Il prezzo della libertà in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 22, 2020 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: author-ofcolour, author-woman, genre-fiction, z-read-gelesen-2020, a-reviewed, transl-dutch, world-suriname, trigger-torture-violence

This book is strange, interesting, terrible and not all that good. I was so excited to read it. A novel from Suriname, a country about which I know nothing, and the blurb of which promised a tale of two sisters among the rebellion of enslaved people. I was also very intrigued to read a post-colonial novel from a Dutch-speaking author about a Dutch-speaking country, the only non-Romance-language country in South America. And it is true, that I learned quite a bit about Suriname (not hard to do se This book is strange, interesting, terrible and not all that good. I was so excited to read it. A novel from Suriname, a country about which I know nothing, and the blurb of which promised a tale of two sisters among the rebellion of enslaved people. I was also very intrigued to read a post-colonial novel from a Dutch-speaking author about a Dutch-speaking country, the only non-Romance-language country in South America. And it is true, that I learned quite a bit about Suriname (not hard to do seeing as I started out from zero). But it is also true that I could have learned this from reading a non-fiction book, and probably got more rounded knowledge.

Why strange? The author is the daughter of Suriname's first president, and her mother tongue (pace her Anglo-sounding name) is Dutch. I bought the book under the impression that it was a novel by a black author or an author of colour. But no specific information about McLeod's heritage is to be found online, neither in English nor in Dutch. Her father's surname was Ferrier (sounds Spanish or Portuguese), and her half-sister studied Portuguese and Spanish (and looks white in photos). Her mother's surname was Lionarons. I don't know if this is a Jewish name, and if the father's surname indicates a Sephardic heritage. Author photos show a dark-skinned, straight-haired woman -- inconclusive evidence.

Why is this important? Only in that the book is written from a white coloniser's perspective. Which to me seems very strange if the author is assumed to be non-white or mixed-race. I had a continuing sense of splitness, of false consciousness, of something that jarred.

Why interesting? I learned that the sugar plantations of Suriname were founded by Sephardic Jews in the 18th century, that there was a large synagogue at a place called Jewish-Savanna, that subsequent Dutch Christian settlers discriminated against the Jews. At one point, a Jewish character is angry at being discriminated against as she is also white! These intra-racial tensions are, as such, interesting. I also learned that most of the travel from plantation to plantation was done by canvas boat on waterways. The most interesting and promising fact was the existence of marrons, the name given to enslaved workers who formed their own communities in the interior of the country and fought the colonisers. But it was Wikipedia that told me that the marrons (maroons in English) ended up being recognised as a separate nation.

Why terrible? The novel has no moral core. And there is terrible, terrible violence. The content warnings alone deserve content warnings (I'll put them behind a spoiler tag): (view spoiler). Most of the violence is perpetrated by whites on blacks. One of the main characters gets away with, literally, murder. Some white characters voice their displeasure at this violence but it never becomes a systemic critique and is always just about treating 'your slaves' well, being kind to them, and if you are kind, the 'slaves' will be faithful to you and serve you gladly.

Why not all that good? In addition to the moral problems, there are the structural ones. Characters get introduced, fall in love, get married and have children, frequently within one page. One character appears in the last third of the book but his story goes nowhere and does not contribute anything to the overall plot or theme. In fact, what is the overall plot or theme? I did not feel for any of the persons. The men are feckless; they marry and continue to have sex all over the place, including with black 'concubines'. One of the main women characters is portrayed as a 'bad' and 'loose' woman who steals men from married women, tricks men, betrays men, is heartless and mean, and mistreats 'her' slaves -- all of this unmotivated and completely one-dimensional. The writing is wooden and without passion. It reads like a first draft of rough jottings.

Format: The 1998 paperback edition of the German translation. Translated well by Martina de Hertog-Vogt. A quite nice if stereotypical cover. Large serif font, little space between lines, roughish paper. Bastei Lübbe: a mass market publisher.

First published in 1987 in Dutch as Hoe duur was de suiker? English translation: The Cost of Sugar. ...more

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