Summary 2084: The End of the World
Pues me ha dejado un poco meh esta novelita. Me encanta el género distópico, y esta obra tenía muchos puntos para gustarme, y mucho. ¿Lo ha hecho? Pichi picha.
La idea de base me parece tremendamente atractiva: un mundo futuro en el que el fundamentalismo islámico más radical ha conseguido conquistarlo todo (o eso es lo que quieren hacer creer al pueblo). Además, las casi constantes referencias/homenajes al 1984 de Orwell, ayudan a meterse en la agobiante y opresiva atmósfera del mundo de Abistán.
¿Cuál es entonces el problema? Es una novela aburrida, MUY aburrida, en la que no pasa apenas nada, y en la que las andanzas de su protagonista, Ati, no son más que una mera excusa para soltarnos, página tras página, diversos aspectos de la sociedad abistaní. Lo cual estaría muy bien si se profundizase en dicho tema, convirtiéndose esta obra en una suerte de reflejo descarnado de la utopía moriana. Pero lamentablemente no es así, limitándose a dar algunas ideas deslavazadas que no consiguen mantener el interés en lo que nos cuenta Sansal.
Una pena, ya que podría haber sido la novela distópica de esta década... 240 References to Orwell abound in this prize-winning novel my Sansal about a totalitarian state and the protagonists slow self-realization and rebellion. Curiously, all the first names consist of only three letters and the politics and scenery are primarily inspired by the middle east. Those having already read dystopian fiction will not be surprised by the totalitarian aspects of the world created here. I found that the characters were rather two-dimensional and that the world lacked originality. Perhaps, in particular, I was put off by the rather long introduction to the country because it takes quite a while before we really meet the protagonist. Perhaps some other commenters had a more fulfilling reading experience of this one than I did? 240 En injustísimo ponerle una estrella a esto. Ha sido un calvario. Si me encuentro con el escritor, lo persigo a paraguazos por la calle.
El club de los sueños. 240 It is hard to describe my reading experience for this one; but chewing off a piece of wood was the closest feeling I got. 2084: The End of the World has a claim of carrying the banner of modern, fundamentalist dystopia. What it delivers, however, is a ridiculously feeble effort of political satire.
Even tough I put some effort to give a token of appreciation for a single aspect of this sloppy novel, I failed to find any. Its story is unimaginative, implausible, stereotypical and riddled with gigantic plot holes. Its characters are shallow and two-dimensional. The writing style is pedantic and cumbersome. Its philosophical discussions are at high-school level low. Its attributions to Islam are obscenely obvious, as if we -readers- are morons and would miss any subtle reference. This novel is an insult to the reader's intellect and surely a bore for admirers of the original masterwork, 1984.
The bottom line, 2084 is nothing but an ink spot staining the legacy of Orwell's 1984. The author's winning of French Academy Grand Prix with this pile of crap is likely to be a hoax, if not an attempt to gratify anti-Islamic disposition of Sansal. That's the French zeitgeist for this epoch after all... 240 Imagine a world dominated by one religion, where the vernacular language is stripped to the bare essentials and other languages are cast out ? Where history records have been re-written and people's moves are painstakingly watched? Sounds familiar right? You are thinking of 1984.. I know
The plot is poorly developed and the characters lack depth except Ati, the protagonist. Ati, after his journey at the Sanatorium, started to doubt and question the things around him. We follow his peregrinations marked with peril in order to quench his curiosity.
The writing is beautiful and what makes this book good is the author's reflexions on religion, language, freedom, the other sides of the border, if such a border exists at all .. 240
WINNER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY GRAND PRIX
A tribute to George Orwell's 1984 and a cry of protest against totalitarianism of all kinds, Sansal's 2084 tells the story of a near future in which Islamic fundamentalists have established an oppressive caliphate where autonomus thought is forbidden.
It is the year 2084. In the kingdom of Abistan named after the prophet Abi, earthly messenger of the god Yolah citizens submit to a single god, demonstrating their devotion by kneeling in prayer nine times a day. Autonomous thought has been banned, remembering is forbidden, and an omnipresent surveillance system instantly informs the authorities of every deviant act, thought, or idea. The kingdom is blessed and its citizens are happy, filled with a sense of purpose and piety. Those who are not the heretics are put to death by stoning or beheading in city squares. But Ati has met people who think differently; in ghettos and caves, hidden from the authorities, exist the last living heretics and free-thinkers of Abistan. Under their influence, Ati begins to doubt. He begins to think. Now, he will have to defend his thoughts with his life.
[In 2084] Sansal dared to go much further than I did, said Michel Houellebecq, the controversial novelist most recently of Submission. 2084 is a cry of freedom, a call to rebellion, a gripping satirical novel of ideas, and an indictment of the religious fundamentalism that, with its hypocrisy and closed-mindedness, threatens our modern democracies and the ideals on which they are founded. 2084: The End of the World
I just read Ayoub El Mouzaïne's take down of Chanson Douce and the Prix Goncourt more generally on Arablit, and it reminded me that I had intended to review 2084 at some point after abandoning it on my Southwest road trip. Not even the clever coincidence of the title and my carrying around of this book around the Grand Canyon could encourage me to make it past the second section. This book was garbage. Native informant red meat for the people at Galligrasseuil, such a passionless boogeymanning of Islam you'd think it was ghost written by Pamela Geller.
I can barely bring myself to describe the plot. It involves a single gimmick of high school fan-fiction sophistication. If two years ago it was all the rage for North Africans to riff off of classics like l'etranger, this year we get a terrible Orwell impression. In the book — Ati, who has spent two years in a sanatorium, meets an archaeologist, Nas, who has found evidence of a village in which men escape the power of the prophet Abi and his religion worshipping Yölah. Yölah? I believe this is breaking at least three fantasy fiction rules for naming characters. Yölah is such a goddamn ridiculous fig-leaf, one-assonant change from Allah, it's almost too obvious to be satire. In English it would be equivalent to saying the prophet shmohammed who preaches of Shallah. Ati later goes on to reveal the lies which make up the ideology of Abistan (a.k.a. Agraba, city of wonder and enchantment). Between that Hardy-Boys-level-of-narrative-sophistication plot, the authors describes a dystopian theocratic world in which independent, critical thought is suppressed by the demands of religion, enforced by technology. Why would you want to read such a sloppy, lazy allegorical attack on religion set in a desert dystopia when you could just read Dune?
The protagonist is somehow the victim of the horrors of theocratic denkverbot, stranded at a sanatarium at the edges of an empire suffering from complete cultural amnesia, but acknowledges as much using practically the same words. An even remotely plausible narrator in this situation wouldn't realize the conditions of ideological oppression, otherwise they would be about ready to collapse. Even at the brink, it would be more likely that a person would still be living under the spell of the eternal nature of their life world, what Alexei Yurchak describes in his book title on the last Soviet generation as Everything Was For Ever, Until It Was No More. There is no effort to portray the experiential depth of life under the hypnosis of theocracy, just a bunch of fucking silly set pieces like electronic prayer monitors, and invented languages. Even those aren't introduced or used to any effect, just there to make the reader mutter under her breath oh, I get it, it's like 1984 but with Muslims.
That is unless, unless Boualem Sansal and the entire French literary establishment (and I can't imagine Houellebecq having the Andy Kaufman-esque sense of humor to pull it off) are all working together to pull off the greatest literary hoax of all time, in which they all laud a book that is so obviously stupid, written hastily like a prop in a movie you can only see in passing, a book jacket with The Threat of Sh-islam written on it. A conspiracy whose aim is to ridicule the entire edifice of intellectual production and their completely predictable islamophobia all in the effort of once and for all making a meaningful statement on the lingering Vichy-ist cancer deep in the heart of French culture using the power of irony.
240 Spicuiri din recenzia finala care se gaseste pe blogul meu
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La o lectură atentă, lectură la care nu îndrăznesc să invit pe nimeni, un cititor cu mintea creață și total iresponsabil față de viața sa socială, ar putea ajunge la concluzia că ambițiile lui Sansal sunt mai mari decât 1984 al lui Orwell și că bate chiar către Muntele vrăjit al lui Thomas Mann. Ati e ftizic și se drege la un sanatoriu dubios, plin de morți, pe un munte, munte pe care șede și cugetă la regimul care-i conduce țara. Și trece în revistă, ca tot omul, întreg sistemul, că doar ce să facă și el ca tot bolândul pe patul de spital? Ati este o combinație dintre Hans Castorp și Settembrini, Sansal reușind să-i amestece pe amândoi într-un singur personaj cu ajutorul divagațiilor pe marginea statului totalitarist din Absurdistan. Și astfel am ajuns și eu să înțeleg de ce Sansal a primit prestigiosul premiu al Academiei: pentru că țintește sus, iar profunzimea, dacă e suficient de „profundă și bine dosită, poate să ofere oricui motivații suficiente pentru a-l ridica în slăvi pe respectivul păstrător al acesteia.
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240 Une intrigue sans queue ni tête, une réflexion superficielle, des personnages sans épaisseur, un style hétéroclite mi-ampoulé mi-vulgaire bourré d’adjectifs comme on bourre les aliments de colorants, rien n’explique le succès de ce bouquin.
J’ai l’impression que certains ont cherché à récompenser le roman qu’ils auraient souhaité lire, et non le roman qu’ils ont eu sous les yeux. 2084 est très, très en dessous de son illustre modèle.
Je cite quelques extraits pris au hasard pour illustrer le style. On notera au passage l’usage inapproprié de la virgule qui semble être une tendance de fond de la littérature française contemporaine.
« Ari et Kao se sentaient écrasés par la majesté, tout était colossal, démesuré, au-delà des dimensions humaines. »
« Ati et Koa étaient effondrés, les énormes riques qu’ils avaient pris et leur extraordinaire traversée de Qodsabad n’avaient servi à rien »
« Ils ne le comprenaient pas, ce fichu mot, il était terrifiant : “Disparu” voulait dire quoi, que Nas était mort, qu’il avait était arrêté, exécuté, enlevé, qui s’était enfui ? » 240 2084 est assez différent de la présentation qu'en ont fait les critiques et les médias. On suit Ati, un jeune homme en proie à une crise existentielle qui l'amène à remettre en cause les fondements de l'Abistan, l'empire mondialisé totalitaire dirigé par des fanatiques religieux (l'islam n'est jamais mentionné mais on devine sans peine que l'auteur cible cette religion).
Cependant, l'intrigue est peu développée, voire secondaire. L'auteur nous livre ses réflexions, parfois poétiques, sur le totalitarisme, la religion, l'ordre et la liberté qui résonnent avec justesse mais qui peinent à entrainer le lecteur dans le récit (j'ai dû m'accrocher au début pour ne pas abandonner la lecture). De même, l'Abistan prend peu forme et n'est décrit que partiellement, on peine à se représenter cet État totalitaire et il demeure une abstraction. En ce sens, 1984 d'Orwell, auquel Boualem Sansal fait référence à de nombreuses reprises, est bien plus puissant et frappe davantage les esprits.
Cela étant, le livre est très bien écrit, les dernières pages sont très belles. À recommander aux amateurs de littérature contemporaine et aux passionnés de questions religieuses et politiques.
240 2084? *raises eyebrows*
1984 is calling, it wants its concept back.
I feel like I should like this more. I feel like, given the French Academy prize it received and the hype around it, I should've liked it more. But I didn't - and that bothers me. It got close to getting 4 stars from time to time, but I couldn't be swayed past 3.5. I have read a lot of books in my time, but rarely am I confused about how much I liked one - maybe that in itself is the best sign that 2084 isn't a bad book at all. It's just... well, it doesn't have any impact. Compared to the best dystopian works that I know, this is simply toying with the idea of totalitarian regime and fear. I only bought it because on the cover of it, the author of the previous book that I read, Soumission has said that this is a tougher and more hopeless read, along the same story line ( a totalitarian regime based on religion). I don't even know what to say, I don't feel like it delivered at all, but at the same time the writing was very good and poignant... It is better than Houllebeqc's Soumission in my opinion, but just by design, because it follows a more violent and dangerous thread into the story. I don't know if I recommend it. 240