Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories

 

   PEN America and the Tompkins Agency for Ukrainian Literature in translation have published this book of short stories. The proceeds from the sale of the book are donated to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

  Ukrainians are fighting for their independence because they do not want to live under Vladimir Putin’s Orwellian regime. I wrote about Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia when I wrote about Oleg Sentsov, so you can check my post if you haven't done so. Ukraine was invaded by Russian forces on February 24, 2022, and since then Ukrainians have been fighting to protect their democracy from the forces of Vladimir Putin.

 Love in Defiance of Pain contains eighteen short stories and an insightful introduction by Adam Higginbotham. His words capture the spirit of resilience of the Ukrainian people and bring to light some of the historical information that helps us to understand the characters and plots.

  Many of the short stories transport us to Ukraine, revealing aspects of her history and culture. However, not all of them take place in Ukraine. For example, “Frogs in the Sea” by Tanja Maljartschuk unfolds in Austria, where an undocumented Ukrainian man befriends a senior woman with dementia. The ending was shocking because it reminded me of the ways meaningful acts of kindness are sometimes treated with distrust and disrespect due to a combination of prejudices, cruelty and ignorance.

   Many of the stories are realistic, but there are a few of them that contain elements of fantasy or that are surreal. The anthology is like a box of artisan chocolates to be enjoyed slowly. Some of the stories are nostalgic. Some are peculiar and engaging. There are two or three stories that I found boring. I think there is something for everybody here, because the stories are all different. Some of them have shocking, unexpected endings. Others have an ending where you least expect it.

  One of my favorite stories is by Natalka Sniadanko: “When to Start, What Not to Pay Attention to, or How to Fall in Love with George Michael.” It is quirky and humorous. On the other hand, I did not like the one by Vasyl Makhno, which takes place in New York. In this disturbing story the men are portrayed as helpless victims and the women are the hopeless deceivers. There is no love in defiance of pain here. It is the kind of story that traps us into a groove of biases and social prejudices that will not allow us to break glass ceilings. It perpetuates the rigid mindsets that will continue to empower toxic bullies, but this is just my humble opinion on it. Read it yourself and reach your own conclusions.

    I still have seven stories to read from a total of eighteen, and I don’t read them in order. I will come back to write an addendum to the post later this month if there is something else that needs to be shared.

 

Relevant links:

https://pen.org/

https://www.tault.org/about-us

 Addendum: I was sad to learn that Vladimir Putin launched an inhumane attack on Unkraine on Christmas Day. He targeted Ukraine's infrastructure to disrupt their Christmas celebrations. Horrifying and vile. Every healthy democracy should stand up against acts of terrorism like the ones Putin perpetrates against Ukraine:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/least-3-people-injured-russian-missile-attack-ukraines-kharkiv-mayor-says-2024-12-25/

Ride Cycle The World by Eyewitness

 

  I am thankful to live in a place where drivers are respectful to bikers. I use my bike as a means of transportation whenever I can. It fills my heart with joy to see the smiles of children as they persuade their mothers to get out on their bicycles instead of using their car.

 The rippling effects of biking go beyond a simple ride. I cherish the sense of freedom and lightness biking affords, for it expands the mind and invigorates the body. Whether you choose a quiet ride by the pine trees, a jaunt through the countryside or the exploration of a city, you get the chance to appreciate the experience of being fully present, to absorb the unique beauty of each scene, and to inhale the scents with a curious mindset.  

 

You become motivated to welcome the surroundings with a renewed sense of wonder and delight.

 

 Ride Cycle the World takes the adventure to a new dimension: it invites us to use the bicycle for journeys across the globe.

 In this book you will find ideas to take your bike across various landscapes and cultures. There are practical recommendations, photographs and maps to inspire everyone. You can choose the routes that suit you.

 I haven’t finished this book because I like to savor it slowly. Every night before going to sleep I read three pages from Ride Cycle The World to go on an imaginary ride somewhere. Every page awakens the mystery of a new adventure, offering a path, trail, or road that regales you with ideas on what to enjoy about a specific place that will lead you to discover new sites and opportunities to rejoice.

