Clare O'Dea's Blog, page 6

A tale of two authors from Ukraine and the UK

[image error]The Jan Michalski Foundation in Montricher is like a cathedral of literature in the middle of the countryside

My reading list for the first half of the year was weighted in favour of two authors who came to Switzerland, Jonathan Coe from Britain and Andrey Kurkov from Ukraine. I was invited to moderate a discussion with the visiting authors at the Bibliotopia Festival in Montricher in May. Apart from being talented and prolific writers from newsworthy countries, Coe and Kurkov are kindred spirits.

Born in the same year, 1961, both Coe and Kurkov are keen musicians. They both use humour to lampoon the social and political woes of their respective countries. Their work is a pleasure to read, which is just as well because I had to read their books in bulk in a short space of time – The Rotters’ Club, Number 11 and Middle England by Coe, and Death and the Penguin, Ukraine Diaries and The President’s Last Love by Kurkov. I recommend all of the above and I look forward to reading more from these authors.

Hailed as a post-Soviet Kafka, Kurkov’s work is whimsical on the surface with a dark undercurrent. In Death and the Penguin, the eponymous penguin is called Misha and he lives with a lonely writer called Viktor. Misha exhibits human-like emotions, or at least Viktor interprets his behaviour that way. At one stage, Misha looks at his master and considers him ‘with the heartfelt sincerity of a worldly-wise party functionary’. Hungry for work, Viktor agrees to take on the task of writing advance obituaries of VIPs for a newspaper editor. All seems fine until his first subject meets an untimely end. Before long there is an epidemic of untimely ends in the bulging obituary file, as Viktor finds himself ensnared by powerful forces. Through Viktor’s circumstances, Kurkov is making a commentary on corruption and the cheapness of life in Ukraine.

“All was well, or appeared so. To every time, its own normality. The once terrible was now commonplace, meaning that people accepted it as the norm and went on living, instead of getting needlessly agitated. For them, as for Viktor, the main thing, after all, was still to live, come what may.”

In a similar vein, the satirical gem The President’s Last Love, gives us wickedly funny characters in outlandish situations. Following the life of the fictional serving president of Ukraine, Bunin, from his youth in the 1980s, we witness the combination of cluelessness and opportunism which helps him climb up the greasy pole of politics. Bunin goes from an amoral hand-to-mouth existence to an amoral gilded existence, always entangled in blighted love affairs and sustained by heavy drinking. Ironically, when he has the most power, he has the least freedom. Even the new heart he received in a transplant comes with strings attached. You will learn more about post-Soviet Ukraine in this highly-entertaining book than you would from reading a hundred articles, and the story will make you laugh and cry. I can’t wait to read Kurkov’s latest novel, Grey Bees set in the Donbass grey zone, which is about to be published in English.  

The third book of Kurkov’s I read was his Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev which covers the time of the Maidan protests in 2013/2014. Kurkov lived a short distance away from the square where all the action happened and travelled extensively around the country during those months.

The juxtaposition of everday family life, planting vegetables at the dacha, attending literary events, throwing children’s birthday parties, with the danger, lies and absurdity of the political situation is a great way to capture recent history. It is fascinating to accompany Kurkov, an ethnic Russian, as he experiences the revolution first-hand and observes the crafty machinations of neighbouring Russia.

Incidentally, another speaker at the Bibliotopia festival, the literary activist Mikhail Shishkin, had some alarming things to say about Russia. The Swiss-based author explained that there is a civil war happening in Russia on the internet. “The frontlines are clear and everyone knows what side they are on,” he said. He warned that the war would inevitably go offline into the real world. The problem with Russia has always been the transition of power. “Russia now is pregnant with new states,” he said, predicting that the day Putin is gone, the whole system of Russia will fall apart.

Speaking of formerly powerful empires falling apart, Jonathan Coe does a wonderful job of excavating the cracks running through British society. His twelfth and most recent novel, Middle England, is being referred to as the great Brexit novel. Some of the main characters have appeared in two previous books, The Rotters’ Club and Closed Circle, but Middle England stands alone as a hugely satisfying read. Coe refers to these books as “panoramic serio-comic political novels”.

Middle England gives us the latest portrait of a nation, striking a pleasant harmony between light and dark notes. What shines through is how exceedingly clever and compassionate Coe is, another thing he has in common with Kurkov. Coe gently savages the dull and prosperous areas of “deep England”, graced with enormous garden centres, palaces of time-wasting for those with leisure and money. This is the heartland of Conservative voters who rely on the we-won-two-World-Wars argument no matter what the political question. The absolute rejection of the other side’s point of view, as seen in the divisions between the characters, is not a million miles away from the online civil war in Russia to which Shishkin referred.

Coe takes a broad canvas when he writes about British society, from the London Riots of 2011 to the Brexit campaign to the influence of trans rights activists in academia, all featured in Middle England. With more action and an even broader sweep, Number 11 is a fantastic read. Coe has packed a lot in, very successfully from the uber-rich of London to reality TV to food banks. A series of episodes with interconnected characters, the novel features a mini police drama and a delightful fable about the quest for the security and innocence of lost childhood. It even takes a horror-movie like turn at one point.

