Julián Fuks

Convoluted Mix
Review of the Charco Press paperback (2021) translated from the original Portuguese language edition "A Ocupação" (2019) by Daniel Hahn

I haven't read Julián Fuks's previous non-fiction novel Resistance (2015/2018) which I understand as being the 1st of a trilogy for which Occupation is the 2nd volume. I may yet revisit this after reading the former. I found Occupation to be somewhat of a chore to get through with the several plotlines and self-congratulatory meta-posturing where the author finishes the book and then sends it to his mentor [author:Mia Couto|49680] with a letter and then includes both it and the response letter as part of the book.

The "Occupation" of the title is presumably the immigrant squatters in an apartment building in Sao Paulo, Brazil. But it can also be interpreted as the disease occupying Fuks' father and the unborn child occupying Fuks' wife in pregnancy in the other plotlines. Fuks adopts the proxy name of Sebastián while he describes his interviews with the immigrants and the traumas of his own life, but the book breaks the fourth wall to reveal all of this openly.

The tales of the building occupiers were the most interesting part of the book and an extended version of the that would have been more interesting than the posturing, but I suppose that meta stuff is Fuks' style. I'll hopefully understand more when I read the earlier book.

I read Occupation as the August 2021 selection from the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month (BotM) club. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers.

Other Reviews
Review by Han Clark, in Lunate, August 19, 2021.

Trivia and Links
The first chapter of Occupation was published as a short story in the Granta literary journal.… (meer)