Recent reading II

There's not much "feel good" in my reading for the moment. Göran Rosenberg's book was followed by a biography about Margot Wallström, a Swedish politician and UN representative. I have also finished a book by Justine Lévy (which I haven't written about so far, but it will earn at least a short comment in the January book list I'm compiling simultaneously with longer posts on specific books, if not an entire post itself).

The most recent book I finished was Johannes Anyuru's En storm kom från paradiset (A Storm Blew in from Paradise - and although the publisher is responsible for the translation of the title I can't seem to find any information about the book appearing in English anytime soon).

Anyway, it is a book of interest not only from a Swedish perspective, so I decided to write about it in English. The book has quite a lot in common with Rosenberg's book about his father. Anyuru also traces his father's in many ways awful route to Sweden, and a not-so-easy life when arrived here. Anyuru's Ugandan father (called P. throughout the book) was selected to train as a fighter pilot in Greece, but while in Athen the Idi Amin military coup took place and P. concludes that he can't return to Uganda. Neither can he stay in Greece, since he is required to service and translate for visiting Ugandan militaries. Thus, he leaves for Rome, where he has a cousin. He applies for all sorts of pilot jobs - and ends up accepting a job flying crop dusters in Zambia. On arrival in Zambia he is not admitted into the country but sent to Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania where he is interrogated and tortured. The somewhat naïve P. has not expected anything like this happening, and is not prepared for the situation although he tries to think of how they have been taught to handle it during his military training. Still, he can't make them believe that he returned to Africa just to get the opportunity to work as a pilot, to be allowed to fly. His interrogators keep thinking that there must be something else behind his return to Africa, and keep asking why he travelled to Zambia.

The book winds on, and although P. is eventually released from the police station in Dar-es-Salaam, his prospects are not much better when moved to a camp for refugees (rather a prison camp) and then on to another camp which is for people who will be used as a guerilla force to fight Idi Amin. At this stage, P. and the reader are quite resigned. As a reader I kept thinking, it must end, something must happen which takes P. to Sweden - but it is a long and hard way there. And even in Sweden, life is not easy.

Anyuru does not tell his history as straightforward as above, but he tells it in a way that make you feel the despair and resignation P. and the other prisoners feel. He tells it in a way that also makes you want to shake P. so that he manages to get away from his awful situation. And he tells it so that you, together with P. and together with his interrogators in Dar-es-Salaam keep asking "Why did you have to go to Zambia, just for getting the opportunity to fly a crop duster!? Why didn't you stay in Rome!?"

To me, this intimate description of one individual's life story, as much as Rosenberg's account of his father's life story, reminds me of all those unfortunate individuals being in camps, wars, and similar hopeless situations all over the world, right now. It is not a pleasant reminder, because it is simply too much to feel at once - but it is a necessary one. And I can't stop wondering why we keep doing this to each other?

The publisher Norstedts presents the author in Swedish here, and in English here. A few of the (Swedish) reviews can be found here: Sveriges Radio, Sydsvenskan (I intended to share DN:s - couldn't find any - and SvD:s - I thought it was way too shallow - too)