Books Set in Asia and North America: Sri Lanka and California

What Lies Between Us, by Nayomi Munaweera (2016)

 

This novel is narrated by a young woman who was born in Sri Lanka during a tumultuous political period of war.  Her father was the son of a wealthy family and her mother was of a poor family.  Her father was light-skinned, but her mother was dark.  Although her father’s family had little to do with her, she grew up in a loving family, surrounded by servants.  One of the servants, Samson, who worked as a gardener, was one of her childhood’s closest friends.

 

As a young teen, however, her life is transformed by events that she dares not speak of.  She has memories of being molested that are closely associated with Samson.  One night, during a monsoon, her father goes to confront Samson.  That same night, her father mysteriously disappears.  His body is found several days later, ostensibly having been drowned in the monsoon.  Samson soon disappears also.  After her father death, she and her mother immigrate to America to live with her mother’s sister and her family.

 

Although our narrator was light-skinned in Sri Lanka, in California, she suddenly finds herself dark-skinned.  This is just one of her adjustments living in her new country.  She adjusts, attends college and becomes a nurse.  She is still a bit of a loner and has dispensed with all thoughts of finding love due to her foreign status.  Then she meets Daniel and falls deeply in love.  

 

They marry and, although, they had not planned to have children, but when she discovers she realized that she wants a child.  Daniel initially says that he doesn’t want a child and she agrees to an abortion.  At the last minute, Daniel changes his mind, and they have a beautiful daughter.  The secrets she has suppressed since childhood, however, bubble to the surface.  As Daniel grows close to the baby, our narrator has traumatic nightmares of her childhood.  She fears for her daughter and makes the ultimate sacrifice.

 

 

In addition to an intriguing tale, this novel provides a beautiful view of Sri Lanka.

 

Read:  January 29, 2021

 

4 Stars

Books Set in the North America: United States

ExUs, by Josephus IV (2014)

 

This is a cautionary tale of what could happen.  The book was written in 2014, but the events happened in the “future”, which was shortly after 2017.  The United States Congress enacted the Victims Law of 2017, which ostensibly gave an advantage to minorities.  Its impact, however, largely targeted Jews.  As more and more restrictions were placed on American Jews, they found themselves without jobs, property and the ability to travel.  Technology had advanced so that a mere pinprick could determine one’s ethnic status.  People who never knew they were Jewish but had one Jewish grandparent were suddenly ostracized.

 

The novel is narrated by a young computer hacker.  He was offered a job sponsored by the NSA that was designed to build security walls within that agency.  He was given high clearance, so was also able to view extensive files, where he realized that the government was backing an Exodus of Jews from the United States.

 

This is a very fast read, but has a lot of food for thought.

 

Read: January 27, 2021

 

4 Stars

 

Books Set in the North America: United States: Tennessee

The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman (1998)

This book is part-memoir, part-fiction.  The author her family’s life in a small rural Tennessee town where they were the only Jews.  She changed the name of the town and the names of some of the townspeople to protect their identities.  Since much of the story occurred either before she was born, or before she was old enough to have a clear memory, had a clear memory, much is of the book is based on her imagination as to what actually happened.  The family lived in Tennessee from 1920 until 1933.  The author was barely 11 when her family moved away.

That said, this family memoir is probably not unlike the story of many Jews living in the rural south.  As she notes, many small southern towns had “Jew” stores – dry-goods stores run and operated by the town’s only Jews.  

Aaron and Rebe Bronson had both immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe/Russia.  Aaron was a self-described natural born salesman.  He set off for Nashville, Tennessee, where he had hoped to make his fortune.  He soon discovered that there were already many Jewish-run stores there; and was convinced to move to the small town of Concordia.  He and his young family arrived in Concordia in 1920 and were taken in by Miss Brookie, an eccentric agnostic who believed in being kind to others.

While Miss Brookie was understanding, none of the other townspeople had ever seen Jews before and were convinced they were a different species.  On the eve of the new store opening, Miss Brookie tells him that it will go well, provided the Klan approves.  The book goes into detail of the tensions between the towns people and the Bronson’s fears of anti-Semitism.  The book also describes the tensions between the white and Black population, often in terms that are very disarming.

Aaron named his store “Bronson’s Low-Priced Store”.  Once the store is open, however, most of the town comes to respect the Bronson’s.  Reba, however, fears for her children and wants them to grow up in a Jewish environment.  When the Depression came, Aaron fought to keep the town going, thereby winning the respect of most of the town.

I found this to be a charming story filled with humor.

Read:  January 23, 2021

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe and Asia: Hungary, Poland and Israel

In Our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe ~ A Dwarf Family’s Survival of the Holocaust, by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev (2004)

 

This book is about the Ovitz family, a Jewish family from Transylvania.  In 1868, the patriarch of the family, Shimshon Eizik Ovitz.  He was born to normal-sized parents; however, he acquired a mutant gene, which made him a dwarf.  He married and his wife, who was of normal height, gave birth to two daughters, both of whom were also dwarfs.  Shortly after his wife died, Shimshon remarried a young woman, only a few years older than his oldest daughter.  Soon, their family grew.  Of Shimshon’s 10 children, seven were dwarfs.  The oldest child, Rozika, was born in 1886; the youngest, Perla, in 1921.