The black humour in The Rotters’ Club is even more pronounced. This time we are back in the 1970s, in the youth of Benjamin Trotter. Set in Birmingham where Coe is from, the novel features a big cast of characters. Like Kurkov in The President’s Last Love, this novel is closely aligned with the writer’s generation, time and place. There are stories within stories in The Rotters’ Club and plenty of characters with strongly-held opinions. An interesting way to explore the class system, labour relations, teenage angst and creativity, friendship, sexual discovery, police violence, music and more.  

And all along, there are real events which shape the characters’ lives, none more so than the scene (spoiler alert) where two characters are caught up in one of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Coe builds up to the horrible climax so masterfully that its impact is devastating. You think you are in a sweet, love scene but you are actually in a vicious death scene. I hardly ever have the experience of being too shocked to continue reading but I had to put the book down for a while to recover after that scene. Not that there is any gore, just an awful realisation. 

I’m going to squeeze in just one more title on the subject of politics. Another writer at the festival (it really was a fantastic line-up) was Philippe Sands, the author of East West Street, published in 2016.

This non-fiction book is partly a memoir and has been hugely popular, even though it is a fairly dense read. The city of Lvov / Lviv / Lemberg is at the heart of the book, along with the Nuremberg trials. Sands traces the stories of three Jewish men and their families from Lviv (now in Ukraine), one of whom is his own grandfather. The other two were legal scholars who ended up connected to the post-war trial through their work on the definition of genocide and crimes against humanity.

East West Street is a powerful and important book. How the author managed to write about those terrible years in such a restrained way is admirable. I loved all the personal details in the background of the three men. Accompanying Sands on his research quest was a great way to tell the interlocking stories. My only complaint is that there was too much repetition of the genocide versus crimes against humanity argument. Sands himself is a human rights lawyer.

So many books, so little time. Thanks to Goodreads, I know that I have read 25 books in the first 25 weeks of this year. When I finish Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered it’ll be a neat one book per week for the first half of the year.

Finally, some snippets of news to do with my work in Switzerland. Back in April, I was invited to take part in the Sunday radio show Les Hautes Parleurs on RTS radio to talk about Brexit. The interview (in French) was filmed and you can view the recording here.

Shortly before that I was the Sonntagsgast (Sunday guest) on the Regionaljournal programme on German-language Swiss public radio, Radio SRF 1. That was a more wide-ranging discussion in German. Meanwhile I am putting the finishing touches to a new writing project, and I will have exciting news about that next month.

That’s all folks. Enjoy your summer reading and do let me know if you take the plunge with Kurkov and Coe!

Brexit: disarray and disappointment for Christmas

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Brexit has given us another Shakespearean year in British politics and, like many observers, I am simultaneously gripped and dismayed by the drama. I am fully expecting a once-in-a-lifetime thunder storm to accompany the final act, though it is anyone’s guess what that ending will look like.  

For the Irish, there is too much at stake for schadenfreude. The dominant feeling is disbelief that we are witnessing such an extreme public display of incompetence and bad judgment on the part of our former rulers. Whatever we thought of the English, we never considered them to be foolish.

The Brexit project was based on the premise that the EU was bad for the UK and that life outside the union would be much better. The UK’s real, home-grown problems, such as having the highest rate of income inequality in the EU, were ignored in the debate which concentrated on the woolly issue of sovereignty, fuelled by wild economic fantasies.

Leaving the EU is a new concept but it is imaginable, assuming you approach the task with good imagination, good planning and some respect for the rest of the union. That we are where we are today clearly shows the plan had no great minds or vision behind it. It is obvious that the Leave campaign never expected to win. The goal, or the game, was to stir up as much discontent as possible while using the debate as a vessel for grand-standing and disruption. At the end of it all, the Leave campaign has left us with a dated, mean-spirited brand of nationalism in lieu of a workable roadmap for Brexit.

The English and Welsh decision to leave the EU, dragging Scotland and Northern Ireland along, was based on negative, not to mention dishonest, campaigning. The narrative of the European Union as a tyrannous force from which the British have to be liberated is bizarre considering the UK’s influential place in the union and the special exceptions it successfully negotiated over the years.

The EU has many flaws but it is not the enemy. If the British public need an enemy so badly, why don’t they look slightly further afield to the country that revived the practice of annexation in the 21st century?

The vote result showed a profound lack of consideration for others – whether immigrants or the Irish or fellow EU countries – and a lack of understanding of the wider implications, such as who would really benefit from this course of action. Why did Putin, to name one Brexit fan, speak out against a second referendum? Because the first result, actively encouraged by his back office, fits perfectly into his agenda of weakening Europe.

Trade was a big argument in the referendum but the Leave campaign denied how complex and painful severing ties with the EU was bound to be. In the 25 years of the single market, entirely new ways of doing business have evolved based on 28 countries being a single trading space. The pain of undoing that mesh of interdependence will be felt for years.

When it came to the prospect of Northern Ireland being pulled from the EU, the Leavers did not bother with denial, just indifference. Thanks to the single market, a hard-won peace agreement and the (relatively new) good working relationship between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, the island of Ireland has, in many ways, been able to move beyond the border.

Joint membership of the EU goes way beyond trade for Ireland. As part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, we in the Republic voted to remove the territorial claim to Northern Ireland from our constitution. This was conceivable not just because everyone wanted peace so badly but because we were all EU citizens. Being European is an additional, welcome identity that unites us and makes it easier to for the two Irelands to cooperate in healthy ways. The shared identity enhances the links between north and south which can only be a good thing. Taking it away is the most destabilising thing that could be done to Northern Ireland.  

