A Book Blog 2025 by Books do Furnish a Room

[Books do furnish a room]

Hunger by Choi Jin Young

“If only it were a billion years in the future, I’d leave Earth with your body on my back and we’d be a pair of happy boats. Doesn’t that sound nicer than cannibalism?”

A Korean novel, novella to be precise about two lovers, Dam and Gu. They meet at elementary school and their novel charts their lives and relationship. It is told from both points of view. It is a romance, albeit a rather macabre one. At the beginning of the novel Gu dies. He is killed on the street as a result of the debt he inherited from his parents. Gu cannot bear to be parted from him. She takes him home, washes him down and over a period of time eats him. It really doesn’t pay to think of the practicalities of this, that clearly isn’t the point. The novel flashes back to the couple’s history. They live at the lower levels of society and life is difficult.

The novel covers a lot of ground, but because of its brevity nothing is covered in any real depth. It emphasises the lack of choices for the working class in Korea. These aren’t Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, there’s more struggle and desperation. It can’t really be called horror despite the cannibalism.

“But what do I know, really? Turns out we're as clueless in death as in life. The only difference is the dead don't agonise over the unknown. They know to leave some things alone.”

I think the trick is to focus on metaphor, but it didn’t really grab me, although it was interesting.

6 out of 10

Starting Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk

“There is no doubt that this secret battle of wits - political chess game played out across the vast geopolitical chessboard of Asia - changed the course of History.”

This is a history of the nineteenth century struggle between two imperialist powers, Russia and Britain for ascendancy in Central and East Asia. It was about a number of issues. A number of imperialist powers had coveted India and Russia was one of those. Russia also had expansionist ambitions in relation to the many small states in Central Asia and towards Afghanistan and China. Hopkirk lays out here the various disastrous incursions into Afghanistan by Britain and Russia very clearly. It does make you realise that the twentieth century incursions into Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and the US supported by other NATO powers had not been thought through and no lessons had been learned from the nineteenth century.

The phrase The Great Game was inevitably coined by that arch-imperialist Rudyard Kipling:

“Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game.”

There are fascinating accounts of explorers and travellers from both sides going into places where Europeans had previously not ventured. There are descriptions of the harsh terrain, the various unpredictable rulers who soon learnt to play the British and Russians off against each other. There was one war in the nineteenth century between the two powers (Crimean War) but there were a number of other occasions where war was close:

“It was a shadow war, not fought face to face, but by proxy and by stealth, in the back streets of Kabul, the passes of the Hindu Kush, and the deserts of Central Asia.”

Britain’s primary ambition was to hang onto India with the occasional annexation of extra bits of territory (depending on whether the Whigs or Tories were in power). Russian ambitions were clear as well, this from Witte, one of Nicholas II’s ministers:

“From the shores of the Pacific, and to the heights of the Himalayas, Russia will not only dominate the affairs of Asia, but those of Europe also.”

Of course today many of those Central Asian states now have independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The story of The Great Game may also have lessons for the current situation vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine. I am sure current Russian tacticians are still looking at the way things worked out in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century Russia had a vision and long-term goals, they still do.

Hopkirk’s account is interesting and provides insights into nineteenth century imperialism and how it worked (or didn’t work) on the ground.

6 and a half out of 10

Starting The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman