celebrity figures, from Los Tigres Del Norte themselves and their most famous writers such as Jefe del Jefes, Teodoro Bello. The issues of assassinated star Chalino Sánchez were particularly interesting and displayed the true dangerous nature of these musicians and their controversial cultural work. We head from the Sinaloan narcocorrido heartland, up to Texas and onto rural Michoacan. Not only do we learn more of the drug trafficking inspirations and the gruesome Mexican drug war, but also we learn of other areas of Mexican culture, history and politics. Wald is a man of the people and the rural campesinos are never far from his heart. He is equally at home listening to corridista buskers on the bus aswell as being able to snort cocaine whilst partying with the stars. For me, the translations done by the author about the often unknown corridos are a true revelation and, being an apprentice translator, I particularly found this aspect of the book exciting. The book is a real adventure and I’d encourage any travel lover to get involved in the quint narrations and journeying. I think that this book will long be regarded as the definitive text on Narcocorridos and I look forward to reading more work by Elijah Wald. It has left me a large legacy of topics and material to research and I shall be busy well into the future covering issues raised by my reading of this most excellent, well written text.

Review: Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal – by Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire is the father of Martinican literature. In his Cahier, he explores his roots in his native Martinique and looks with an often angry voice at the repression of his fellow islanders. The Cahier is a poem directed at enlightening the views of his fellow countrymen and giving them a point at which to resist their colonial masters, to escape the bonds of Negrédom, the chains of slavery that bound them in the triangular slave trade culture and left them in the sugar cane fields of Martinique. A founding father of the black movement in literature, Négritude, Césaire explores the roots of slavery and his négritude is a self-revealing look at how he is perceived by the world, due to his skin colour. The poetic text is often violent and revealing and he uses a variety of different methods to shock and disturb the reader. One is always looking for an identity of Martinique and the author succeeds in describing the island’s features, its fauna and flora, its colonial past, its poverty and hunger and suffering of the population. As we move through the book, the racial voice progresses until we hear a potent cry of anger about this inequality, the way in which his race restricts his world view and aspirations. I found the book, convenient in its parallel text, usefully translated, and a positive journey into the Caribbean. In the twenty-first century we still have not unshackled racism from our society and slavery is very much alive, if not as a political reality, but as an enchaining colonial restriction upon the black inhabitants of Martinique and its Caribbean cousins. It must be stressed how important a work this must be to natives of Martinique and the foundation point it is for black literature. I studied this book as part of my ‘Imaging The Islands’ course at Cardiff University’s School of Modern Languages.

Review: In Other Words – A Coursebook On Translation – by Mona Baker

This Mona Baker book is a core text on my Translation (MA) at Cardiff University. We use the text to accompany the Translation Methods Course. The early chapter of equivalence at word level and how to translate non equivalence is particularly interesting, useful and a strong section of the well-written precise coursebook. On occasion there is perhaps an abundance of examples although Baker covers a range of different languages, often straying into non-European, non-standard foreign tongues. In this new edition there is a valuable additional chapter on Ethics and Morality. This is a fashionable area of current Translation research. I feel that the book is an essential read for anyone considering Translation as a profession or those who study it at degree level. To a lay reader, perhaps the in depth detail is a bit profound. However, the book remains very accessible and is an ideal entry level text for students. This book will be well-thumbed in my reference section.

Review: Through the Language Glass – by Guy Deutscher

Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was a fantastic read. It was quite different to how I initially imagined it to be. As you follow the story is constructively builds a cohesive, rational scientific argument as to exactly how and why different language users perceive the world differently. It is thoroughly thought-provoking and addresses issues that I had never previously pondered about but which are clearly important. There is a clear difference between language speakers across the world, but how does this manifest at a biological level? From colour perception to spatial awareness to use of gender, our language constrains us, in effect imprisons us to perceive the world in predetermined ways. I think that by reading this book I am more aware of the difference in languages and by being aware of that difference it assists one to break their own shackles of a restricted mind. At the very least I have a sturdy amount of scientific examples of linguistic studies with which to embellish my work on the Translation degree I am studying. A good read.

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Review: Translation and Globalization – by Michael Cronin

Translation and Globalization by Michael Cronin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book, by Irish author Michael Cronin, explores translation studies from a globalization perspective with specific attention paid to the situation in Ireland. Globalization is a trend which is ever-increasing in our world and it is an undeniable fact. How do translators fit into this movement of culture? They are involved whether they support globalization or not and very often they must remain unbiased in their views. As contact increases between different cultures and language groups across the planet the translator is finding himself ever more involved. Technology issues and localisation are covered and this is particularly relevant to Ireland which has set itself up as a hub for the international technological revolution. The book analyses the different cultural conflicts which arise in translation as a result of globalization. What are the relationships between powerful global languages and more minor ones? I found the final chapter on minor languages, looking in detail at Irish Gaelic, most interesting. When one is a native speaker of English it is difficult to overlook the factors affecting translators of minor languages whose working lives and structure and thinking are markedly different to the bulk of translators. The book is very well written and gives a comprehensive outlook on Translation Studies, never veering too far from the underlying topic of globalization. I found it easy to follow and rich in its definitions and examples. I will be using the specific content on Translation History for my next essay.

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