Books I Read October 27th, 2025

Just sort of quietly baking bread while the Republic burns.

The Black Insider by Dambudzo Marechera – A postmodern evening in an apocalyptic Zimbabwe destroyed by ethnic strife, as told by an authorial analog. Marechera was brilliant, and very much wants you to know it. There's a pretty constant stream of literary references in addition to the philosophical asides, linguistic deviations and switches in perspective usual to this genre. But, Marechera was brilliant, and there's a lot of very insightful stuff here. There's a sensitivity to Marechera which I think would come across even if you didn't know his tragic life story, a rawness to him, as of a burn wound. I've enjoyed my foray into his writing, for which, as it happens, I have Binyavanga Wainaina to thank, who recommends him in one of his short stories. Always enjoy following ladders of inspiration.

Bachelors: Novellas and Stories by Arthur Schnitzler – Shorts from one of turn of the century Vienna's many insightful psychoanalytical authors. There's one in here which is the stream-of-consciousness of an unlikable anti-Semitic officer who experiences a devastating social shock that's particularly excellent.

In Sickness and in Health by Ruth Rendell – A creepy noir ruined by its ending.

The Woman from Sarejevo by Ivo Andric – In a dying Dual Monarchy a Bosnian woman dedicates her life to greed to predictable effect. Interesting fact, according to Goodreads I am the first person to read this book.

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker – The underlying theme of all human existence is not sex, as per Freud, but death and the paradox of existing as a being of thought chained to a rotting corpse. All our problems come from being a god that shits. As a philosophy I pretty much share it, but still it is probably a mistake to suppose that the same sense of existential angst which is the concern of humankind generally is also the root cause of mental illness, rather than the failure of some other process generally possessed by the better functioning members of the species. An attempt at the end of the text to define schizophrenia and sexual perversion in line with the overall concern is spectacularly unpersuasive. Still, this was engaging as thought and philosophy, if not in any particularly clinically useful way.

Through the Doll's House Door by Jane Gardam – Toy Story but done with a precious smallness. A lovely digression, very different from the other stuff I read by Gardam, all of which if memory serves were well-drawn character studies of serious English people. Always impressive to see a skilled writer break successfully in an unfamiliar direction.