Tuesday, February 4, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears by Johannes Anyuru (translated by Saskia Vogel)




They Will Drown in Their Mother's Tears is a novel first published in Sweden by Johannes Anyuru back in 2017 which was translated into English last year.  It's a short novel, and one in which fits in the subgenre of potential science fiction, as I've talked about elsewhere on this blog - where it's a question for much of the book whether this is science fiction or not (I won't spoil in this review).  The novel won or was nominated for a bunch of awards for literary fiction upon is original release, so I was interested in reading the translation.

And it's a very fascinating, if depressing and maybe predictable, novel to read in English.  Taking inspiration from the Charlie Hebdo Shooting, this novel is a tale of both radicalization and the potential radical response to the horrors of radicalization by the terrorized, and the cycle that results.  It packs a lot into this short package, and is absolutely worth a read.



---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
In Sweden, two young men and a young woman, wearing suicide vests and carrying a homemade version of the flag of ISIS/Daesh, storm a presentation by an artist known for his caricatures of Muhammad and other Islamic symbols.  But at the last moment, the young woman seems to have a change of heart, and shoots her compatriot to prevent him from killing the artist and surrenders.

A while later, imprisoned, the young woman, who by all accounts should be Flemish but instead speaks perfect Swedish, asks to see a particular Muslim Swedish writer.  When the writer comes to meet the woman, the woman tells the writer that the woman is not who she appears, and that she actually came back in time from an alternate history in which the attack went forward and Sweden responded by implementing radical policies targeting those who don't fit the Swedish "norm" - being white Christians willing to swear a loyalty oath.

As the writer reads the woman's tale, of a world in which Muslims and Jews have been persecuted and put into a camp for non-Swedes...or worse, the writer begins to question whether he feels safe in his own version of Sweden, or whether the reality described by the woman - real or imagined - could actually come to pass in this world....and what it would mean if it didn't....and what it means for the writer's family, including his wife and daughter.
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They Will Drown in Their Mother's Tears is a short novel, which splits its narrative in two: the tale of the young woman (whose name is never quite identified*) as she writes about the future she supposedly came from and the tale of the writer in present day Sweden trying to figure out if he and his family really belong and if the woman's tale feels like the likely future of the country.  The story does not always make it clear where one narrative ends and another begins, jumping back and forth between them with little warning (both narratives are told in first person) - and while normally I might complain about that, I suspect it was a deliberate choice here, as the worlds described potentially blend together.

*For all Intents and Purposes, anyway.

The two narratives serve a purpose in showing two aspects of our own world: how the world reacts to the acts of radicals and how those individuals get radicalized in the first place....and how the two form a constant cycle of destruction.  The Sweden of the woman reacts to the terrorist acts of Daesh wannabees by ostracizing those who don't fit the norm (White Christians) and excommunicating them from their country, sticking them in ghettos and oppressing them in horrifying ways - trying to force them to eat pork, torturing them, and worse - while the oppression drives those who would have no inclination toward radicalization to turn to that route...if they can even survive in the first place.  Meanwhile the oppressors are of course simply radicals by another name, with just a different religion in its place.  The cycle goes on and on, and only by trying to break it, could the future be changed for the better....if it can be.

Anyuru mind you is careful not to provide easy answers to the questions of terror, radicalization, and then the fear-driven oppression of minorities as a result.  At one point the writer notes to the woman that if the woman's story is true, then isn't the woman suggesting that the state's evil oppression was the fault of the minorities (Muslims) who are oppressed?  Obviously, such a thing is incorrect, but it's easy to make that mistake given how the cycle perpetuates itself, something Anyuru is careful not to do.  Similarly, Anyuru makes it clear that the acts involved are not necessarily tied to any religion, after all, like in the real world, the terrorist killers aren't really that interested in religion, while the state oppressors in the woman's world don't really care about religion except to the point that it defines an "other."

Is the book hard to read?  Yes it is, and it often is a bit predictable (the reader will figure out the connection between the Writer and the Woman fairly early I suspect, like I did).  Still, it's a strong look at this all too depressingly real topic in our current world, even if the threat of such terror seems more at a remove at present than it did just a few years back.  After all, nothing of the ideas in this story are limited to a context of Islamic terror, and today's anti-immigrant fervor and acts of a certain US Administration can seem terrifyingly like the Sweden of the Woman.....
 


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