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A review by arirang
The Society of Reluctant Dreamers by José Eduardo Agualusa, Daniel Hahn
4.0
“I was lying, yes, I invented the whole thing. Or–no, no, I wasn’t lying. What difference does it make?”
“It does, it does make a difference!” I shouted.
“It doesn’t, seriously. It doesn’t matter in the least. What matters is that you believed it. While I was telling you my story, you believed it. While I was telling you my story, the whole thing was true.”
The last two translations by Daniel Hahn from José Eduardo Agualusa originals, The Book of Chameleons and A General Theory of Oblivion (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1576159376) won the IFFP (forerunner of the Booker International) and Dublin Literary Prize respectively.
The author has described The Society of Reluctant Dreamers as "uma fábula política, poética, satírica e divertida, que desafia e questiona a natureza da realidade, ao mesmo tempo que defende a reabilitação do sonho enquanto instrumento da consciência e da transformação" (google translate: a political, poetic, satirical and entertaining fable that challenges and questions the nature of reality while defending the rehabilitation of the dream as an instrument of consciousness and transformation.)
Angolan journalist Daniel Benchimol reappears from A General Theory of Oblivion, again a specialist in investigations to things that have mysteriously disappeared, here his preoccupation the real-life case of the mysteriously vanishing Boeing 727 (https://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/mystery-of-the-missing-727-plane/3471561/).
The novel takes its title from various characters he meets, an ex-Unita military operative who appears in other people's dreams, an artist who depicts her own dreams and a neuroscientist attempting to record people's dream (based on the author's conversations with the real-life neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidarta_Ribeiro).
Meanwhile Benchimol's daughter is part of a group of young people who practice non-violent protests against the Angolan regime - and the novel was inspired by the real-life 15+2 movement in the country (see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/30/angola-book-club-dos-santos-arrests and https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-angola-15).
In the novel his daughter and her colleagues shower the President with literal blood money, but the 15+2 detainees were originally arrested for reading subversive literature, notably Gene Sharp's [b:From Dictatorship to Democracy|1119326|From Dictatorship to Democracy|Gene Sharp|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1538845443l/1119326._SY75_.jpg|1106394] which has served as something of a inspirational manual for non-violent insurgents groups from Serbia, to the Arab Spring and in Angola. The Financial Times in 2012 described Sharp as "the Lenin of the new Gandhi-ism" and referring to a new trend of "the wildfire spread of systematically non-violent insurgency. This owes a great deal to the strategic thinking of Gene Sharp, an American academic whose how-to-topple-your-tyrant manual, From Dictatorship to Democracy, is the bible of activists from Belgrade to Rangoon".
Benchimol's daughter ultimately is the novel's real focus. He is now divorced from her mother, who came from a higher social class, and his daughter tells him of how she struggled to find an identity, but also contrasts the rather passive acquiescence to the regime of Benchimol and his compatriots to the younger generation's resistance:
I grew up divided between different worlds, too. Worse than that, I grew up a stranger to my own country.
At first, I thought Angola was the name for the network of condos that are home to Mamã, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and all their friends. I thought Angola was this big network of condos separated from one another by pieces of wasteland: Africa. I believed our employees lived in condos, too, with names like Rocha Pinto, Cazenga, Golfe, or Catambor. One day I asked Teresa (my nanny–I hope you remember her) if the swimming pool in the condo where she lived was bigger than ours. Teresa told me that where she lived, they call the rain-puddles swimming pools and each person has their own. At the time, I didn’t get the irony.
Later, I thought Angola was mostly made up of bohemian artists who on Saturdays would gather at each other’s homes, to drink beer, to smoke dope, to discuss plans they would never carry out. Almost all of them expressed contempt for money and mocked the luxury condos where my mother and her family live. Today I know they despised money only because they have enough not to have to think about it.
Poor people don’t despise money. I only got to know the Angola of the poor–I won’t say the real Angola, but the one that represents the overwhelming majority of Angolans–a few years ago. Strange as it may seem, I recognized myself in it. I’ve ended up in this prison because I decided to be Angolan. I’m fighting for my citizenship. Fear destroys people. It corrupts more than money. I’ve seen that happen in Mamã’s Angola Condo. I’ve seen that happen in your Artists’ Republic. I see it happen, too, in the Angola where almost all Angolans live. Fear isn’t a choice.
There’s no way to avoid feeling fear. And yet we can choose not to give in to it. My companions and I have chosen to fight against fear.
The novel has a rather (over-?)idealistic end as the power of dreams proves more than equal to that of the regime, but then Agualusa's point is the power of non-violent insurgency, which has indeed (albeit not yet in Angola) effected considerable political change.