 

  The book takes you to every continent except Antarctica… I don’t know if I will ever make these trips, but the marvel of any ride—even if it’s close to home—creates more space to dream and to relish the magic of every moment through a deeper perception.

  Who doesn’t love the excitement of reaching a special peaceful spot? When the city gets too noisy and crowded, a bike can help us find a place that leaves us in awe, a sanctuary where the mind rests and restores itself, where we feel a deeper communion with Mother Nature.

 

 Have fun reading more posts/blogs related to bicycling:

https://travellingtwo.com/

https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a35866989/historic-women-in-cycling/

Bicycling with Butterflies, a review of Sara Dykman's book

The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion and Coexistence in the Human Age by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce

 

“The Animals’ Agenda brings us closer to the day when our behavior toward our fellow species is determined not by convenience or greed but by compassion.” Sy Montgomery

 

 It is a common “mistake” to make generalizations about groups of people, and this mistake is also made in relation to animals. Just like people, animals have individual personalities. Their intelligence and intuition allow them to adapt to their environment. They have emotions and they experience trauma. Despite the scientific progress made in understanding animal cognition and behaviors, the poor treatment of animals continues to ignore the suffering and pain humans inflict upon them.

  The Animals' Agenda by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce is a detailed account of our interactions with animals; the authors propose solutions that can be applied to address these issues.

 Animal sentience is well established in the scientific community, so why is it okay to disregard the ethical implications of this knowledge?

 What is the meaning of freedom? According to Hope Ferdowsian, physician and bioethicist, freedom for animals has the same meaning that it has for humans. “Freedom to meet our basic physical needs, whatever those might be by species and individual—including freedom of movement (bodily liberty); safe and secure from harm from humans (bodily integrity—and this should include freedom from harm to the mind); freedom to love and bond with whom we wish; respect for our choices, and freedom from humiliation and intentional shaming.”

  The Animals' Agenda reveals the ways in which we mistreat animals, and it opens the door to a new possibility: the hope to turn the Anthropocene, or Age of Humanity, into the “Compassionocene.” First, The Animals’ Agenda sets the path to acknowledge how the consequences of our actions have effects on our own lives, so we are not immune to these consequences.

  There is no way out of the chaos unless we choose a path of compassion and understanding.

   What we do to others, we do to ourselves. Changes need to happen from the heart. Caring for others is intelligence in action.

     It was devastating and disturbing to learn about the details of the massacre in a school in Texas. As a mother myself, my heart breaks for the lives of the kids and the teachers lost. A hater shot 19 children and two teachers, but first he shot his grandmother. Then he had enough time to crash his grandmother’s car and to perform these atrocities inside the school building while enforcement officials hesitated outside and stopped parents from breaking into the building to be with their children.

 The hater had bought the ammunitions on his eighteenth birthday. Every detail of this horrifying event is traumatizing. There are no words to describe the desperation I feel as I type this paragraph.

  The hater responsible for killing 21 people had a history of abusing animals. Not only did he abuse animals but he also promoted the abuse of animals by sharing photos on social media. 

  Animal abuse should never be ignored.

  The white supremacist in Buffalo, New York, who killed ten people at the grocery store two weeks ago, has a history of animal abuse, and it had never been reported. Why?

  How is it possible that the person who whines about “politicization” of the shootings receives large amounts of money from pro-gun groups for his political campaigns? His statement is not only contradictory, but the whole situation seems to have been taken from a terrifying dystopian novel. And why is animal abuse not taken seriously?

  I wrote about the association between cruelty toward animals and criminal behavior when I reviewed the book Second Nature by Jonathan Balcombe. You can also learn about this by reading the link of the Humane Society I provide at the bottom of this post.

 The way we treat animals is indeed a reflection of how we fail on many levels.

I am sharing an articles that may be of interest to you:

https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/the-link-between-animal-cruelty-and-human-violence

 

Life Went on Anyway by Oleg Sentsov

 

  Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was born in Simferopol, Crimea. He is also a dramatist, a writer and an activist. In May 2014, under Vladimir Putin’s Orwellian regime, he was arrested in Crimea due to false accusations. The FSB (Russian Secret Services) persecuted dissidents; the Kremlin hates opponents of the Russian Propaganda.

