Band of Thebes

Man Booker International Winner: Lydia Davis

Achebe, Kadaré, Munro, Roth... and Davis? Yes, Lydia Davis has won the fifth Man Booker International Prize. Announced an hour ago in London, the award honors Davis's slippery, super-short work. Many of her stories are less than a page and some are only a couple sentences. 

The five judges -- Elif Batuman, Aminatta Forna, Yiyun Li, Tim Parks, and Christopher Ricks -- said her "writings fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind. Just how to categorise them? They have been called stories but could equally be miniatures, anecdotes, essays, jokes, parables, fables, texts, aphorisms or even apophthegms, prayers or simply observations." Ricks added, "There is vigilance to her stories, and great imaginative attention. Vigilance as how to realise things down to the very word or syllable; vigilance as to everybody's impure motives and illusions of feeling." All the best of her nine volumes are gathered in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis [Kindle]. Davis is also a tireless translator, best known for her Proust and Flaubert.

Will it be a scandal that American writers have won the biannual award twice in a row, and North American authors have won three of the five times? Unrealistically, I hoped the Swiss writer Peter Stammwould win. Last week the Guardian did a tremendous service asking each of the ten finalists which one of their books they would recommend to new readers. Of course Marilynne Robinson named all three of her three novels. In two parts here (Ananthamurthy, Appelfeld, Davis, Husain, Lianke) and here (N'Diaye, Novakovich, Robinson, Sorokin, Stamm).

Gerbrand Bakker Wins Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

After winning the IMPAC Dublin Prize for his gay first novel The Twin, Gerbrand Bakker last night won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his second novel, published in the UK as The Detour and here in the US as Ten White Geese. Don't miss either of these wonderful books. Peter Cameron said, "I loved Gerbrand Bakker’s beautiful novel The Twin, but nothing could have prepared me for the singular experience of reading Ten White Geese. Mr. Bakker illuminates the beautiful, tragic darkness at the core of every life with a meticulously honest compassion that is both heartbreaking and revivifying. This book stopped me in my tracks, and moved me beyond words."

Bakker explained the book's origins: "I've been to North Wales often, I know the land, and I'd always thought I would like to write something about it. But you need more. And then the three things came together – the Emily Dickinson poem, Ample Make This Bed, which is the motto, and this Dutchwoman, sitting in a completely strange landscape. That was the moment I realised I could write it. I like quiet environments – then things start to happen. If I set a novel in a big city, maybe nothing would happen – it doesn't inspire me."

He now joins a tiny club of authors who have won both the IMPAC and the IFFP: Orhan Pamuk and Per Petterson.

Grim Stats in EU's First Survey of 93,000 LGBT People

Above, the answer to just one of 168 questions in the survey: 'In the last 5 years, have you been: personally harassed by someone or a group for any reason in a way that really annoyed, offended or upset you - either at work, home, on the street, on public transport, in a shop, in an office or on the internet ?'

For five years the EU has failed to pass the lgbt Anti-Discrimination Directive drafted by the European Commission in 2008. Today, marking the annual International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency released the results of its first massive online survey of 93,000 lgbt Europeans and the findings are grim:

• Some 26% of respondents (and 35% of transgender respondents) said they had been attacked or threatened with violence in the past five years
• Most of the hate attacks reported took place in public and were perpetrated by more than one person, with the attackers predominantly being male
• More than half of those who said they had been attacked did not report the incident to the authorities, believing no action would be taken
• Half of respondents said they had felt personally discriminated against in the year before the survey, although 90% did not report the discrimination
• Some 20% of gay or bisexual respondents and 29% of transgender respondents said they had suffered discrimination at work or when looking for a job
• Two-thirds of respondents said they had tried to hide or disguise their sexuality at school

Study these interactive maps, charts, and graphs of the survey's findings.