A novel that has a lot going on, including indirect references to many real-life people and events as shown above, and perhaps lacking a little coherency as a result. But nevertheless another striking novel from this author/translator combination and one I would expect to see figuring in awards in 2020. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
“It does, it does make a difference!” I shouted.
“It doesn’t, seriously. It doesn’t matter in the least. What matters is that you believed it. While I was telling you my story, you believed it. While I was telling you my story, the whole thing was true.”
The last two translations by Daniel Hahn from José Eduardo Agualusa originals, The Book of Chameleons and A General Theory of Oblivion (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1576159376) won the IFFP (forerunner of the Booker International) and Dublin Literary Prize respectively.
The author has described The Society of Reluctant Dreamers as "uma fábula política, poética, satírica e divertida, que desafia e questiona a natureza da realidade, ao mesmo tempo que defende a reabilitação do sonho enquanto instrumento da consciência e da transformação" (google translate: a political, poetic, satirical and entertaining fable that challenges and questions the nature of reality while defending the rehabilitation of the dream as an instrument of consciousness and transformation.)
Angolan journalist Daniel Benchimol reappears from A General Theory of Oblivion, again a specialist in investigations to things that have mysteriously disappeared, here his preoccupation the real-life case of the mysteriously vanishing Boeing 727 (https://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/mystery-of-the-missing-727-plane/3471561/).
The novel takes its title from various characters he meets, an ex-Unita military operative who appears in other people's dreams, an artist who depicts her own dreams and a neuroscientist attempting to record people's dream (based on the author's conversations with the real-life neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidarta_Ribeiro).
Meanwhile Benchimol's daughter is part of a group of young people who practice non-violent protests against the Angolan regime - and the novel was inspired by the real-life 15+2 movement in the country (see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/30/angola-book-club-dos-santos-arrests and https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-angola-15).
In the novel his daughter and her colleagues shower the President with literal blood money, but the 15+2 detainees were originally arrested for reading subversive literature, notably Gene Sharp's [b:From Dictatorship to Democracy|1119326|From Dictatorship to Democracy|Gene Sharp|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1538845443l/1119326._SY75_.jpg|1106394] which has served as something of a inspirational manual for non-violent insurgents groups from Serbia, to the Arab Spring and in Angola. The Financial Times in 2012 described Sharp as "the Lenin of the new Gandhi-ism" and referring to a new trend of "the wildfire spread of systematically non-violent insurgency. This owes a great deal to the strategic thinking of Gene Sharp, an American academic whose how-to-topple-your-tyrant manual, From Dictatorship to Democracy, is the bible of activists from Belgrade to Rangoon".
Benchimol's daughter ultimately is the novel's real focus. He is now divorced from her mother, who came from a higher social class, and his daughter tells him of how she struggled to find an identity, but also contrasts the rather passive acquiescence to the regime of Benchimol and his compatriots to the younger generation's resistance:
I grew up divided between different worlds, too. Worse than that, I grew up a stranger to my own country.
At first, I thought Angola was the name for the network of condos that are home to Mamã, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and all their friends. I thought Angola was this big network of condos separated from one another by pieces of wasteland: Africa. I believed our employees lived in condos, too, with names like Rocha Pinto, Cazenga, Golfe, or Catambor. One day I asked Teresa (my nanny–I hope you remember her) if the swimming pool in the condo where she lived was bigger than ours. Teresa told me that where she lived, they call the rain-puddles swimming pools and each person has their own. At the time, I didn’t get the irony.
Later, I thought Angola was mostly made up of bohemian artists who on Saturdays would gather at each other’s homes, to drink beer, to smoke dope, to discuss plans they would never carry out. Almost all of them expressed contempt for money and mocked the luxury condos where my mother and her family live. Today I know they despised money only because they have enough not to have to think about it.
Poor people don’t despise money. I only got to know the Angola of the poor–I won’t say the real Angola, but the one that represents the overwhelming majority of Angolans–a few years ago. Strange as it may seem, I recognized myself in it. I’ve ended up in this prison because I decided to be Angolan. I’m fighting for my citizenship. Fear destroys people. It corrupts more than money. I’ve seen that happen in Mamã’s Angola Condo. I’ve seen that happen in your Artists’ Republic. I see it happen, too, in the Angola where almost all Angolans live. Fear isn’t a choice.
There’s no way to avoid feeling fear. And yet we can choose not to give in to it. My companions and I have chosen to fight against fear.
The novel has a rather (over-?)idealistic end as the power of dreams proves more than equal to that of the regime, but then Agualusa's point is the power of non-violent insurgency, which has indeed (albeit not yet in Angola) effected considerable political change.
A novel that has a lot going on, including indirect references to many real-life people and events as shown above, and perhaps lacking a little coherency as a result. But nevertheless another striking novel from this author/translator combination and one I would expect to see figuring in awards in 2020. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.