   Oleg Sentsov opposed the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine and his only “crime” was to bring food and supplies to the Ukrainian soldiers trapped in Crimean bases, but the FSB accused him of being a terrorist. He was beaten, tortured, suffocated and forced to confess, but he never gave in. Oleg Sentsov stood by his principles. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Russia.

  Oleg Sentsov became a symbol of the Russian’s state disregard for human dignity and basic human rights. International Human Rights organizations condemned his imprisonment and considered it a way of the Russian Government to quash dissent.

  In 2018 Oleg Sentsov went on a hunger strike for 145 days to advocate for the release of 70 Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. This was an incredible act of courage. As a consequence of this, he lost 66 pounds, but he was also awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. Thankfully, he was released in September 2019.

  Oleg Sentsov’s Life Went on Anyway, translated by Uillean Blacker, shares life vignettes of his childhood and youth. His writing style is honest and straightforward.  He does not sugarcoat his experiences, but neither does he dwell on them with pessimism.

  His life stories may have carved the path of his activism in his adult years. They sound simple. Yet you may find yourself reflecting on them after you finish the read.

   Life Went on Anyway is not about Sentsov’s activism, even though the translator provides an introduction and a background to help us understand the political situation.

  Sentsov introduces himself by explaining that he had a happy childhood, and he did if you consider the love of his family and his dog, and the community of friends in his neighborhood, where he played outdoors until it got dark. However, his childhood years also had a sad side, which may have molded the fabric of his current resilience.

  His attitude toward school was ambiguous. “I liked school, but not for long. I liked studying, but not necessarily going to school. The Soviet education broke me down with its routine, its rote learning, its ponderous lessons as thick as tar. I liked gymnastics, woodwork and metalwork, and the breaks, when you at least had some kind of freedom.”

  He also loved literature and history. However, his teachers did not welcome his inquisitive nature. The teachers sent him out of the class often for asking too many questions that nobody else asked.

 “I spent half of my literature and history classes in the corridor.” He had the highest grades and wrote remarkable essays, which the teachers liked to read aloud, but the other students were not impressed.

 Starting in fourth grade, he became an outcast among his peers. The other students mocked him and ridiculed him regularly, and nobody stood up for him. He endured five years of humiliation in school, fighting the bullies and defending himself however he could. He never told his mother about this, but she could sense something, and she suggested that he could change schools. (This never happened, however, and the bullying lasted five years).

  “In class, in the corridor, in the changing-room, in the sports hall, in the canteen, in the toilet, in the park behind the school, everywhere. Five years of hell.”

    Life went on, and the bullying eventually stopped. In his book Oleg gives advice to his younger self…and I will let you search for his wise advice when you get to read his book.

  Another past event that may have left a deep imprint in him happened in a hospital. When Oleg was thirteen he had a tonsillectomy. During his hospital stay he witnessed how a boy mocked a child with Down syndrome. Oleg observed what happened and was silent about it then, but the scene stayed with him. Oleg never forgot how a child with Down syndrome had been humiliated.

 All these experiences may have shaped the activist he is today.

 Oleg Sentsov is now fighting in Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

 Wherever he is, I hope he is safe. I also look forward to watching his films and to reading more of his works.

 Sentsov’s works include two books of short stories, several scripts, plays, essays, and films. In 2016 he was awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine, the country’s highest honor for artistic achievement. In 2017 he received the PEN/Barbey Freedom to write award.

 To end this post I will share some informative thought-provoking articles:

 https://theconversation.com/putins-brazen-manipulation-of-language-is-a-perfect-example-of-orwellian-doublespeak-178865

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60891801

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/29/online-abuse-lawsuits-gendered-personal-attacks

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/vladimir-putins-rewriting-of-history-draws-on-a-long-tradition-of-soviet-myth-making-180979724/ 

Till next time.

 

 

"1984" by George Orwell

"Of course the people do not want war... But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. " German Field Marshall

 A reader of this blog took the time to e-mail me the post I deleted by accident. Thank you , Claire. I appreciate your time and cooperation.