The border is not just a line on a map. For many, north and south it is a scar that in recent years was finally allowed to heal in a context of forgiveness.  The fading of that scar allowed people who had been oppressed by it to feel free, and it took away the legitimacy of paramilitaries. We don’t know what life will look like – economically, emotionally and politically – with the scar cut open again. But we have got the message that the people who voted leave could not care less. 

Historically, the Swiss have also had an ambivalent attitude to the EU, and there is an influential segment of Swiss politics and public opinion that beats the same nativist drum as the Brexiteers. This was the constituency Steve Bannon was seeking out when he came to Zurich in March and praised the delighted audience for being the first to stand up to the EU.

Just like the British isolationists, these Swiss have a superiority complex when it comes to Europe. They believe they are better than other Europeans, sweating away stupidly under the yoke of the evil EU. They knock the EU as a rotten construct while benefitting from its strength and partnership in a myriad of tangible and intangible ways. It is a highly unattractive mix of snobbery combined with a sense of entitlement.

The Swiss are not EU members but their relationship with the EU is so close, complicated and crucial to the smooth functioning and well-being of the nation, that they might as well be.  

As well as intensive contact between people – 17.5 per cent of Swiss residents are EU citizens (not including dual nationals), and 430,000 Swiss live in the EU – Switzerland is hooked on the EU because the single market of 510 million people is its largest trading partner.

Switzerland is part of the Schengen area and ties are increasing rather than diminishing, for example in the area of food safety, public health, research, electricity and CO2 emissions. The raft of bilateral agreements that govern the relationship are in the process of being replaced by one over-arching agreement, though there is resistance from the usual suspects to this pragmatic solution.

And while we are all bitching at each other in Europe, things are evolving quickly on the global stage. Since the phenomenal rise of China, the world now has two great economic and military powers where before there was one. China has no allegiance to Europe or wishy-washy ideas like human rights, and Trump has proven that US sympathy for Europe is only skin deep.

Over the same time period, Russia has been trying to claw back to a strong position since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and while unable to score on economic progress, it has fallen back on dirty tricks and military posturing.

The EU has plenty of shortcomings and often does not live up to its own ideals but we don’t know what life in Europe would be like without it. When it comes to regional trade, the EU is the only game in town. When it comes to geopolitical influence, 28 countries may find it hard to reach consensus but as a group they still manage to play an important role as a global voice for democracy.

Whatever happens in the next three months and beyond, we have no choice as Europeans but to wish the British people well and to hope for a tolerable outcome to Brexit that does not cause undue suffering and instability. The British rejection of the EU, adopting the role of the thankless child, has brought the rest of the family closer together – for now. All is disarray and disappointment this Christmas. Let’s stock up on some good cheer and goodwill before the next instalment of drama in 2019. 

A wannabe vegetarian goes hunting

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My New Year’s resolution this year was to give up meat. With great effort and a handful of staple dishes, I managed to get through January meat-free. My quest has gone steadily downhill since then and I am now back where I started, eating meat roughly every second day and feeling uneasy about it. Part of the problem is that the rest of my family are not yet converted, so I still have to cook for four meat eaters. There’s only so many times I can reheat my lentil stew and watch them eat lasagne (I make a very good lasagne).

To be accurate, I never aimed to be a pure vegetarian. Ideally, I would like to eliminate meat from my own cooking while being relaxed about eating a meat dish as a guest at someone else’s table. But by not taking a hard line, I’ve been too open to making other exceptions. Classic slippery slope.

My motivation to stop eating meat mainly stems from conscientious objection to the meat industry. I just wish I was more conscientious about it. When I think about the cruel and unnatural conditions animals must endure in large-scale farming and the way they are slaughtered, I feel I cannot be complicit. I’m also swayed by the environmental arguments and, to a lesser extent, the health benefits.

But why is it proving so difficult to give up just one of many foodstuffs? Meat eating is just a habit, not an addiction, even if I did grow up in a strong meat-eating culture.

A lot of people grapple with this issue in young adulthood but my twenties came and went without me seriously considering vegetarianism. I was always too hungry and in too much of a hurry chasing other goals. But that’s a long time ago now. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to face up to this basic moral choice. And I can’t believe how what a lousy job I’m doing at sticking to that choice.

In my reasoning, and some vegetarians will disagree strongly, the problem is not the fact that an animal dies to feed me, the problem is how the animal lives and dies. The forced breeding of billions of animal lives in miserable warehouse conditions to produce meat is an ugly reality. The more traditional small-scale farming model is obviously more acceptable, and one thing you see in Switzerland is a lot of contented cows ambling about in beautiful, big fields. Pigs and chickens suffer behind closed doors, unfortunately. But no matter how pretty the farm, when the time comes, the animals still have to be transported to be slaughtered en masse. Back to my original sticking point of not wanting to be complicit in a horrible, distressing death.

But what if there was such a thing as a good life and a clean death for an animal? It turns out this ideal does exist and there is a group of people dedicated to making it possible, Swiss hunters. Though it’s a hugely popular pastime here, hunting has always been alien to me. Now, as part of this whole thinking process around the ethics of eating meat, I have become more curious about hunting. So much so, that I was inspired to go on a hunting expedition and write an article about it.