 

The family stuck together, with the normal-sized sibling caring for the other seven.  They built their own vaudeville troupe, known as the Lilliput Troupe, and entertained neighboring villages and cities with music, skits, jokes and other entertainment.  This made them well known and afforded them a means to survive.

 

Then the Holocaust came to their part of Transylvania.  All Jews of the area were transported to concentration camps.  The Ovitz family (minus one brother) were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The novelty of having seven little people in one family caught the eye of Joseph Mengele, and they were spared, along with their 3 normal-sized sibling.  They also convinced Mengele that several other townspeople were also family members.

 

This gave Mengele an opportunity to “experiment” on the entire extended family.  In exchange, the family was afforded certain “luxuries” not afforded the other prisoners.  They all lived in fear, however, never knowing what atrocities would be committed to their bodies.  Amazingly, despite the torture inflicted upon them, all of the members of the extended “family” survived the Holocaust.  They ultimately were able to immigrate to Israel, where they spent their remaining lives.

 

This is an important story and provides insight into the human experimentation conducted in the camps.  The book, however, jumps around too much, which interrupts the flow of the story.

 

Read:  January 21, 2021

 

3.5 Stars

 

 

 

 

 

Books Set in Asia: Afghanistan

The Opium Prince, by Jasmine Aimaq (2020)

 

This novel takes place in the late 1970 in Afghanistan, shortly before the Russian invasion.  Daniel Abdullah Sajadi was the son of an Afghani war lord and an American mother.  After his mother leaves her husband, and his father is thrown in jail, Daniel was raised by his father’s friend, Sherzia.

 

Daniel left Afghanistan to attend college in the United States, where he met and married Rebecca.  After college, he landed a job with the United States government to head a program called USADE, designed to eradicating the poppy fields.  This job led him back to Afghanistan.

 

While traveling in the countryside one day with his wife, he accidently hit and killed a young nomadic Kochi child.  He turns himself in to the local police authorities where he was let off with a small fine.  The nomadic tribes were not viewed as people by the authorities.  Additionally, at the same time a man named Taj Maleki seemingly intervened to help Daniel negotiate with the young girl’s family.  Only later do we learn that Taj and recently purchased the young girl from her family telling them that she would have a better life with him.

 

Taj was a powerful opium khan, who attempted to blackmail Daniel to prevent Daniel from defoliating his poppy fields.  Daniel remained haunted by the death of the young girl and is an easy target for Taj.  Daniel is torn between wanting to eradicate the poppy fields, yet not be caught in Taj’s trap.  Because Daniel lost his parents as a young boy, he has idolized his father who he believed to be a great man in Afghanistan (he had little memory of his mother).

 

This novel focuses on the opium trade in Afghanistan and how it infiltrates so much of the country’s war economy.  The government wants to destroy the opium trade, and yet the entire world is so wrapped up in its addiction.  The novel emphasizes the power struggles of the opium kings, the government, the religious leaders and the Communists.  When Russia does invade Afghanistan, the whole world shifts for Daniel.

 

This is an amazing novel.

 

Read:  January 17, 2021

 

5 Stars

 

 

 

Books Set in Asia and Europe: Iran and England

The Saffron Kitchen, by Yasmin Crowther (2006)

 

Maryam Mazer was born and raised in a small village in Iran in a wealthy family.  Her father was a general in the Shah’s army.  She grew up in a somewhat traditional family where women were expected to marry a man selected by the father.  When she is 16, her father found a man for her to marry, but Maryam had other ideas.  She dreamt of being a nurse and helping people.

 

Her closest childhood friend was Ali, her father’s servant.  He grew up in a very tiny village and taught himself to read.  In Maryam’s family, he became her father’s confident and secretary, however, he was treated as a servant.

 

When the Iranian Revolution, Maryam found herself in the middle of a family tragedy and was sent to Tehran, and ultimately to London.  Maryam had ventured from her home during rioting in her village.  Ali saw her and brought her to his apartment until it was safe for her to return the next day.  Her father assumed that she had slept with Ali, and thus shamed the family’s name.  He disowned her; but allowed her to go to Tehran to pursue her nursing dreams.  She left, knowing that Ali had been beaten within an inch of his life by here father’s men.

 

In London, she met Edward, who became her devoted husband, and they had a daughter, Sara.  She had what seemed to be a perfect life.  She would occasionally return to Iran to visit family.  When her last living sister died, however, her 12-year-old nephew, Saeed, was sent to London to live with Maryam and Edward.

 

Saeed had difficulty settling life in London.  His presence in Maryam’s household opened the floodgates to her memories of Iran, which she had suppressed for years.  She believed that the only way to face her demons would be to return to Iran and to the tiny village where she had spent many pleasant summers as a child.  Ali was still living there, waiting for her return.

 

The book goes back and forth between Maryam and her grown daughter, Sara.  Sara’s life was only in England, but she knows of her Iranian roots.  The novel slowly peels back the layers of Maryam’s life so that we understand what brought her to London and back to Iran.

 

Read: January 14, 2021

 

4.5 Stars