Although the most discrimination was found in Eastern European countries, ILGA's communications manager Juris Lavrikovs implied a backlash in western countries that have seen "tremendous" lgbt advances. "Look at France, which used to be considered a very liberal, very open country. Now it is scary for a gay couple to walk hand in hand in Paris because of the increase in violence."

Tomas Raskevicius of the Lithuanian Gay League said, "Lithuania has one of the highest suicide rates in Europe. We have this real feeling that a lot of suicides are connected to homophobic bullying. The authorities don't talk about it out loud, and the daily harassment and remarks in the streets and public places is very widespread."

One of the countries keen to join the EU is the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Today in the capital Tbilisi, a few dozen people gathered for IDAHO. The head of the Georgian Orthodox Church called the pride rally "an insult" and - nonsensically - "a violation of the majority's rights," sparking 10,000 anti-gay protesters to demonstrate against the small pro-gay group. The antigay faction became increasingly enraged and eventually stormed the police ranks who had been protecting the lgbt marchers. As the gay group was hurried away, the mob threw rocks at their buses. BBC has footage.

Commonwealth Prize Regional Winners

    

The Commonwealth Prize for fiction has announced this year's five regional winners who will compete for the overall prize announced on May 31.

Canada & Europe: Lisa O'Donnell, The Death of Bees

Africa: E.E. Sule, Sterile Sky

Asia: Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

Pacific: Michael Sala, The Last Thread

Caribbean: Ezekel Alan, Disposable People: Inspired by true events [Kindle only $1.99]

Marriage Equality: France, RI, DE, NV, Santa Fe, Colombia

Defying antigay mobs outside, and antigay protesters in the gallery (about whom the Speaker said, "Get these enemies of democracy outside parliament!"), the French Assembly approved marriage equality by a wide margin, 331 to 225. It is the 14th nation to legalize same-sex marriage. Three other countries (Mexico, Brazil, and the US) have marriage equality in some states.

Yesterday, Rhode Island's senate passed 26-12. Previously, the house passed a similar measure 51-19, but because the senate bill differs it has to go back to the house. The governor says he will sign it. 

When that bill becomes law in August, 16.1% of US citizens will live in states that recognize marriage equality.

On Tuesday, Delaware's house approved a marriage equality bill in a 23-18 vote. Now it goes to the senate where a close vote is expected. 

Also Tuesday, the Nevada senate voted 12-9 to begin the process to reverse the state's ban on marriage equality. During the debate, lawmaker Kelvin Atkinson came out.

Last night, the Santa Fe City Council voted 5-1 (with two abstaining) to approve marriage equality and urge county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The mayor supports the measure, which is seen as largely symbolic .

Yesterday, Colombia's parliament rejected a marriage equality bill 51-17. Armando Benedetti, who drafted the bill, said, “Those who vote against this project ... would have voted in favour of slavery.”

Uruguay, New Zealand Will Be 12th, 13th Nations with Marriage Equality

Following last week's overwhelming victories in the senate (23-8) and house (71-21) passing marriage equality in Uruguay, a similar bill yesterday passed on its third try in New Zealand's parliament, 77-44. Watch the video below to see the happy gallery and politicians SINGING in celebration. The law will take effect in about four months. NZ and Uruguay will become the 12th and 13th nations with marriage equality. The first was The Netherlands in 2001.

(Other than showering with a kiwi rugby team, by far the best introductions to queer New Zealand are Chris Brickell's book Mates and Lovers and the awesome documentary Topp Twins.)

In France, the contested bill has passed tough votes in the senate and assembly and faces only the final vote next week. The pro-equality government moved that date earlier from May to avoid more mass protests against gay marriage.

The ten countries that currently enjoy marriage equality are Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Canada, and South Africa.

In the US, the next likeliest state to get gay nups is Delaware, which introduced a new bill earlier this month. (Fast work for the Small Wonder that only got civil unions in 2011.) Illinois, Minnesota, and Rhode Island are also working toward passage of similar measures. Advocates in California, New Jersey, and Hawaii, all previously cheated from their right to marry, continue their fights, too.

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist

Ready to globetrot? Honoring "the best work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the United Kingdom," the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has announced its longlist of sixteen:

Gerbrand Bakker, Ten White Geese (translated by David Colmer from the Dutch)

Chris Barnard, Bundu (Michiel Heyns; Afrikaans)

Laurent Binet, HHhH (Sam Taylor; French)

Dasa Drndic, Trieste (Ellen Elias-Bursac; Croatian)

Pawel Huelle, Cold Sea Stories (Antonia Lloyd-Jones; Polish)

Pia Juul, Murder of Halland (Martin Aitken; Danish)

Ismail Kadare, The Fall of the Stone City (John Hodgson; Albanian)

Khaled Khalifa, In Praise of Hatred (Leri Price; Arabic)

Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family (Don Bartlett; Norwegian)

Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Satantango (George Szirtes; Hungarian)

Alain Mabanckou, Black Bazaar (Sarah Ardizzone; French)

Diego Marani, The Last of the Vostyachs (Judith Landry; Italian)

Andrés Neuman, Traveler of the Century (Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia; Spanish)

Orhan Pamuk, Silent House (Robert Finn; Turkish)

Juan Gabriel Vásquez: The Sound of Things Falling (Anne McLean; Spanish)

Enrique Vila-Matas: Dublinesque (Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean; Spanish)

Among previous winners are W G Sebald, Per Petterson, José Saramago, Orhan Pamuk, and Milan Kundera. Founded in 1990, the prize has never been awarded to a novel by a woman.

Man Booker International Shortlist

    

Judges of the Man Booker International Prize have broken through from a parallel universe where these ten writers are their finalists for a newish lifetime achievement award given only every other year. You'll note the complete absence of authors who are Spanish, Latino, African, or Arab:

U R Ananthamurthy (India)

Aharon Appelfeld (Israel)

Lydia Davis (USA)

Intizar Husain (Pakistan)

Yan Lianke (China)

Marie NDiaye (France)

Josip Novakovich (Canada)

Marilynne Robinson (USA)

Vladimir Sorokin (Russia) 

Peter Stamm (Switzerland)

Unedited, expat judge Tim Parks said to the press, "Ten wonderful authors, nine of whom I didn't know before I started reading for this prize." Yikes, dude.

If you don't know Yan Lianke, his Dream of Ding Village [Kindle] is an aids novel that was shortlisted for the Asia Booker and his most recent Lenin's Kisses [Kindle] was named a best book of 2012 by The New Yorker, MacLeans, and Kirkus. I was as happy as you when a black woman won the Prix Goncourt in 2009, and last summer Knopf finally brought out the English translation of Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women [Kindle]. Readers of a certain bent may be able to queer their experience of Lydia Davis's novel The End of the Story about an unnamed narrator's obsession with a much younger male ex-lover. And fans of northern wonders Tove Jansson, Gerbrand Bakker, and Per Petterson should certainly seek Peter Stamm's short novel Unformed Landscapes about Kathrine, a woman who has never been below the Arctic Circle until she abandons her husband and son.

The winner of the Man Booker International will be announced May 22.

Failing US Aids Goals Worse than Abroad + 5 Other Articles in Atlantic

MacArthur Fellow Mark Harrington writes in The Atlantic: "Not only is the U.S. [aids] plan not on track to achieve its goals, but they are themselves far less ambitious than what has already been achieved in the past decade in some of the world's poorest countries, such as Cambodia, Ethiopia, or Zambia." Look at this chart lists twenty-five nations -- including India, Thailand, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Ghana -- where new hiv infections fell by more than 50%, while in the US new infection rates have "hovered around 50,000 per year for two decades." Harrington attended a White House event where the administration talked about commitment to ending the pandemic but no official mentioned drug users or reauthorizing Ryan White or PEPFAR. Harrington adds, "In the United States, only 25 percent of the 1.2 million HIV positive people are on effective ART with an undetectable viral load. Only 33 percent are retained in care...Each year Obama has been president, he's cut funding to the CDC and to the TB program."

The magazine has five other articles about aids:

Kenyon Farrow's "Young, Gay, Black -- and at Risk for HIV"

Rebecca Chao on China's Surprising Assault on HIV/AIDS—and a Cultural Taboo

Brian Fung's The Global Geography of HIV: 20 Years of Change—in 1 GIF

And two from John-Manuel Andriote, "Should Everyone HIV+ Be Required to Disclose That to Every Sexual Partner?" (45 states have made failure to disclose a criminal offense) and The Prospects for a 'Sterilizing' HIV Cure.

Send a Card to Someone Wrongly Imprisoned, Like Pussy Riot

The more you see of holiday shoppers, the more you think the Grinch and Scrooge make valid points. Rekindle your generous spirit by sending a message of hope to a struggling activist or someone wrongly imprisoned on Amnesty International's annual Write for Rights campaign.

Among ths year's fiften cases are: 

EPOC, a South African organization fighting homophobia, one of whose workers, Noxolo Nogwaza, was murdered for being a lesbian. In this case Amnesty asks that you NOT include your name or address.

Gao Zhisheng, high-profile human rights lawyer in China.

Azza Suleiman, an activist recovering from brutal injuries received when soldiers beat her in Tahrir Square.

Mehman Huseynov [pictured], who turns 23 today, facing up to 5 years in prison in Azerbaijan on fake charges of hooliganism for meeting with the EuroSong winner prompting her to speak out about human rights violations in his country.

In the US, Reggie Clemons. "For 19 years, Reggie has sat on death row for a murder that even the prosecution agree he didn’t commit."

Young Women for Change (YWC), the grassroots org in Afghanistan.

Anas al-Shogre, detained in Syria.

And of course PUSSY RIOT, who can receive printed cards or phone text messages. 

IMPAC Dublin Longlist

Good on you, Melbourne library, for choosing What the Family Needed, the forthcoming gay-inclusive novel by local gay author Steven Amsterdam, as your nomination for the IMPAC Dublin Award. And isn't it even more invigorating to see that a novel arguing gay culture as the foundation of all culture, Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child, is the nominee from seven places as diverse as Moscow, Belgium, Greece, Prague, New Zealand, London, and San Diego? 

The IMPAC longlist is one of the best snapshots of international reading preferences. This year, libraries in 120 cities in 44 countries nominated 154 books, all in English now but originally published in 19 languages. Among queer books (some by straight authors) on the longlist are:

The Absolutist by John Boyne [nominated by Finland and Liverpool]

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach [eight U.S. cities and Belgium]

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai [Tallahassee]

Damned by Chuck Palahniuk [Naples, Italy]

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst [seven cities]

We the Animals by Justin Torres [NYC and Hartford] 

What the Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam [Melbourne]

Although I'm not familiar with all 154 books, the list noticeably lacks lesbians. 

The year's overall most nominated book is Julian Barnes' Booker winner The Sense of an Ending, chosen by fifteen libraries. The Sisters Brothers is nominated ten times and The Tiger's Wife tied with The Art of Fielding at nine. Last year, Emma Donoghue's Room earned twenty nominations.

Today Is Intersex Awareness Day

If you don't have any intersex friends, where do you get your understanding of what it's like to be a hermaphrodite in a world so strictly devoted to the male/female divide? Hollywood isn't going to help (though Argentina's XXY is highly praised) and television will be the opposite of subtle. As ever, the answer is to read books.

In fiction, start with two giants. One is Kathleen Winter's terrific Annabel [Kindle], which was shortlisted for all three major Canadian book awards, was a finalist for the Orange Prize (losing to The Tiger's Wife), and won the $20,000 Thomas Head Raddall Award. The other is Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex [Kindle] winner of a Pulitzer, an Ambassador Book Award, a Great Lakes Book Award, Spain's Santiago de Compostela Literary Prize, and, for readability, was an Oprah Book Club selection. Middlesex also was a finalist for the NBCC, Lammy, and IMPAC Dublin. If you avoided the book thinking it merely covered protagonist Calliope/Cal's personal struggle, critic Ruth Franklin considers hermaphroditism as a larger metaphor:

"But it functions also, quite effectively, as an image for the many divided American selves—the immigrants, like Calliope’s ancestors, split between the old country and the new; race relations in Detroit in the 1960s, when she/he comes of age there; and the ways people transform themselves, under duress or through force of will, into new creations. Living as a man, Cal ultimately winds up in Berlin after the fall of the Wall, its two halves struggling to reunite."

For a firsthand account of living between genders, get performer Thea Hillman's memoir Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) [Kindle] which Pat Califia calls an "amazing and courageous book." 

In science, try Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by out lesbian Anne Fausto-Sterling, who has taught biology at Brown for forty-one years and is married to Pulitzer-winning playwright Paula Vogel. Others in the crowded nonfiction field are Sharon Preves's Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self, Katrina Karkazis's Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience, Alice Dreger's Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, and Gerald Callahan's Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes.

A new YA novel on the subject is Lianne Simon's Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite [Kindle], which already has a dozen reader reviews averaging 4.7 of 5 stars.

And why October 26, you ask? Sixteen years ago today activists from the Intersex Society of North America and allies from the Transgender Menace protested at an American Academy of Pediatrics conference in Boston where doctors were advocating infant genital surgery on intersex kids in order to make them ‘normal.’ Now the day is commemorated in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia.

Grumpy Old Gays Trash Talk Current Queer Culture in Lovetown

Michal Witkowski rams the gates of nostalgia in his debut novel Lovetown, whose aging gay characters in Poland have the cheek to hanker for the bad old days behind the Iron Curtain. Oh, they were so much younger then, and had no trouble scoring with the inexhaustible supply of Russian soldiers. These gents go by the names "Patricia" and "Lucretia" and they scandalize the gay journalist interviewing them, a newbie who is at once more free and more uptight than they ever were. They complain, "No one has any sense of filth or wrongdoing; it's all about having fun." 

Historical gay novelist Neil Bartlett reviewed it in the Guardian:

"The dark, postmodernist wit of this transformation places the reader in a quandary. Is she or he to join the party, or to watch it from a safe distance?...

"In one cruel and deliciously unreasonable passage a buffed-up muscle-boy (hobbies: monogamy and civil rights) corners the journalist and demands to know why he isn't writing the kind of novel that young gay men such as himself enjoy these days – socially responsible ones about monogamy and civil rights. Turning on this hapless representative of bourgeois "liberation" the full linguistic force of his anti-heroines' scorn, Witkowski makes it clear that contemporary culture abandons at its peril the heritage of survival tactics which his queens cultivated through the dark years. Faced with exclusion and brutality, they kept themselves alive through an unholy marriage of desperation and imagination, constructing an alternative reality that could teach the younger generation a thing or two about empowerment. Or, as a queen called Paula puts it more succinctly in the novel's closing pages: "So take that darling, and put that in one pan of the scales, and in the other put all those gay bars of yours."

Surprisingly for a rad queer novel, Lovetown was longlisted last year with work from Orhan Pamuk, David Grossman, and Per Petterson for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. So far it's been published in 12 languages. 

Danish MP Wants Hans Christian Andersen Gay Festival

Once upon a time there was a thirty year-old MP named Trine Bramsen who wanted her government to sponsor a week-long gay festival celebrating Hans Christian Andersen. She said it would lure queer couples to Andersen's birthplace, Funen, which she represents as a Social Democrat. Her evil opponents laughed wickedly and called her idea "silly." Denmark was the first nation in the universe to legalize same-sex unions, in 1989, the same year Disney bastardized The Little Mermaid with a singing, dancing happy ending. (Andersen's original, dark tale is said to represent his views of relationships, most or all of which were unrequited in his case.) Denmark will extend full marriage equality to gay couples in February, and Trine envisions a tourist bonanza. Topping the list of questions about the festival, who will play the lead in The Emperor's New Clothes?