 Today I’m publishing my post on “1984” again, with a few “upgrades”.

  If there is something about the plot and/or characters that offends somebody, please bear with it. George Orwell is now dead so you can’t bully the author. Excuse my sense of humor here. I know, I know. Women are not expected to have this kind of sense of humor (unless they use it to pester a woman who opposes the bully in power).

 Thankfully, I’m married to a man who loves my sense of humor.

 Do people get annoyed by the use of pen-names? Hopefully not because George Orwell is a pen-name. Ladies and gentlemen: live and let live.

Here’s my essay on “1984” by George Orwell.

 ‘1984’ is a dystopian novel about a country called Oceania. (The name Oceania probably alludes to the isolationist nature of its people).  Oceania  is constantly at war, but its citizens do not know why it is at war. They do support it, though, because anybody who is not a supporter is considered a traitor.

  Hatred and rage fuel the support of this endless war. 

 Anyone who dares to oppose the dictator’s ideas or think differently is vilified and will disappear. Those who work for the party are instructed to manipulate the truth as needed.  In fact, nobody is expected to  care about the truth because their lives would be at stake if they did. Freedom is considered to be blind obedience to the leader. 
 Physical movements and facial expressions are closely monitored by screens in people’s homes, political prisoners are treated worse than criminals and love does not exist; hatred and fear condition everybody’s behavior. Blind obedience to Big Brother is what matters.

 Torture and starvation await anybody who dares to challenge the system in any way.  Another strategy of the ruling Party is to destroy words. “We’re cutting the language down to the bone. Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” “There will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

  Winston is a thirty-nine year-old man who works for the Ministry of Truth. He helps to change the historical facts but, in reality, he is a free thinking person who would like to sabotage Big Brother’s dictatorship. He falls in love with a woman, and they both challenge the system by loving each other and having secret encounters that they must plan in advance.

 When Winston becomes a political prisoner a member of the inner Party confesses to him, “Our civilization is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything. Already we have destroyed the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. ..”

   “There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science”.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power”. “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”.

 The truth is distorted to meet the leader’s interests; conformity becomes the rule.

 The society in which the authoritarian regime thrives is designed carefully to disregard critical thinking and to believe blindly in their leader. His authority is not to be questioned, and those who dare do it are punished and labeled as enemies. George Orwell portrays the dynamics of this society with striking details.

 The features that make Big Brother powerful are the following:

-Fanaticism

-Scapegoating

-Exacerbated nationalism

-Mindless slogans and repeated lies

-The destruction of language

-Use of songs and ceremonies to venerate the leader

  The past becomes mutable for the government can manipulate history by rewriting the historical facts and changing the data to keep the dictator in power.  This is done because the omnipotence of the dictator can only be preserved through lies and irrationality. 

  In Oceania the proletarians - also called “the proles”- are the majority of the population. The Party claimed to have liberated “the proles”, but, in reality, the dictator does not care about them.

“So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.”

“All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations”.

   Contradictions are at the heart of the regime. In ‘1984’ the Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. 

    The question that lingers in my mind is whether these totalitarian leaders succeed because of the ignorance and/ or apathy of the masses or the conformism of the intellectuals. I think it is a combination of both. As Albert Einstein said, “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

Can you see it too?

Did you know that frogs help to curb the population of mosquitoes?

My daughter and I love frogs, so when I heard about a two-week summer camp that focuses on frogs I signed her up for it. The kids go on field trips, do crafts and learn about frogs.

  I was disappointed to see that they keep frogs in bowls. My daughter talked to the teacher about setting them free and she was told that those frogs belong to them. Then I explained to my daughter that those frogs do not belong to human beings; they belong to nature.

 We don’t need to be smart to understand that those frogs are suffering.  
  Is this the way they teach about compassion to kids?

 Are they imparting the message that their suffering is okay as long as we ignore it?
 Being more powerful than the frogs does not mean that it is acceptable to imprison them.

 I promised my daughter that I will write a letter to her teacher.

 Later that day we came across this lovely picture book at the local library: Growing Frogs by Vivian French; it was illustrated by Alison Bartlett.