The autumn hunting season is currently in full swing and game features on the menu of Swiss restaurants everywhere, from the hushed dining rooms of Michelin Star restaurants to the loud and crowded supermarket canteens. The most popular meat is venison and it is served with an array of mouth-watering side dishes, including glazed chestnuts, Späzle dumplings, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, poached pear and cranberry sauce. About a third of the game eaten in Switzerland comes from domestic hobby hunters but the demand is so high that most of the meat has to be imported.

Up until last month, you could fit everything I knew about hunting onto a beermat. I certainly didn’t see the attraction of stalking and shooting an animal. As an activity, it seemed a bit selfish and unnecessary. When I go walking near my home, I sometimes catch sight of chamois (a kind of goat antelope native to the Alps) and deer and it makes my day. Why would you want to hurt those lovely creatures?

This was more of a superficial, city girl reaction. Of course I have heard of culling and how it is necessary to keep wild populations at sustainable levels to protect biodiversity. And I know humans started out as hunter gatherers. Children don’t play chasing and hide-and-seek for no reason. Hunting is in the blood. I just didn’t think it was in my blood.

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Well, I was wrong. The day I spent hunting chamois was completely different and more exciting than most other days I’ve spent in the great outdoors. It beats skiing, paragliding (OK, I’ve only done a tandem jump once) and hiking.  And I didn’t even carry a gun! All I did was trek around the place, look through binoculars a lot, and watch animals. I was with a party of eight hunters who split up for the day and only one of the eight shot a chamois. Yet everyone had a great time because we were all there with a purpose. I discovered that you don’t need to shoot something yourself to feel the thrill of the chase.

It felt OK to me because the chamois that was shot was killed instantly and was sold to a restaurant. And then there’s the context in which the hunt was happening. Hunting is tightly regulated in Switzerland, and I think this is a good thing. They don’t just let any fool go out with a gun. You have to go through a two-year training programme to get your hunting licence, and then pass an annual shooting test. The cull numbers are carefully controlled (15 per cent of the herd) and hunters who apply are allocated a small number of animals to shoot, age and sex specified. They have to put a date tag on their kill and show it to a wildlife inspector the same day.

The hunters aim for the side of the chest, just under the leg, to kill with one shot. Some butcher the carcass themselves and keep the meat, the rest sell directly to butchers or restaurants but the money they make does not cover the licence costs. For these men – and some women, the proportion is growing – hunting is a way of life.

There are two hunting systems in Switzerland. In most cantons, the hunting period for the ‘better’ animals – red deer, roe deer and chamois – is limited to a few weeks in the autumn. Smaller animals, fowl and wild boar have a longer hunting season.

Swiss hunters tend to be members of clubs. In the non-hunting months, they spend a lot of time involved with the animals – saving fawns from combine harvesters during the mowing season (the little ones tend to hide in the long grass when they get scared), delivering straw to feeding points in the winter, doing forest maintenance and lots of observing to see the condition, whereabouts and numbers of the animals.

The hunters are a tightly-knit community from all walks of life, but the majority I met work in manual jobs. They spend a lot of time in nature and that, along with the camaraderie and the challenge, is the attraction. I wonder if I fell into the trap of the embedded journalist of liking the hunters too much and losing sight of the rights and wrongs of the venture. I hope not.

If you want to read more about it, the article I wrote for swissinfo.ch is here: The Swiss hunt: collecting the reward for a year’s work. You’ll find recipes and more information on what goes into the classic Swiss game dish at Helvetic Kitchen, the excellent Swiss cooking blog by author Andie Pilot.

Feel free to scroll down and comment. I’d love to hear your take on any of these subjects from vegetarianism to cooking for a family with different diets to humane farming to hunting. These are areas where personal decisions can have far-reaching consequences – at least that’s the hope. 

All of life on a Swiss boulevard

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Every town is a collection of businesses at different stages of their life cycle – fledgling, midlife, waning, and shuttered for good.

The town I live in, Fribourg in Switzerland, was founded in 1157. Many generations have made their living here. It is built in and around a gorge, which also happens to be the geographical line separating the French-speaking Swiss from the German-speaking Swiss. It’s got history and medieval architecture in spades. For a guided walk around the most interesting parts of the town, see this blog post. 

Fribourg was first settled around the river bank, growing upwards on steep slopes, century by century. When the Swiss constitution was created in 1848, the area of Pérolles was just fields. But when the trainline came to Fribourg, it brought new energy to the periphery, and by the turn of the century the new Boulevard de Pérolles, and its side streets, was the happening part of town.

The boulevard is about a kilometre long, starting at the train station and ending at a bunch of new university buildings. There’s a cinema on Pérolles, a church with a declining congregation, a newspaper with a declining circulation, a bank, a secondary school, various bars and restaurants, clothes shops, hairdressers, a small shopping centre and lots of apartments. The dentists and doctors of Fribourg have their surgeries on the upper floors of this street. The strangest business is a shop that offers ‘acqua-ness’, cycling in tank of water in your own private cabin.  

But despite all this activity, Pérolles does not have the feel of a thriving street. Shops change hands too often and many businesses appear to be hanging on by a thread. The longest shopfront on the street is FriCash, a store that offers cash for jewellery and household goods. This lack of vitality is probably to do with the fact that the street is bordered by a gorge on one side and not leading anywhere in particular. The rest of the town, situated to the north and west of Pérolles forms a better-connected core.