Serious readers of fairy tales really ought to own these gorgeous editions from Norton: The Annotated Brothers Grimm, The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, and The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales for starters. Later, you should add The Annotated Peter Pan, The Annotated Alice, The Annotated Hunting of the Snark, and The Annotated Wind in the Willows, among many others in the stellar series.

Contemporary followers of fairy tales should consider the career-spanning new Collected Folk Tales by Alan Garner, whom Neil Gaiman called a "national treasure" in his rave review. Readers looking for more blood and vinegar in their tales might try There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.

International Gay Euphoria

Now that the glitter has settled after Hillary's gay speech and Obama's memo, IGLHRC actually read the new policy. Exec Director Jessica Stern said,

"Significantly, neither...said that LGBT rights would become a condition for foreign assistance. Their message, initially misinterpreted in online discussions and by the media, stated clearly that, 'agencies involved with foreign aid…shall enhance their ongoing efforts to…build respect for the human rights of LGBT persons.' To be clear, there were no indications of tying aid to conditions or of cutting aid."

So, we're telling homophobes, Don't worry, nothing will change, you'll still get our money; while telling long-suffering LGBT activists in the developing world, Don't worry, big changes coming. This style of governing used to be mocked as the Queen of Hearts but now is celebrated as Team of Rivals. Toothless and legless, because as merely a presidential memo, it can be instantly undone by the next administration.

The Geneva speech was nice but rather than Do-as-I-Say-Not-as-I-Do grandstanding abroad, we need actual results at home. Clinton said, "gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights," yet she and Obama continue to oppose marriage equality -- based on their personal beliefs. The White Rabbit already explained this: When bad African leaders have personal beliefs that's prejudice, and a violation of international human rights law, and an easy target in an election year.

The true cause for transatlantic euphoria this week is Elio di Rupo, above. Following lesbian Johanna Sigurdardottir as Iceland's PM in 2009, Di Rupo becomes the first openly gay male Prime Minister of a European country. The nation of Tintin and Poirot had been without a federal administration for 541 days. Di Rupo is part of Belgium's French-speaking minority, he's a Socialist, and he came out professionally fifteen years ago in response to a reporter's question as he was getting into a car. He said, "Yes, so what?" He is also an atheist. Rick Warren had no role at his swearing in.

U.S., Pakistan, Amtrak Screwing with Censorship

Last week, the Pakistan Telecommunications Agency issued this list of 1,695 words to the nation's mobile phone companies, giving them one week to block users from texting the "obscene" terms. You've already guessed it includes  gay, gay pride, homosexual, queer, lesbain, lesbayn, lesbian, lesbin, lesbo, lez, lezbo, dike (but not dyke), and ass clown... yet even you with your decades of linguistical depravity won't have guessed the crime of texting: athlete's foot, black out, harder, showtime, kmart, glazed donut, headlights, sixty nine, robber, oui, lowlife, limy, kill, killer, killing, hostage, honkey, hell no, hell yes, deeper, fatso, idiot, stupid, retard, creamy, drunk, jesus christ, or got jesus. The online banking industry won't like the block on "deposit," either. After widespread outcry and international mockery, PTA spokesman Mohammad Younis said the list was never intended to be made public and a final, shorter list will be released later. Chances are, gay terms will stay forbidden.

Filters are no joke. Even Amtrak's wifi blocks users from accessing gay news sites.

