The Battle for Home by Marwa al-Sabouni

A very interesting book about the civil war in Syria, and an inspiring example of vision and determination in the face of great adversity.  

The author contends that the old architecture of the country once contributed to the unity of the nation, and that colonial and modern architecture sowed the seeds of the recent conflict.  

According to al-Sabouni, the old Syrian urban centres, such as Damascus, Aleppo and Homs - Homs being her home town - had grown organically, with various ethnic and religious groups living together as a single, integrated community.  Colonial and modern town planning, combined with industrialisation and urbanisation, tended to surround the old city centres with suburbs segregated on religious and ethnic lines.  This segregation first led to conflict, then to war.

Throughout the book, al-Sabouni interweaves her philosophical views on the role architecture plays in creating and sustaining community and culture with her analysis of how the war came about.  She also recounts the consequences the war has had on the population: civilian deaths, sectarian violence, the diaspora of refugees and the reduced circumstances of those who chose (or had no choice but) to stay in Syria.

The author's style is of the first order.  The narrative is lyrical, logical and crisp.  The reader is left in no doubt that there is a fine and decent mind at work.  Al-Sabouni has a vision for her ravaged country, and an optimism that a new architecture, incorporating the inclusiveness of the old, can not only rebuild her country's cities but its community as well.

Highly recommended.

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

Do  you want a holiday from books featuring nasty people doing nasty things to each other?  Well, The Country of the Pointed Firs is a worthy option for a gentle getaway destination.

Written at the end of the 19th Century, it is about life in the maritime village of Dunnett Landing, Maine.  There is no plot.  There is just recollection and anecdote, as the narrator relates the conversations she had during a prolonged summer visit to the village.

The characters are likeable and engaging, even the morose Captain Littlepage, and especially the warm and welcoming Mrs Blackett.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Maine of yesteryear.  

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favourite novelists.  Alas, I have read all his novels.  As much as I would like to read them again, it is time to turn to his works of non-fiction.

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is a collection of Vonnegut's essays, lectures and other non-fiction writing from the period 1966 to 1974.  This is also the period in which he produced his masterpiece novel Slaughterhouse-Five.  The title refers to three concepts invented by the prophet Bokonon in Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle. Each concept, in the final analysis, is an illusion masquerading as a truth. So it is one of Vonnegut's tongue-in-cheek, po-mo jokes to apply this title to his non-fiction.

Vonnegut often has a bleak view of human beings.  He acknowledges that humans are capable of love and kindness and other positive behaviours, but he does not allow this to blind him to the darker side of our nature.  He describes himself as a black humourist, and he says this about his ouevre:

Black humourists' holy wanderers find nothing but junk and lies and idiocy wherever they go.  A chewing-gum wrapper or a used condom is often the best they can do for a Holy Grail.

And he draws our attention to a lot of this kind of thing in this volume.  His essay about his humanitarian visit to Biafra in the closing days of the war with Nigeria is particularly harrowing.  Other essays dealing with science are more hopeful, and others are neutral in tone.  

In the preface, Vonnegut says:

If a person with a demonstrably ordinary mind, like mine, will devote himself to giving birth to a work of the imagination, that work will in tempt and tease that ordinary mind into cleverness ... I am not especially satisfied with my own imaginative works, my fiction.  I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

It may well be the case that Vonnegut is a better novelist than he is a non-fiction writer.  Even so, this collection is thought-provoking, informative and (sometimes) amusing.  Worth reading for the insights it offers of the man and his work.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

I read A Wizard of Earthsea in memory of a friend who passed away far too early.  It was one of her favourites.  

I first read this book when I was in high school  Quite a few decades have elapsed since then, and my memories of it were mere tattered cobwebs waving in a gentle breeze; however, it stands up nicely to being re-read.  There are intriguing themes and concepts, and Le Guin's use of language is deft.  This is more than a Y.A. novel and certainly appealed to my adult self.

The protagonist of the tale, Ged, is a young boy who becomes apprenticed to a wizard called Ogion.  They live on the island of Gont, one of hundreds in the archipelago called Earthsea.  Ged is restless and ambitious, and he becomes frustrated with Ogion's cautious method of instruction.  Ogion tells him: Manhood is patience.  Mastery is nine times patience.  Ged cannot settle down, and Ogion recommends he goes on the island of Roke to attend a school for wizards.  On Roke, Ged displays a precocious talent for magic, and this makes the older students envious.  Ged is provoked into a magic duel, and in his pride he oversteps his skills with disastrous results.  Will he ever be able to find redemption?

Le Guin had an interest in Taoism, and its philosophy of balance in nature underpins the tale.  On Roke, the boys are told by their master:

The world is in balance, in Equilibrium.  A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world.  It is dangerous, that power.  It is most perilous.  It must follow knowledge, and serve need.  To light a candle is to cast a shadow ...

Of course, it is advice that will go unheeded, and a great harm is caused.  It is interesting to think of our modern times where the power of human technology to change the world in our image is also changing the natural equilibrium of the environment.

Le Guin also introduced the idea that everything has its own True Name, and learning that name gives one mastery over that thing.  A true name can be divined by gaining deep knowledge of a thing, be it animal, vegetable or mineral.  What one does with that knowledge and power is an ethical matter.  Do we chose mastery over balance?  Again, this has resonances for us in the 21st Century.

Time to think deeply.

Vale, Kerry, and thanks for reminding me about A Wizard of Earthsea.