Yet many things have happened on Pérolles in my 15 years in Fribourg. I had 30 anti-allergy injections on 30 separate visits (that didn’t work) on Pérolles. I had my Swiss citizenship interview in an office on Pérolles. I learned to speak German in the adult education centre off Pérolles. And I found out I was pregnant with twins at a gynaecologist on Pérolles. I’ve had fillings filled at the dentist on this street, I’ve had my hair cut here many times, I’ve celebrated birthdays and anniversaries on this street, and now I rent office space in an old chocolate factory just a few yards from the boulevard.

Two awful things have happened on Pérolles in my time living here. One day, a man stabbed his toddler in the toilets of the shopping centre. The mother ran with the injured child to a clinic just off the boulevard but they could not save him. Desperately sad.

A few years later, a tailor whose shop was next door to a café, flew into a murderous rage. He was having a long-running row with the café owner about the café’s street tables infringing on his shop front. One day, he grabbed a scissors, stormed into the café and stabbed his neighbour in the heart.

Miraculously, the injured man survived. I read a newspaper article about him some years later, written after the trial. Although he had recovered physically, he could not get over the crime because his attacker did not receive a custodial sentence – just a suspended sentence and a fine. The lack of punishment tormented the victim so much. But that is the Swiss justice system. You can deliberately stab someone in the heart in anger and not go to jail. Suspended sentences are the norm as jail is mainly reserved for those at risk of reoffending.

You can park on Pérolles, one franc per half hour. Two bus routes also carry people up and down the street and into the suburbs. And if you look closely, you will see that all of life is there.  

Catching fleas from Bannon, a European view

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Six months ago, I sat in a concert hall in Zurich listening to Steve Bannon fantasise about civil unrest, while the audience around me murmured their appreciation in subdued Swiss fashion. Bannon was talking about the new serfdom of the working class, but this was not a gathering of the disadvantaged. Anything but.

For a start, the poor are as rare as hen’s teeth in Switzerland (OK, seven per cent of the population), but more importantly, they don’t come out on a cold weeknight and pay 40 francs to listen to a political speech, especially not during ice hockey season.

No, this was more like an outing of business clubs and retired professionals. As I wrote in The Irish Times, mostly the kind of people you would see in a city’s central business district at lunchtime, minus the young women working in lower paid roles.

It would be nice to dismiss Bannon as a political Ozzy Osbourne (also coming to Zurich soon on tour), just another ageing performer who still needs the attention or the money that a tour generates. But of course, Bannon is more than a performer, he is a master strategist who represents a powerful movement that wants to revolutionise Western society. It is clear that we, the media, need to keep tabs on him but, as the current confusion of inviting and disinviting shows, not clear whether or not to engage with him.

One thing to be very careful of in this context is journalistic ego. When Bannon speaks, the media lights up the stage. The person interviewing him gets a share of the glory. His Swiss host last March, news editor and right-wing populist parliamentarian Roger Köppel, practically swooned with excitement when he came out to introduce Bannon to the 1,400-strong crowd. The ensuing ‘interview’ was so soft it resembled a sponge bath.

Now we have David Remnick of The New Yorker and Zanny Minton Beddoes of The Economist, both struck with the same brilliant idea at the same time of inviting Bannon as speaker.

Remnick invited Bannon to attend The New Yorker Festival in October, for which he would be paid an honorarium. The news became known on September 3, unleashing a storm of criticism. The next day, Remnick rescinded the invitation without actually accepting any of the arguments that had been voiced against his plan. Reading between the lines, Remnick probably hoped to be the one to slay the dragon with his “rigorous interview” skills. While he has now dropped the festival appearance, he intends to interview Bannon again in a more traditionally journalistic setting in future.

Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, Minton Beddoes, is not for turning. Bannon is scheduled to take part in an event on September 15th in the Open Future festival, a 24-hour rolling event in Hong Kong, London and New York.

In a statement issued on the same day as Remnick’s, defending the magazine’s position, Minton Beddoes spoke of the importance of testing ideas in open debate. While she is clear that Bannon’s world view “is antithetical to the liberal values” of The Economist, she maintains that it is nevertheless necessary to engage in a conversation with critics, including the man she describes as one of the chief proponents of nativist nationalism.

Even Köppel echoed this approach. “If he is the devil,” he told the crowd, “we have to interview the devil!”

So what are these ideas we are supposed to test in open debate? One idea is that we, the mainstream media, are the enemy of the people. Early in the show in Zurich, Bannon called for the lights to be turned on and for the “opposition party media” (a nonsensical notion in the Swiss political context) to make themselves known. That was such an alien and disturbing moment for me as a European journalist, and I shudder to think what American journalists have gone through since this media-trashing narrative took hold under Trump.

When he’s not talking about the corrupt global elite, a good part of Bannon’s spiel is plain boasting. If you don’t stop him, he will relive the excitement of the presidential election night, literally hour-by-hour, gleefully listing the order in which the states turned red.

He does not hide the fact that the election was won on the perception that the US was in decline. The goal of the campaign he led was to sow discontent and provide simple solutions – namely a clamp-down on immigration and trade. Trump and Bannon needed voters to believe that the US was in decline and, as we now know, they used very effective social media tools to reinforce that message.

In the more hysterical portion of his Zurich speech, Bannon’s message got a bit murky. He talked about central banks debasing national currencies, and governments debasing citizenship. He proposed cryptocurrency as a silver bullet, a way of bypassing government. And then, surprisingly, he spoke about the threat of data harvesting.