Meanwhile, Congress debates the awful, awful SOPA [Stop Online Piracy Act], which would allow any copyright-holding company unfettered power to kill any website it believes infringes upon or is perceived to help users to infringe upon its IP and to cut off advertising revenue and payments to any site thought to be "rogue" -- all without needing a judge's approval. Understated Google testified that they have "a lot of concerns the bill sweeps in legitimate sites." Overstated Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante testified the US system of copyright would "fail" without this bill. Earlier, Silicon Valley Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren said the terrible House proposal, courtesy of a Texas Republican, “would mean the end of the internet as we know it.” Time reports, "the chances it’ll pass are excellent, because it’s backed by powerful business lobbies and has bipartisan majority support in both the House and Senate." But Rep. Darrell Issa told The Hill it has "no chance" of passage in its current form.

Mitko by Garth Greenwell

Last year I was a Lambda judge for debut fiction and to my mind Garth Greenwell’s careful, beguiling new novella Mitkowould have trumped every entry. His craft, authority, and wry observations all confirm the arrival of an exceptional talent. As blurber Honor Moore says, “Mitko is a novella of astonishing force and poignance, and Garth Greenwell’s Sofia, Bulgaria, brings to mind Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin or the Saigon of Marguerite Duras.”

Prepare a place in your permanent pantheon for Mitko B., the tall, slim, big-shouldered, broken-toothed, buzzcut 23 year-old Bulgarian who, very drunk one afternoon in the basement bathroom of the National Palace of Culture, tries to sell our unnamed narrator a paltry sample of weed and, failing that, offers to let the American perform oral sex on him for 10 leva. After a couple more tearoom encounters the narrator invites the homeless Mitko for an overnight in his apartment.

“Never before had I met anyone who combined such transparency (or the semblance of transparency) with such mystery, so that he seemed at once vulnerable, over-exposed, and unrelievedly hidden behind impervious defenses… On my street, the relative prosperity of which marked it off from its neighbors, Mitko turned into a little shop for alcohol and cigarettes… immediately placing both hands palm down on the glass counter, making the shopkeeper wince, and then leaned over to peer at the more expensive bottles where they were displayed on the back wall. He examined several of these, asking the man repeatedly and to his increasing exasperation to pass them over the counter so he could read their labels. In my pre-coital generosity I didn’t balk at the exorbitant result of these deliberations, or at the cheap orange soda he chose to accompany it.”

Before and after sex Mitko is more interested in the narrator’s computer. Shocked at its grime, he first cleans it fastidiously then displays his own hookup profile photo by photo. Bounding out of bed as soon as they’ve finished, he Skypes with older tricks to arrange future meetings and he chats with furtive boys throughout rural Bulgaria whose only connections to gay life are virtual late-night secret sessions hidden from their parents.

“…This was two years ago, he said as I looked at the young man in the image, who stood on Vitosha Boulevard with a bag from one of the posh stores there, his face full to the camera and smiling broadly at whoever held it, showing his unbroken teeth. It was difficult to recognize the man the image as the man beside me; not only was the tooth unbroken, but also his head was unshaved, his hair brown and prosperous, conventionally cut. There was nothing rough or threatening about him at all; he looked like a nice kid, a kid I might have taught at the expensive school where I work. It was difficult to listen to him as he continued speaking, as I found myself strangely unnerved, unable to reconcile the change so short a time had wrought. It was hardly possible they could be the same, this prosperous teenager and the man beside me; since I couldn’t reason how a single life might accommodate them both I found myself wondering which life was real, which face (I looked repeatedly from one to the other) was the true face, and how it had been lost or gained.”

Throughout the book, Greenwell expertly explores these “contradictions that, as they alternate and repeat and thus form patterns and reliances, as much as anything else make up the self.” He enlarges that duality to encompass performance honesty and artifice in an overwrought singer who genuinely moves her audience, and ultimately expands the theme to the irreconcilable twin faces of time and memory in this act of storytelling.

The plot too reinforces the self-contradiction, a fence-straddling relationship that has progressed beyond mere transactions but isn’t an actual friendship, since one half of it is never around unless he’s getting paid. Nowhere do the contradictions churn deeper than in sex itself.

