I was delighted to be invited to join the (English language) book club with the International Women’s Group in Helsinki recently. My previous experience of being in a book club with a group of international women (when I lived in Amsterdam for two years during Covid times) was very positive. I got pushed out of my reading comfort zone and I read books and translations of books that I wouldn’t have naturally gravitated towards otherwise.
Though I didn’t actually attend the meeting and discussion in January due to a clash of events, I was absorbed by the assigned book Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie. It’s an autobiographical book recounting the stabbing attack on Rushdie in 2022 and its devastating consequences on him and those around him. It is a courageous defence of free speech and was a reminder to me about the threats the ‘free world’ faces.
What especially resonated with me was what Rushdie sees as the vital place the creative artist and, more especially, the writer holds in today’s world. On May 13th 2022, on behalf of PEN America, he addressed a gathering of writers at the UN to discuss how writers might best respond to a world in crisis (the war in Ukraine had begun in late February). At that event, Rushdie said, ‘We are engaged in a world war of stories – a war between incompatible versions of realities – and we need to learn how to fight it.’ He continued, ‘False narratives rooted in antiquated religiosity and bigoted ideas from hundreds of years ago are used to justify (this) and find willing audiences and believers. Violence grows and democracy dies.’
He was attacked and almost died on August 12th 2022. As a response, he suggests that ‘the powerful may own the present, but writers own the future, for it is through our work …. that the present misdeeds will be judged…. A poem will not stop a bullet. A novel cannot defuse a bomb…But we are not helpless.’ He encourages writers to ‘sing the truth.’ He argues that stories are at the heart of what’s happening and ‘the dishonest narratives of the oppressors have proved attractive to many.’ He challenges writers to tell better stories than the ‘tyrants, populists and fools’ and not stop until ‘the tide turns and a better day begins.’ What a challenge. I hope that many writers are up to it.
Coincidentally (I think), our February book, which I am half-way through, The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams is a story about knowledge – who makes it, who can access it, and what is lost when it is withheld. The author explores a slice of history through women's eyes. To paraphrase the blurb, in 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, it is the women who must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho.
It is indeed a story within which I am happy to live for a while. It gives me a different perspective on the Great War, a descriptor which must be one of the ‘greatest’ euphemisms of modern history. I do accept that 'great' in this case indicates the enormous scale of the conflict, but I always steered away from this moniker when I was teaching it in history lessons. It was far from great.
Lots to think about here , Kathryn. I recall, many years ago, thinking that self-publishing and e-publishing would democratise writing/publishing, that the writer would not have to go through the gatekeeper of the agent/publisher in order to make their novel available to the public. I thought and hoped it would lead to a greater diversity of perspective and material available to the avid reader. Alas, I no longer think this and feel that the self-publisher’s work simply remains invisible and ignored.
Love this Kathryn, your blogs are thoughtful and have depth; are varied and interesting. Keep up the good work, looking forward to the next one already!