“Your digital identity is extracted from you for free and used behind a cloud of secrecy to enslave you.” A strange line of attack coming from the man who helped found Cambridge Analytica. Strange is one thing, the next level of this conversation of ideas was sinister.

Bannon predicted turmoil and sounded pleased about it. When asked what he would say to people who fear the consequences of popular revolt, Bannon said it was a false choice. “You are not going to have stability. The system cannot continue as it is.”

In a nutshell, Bannon’s world view is that there is either going to be a right-wing revolt or some form of socialist or state capitalism. These are the stakes and he is clearly in favour of what he calls turmoil or unrest, in other words violence. Bannon’s aim is to provoke that revolt and I’m not sure he cares who wins, as long as the fantasy of destruction is fulfilled.

The Economist wants to expose bigotry and prejudice. I share that desire. But can The Economist, and all the other principled journalists, be sure that they are not being played? Bannon is about perception, not facts. He sounds notes at a frequency that is missed by most reasonable people but highly nourishing to his true listeners.

Sadly, the media, myself included, is as incapable of ignoring Steve Bannon as a kitten is of ignoring a dangling string. Our duty is to discuss, to analyse, to tear apart his arguments, and that may include an interview. But allowing Bannon to perform on your stage is another matter, one sure way for the kitten to end up with fleas.

Home is where the sunrise is

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I recently received an invitation to attend an event in Zurich to discuss the concept of Heimat, among other things. Heimat is a German word that doesn’t have a direct equivalent in English. It can mean home, homeland, native land and more.

When Swiss citizens fill in official forms, they are routinely asked to give their Heimatort (literally ‘native place’), the commune of origin of their family. This is passed down through the paternal line so that my husband’s Heimatort (and by extension mine) is the village where his grandfather was born, even though his grandfather left there as a small boy when he was sent to live with relatives after his mother’s death. This grandfather, who ended up working as a saddler in another village, never lived in his native village again and may not have felt any emotional attachment to the place but many Swiss are proud of their Heimatort.

The old function of Heimatort was that the commune (municipality) would provide for you in case of destitution. In the past, this was more about social control than charity. Somebody caught begging or drunk in public could be picked up and returned to his or her Heimat to be dealt with. Not a cheery prospect at a time when people who were classed as ‘work shy’ could be interned under the ‘administrative care’ legal provision (common up to the 1970s). Children who were taken into care were referred to their Heimat for a foster home placement – in practice to work as labourers or servants for farming families – which often meant a new life of drudgery miles away from where they grew up.

Now, thankfully, we have prosperity, social welfare payments and a professionalised child welfare system. The Heimatort is only relevant in a few minor, archaic ways, such as the right to graze animals on commonly held land.  (Admittedly this is not minor if you can’t access the land your neighbours are using for free.) I don’t know of any other residual rights Heimatort grants but I’d be curious to know if anyone can enlighten me.

I have some Heimat issues myself in that I still feel the loss of my Irish homeland very keenly. Ideally, after fifteen years in a different country I should have transferred my allegiance and affections to my new location. But this has not happened, at least not to a convincing degree. Despite the fact that I have built a decent life for myself in Switzerland, a process that involved great effort, I still feel the inner tension of being pulled back to my place of origin. Meanwhile, my family is deeply rooted and happy here. It’s a conundrum.

A three-month stay in Ireland this year went some way to alleviating that tension. Apart from all the external trappings of life in Dublin that I enjoy (the sea, the sea!), there are two interlinked things the place offers me that I haven’t been able to replicate in Switzerland. One is a sense of community and the other is the ability to be myself. My German and French are good but I don’t feel truly myself when I speak those languages. I cannot be as genuine when I am working to communicate with a reduced vocabulary (and I seem to have hit a ceiling in both languages). But it’s not only about language; I have good relations with lots of people on an individual basis but it’s in a group that solidarity and shared experiences come into play. In this environment you can express a bigger range of your personality and find meaningful acceptance. I already have some ideas on how to respond to this problem and I’ll be giving it more thought over the coming months.

As for my book related activities, I am doing my bit to promote the French and German editions of The Naked Swiss (La Suisse mise à nu and Die Wahre Schweiz), which has so far notably involved a live television interview in Payot bookshop in Geneva on July 5th.

The interview was hosted by Patrick Vallélian of the in-depth Swiss news magazine Sept.Info, which is running an excerpt from La Suisse mise à nu in their latest edition and organising various joint events at bookshops in French-speaking Switzerland. More updates about these events on my Facebook page.

I was delighted to see the French translation reviewed in the Tribune de Genève newspaper and I’m looking forward to reading the write-up of the interview I gave 24 Heures newspaper later this month.

This time last year I was preparing for Le livre sur les quais festival in Morges at the beginning of September. This year the pressure is off as I will be attending as a visitor rather than a guest author. I have my ticket to see Maggie O’Farrell on September 2nd and will book more as soon as the full English programme is online. Especially looking forward to hearing Lisa McInerney speak. I loved her first book, The Glorious Heresies.

The photo above is the view from the top of the Kaiseregg mountain in Fribourg at sunrise a fortnight ago. The actual sunrise pics didn’t come out too well on my old phone but this one captures the dreamy beauty of the place. We had to get up at half past three in the morning to complete the climb in time before the sun came up. Tough going but well worth the effort, this was the best experience of my Swiss summer so far. I wish you all good times and safe travels this summer too.

The Naked Swiss translations are here!