 On the first page we read the following words:

 Frogs are in danger. Please help!

Rules for frog-lovers:

Don’t take frog spawn from a pond in the wild

You should only take frog spawn from a man-made pond and only take a little.

Always take your frogs back to the pond they came from.

 We live in a neighborhood of educated people. Yet they seem to ignore that the chemicals they use to kill weeds are harming frogs. How about teaching kids about compassion by respecting nature?

 Ignorance has its own consequences. Human beings are also part of nature and, whether we acknowledge it or not, pesticides end up in the water we drink.

On Freedom and banned books

"Think wrongly if you please but in all cases think for yourself."~ Doris Lessing

In this era of television screens everywhere, drones and cookies I think of George Orwell and conclude that he was indeed a visionary. Television screens are highly efficient at manipulating the masses, and then there is another issue that curbs freedom: censorship.

 Those who ban books may believe that they have a higher “sense of morality” but I doubt the morality of those who abuse their power by banning books.

 I believe censoring a book is a violation of people’s freedom: the decision to read or not to read a book belongs to each individual person.

  What does the act of banning a book entail? Let’s analyze it.

 When somebody bans a book or makes an attempt to ban it, they are taking for granted that their opinion is more relevant than anybody else’s opinions. They do not give others the chance to read the book themselves and to reach their own conclusions regarding the quality or the significance of it.

   Do the people who censor books believe they are superior to the rest of the population? They are certainly not an example of humility but the epitome of manipulation and control which George Orwell portrayed so well in “1984” and “Animal Farm”. Not surprisingly these books have been censored and are still censored in some places.

 Another term that I want to challenge is that of the “challenged books”. When they say that a book has been challenged, they mean that a group of persons made an attempt to censor it or to restrict the access to it in some way.
 Challenging a book should carry a different meaning, though. It should be about reading a book and having an open discussion about it. In order to grow and learn we should all be allowed to read the book first. Then we can have a healthy discussion on it.

 I appreciate the opportunity to read other people’s opinions on books I read.  I may agree or disagree with them, but in both cases I find it enriching to learn what other people think about the same stories I have read. It is also thrilling to discover the different paths that a book can take in the minds of different readers.

 When I was writing this post I came across the news that a blogger in Saudi Arabia will be flogged 50 times every Friday during 20 weeks in a public square because he criticized Islam on his blog. His name is Raif Badawi.
 Raif Badawi is also jailed for ten years  due to the fact that he was brave enough to express his opinion.  (George Orwell shows in his novel 1984 how  prisoners of conscience  are subjected to ill-treatment and boundless cruelty.)
   Raif should be in Canada with his family now, but he is currently in prison, suffering the consequences of this torture.
I have signed a petition to ask the authorities to release him and to drop the charges. Here is the link.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." — Martin Luther King Jr., who was born on this day in 1929.

Homage to Catalonia

“One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war- propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

George Orwell

   I already wrote about George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London”, a non-fiction book about his life as a homeless man in the early 1930's in Paris and London.

George Orwell died at age 46. During his short life he fought in the Spanish Civil War. In Homage to Catalonia George Orwell transports us to Barcelona during the years 1936 and 1937.  Without sentimentality, he exposed the reality of a war that gnawed at the human spirit.

  It is an invaluable feat to be able to reveal one’s truth while acknowledging that this truth may be biased by one’s personal perspectives. I believe this is a sign of wisdom, a humble approach to sharing personal experiences:

      “I hope the account I have given is not too misleading. I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan. Beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war.”

 As he described the different political movements (anarchists, communists, PUOM), I came to the realization that the boundaries between them became blurred. Orwell explored a territory that was crippled by deception, paranoia, hatred, and false accusations between the parties.

 Aside from plumbing the tendencies and features of the political parties that were involved in this war, George Orwell narrated the shocking details of his daily life during this chaotic time. The soldiers were unable to change their clothes for months. When they slept they had to keep their boots on lest somebody attack them.

