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Bezig met laden... Hanuman's Travels (2009)door Andrei Ivanov
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While they are waiting to go to the Danish island of Lolland, two asylum-seekers - one a Russian Estonian man (the narrator), the other an Indian (the protagonist) - make do with daily life in the refugee camp. Among scams, big and small disgraces, humiliations and lies, a map is gradually drawn - a detailed map of itineraries where the hopes and the fears of thousands of marginal people flounder and intertwine. Andrei Ivanov was inspired to write this novel by his own vicissitudes as a stateless person living in Denmark. Their struggle at times engenders dismissiveness and even intolerance, but also humanity, courage and the wisdom born of experience and resignation. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Review of the English language translation published by Vagabond Voices (2018) of the Russian language original "Путешествие Ханумана на Лолланд" (Hanuman's Journey to Lolland) (2009) published by Avenarius
Perhaps there was some time in the past, or there will be in some distant future, when a dark-comedy picaresque tale of refugees scamming the system, and each other, will have a transgressive humour to it. But reading this in the late 2010's era of both the North American and Middle Eastern refugee immigration crises and accompanying political firestorms, this is not that time.
This 400-pager became a slog as it proceeded from one scam to the next in its tale of the titular Hanuman and his Russo-Estonian friend Yevgeny who conspire with various associates to raise money for gambling, booze, drugs and/or prostitutes. There is one over-reaching goal of Hanuman's which is to travel to Lolland, an area of Denmark likened to the party island of Ibiza. Most of the proceeds are frittered away or the schemes fall through before (mild*)
It just became distasteful and trying to read this at length and I actually dropped it for a few weeks before deciding to push through to the end instead of leaving it as a DNF. My main reason for reading this was because of the author's Estonian connection. The original book was published in Russian in 2009 and in Estonian as "Hanumani teekond Lollandile" only in 2012. I can't imagine this being funny at the time, but it seems even less so now.
*I'm calling that a mild spoiler, as the title of the book in most editions: "Hanuman's Journey to Lolland," already implies that he will eventually get there. ( )