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Today I am celebrating the good news that the French and German translations of The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths are out in the world. My copies arrived this week and I am delighted with the look and feel of the new books.

The publication of the translations coincides with the publication of the second edition of the original version, which has an extra chapter on the Swiss relationship with the European Union. For more about the second edition, check out this interview. The books are available online from the publishers Bergli Books and Helvetiq (German, French), from the usual online booksellers and in all good book shops in Switzerland.

The German title is Die Wahre Schweiz, which means the true or the real Switzerland, and the French is La Suisse mise à nu, which means Switzerland laid bare. The subtitles of both are the same: ‘A people and their 10 myths’. It has been a fascinating process working the with the translators to produce a text that was faithful to the original, as well as being crystal clear to readers from other cultures.

Also today, Swiss author Hans Durrer published a glowing review of The Naked Swiss, in which he praised the book as “highly informative”, “profoundly balanced” and “good storytelling”.

And the final bit of good news is the launch of this book trailer, created by Bergli Books. Enjoy!

The abortion referendum is an empathy test for Ireland

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Something vitally important to the lives and health of Irish women is happening this month in Ireland. On May 25th, voters will finally have the chance to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, the one that has allowed the country to deny essential healthcare to generations of women.

I will be in Ireland for the vote and I hope to witness the end of a deep-rooted tradition of silencing and shaming women. This tradition has always been dependent on indifference to female suffering.

Well it’s harder to be indifferent when people start speaking their truth openly. One of the positive outcomes of the referendum debate is that so many Irish women and couples are coming forward to speak out about how the amendment has affected them. The referendum has become an empathy test for the nation.

Just like women in every country in the world, Irish women need abortion, preferably provided with compassion as early as possible in the pregnancy. But unlike women in most Western countries, Irish women are criminalised if they seek abortion. The same applies to women in Northern Ireland. So they have to travel in secret to Britain, if they can afford it, or they buy pills online and go through the termination without medical supervision, afraid to seek help if anything goes wrong.

The Irish abortion ban means fear and danger for Irish women, it means additional stress, delay and expense at a time of crisis. This is nothing less than punishment and it has worked for this long because it fits neatly with the cultural legacy of strict social control of women’s fertility.  

The Eighth Amendment of 1983 acknowledges the right to life of “the unborn” without any definition. It says that the state guarantees in its laws to respect, defend and vindicate that right, with “due regard to the equal right to life of the mother”.

This wording does not just mean that no regular abortion services can be made available in Ireland, it also enforces callous and dangerous restrictions in prenatal and maternity care when patients are at their most vulnerable.  

Currently, a pregnant woman or child with a physical illness or experiencing a medical emergency may only have a termination in Ireland if there is a “real and substantial risk” to her life if she does not have a termination. The same applies to suicidal women and girls. This law dictates everything from the management of miscarrying patients and cases of fatal foetal abnormality to the management of labour in mothers about to deliver full term healthy babies.

In the case of a miscarriage that drags on for days, doctors do not intervene as long as there is a heartbeat, no matter how unwell the patient is. They can only perform a D&C if the woman reaches the point where her life is in danger. Unless, as in the tragic case of Savita Halappanavar in Galway in 2012, they miss that window between extreme suffering and impending death and the woman dies of sepsis.

Suffering is fine. The woman may suffer any degree of physical or mental anguish but as long as her life is not in imminent danger, it doesn’t count. The woman’s health or wellbeing during or after pregnancy does not count. The unborn’s right to life trumps her right to safety or peace of mind from day one.  

The same rules apply to everyone, from a child of 12 in care to a 45-year-old mother of four, regardless of whether she is a rape victim, a cancer patient whose treatment must be suspended or someone with a serious illness made worse by pregnancy. Legally, nothing in the woman’s circumstances matters while she is pregnant. That this injustice has been tolerated for so long is simply staggering.

Switzerland, where I live, allows unrestricted access to abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and has one of the lowest rates of abortion in the world. The Irish abortion rate cannot even be accurately measured because it is shrouded in secrecy and illegality, even more so since abortion pills became available. You cannot help people if you criminalise them.

The Eighth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1983 in a context where abortion was already illegal and there was no discernible movement to change that. At that time, up to 4,000 Irish women were travelling to England per year to avail of terminations. Those lonely journeys have continued and are still happening this month and every month.  

The amendment was a pre-emptive strike and a highly effective one too. The complicated realities of unwanted pregnancy, pregnancy loss, fatal foetal abnormality, pregnancy by rape, pregnancy with serious illness, child pregnancy – all of it disregarded in one stroke.

I was 11 years old when this happened. My parents campaigned against the Eighth then and my mother and sister carry on the fight now in the Together4Yes campaign. As a non-resident I can no longer vote in Ireland. But I am counting on my fellow countrywomen and countrymen to show they care and strike back for all our women and girls.

Repeal the 8th! 

Ps. I have disabled comments on this post to keep the scary element away. You can show your love by liking or sharing.

Second edition giveaway of The Naked Swiss

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When Bergli Books started the preparations for the second edition of The Naked Swiss last year, we had a chat about whether it would be a good idea to add something to the book. In the end I agreed to write a new chapter, one that had been on my original list but that I had run out of time to write.

I’m delighted to announce that the updated second edition is now available online and in shops all over Switzerland. The new chapter is about the Swiss relationship with the European Union. Switzerland is a lot more deeply entwined in the EU than many Swiss people realise.