“I fell back from him then, I lay next to him thinking, as I had had cause to think before, of how helpless desire is outside its little theater of heat, how ridiculous it becomes the moment it isn’t welcomed and reflected, even if that reflection is contrived. And also how lonely, even as Mitko was right next to me, naked now and stretched out beside me with his arms behind his head, granting me an unrestricted access that did nothing to assuage my sense of the lack of him, even as it was his warmth next to me that I strove to feel as I brought myself off.”

Get this novella strictly for your enjoyment and illumination. But, if you happen to have been born with an ego, you will also enjoy, as the years pass and future, longer Greenwell books stack up, being able to say you’ve been reading him since Mitko’s debut.

More smart blurbs from Stephen McCauley, David Francis, Robert Boyers, and Margot Livesey after the jump.

Married Lesbian Couple Rescued 40 Teens from Norway Massacre

If, as I insisted, you'd read Tove Jansson's elliptical, elegant Fair Play or her marvelous The Summer Book, you could perfectly envision the Norwegian island chain where married lesbians Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen [adidas] were eating at their campsite when they heard shots and screams across the water. Did they run and hide? No, they're lesbians, so they jumped in their boat and sped toward the slaughter. The women pulled terrified teens from the water and the rocky coast as the insane far-right gunman shot through their vessel. Unfortunately, there were too many youth to fit in the boat. Hege and Toril ferried the group to safety, then hurried back to the massacre, rescuing another boatload. Then they did it yet again. And still again. Altogether in their four trips they saved forty people from the scene where seventy-six died.

The mainstream U.S. media, which loves a hero story almost as much as a tragedy, has been uniformly silent about the lesbian superstars. Instead, you get a gay man, Bruce Bawer, in his self-serving WSJ piece saying how shocked he is to discover his extremist anti-Islam writings are quoted in the extremist anti-Islam writings of a killer. Ignore him and stick with Tove Jansson.

photo: Maija Tammi/HS

EuroWinners: Terrence Malick, Kirsten Dunst, and Azerbaijan

Catching up on two European prizes at opposite ends of the arts spectrum: the Cannes jury awarded its Palme d'Or to the Brad Pitt-Sean Penn family epic The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick and best actress award once again to a suffering woman in a Lars von Trier film, this time Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia. Full Cannes winners here. Best actor was France's Jean Dujardin, 38, and best director Denmark's Nicolas Winding Refn for "Drive" set in Los Angeles and starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan won the all-important Eurovision Song contest thanks to Ell & Nikki's duet "Running Scared." Second place was Italy's Raphael Gualazzi, 29, with "Follia D'Amore" and third place Sweden's Eric Saade, 20, with "Popular" below. Another of Eric's songs is "Manboy."

The Radiation Network

Information junkies can now monitor radiation levels throughout the U.S., updated every minute at the Radiation Network. The fine print says the Alaska monitor, in Anchorage, is located indoors.

Your interest may be amped by conflicting reports today about Japan's nuclear woes. The Vancouver Sun begins "One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did sustain a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time on Thursday, describing finding a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel." The NYT puts these facts midway through their brief article -- "That indicated that the exposed fuel has probably melted and slumped to the bottom of the vessel in little pellets" -- and avoids using the term meltdown other than to report the plant did not sustain a "full meltdown." The reporter emphasizes the upbeat, quoting a scientist David Lochbaum from "a nonprofit group usually critical of the nuclear industry," saying, "As bad as things are, they’re getting better." Tepco had earlier said it would take six to nine months to bring the plant under control; now, it will be longer.

Yesterday Greenpeace released a study finding 10 of the 22 seaweed samples they collected 40 miles from the stricken plant contain up to five times the legal limits of Iodine-131 and Caesium-137. Seaweed is a staple of the Japanese diet and the annual harvest begins next Friday.