  “All of us were lousy by this time; though still cold it was warm enough for that. I have had a big experience of body vermin of various kinds and for sheer beastliness the louse beats everything I have encountered. Other insects, mosquitoes for instance, make you suffer more, but at least they aren’t resident vermin. The human louse somewhat resembles a tiny lobster, and he lives chiefly in your trousers. Short of burning all your clothes there is no known way of getting rid of him. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of their own at horrible speed. I think the pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate their pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war, indeed! In war all soldiers are lousy, at least when it was warm enough. The men who fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae—every one of them had lice crawling his testicles.”

  The atmosphere of suspicion made everybody paranoid:

“Various people were infected with spy mania and were creeping round whispering that everyone else was a spy of the Communists, or the Trotskyists, or the Anarchists, or what-not. The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot.  I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies—unless one counts the journalists.”

 Unlike the journalists, Orwell tried his best to be objective by exposing what he witnessed.

   Enticed by the ideals of freedom and equality Orwell fought for the PUOM.  He believed that fighting was necessary to defeat fascism. Yet, at later stages, the group for which he fought was accused of being fascist and was suppressed by law. This meant that every person who had been enlisted was persecuted and incarcerated without trial.  For this reason George Orwell and his wife had to escape from Spain. They fled to France with the aid of the British consul.

  Political prisoners lived on scanty food, in filthy conditions, under the pressure of an uncertain future.  People who tried to visit the prisoners more than once were considered suspicious and ran the risk of ending up in jail for no reason.

 Another interesting aspect of his memoir is the description of Barcelona at different stages of the revolution.  Not only did he describe what the city looked like through vivid, interesting scenes, but he also disclosed the way people behaved and interacted.

  All in all, this memoir is a vivid testimony of a period ravaged by war. It is the story of a man who dared to show how his ideals were at odds with the political reality. Orwell expanded these situations and experiences by carrying them into the realm of fiction: he wrote his novels 1984 and Animal Farm, two masterpieces that explore the deceit of the totalitarian regimes. In doing so, he dwelt on the stratagems of the political power, the slogans and the realities underlying those slogans.  

   Orwell was an Englishman fighting in Spain, and the fact that he was an outsider made the stories even more compelling. Even though he had seen the darkest side of humanity during the war, he did not lose his faith in human decency. He had met Spaniards who had given him whatever they could to help him. Their kindness was heartwarming-- to the point of being comical at times.

 After reading this book I pondered over the concepts of reality and truth. Reality is what really happens. Truth is the perception of reality. People can tell you different “truths” about a specific event, and their different versions of reality are colored by their preconceptions.
 A totalitarian regime imposes the existence of an absolute truth, and those who do not adhere to it are in trouble.

Homage to Catalonia sold poorly in England and it was not even published in America. Perhaps reality is not always welcomed by the masses.

The Invention of Morel

 After being accused of a crime he did not commit, a man flees to an island by boat. This man is a writer. He documents his experiences in a diary.
 This mysterious island has a museum, a church and a swimming pool.

 Living on this island is an experience of survival and discoveries. This is a place that hides many secrets. The sea catches him by surprise if he is not attentive to the tides. Surviving is a daily challenge. He navigates the vicissitudes of freedom, uncertainty and solitude.

 There are other human beings on this island, but they appear to be detached from him. One day he falls in love with a woman who contemplates the sunset every day. The woman ignores the narrator. Sometimes she reads a book. Sometimes a man with a beard is by her side, conversing with her. This man's name is Morel. Is she in love with Morel?
 Is this woman a real woman? Is the narrator truly in love with this woman, or is he obsessed with her?

 One cannot help but wonder, along with the narrator, if the other people on the island are aware of the writer's existence. Are they planning to catch him? Do their conversations have anything to do with his life?

Suspense, intrigue and magical realism intertwine throughout the novella to encourage our imagination to play with the vivid settings of this enigmatic island, and as we follow the writer's story, the limits between fantasy and reality become blurred.
 We are invited to accept our creativity as the soul of our own existence or as a projection of somebody's desires.

  The Invention of Morel is a novella written by Adolfo Bioy Casares(1914-1999), an Argentinian author who won several awards, including The French Legion of Honor (1981), The Diamond Konex Award of Literature (1994) and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1991).