In the Europe chapter, I explain how Switzerland got to where it is today regarding the EU and how the relationship works. Switzerland and the EU are like the long-term couple who are not married but have been to a lawyer to cobble together most of the equivalent rights and obligations. One of the parties (guess who?) is not happy and is pushing for more commitment. I also explain how the Swiss soon-to-be-defunct bilateral model is not a viable option for the United Kingdom to copy in the brave new post-Brexit world. All the same, you can be sure the British are watching the Swiss very closely to see what new deal they settle for.

As part of the research for the new chapter, I crossed Lake Geneva last summer to spend a night in Thonon-les-Bains on the French side. Early the next morning I set off towards Lausanne with the French cross-border commuters. More on that trip to Thonon-les-Bains in this blog post.

What else is new in the second edition? Well, I updated the statistics and some political developments. The book now has an index and a new author photo (thanks to Elaine Pringle Photography). If you want to be sure you’ve got the right one, it sports a little gold rosette on the cover that reads: NEW EDITION WITH AN 11TH MYTH: THE SWISS ARE EUROPEAN.

The launch of the second edition coincides with the launch of the French and German translations, which are due out on April 30th. I’ll write again when I have a copy of each in my hands. La Suisse mise à nu and Die Wahre Schweiz are available to pre-order this week from Helvetiq. The Swiss language editions have a different cover depicting the roof being lifted off a Swiss chalet. It’s fun and clever. Check it out!

I’m in Ireland at the moment so I haven’t seen the new The Naked Swiss on the shelves. I will send a free book to the first person to post a photo of the second edition in a Swiss bookshop, either to my Twitter account @clareodeaz or on my Facebook page. Happy hunting

Feeling the cold and snow in literature

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The cold and the snow are on everybody’s mind and doorstep this week in Europe. In Switzerland we have had a week of extreme cold. Wednesday was the worst, minus fourteen in the morning. When I walked the dog at the edge of the Gottéron Valley I thought the cold wind racing down from the Alps would crack my cheekbones.

I just finished reading Helen Dunmore’s The Siege, set in Leningrad in the desperate years of 1941/2 where the cold plays a fateful part. My brush with wind chill inspired me to look for some great descriptions of cold and snow in literature, beginning with The Siege. In this scene, the main character is on her way to the bakery to queue for bread. She is suffering from malnutrition because of food shortages.

“It’s cold, so cold. Anna adjusts the scarf she has wound around her face. She’ll rest for a couple of minutes. No longer than that, because in her weakened state the cold could easily finish her off. The scorching frost goes down into her lungs like a knife. She coughs, gasps, shifts her weight from foot to foot, and bats her hands together. Her gloved hands make a muffled, ghostly sound. She thinks of the bulbs under their coverlets of snow, and shivers.”

This is such a beautiful novel, describing searing hardship in a wonderfully sympathetic way with characters who emerge as more important than the crushing heel of history.

The other examples I found happen to come from short stories. I love this scene from George Saunders’ Tenth of December featuring Don Eber, an old man on a suicide bid who has stripped off in a remote area in sub-zero temperature and is talking to himself.

“Nausea had not been mentioned in The Humbling Steppe.

A blissful feeling overtook me as I drifted off to sleep at the base of the crevasse. No fear, no discomfort, only a vague sadness at the thought of all that remained undone. This is death? I thought. It is but nothing.

Author, whose name I cannot remember, I would like a word with you.

A-hole.

The shivering was insane. Like a tremor. His head was shaking on his neck. He paused to puke a bit in the snow, white-yellow against the white-blue.

This was scary. This was scary now.

Every step was a victory. He had to remember that. With every step he was fleeing father and father. Farther from father. Stepfarther. What a victory he was wresting. From the jaws of the feet.

He felt a need at the back of his throat to say it right.

From the jaws of defeat. From the jaws of defeat.”

There’s a very chilly and chilling scene in Them Old Cowboy Songs from Annie Proulx’s collection Fine Just the Way It Is. Archie is the unlucky young cowboy who has been sent out to round up stray cows in Wyoming in January.

“Back in the swamp it was just coming light, like grey polish on the cold world, the air so still Archie could see the tiny breath cloud of a finch on a willow twig. Beneath the hardened crust the snow was wallowy. His fresh horse was Poco, who did not know swamps. Poco blundered along, stumbled into an invisible sinkhole and took Archie deep with him. The snow shot down his neck, up his sleeves, into his boots, filled eyes, ears, nose, matter his hair. Poco, in getting up, rammed his hat deep into the bog. The snow in contact with his body heat melted, and as he climbed back into the saddle the wind that accompanied the pale sunlight froze his clothes. Somehow he managed to push eight Wing-Cross strays out of the swamp and back toward the high ground, but his matches would not light and while he struggled to make a fire the cows scattered. He could barely move and when he got back to the bunkhouse he was frozen into the saddle and had to be pried off the horse by two men. He heard cloth rip.”

And finally, the most well-known and the most exquisite, the ending of James Joyce’s The Dead, when Gabriel Conroy looks out the window at the snow after his wife has told him about a boy she loved who died many years before.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

Stay warm, folks!

Ps. I’m attending the Geneva Writers Conference this weekend, weather permitting, and really looking forward to immersing myself in writing talk and ideas. Report to follow on clareodea.com.

Pps. The photo is a view of Lake Brienz taken from Axalp in the Bernese Oberland.